uteuil_ (as the new collection was entitled),
which remained almost unnoticed for some weeks, until Sainte-Beuve in the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_ of January 15, 1833, published a review of this and
the earlier poems, indicating their beauty and originality, the promise of
the one and progress of the other, with his infallible discernment and
discrimination. A few critics followed his lead, others differed, and
discussions began again which could not but spread the young man's fame.
The _Revue des Deux Mondes_ was now open to him, and henceforth, with a few
exceptions, whatever he wrote appeared in that periodical. He made his
entry with the drama of _Andrea del Sarto_, which is rife with tense and
tragic situations and deeply-moving scenes. The affairs of the family
turned out much better than had been expected, but Alfred de Musset
continued to work with application and ardor. His fine critical faculty
kept his vagaries within bounds: he knew better than anybody "how much good
sense it requires to do without common sense"--a dictum of his own. Like
every true artist, he took his subjects wherever he found them: the
dripping raindrops and tolling of the convent-bell suggested one of
Chopin's most enchanting _Preludes;_ the accidental attitudes of women and
children in the street have given painters and sculptors their finest
groups; so a bunch of fresh roses which De Musset's mother put upon his
table one morning during his days of extravagant dissipation, saying, "All
this for fourpence," gave him a happy idea for unravelling the perplexity
of Valentin in _Les Deux Maitresses;_ and his unconscious exclamation, "Si
je vous le disais pourtant que je vous aime," which caused a passer-by in
the street to laugh at him, furnished the opening of the _Stances a Ninon_,
like Dante's

Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore.

These fortunate dispositions were interrupted by a meeting which affected
his character and genius more than any other event in his life. It is
curious that Madame Sand and De Musset originally avoided making each
other's acquaintance. She fancied that she should not like him, and he,
although greatly struck by the genius of her first novel, _Indiana_,
disliked her overloaded style of writing, and struck out in pencil a
quantity of superfluous adjectives and other parts of speech in a copy
which unluckily fell into her hands. Their first encounter was followed by
a sudden, almost instantaneous, mutual passion--