ing for her at the door in a hired carriage, and begged
urgently to speak with her. She went down accompanied by a servant. The
unknown lady named herself; she besought this deeply grieved mother to
confide her son to her, saying that she would have for him a maternal
affection and care. As promises did not avail, she went so far as sworn
vows. She used all her eloquence, and she must have had a great deal,
since her enterprise succeeded. In a moment of emotion the consent was
given." The author of "Lelia" and the author of "Rolla" started for
Italy together. M. Paul de Musset mentions that he accompanied them to
the mail coach "on a sad, misty evening, in the midst of circumstances
that boded ill." They spent the winter at Venice, and M. Paul de Musset
and his mother continued to hear regularly from Alfred. But toward the
middle of February his letters suddenly stopped, and for six weeks they
were without news. They were on the point of starting for Italy, to put
an end to their suspense, when they received a melancholy epistle
informing them that their son and brother was on his way home. He was
slowly recovering from an attack of brain fever, but as soon as he
should be able to drag himself along he would seek the refuge of the
paternal roof.

On the 10th of April he reappeared alone. A quarter of a century later,
and a short time after his death, Mme. Sand gave to the world, in the
guise of a novel, an account of the events which had occupied this
interval. The account was highly to her own advantage and much to the
discredit of her companion. Paul de Musset immediately retorted with a
little book which is decidedly poor as fiction, but tolerably good,
probably, as history. As a devoted brother, given all the
circumstances, it was perhaps the best thing he could do. It is
believed that his reply was more than, in the vulgar phrase, Mme. Sand
had bargained for; inasmuch as he made use of documents of whose
existence she had been ignorant. Alfred de Musset, suspecting that her
version of their relations would be given to the world, had, in the
last weeks of his life, dictated to his brother a detailed statement of
those incidents to which misrepresentation would chiefly address
itself, and this narrative Paul de Musset simply incorporated in his
novel. The gist of it is that the poet's companion took advantage of
his being seriously ill, in Venice, to be flagrantly unfaithful, and
that, discovering her infidelity, he