Nice quil adviendra di., simulacre humain,
Ni si ces vastes cieux eclaireront demain
Ce qu' ils ensevelissent heure, en ce lieu,
Je me dis seulement: a cette
Un jour, je fus aime, j'aimais, elle etait belle,
Jenfouis ce tresor dans mon ame immortelle
Et je l'em porte a Dieu._

This love poem, running through all he wrote from the _Nuit de Mai_
to the _Souvenir_, is undoubtedly the most beautiful and the most
profoundly human of anything in the French language. The charming poet
had become a great poet. That shock had occurred within him which is
felt by the human being to the very depths of his soul, and makes of him
a new creature. It is in this sense that the theory of the romanticists,
with regard to the educative virtues of suffering, is true. But it is
not only suffering in connection with our love affairs which has this
special privilege. After some misfortune which uproots, as it were, our
life, after some disappointment which destroys our moral edifice, the
world appears changed to us. The whole network of accepted ideas and
of conventional opinions is broken asunder. We find ourselves in direct
contact with reality, and the shock makes our true nature come to the
front. . . . Such was the crisis through which Musset had just passed.
The man came out of it crushed and bruised, but the poet came through it
triumphant.

It has been insisted on too much that George Sand was only the
reflection of the men who had approached her. In the case of Musset
it was the contrary. Musset owed her more than she owed to him. She
transformed him by the force of her strong individuality. She, on the
contrary, only found in Musset a child, and what she was seeking was a
dominator.

She thought she had discovered him this very year 1835.

The sixth _Lettre d'un voyageur_ was addressed to Everard. This Everard
was considered by her to be a superior man. He was so much above the
average height that George Sand advised him to sit down when he was with
other men, as when standing he was too much above them. She compares him
to Atlas carrying the world, and to Hercules in a lion's skin. But among
all her comparisons, when she is seeking to give the measure of his
superiority, without ever really succeeding in this, it is evident
that the comparison she prefers is that of Marius at Minturnae. He
personifies virtue a _l'antique:_ he is the Roman.

Let us now consider to whom all this flattery was addr