here.

Ten years after this, in one of the last strains of his unstrung harp, a
fragment called "Souvenir des Alpes," the sad chord is touched once more:
up to the end it answered faintly to certain notes. Long after their
rupture and separation he said that he would have given ten years of his
life to marry her had she been free; and it is deplorable that the most
fervent and lasting affection of which he was capable should have been
thrown back upon him in such sort.

Of marriage there were several schemes at different times: they fell
through because he was averse to them himself, except one to which he much
inclined, the young lady being pretty, intelligent, charming and the
daughter of an old friend; but on the first advances it turned out that she
was engaged to another man. His biographer regrets this deeply, convinced
that such an alliance would have been his brother's salvation; but even if
he could have been more constant to his wife than to his mistresses, the
habit of intemperance was too confirmed to admit much hope of domestic
happiness. The same may be opined in regard to the vague hopes which were
destroyed by the death of the young duke of Orleans. When Louis Philippe
came to the throne, De Musset made no attempt to approach the royal family
on the pretext of the old school-friendship: it was the duke himself who
renewed it in 1836 on accidentally seeing some unpublished verses of the
poet's on the king's escape from an attempt at assassination. Louis
Philippe himself did not like the sonnet, considering the use of the poetic
_thou_ too familiar a form of address: he did not know who was the author;
and when Alfred was presented to him at a court-ball took him for a cousin
who was inspector of the royal forests at Joinville, and continued to greet
him, under this mistake, with a few gracious words two or three times a
year during the rest of his reign, while the poet's name was on the lips
and in the heart of every one else. The duke's favor and friendliness ended
only with his sad and sudden death.

Paul de Musset tells us that the years 1837 and 1838 were the happiest in
his brother's life. The love-trouble which had wrung from him the "Nuit de
Decembre" was a disappointment, but not a deception, and the parting had
caused equal sorrow on both sides, but no bitterness. After no long
interval appeared "a very young and very pretty person whom he met
frequently in society, of an enthusiastic, passionat