eldom accepted the invitations
of his friends in the country, he now repeatedly rushed out of town to
escape the visits of editors, who had become no better than duns in his
eyes. When at home he shut himself in his room for days together in so
gloomy a frame of mind that even his brother did not venture to break in
upon him: he even made a furtive attempt at suicide one night when his
despondency reached its lowest depth; it was foiled by the accident of
Paul's having unloaded the pistols and locked up the powder and balls some
time before. He grew morbidly irritable, and resented Paul's remonstrances,
which, we may be sure, were made with all the tact and consideration of
natural delicacy and unselfish affection, generally by laughing at the poor
poet, which was the most effectual way of restoring his courage and
good-humor. One morning he emerged from his seclusion, and with vindictive
desperation threw before his brother a quantity of manuscripts, saying,
"You _would_ have prose: there it is for you." It was the introduction to a
sort of romance called _Le Poete dechu_, a wretched story of a young man of
many gifts who finds himself under the necessity of writing for the support
of his orphan sisters, and it described with harrowing eloquence the vain
efforts of his exhausted brain. The extracts in the biography are painfully
affecting and powerful, but the work was never finished or published. Such
a state of things could not go on indefinitely, and De Musset fell
dangerously ill of congestion of the lungs, brought on by reckless
imprudence when already far from well: the attack was accompanied by so
much fever and delirium that it was at first mistaken for brain fever. This
illness redoubled the tenderness and devotion of his family and friends:
his Marraine and Princess Belgiojoso took turns by his bedside, magnetizing
the unruly patient into quiescence; but the person who exercised the
greatest influence over him was a poor Sister of Charity, Soeur Marcelline,
who was engaged to assist in nursing him. The untiring care,
self-abnegation, angelic sweetness and serenity of this humble woman gained
the attachment of the whole family, and established an ascendency over
Alfred's impressionable imagination. She did not confine her office to her
patient's physical welfare, but strove earnestly to minister to him
spiritually. His long convalescence "was like a second birth. He did not
seem more than seventeen: he had the jo