Just as Juliette had practically burned in effigy almost all the Academicians of her time before she had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with them and finding them charming, so she began by criticising and censuring Louis Philippe and his children with the greatest severity. Were not these people going to wrest her poet from her? And for what? For the sake of empty honours and useless occupations! Therefore we find Juliette preaching to her lover the contempt of earthly greatness. She was fiercely jealous of the citizen-king.
In order to calm her apprehensions, Victor Hugo had only to reveal to her his secret plans; from the first moment that he mentioned the Pairie to her, she became complacent and Orléaniste. Whether the poet went to harangue the widow of the soldier-prince in the name of the Académie, after the accident of 1842, or whether he paid her a private visit, Juliette always insisted upon accompanying him to Neuilly, and there she would wait, sitting in a cab outside, whilst her lover coined honeyed phrases inside the palace.
The Duchesse was German, simple, a good mother, and deeply religious. Of Victor Hugo's works, the only one she was familiar with was No. XXXIII. of the _Chants du Crépuscule, Dans L'Église de...._
"C'était une humble église au cintre surbaissé, L'église où nous entrâmes, Où depuis trois cents ans avaient déjà passé, Et pleuré des âmes."
The good lady probably thought these verses had been composed in a moment of deep fervour, in honour of a respected spouse. She congratulated the poet, quoted some of the lines to him, questioned him minutely about his children--and, while he enlarged on these domestic topics, the real heroine of the beautiful poetry so dear to the Duchesse, sat waiting below in the cab ... dreaming of the future peer of France; she already saw him in imagination descending the great staircase of the Luxembourg, with a demeanour full of dignity. For her part, she was more than ever content to remain at the foot of the steps, in a posture of humility, among the crowd of watchers.... When the poet issued at last from the ducal apartments, she would tell him her dream, and he would complacently acquiesce.
The appointment of Victor Hugo to the Pairie appeared in the _Moniteur_ of April 15th, 1845. It must be left to politicians to determine in what degree the presence of "Olympio" could profit the councils of the nation; but to Juliette's biographer the entry of her lover into the Luxembourg seems a felicitous event. From that moment, in fact, the young woman ceased to be cloistered. Busier than ever, and perhaps less jealous, the poet permitted his mistress to accompany him to the Luxembourg and to return alone to the Marais. At first Juliette hardly knew how to take this unfamiliar freedom. With her lover absent, she had grown accustomed to semi-obscurity. The blatant sunshine seemed to mock her loneliness. She writes: "Nobody can feel sadder than I do, when I trudge through the streets alone. I have not done such a thing for twelve years, and I ask myself what it may portend. Is it a mark of your confidence or of your indifference? Perhaps both. In any case, I am far from content."