Sand was too broad-minded
to be hurt by such criticism, and she was intelligent enough to learn a
lesson from it.

Musset's transformation was singularly deeper. When he started for
Venice, he was the youngest and most charming of poets, fanciful and
full of fun. "Monsieur mon gamin d'Alfred," George Sand called him at
that time. When he returned from there, he was the saddest of poets. For
some time he was, as it were, stunned. His very soul seemed to be bowed
down with his grief. He was astonished at the change he felt in himself,
and he did not by any means court any fresh inspiration.

_J'ai vu, le temps ou ma jeunesse_
_Sur mes levres etait sans cesse_
_Prete a chanter comme un oiseau;_
_Mais j'ai souffert un dur martyre_
_Et le moins que j'en pourrais dire_,
_Si je lessayais sur a lyre_,
_La briserait comme un roseau_,

he writes.

In the _Nuit de Mai_, the earliest of these songs of despair, we have
the poet's symbol of the pelican giving its entrails as food to its
starving young. The only symbols that we get in this poetry are symbols
of sadness, and these are at times given in magnificent fulness of
detail. We have solitude in the _Nuit de decembre_, and the labourer
whose house has been burnt in the _Lettre a Lamartine_. The _Nuit
d'aout_ gives proof of a wild effort to give life another trial, but in
the _Auit d'octobre_ anger gets the better of him once more.

_Honte a toi, qui la premiere
M'as appris la trahison . . . !_

The question has often been asked whether the poet refers here to the
woman he loved in Venice but it matters little whether he did or not.
He only saw her through the personage who from henceforth symbolized
"woman" to him and the suffering which she may cause a man. And yet, as
this suffering became less intense, softened as it was by time, he began
to discover the benefit of it. His soul had expanded, so that he was now
in communion with all that is great in Nature and in Art. The harmony
of the sky, the silence of night, the murmur of flowing water, Petrarch,
Michel Angelo, Shakespeare, all appealed to him. The day came when he
could write:

_Un souvenir heureux est peut-etre sur terre
Plus vrai que le bonheur_.

This is the only philosophy for a conception of life which treats love
as everything for man. He not only pardons now, but he is grateful:

_Je ne veux rien savoir, ni si les champs fleurissent,