e in her
sentiments, however much he might feel himself to blame for it.

The history of the separation of the lovers--of De Musset's illness,
jealousy, and departure from Venice alone--is a thrice-told tale. Like
the subject of "The Ring and the Book," it has been set forth, by
various persons, variously interested, with correspondingly various
coloring. The story, as told by George Sand in her later novel, _Elle et
Lui_, is substantially the same as one related by De Musset in his
_Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle_, published two years after these
events, and in which, if it is to be regarded as reflecting personal
idiosyncrasies in the slightest degree, the poet certainly makes himself
out as the most insupportable of human companions. None the less did the
publication of _Elle et Lui_, a quarter of a century later, provoke a
savage retort from the deceased poet's brother, in _Lui et Elle_.
Finally, in _Lui_, a third novelist, Madame Colet, presented the world
with a separate version of the affair from one who imagined she could
have made up to the poet for what he had lost.

But it needs no deep study of human nature, or yet of these novels, to
understand the impracticability of two such minds long remaining
together in unity. Genius, in private life, is apt to be a torment--its
foibles demanding infinite patience, forbearance, nay, affectionate
blindness, in those who would minister to its happiness, and mitigate
the worst results of those foibles themselves. Certainly George Sand,
for a genius, was a wonderfully equable character; her "satanic" moods
showed themselves chiefly in pen and ink; her nerves were very strong,
the balance of her physical and mental organization was splendidly even,
as one imagines Shakespeare's to have been. But the very vigor of her
character, its force of self-assertion, unfitted her to be the
complement to any but a very yielding nature. The direct influence a
passive, merely receptive spirit would have accepted, and gratefully,
was soon felt as an intolerable burden by a mind in many ways different
from her own, but with the same imperious instinct of freedom, and as
little capable of playing anvil to another mind for long. He rebelled
against her ascendancy, but suffered from the spell. She was no Countess
Guiccioli, content to adore and be adored, and exercise an indirect
power for good on a capricious lover. Her logical mind, energetic and
independent, grew impatient of the seemi