French actress (1806-1883) who abandoned her career after becoming the mistress of Victor Hugo, to whom she acted as a secretary and traveling companion. ALS in French, signed “Juliette,” four pages on two adjoining sheets, 4.75 x 7.5, October 3, 1848. Handwritten letter to illustrious French writer Victor Hugo by his lifetime lover, allowing one to glimpse their daily life and bearing witness to Juliette Drouet’s amorous devotion. In part (translated): "I shall not see you tonight, my beloved. This thought weights as heavily as a piece of lead upon all the hours before tomorrow, and makes me find them fatally heavy, slow, monotonous and gloomy. However, I am doing what I can to make time pass, but while I make various exercises with my feet, hands and eyes, my thoughts and my soul are counting second after second every hour of absence with a painful impatience. O, how much I would like to be dead, so as not to leave you again. God knows how much I would suffer, should I see you love another woman. Were it not for this terrible fear, I would have long ago relinquished this stupid life in which I see you so rarely, and exchanged it for the other one as I would like it to be, and as I hope it will be. But I know that I would be as jealous in the other world as in this one, and this is what makes me go there long before you. Dear beloved, I am writing you gloomy nonsense, while I have so many sweet things to tell you, so many kisses to give you and so much love to teach you. I am stupid to waste away your time, my paper of which only one page is left, and my tenderness, of which you have too much. I beg your pardon one thousand times for this, and I adore you, knelt on my two knees before you." In fine condition, with a tiny loss to the corner tip, affecting the last letter of her signature.
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