When I visited Victor Hugo’s house at Place des Vosges in Paris , for the first time in 1996, I expected to feel the dense atmosphere of French literary grandeur, something between Voltairean satire and Napoleonic ambition. After all, Hugo was once an admirer of Napoleon I and a Republican in the lineage of Enlightenment humanism. Yet the room that welcomed me was not overtly French. It was filled with Chinese objects. I was surprised. When I visited the house again in 2023,