on his part the first and
strongest if not the only one, of his life. The first season of this
intimacy was like a long summer holiday. "It seemed," writes the
biographer, "as if a partnership in which existence was so gay, to which
each brought such contributions of talent, wit, grace, youth, and
good-humor, could never be dissolved. It seemed as if such happy people
should find nothing better to do than remain in a home which they had made
so attractive for themselves and their friends.... I never saw such a happy
company, nor one which cared so little about the rest of the world.
Conversation never flagged: they passed their time in talking, drawing, and
making music. A childish glee reigned supreme. They invented all sorts of
amusements, not because they were bored, but because they were overflowing
with spirits." But Paris became too narrow for them, and they fled--first
to Fontainebleau, then to Italy. Musset's mother was deeply opposed to the
latter project, foreseeing misfortune with the prescience of affection, and
he promised not to go without her consent, although his heart was set upon
it. The most incredible story in the biography is that Madame Sand actually
surprised Madame de Musset into an interview, and, by appeals, eloquence,
persuasion and vows, obtained her sorrowful acquiescence.

The lamentable story of that Italian journey has been told too often and by
too many people to need repetition here. No doubt Paul de Musset has told
it as fairly as could be expected from his brother's side: probably the
circumstances occurred much as he sets them down. But he could not make due
allowance for the effect which Alfred's dissolute habits had produced upon
his character: he was but twenty-three, and had run the round of vice; he
had already depicted the moral result of such courses in his terrible
allegory of "La Coupe et les Levres:" the idea recurs throughout his works,
conspicuously in the _Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle_, which is Madame
Sand's best apology. But if his excesses had destroyed his ingenuousness,
she destroyed his faith in human nature, and on her will ever rest the
brand he set in the burning words of the "Nuit d'Octobre."

He returned to Paris shattered in mind and body, and shut himself up in his
room for months, unable to endure contact with the outer world, or even
that of the loving home circle which environed him with anxious tenderness.
He could not read or write: a favorite piece