al genius, Chopin.

Poor Alfred de Musset has had the sympathy of all classes and conditions
of men, apparently, from that day to this. She tried to vindicate
herself in the affair by publishing a book entitled "Elle et Lui,"
"wherein she depicted the sufferings of an angelic woman, all
tenderness, love, and patience, whose fate was joined to that of a man
all egotism, selfishness, sensuousness, and eccentricity." How grandly
the woman suffered, and how wantonly the man flung happiness away, is
told with all the impassioned fervor of George Sand in her early
writings. The taste of the whole proceeding was revoltingly low, and no
more than matched by that of the rejoinder, which was made in a book
called "Lui et Elle," written by Paul de Musset after his brother's
death. In this book the picture is reversed: "a hideous woman is
portrayed, utterly selfish, dissolute, heartless; and her lover, who is
easily recognized as Musset himself, is described as having almost all
of the heroic virtues." Both books were thoroughly French,--thoroughly
execrable.

Chopin at first feared Madame Sand very much, and refused to be
presented to her; but as she persisted in her desire to make the
acquaintance of so fine and delicate a genius, they at last met, and the
fate of poor Chopin was at once sealed. He was consumed from the very
first by an absorbing passion, to which no other name but morbid
infatuation could be applied. Madame Sand herself describes it in
"Lucrezia Floriani" thus:--

"For it seemed as if this fragile being was absorbed and consumed
by his affection. . . . Others seek happiness in their attachments;
when they no longer find it, the attachment gently vanishes. But he
loved for the sake of loving. No amount of suffering was sufficient
to discourage him. He could enter upon a new phase, that of woe;
but the phase of coldness he could never arrive at. It would have
been indeed a phase of physical agony,--for his love was his life,
and, delicious or bitter, he had not the power of withdrawing
himself a single moment from its domination."

Chopin, suffering from severe sickness, was ordered to a warmer climate;
and in the fall of 1837 Madame Sand accompanied him to the Island of
Majorca, where she nursed him back to life, although his friends at the
time of his departure never thought to see him again, and although he
was dangerously ill for a long time after their arrival.