relapsed into a brain fever which
threatened his life, and from which he rose only to make his way home
with broken wings and a bleeding heart.

Mme. Sand's version of the story is that his companion's infidelity was
a delusion of the fever itself, and that the charge was but the climax
of a series of intolerable affronts and general fantasticalities.

Fancy the great gossiping, vulgar-minded public deliberately invited to
ponder this delicate question! The public should never have been
appealed to; but once the appeal made, it administers perforce a rough
justice of its own. According to this rough justice, the case looks
badly for Musset's fellow traveller. She was six years older than he
(at that time of life a grave fact); she had drawn him away from his
mother, taken him in charge, assumed a responsibility. Their literary
physiognomies were before the world, and she was, on the face of the
matter, the riper, stronger, more reasonable nature. She had made great
pretensions to reason, and it is fair to say of Alfred de Musset that
he had made none whatever. What the public sees is that the latter,
unreasonable though he may have been, comes staggering home, alone and
forlorn, while his companion remains quietly at Venice and writes three
or four highly successful romances. Herr Lindau, who analyzes the
affair, comes to the same conclusion as the gross synthetic public; and
he qualifies certain sides of it in terms of which observant readers of
George Sand's writings will recognize the justice. It is very happy to
say "she was something of a Philistine;" that at the bottom of all
experience with her was the desire to turn it to some economical
account; and that she probably irritated her companion in a high degree
by talking too much about loving him as a mother and a sister. (This,
it will be remembered, is the basis of action with Therese, in "Elle et
Lui." She becomes the hero's mistress in order to retain him in the
filial relation, after the fashion of Rousseau's friend, Mme. de
Warens.) On the other hand, it seems hardly fair to make it one of
Musset's grievances that his comrade was industrious, thrifty, and
methodical; that she had, as the French say, _de l'ordre_; and that,
being charged with the maintenance of a family, she allowed nothing to
divert her from producing her daily stint of "copy."

It is easy to believe that Musset may have tried the patience of a
tranquil associate. George Sand's Jacques Lau