ing, that he never should be able to practise a profession, and never
could resign himself to being _any particular kind of man._ His talent for
drawing led him to work in a painter's studio and in the galleries of the
Louvre with some success, and for a time he was in high spirits at the
idea of having found his calling, and pursued it while attending lectures
and classes on other subjects. This uncertainty lasted a couple of years,
during which he began to venture a little into society, of which, like most
lively, versatile young people, he was extravagantly fond. His Muse was
still dormant, but his love for poetry was strongly developed; a volume of
Andre Chenier was always in his pocket, and he delighted to read it under
the trees in the avenues of the Bois on his daily walk out of Paris to the
suburb of Auteuil, where his family lived at that time. Under this
influence he wrote a poem, which he afterward destroyed, excepting a few
good descriptive lines which he introduced into one of later date.
Meanwhile, he had been presented to the once famous Cenacle, the nucleus of
the romantic school, then in the pride and flush of youth and rapidly
increasing popularity; its head-quarters were at the house of Victor Hugo
_facile princeps ordinis_ even among its chiefs. There he met Alfred de
Vigny, Merimee, Sainte-Beuve and others, whose talents differed essentially
in kind and degree, but who were temporarily drawn together by similarity
of literary principles and tastes. Their meetings were entirely taken up
with intellectual discussions, or the reading of a new production, or in
walks which have been commemorated by Merimee and Sainte-Beuve, when they
carried their romanticism to the towers of Notre Dame to see the sun set or
the moon rise over Paris.

Stimulated by this companionship, Alfred de Musset began to compose. His
first attempt at publication was anonymous, a ballad called "A Dream,"
which, through the good offices of a friend, was accepted by _Le
Provincial,_ a tri-weekly newspaper of Dijon: it did not pass unnoticed,
but excited a controversy in print between the two editors, to the extreme
delight of the young poet, who always fondly cherished the number of the
paper in which it appeared. At length, one morning he woke up Sainte-Beuve
with the laughing declaration that he too was a poet, and in support of
his assertion recited some of his verses to that keenly attentive and
appreciative ear. Sainte-Beuve at on