ng inconsistencies of her gifted
companion; and when at last she began to perceive in them the fatal
conditions of those gifts themselves, only compassion survived in her,
as she thought, and compassion was cold.

How could De Musset, with such an excellent example of prudence, regular
hours, good sense, calm self-possession, and ceaseless literary industry
as hers before his eyes, not be stirred up to emulate such admirable
qualities? But her reason made him unreasonable; the indefatigability of
her pen irritated his nerves, and made him idle out of contradiction;
her homilies provoked only fresh imprudences--as though he wanted to
make proof of his independence whilst secretly feeling her dominion--a
phenomenon with which highly nervous people will sympathize not a
little, but which was perfectly inexplicable to George Sand.

His genius was of a more delicate essence than hers; he has struck, at
times, a deeper note. But his nature was frailer, his muse not so easily
within call, his character as intolerant of restraint as her own, but
less self-sufficing; and the morbid taint of thought then prevalent, and
which her natural optimism and better balanced faculties enabled her to
throw off very shortly, had entered into him ineffaceably. Whether or
not she brought a fresh blight on his mind, she certaintly failed to
cure it.

The spring had hardly begun when De Musset was struck down by fever.
George Sand, who had previously been very ill herself, nursed him
through his attack with great devotion; and in six weeks' time he was
restored to health, if not to happiness. Theirs was at an end, as they
recognized, and agreed to part--"for a time, perhaps, or perhaps for
ever," she wrote,--with their attachment broken but not destroyed.

It was early in April that De Musset started on his homeward journey.
George Sand saw him on his way as far as Vicenza, and ere returning to
Venice, made a little excursion in the Alps, along the course of the
Brenta. "I have walked as much as four-and-twenty miles a day," she
writes to M. Boucoiran, "and found out that this sort of exercise is
very good for me, both morally and physically. Tell Buloz I will write
some letters for the _Revue_, upon my pedestrian tours. I came back into
Venice with only seven centimes in my pocket, otherwise I should have
gone as far as the Tyrol; but the want of baggage and money obliged me
to return. In a few days I shall start again, and cross over the Al