oning he pursued for three years a dissolute mode of
life, which, thanks to the remarkable strength and elasticity of his
constitution, did not prevent his carrying on his studies and going with
great zest into society, where he became more and more welcome, besides
writing occasionally. He translated De Quincey's _Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater_, introducing some reveries of his own, but the work attracted
no attention. During this period his father, naturally anxious about his
son's unprofitable courses, one morning informed him that he had obtained a
clerkship for him in an office connected with the military commissariat.
Alfred did not venture to demur, but the confinement and routine of an
office were intolerable, and he resolved to conquer his liberty by every
effort of which he was capable. He offered his manuscripts for publication
to M. Canel, the devoted editor of the romantic party: they fell short by
five hundred lines of the number of pages requisite for a volume of the
usual octavo bulk. He obtained a holiday, which he spent with a favorite
uncle who lived in the provinces, and came back in three weeks with the
poem of "Mardoche." He persuaded his father to give a literary party, to
which his friends of the Cenacle were invited, and repeated his latest
compositions to them, including "Mardoche." Here we have another example of
manners startling to our notions: the keynote of these verses was rank
libertinism, yet in his mother's drawing-room and apparently in the
presence of his father, a dignified, reputable man, venerated by his
children, this young rake declaimed stanzas more licentious than any in
Byron's _Don Juan_. But it caused no scandal: the friends were rapturous,
and predicted the infallible success of the poems, in which they were
justified by the event. "Rarely," says Paul de Musset, "has so small a
quantity of paper made so much noise." There was an uproar among the
newspapers, some applauding with all their might, others denouncing the
exaggeration of the romantic tendency: the romanticists themselves were
disconcerted to find the "Ballade a la Lune," which they had taken as a
good joke, turned into a joke against themselves. At all events, the young
man was launched, and his vocation was thenceforth decided. In reading
these first productions of Alfred de Musset's without the prejudice or
partiality of faction, it cannot be denied that if not sufficient in
themselves to ensure his immor