trician women. The first part of _Consuelo_ takes us back to
the singing schools and theatres of Venice in the eighteenth century,
and introduces us to individuals taken from life and cleverly drawn.
We have Comte Zustiniani, the dilettante, a wealthy patron of the fine
arts; Porpora, the old master, who looks upon his art as something
sacred; Corilla, the prima donna, annoyed at seeing a new star appear;
Anzoleto, the tenor, who is jealous because he gets less applause than
his friend; and above and beyond all the others Consuelo, good kind
Consuelo, the sympathetic singer.

The theatres of Venice seem to be very much like those of Paris and
of other places. We have the following sketch of the vanity of the
comedian. "Can a man be jealous of a woman's advantages? Can a lover
dislike his sweetheart to have success? A man can certainly be jealous
of a woman's advantages when that man is a vain artist, and a lover
may hate his sweetheart to have any success if they both belong to the
theatre. A comedian is not a man, Consuelo, but a woman. He lives on his
sickly vanity; he only thinks of satisfying that vanity, and he works
for the sake of intoxicating himself with vanity. A woman's beauty is
apt to take attention from him and a woman's talent may cause his talent
to be thrown in the background. A woman is his rival, or rather he is
the rival of a woman. He has all the little meannesses, the caprices,
the exigences and the weak points of a coquette." Such is the note of
this picture of things and people in the theatrical world. How can we
doubt its veracity!

At any rate, the general idea that George Sand had of the artist was
exactly the idea adopted by romanticism. We all know what a being
set apart and free from all social and moral laws, what a "monster"
romanticism made of the artist. It is one of its dogmas that the
necessities of art are incompatible with the conditions of a regular
life. An artist, for instance, cannot be _bourgeois_, as he is the exact
opposite. We have Kean's speech in Dumas' drama, entitled _Kean, or
Disorder and Genius._

"An actor," he says, "must know all the passions, so that he may express
them as he should. I study them in myself." And then he adds: "That is
what you call, orderly! And what is to become of genius while I am being
orderly?"

All this is absurd. The artist is not the man who has felt the most, but
the man best gifted for imagining the various states of mind and feeling