CHAPTER XIII.

Mr. Van Ness came beaming down through the lilacs to the arbor, and was

received with much reverence by Mrs. Wilde. She was a devout woman, and

Pliny Van Ness's name was in all the churches. They all sauntered back to

luncheon presently, Mrs. Wilde and Jane going before, while Mr. Van Ness

and the Russian princess walked more slowly through the woods, the

foreigner talking with animation and many gestures of American trees, while

the reformer listened benignly, ineffable calm in his smiling eyes.

"You followed me here purposely, Charlotte?" he said gently as she dilated

eloquently on our autumnal foliage.

"No. I did not know that you were in New York. But I meant to call upon you

soon. I have had no money from you since last August."

"Somebody, apparently, has filled my place as your banker," his placid eye

sweeping over the costly dress and be-diamonded fingers.

"What is that to you?" with a sudden shrill passion. "Once you would have

cared, Pliny. But that was years ago."

"Yes. Many years ago," buttoning his glove carefully. "A Russian princess,

eh?" after a short pause. "You are playing higher than ordinary, Charlotte.

You'll find it dangerous. I should advise you to keep to begging letters or

the rôle of medium or literary tramp."

"One class is as ready to be humbugged as the other. Who knows that better

than you?"

"In the religious and charitable work to which I have given up my life,"

deliberately measuring his words, "there are few impostors to be met. We

usually detect fraud, with God's help, and do not suffer from it,

therefore."

She stopped short, looking at him with blank amazement. Then walked on with

a shrug: "Absolutely! He expects me to believe in him! He believes in

himself! Can imposture go further than that?"

Mrs. Wilde, in the distance, caught sight of the two figures as they passed

through a belt of sunlight, and smiled contentedly.

"I am so glad to bring poor madame under direct religious influence! Mr.

Van Ness is speaking to her with great earnestness, I perceive."

The Princess Trebizoff scanned the great reformer as they walked,

appraising him, from the measured solemn step to his calm humility of eye.

She would have relished a passionate scene with him. After terrapin and

champagne, there was nothing she relished so much as emotion and tears. But

they had played up to each other so often! The tragedy in their relation

had grown terribly stale! You could not, she felt, make Hamlet's inky cloak

out of dyed cotton. But he would serve as audience.

"I'm growing very tired of good society," talking rapidly as usual. "Now,

you always enjoyed a dead level, Pliny."

"Yes. There's no Bohemian blood in my veins. I was designed for

respectability."

"So? I mean Ted shall be respectable," with sudden earnestness. "He is in a

Presbyterian college. I should be glad if he'd go into the ministry. Yes, I

should. Provided he had a call from God. I'll have no sham professions

from Ted," her black eyes sparkling. "You did not ask for the boy. In your

weighty affairs doubtless you forgot there was such a human being."

"No, indeed. In what institution have you placed Thaddeus?"

"No matter. He's out of your influence, thank God! He never heard your

name. But as for me, I think I'll drop this princess business soon,"

meditatively. "I began down town," with a fresh burst of vivacity. "On the

boarding-house keepers. Last December."

"You are Madame Varens! Is it possible?" turning to look at her. "The

papers were filled with your exploits last winter."

"Precisely!" She had a joyous girlish laugh, infectious enough to draw a

smile from Van Ness.

"You are really very clever, Charlotte," admiringly.

"I made a tour in the West just before that," excitedly, patting her hands

together. "Agent for Orphans' Homes in the Gulf States. I wrote a letter of

introduction from one or two bishops to the clergymen in their dioceses:

that started me, and the clergy and press passed me through. What a mill of

tea-drinkings and church-gossip I went through! But it was better fun than

this."

Looking up, she happened to catch the cold, furtive glance with which he

had listened, and kept her eye fixed on him curiously.

"Do you hate me so much as _that?_" she said with a long breath. "Well,"

frankly, "it must be intolerable to carry such a millstone about your neck

as I am to you. You know I could pull you down any minute I chose," tossing

her head and laughing maliciously. "No matter how high you had climbed. I

often wonder, Pliny, why you do not rid yourself of me. It could be easily

done."

The usually suave tone was harsh and hoarse as he began to speak. He

coughed, and carefully modulated his voice before he said politely, "Yes.

But it would involve exposure unless carefully managed. That is certain

damnation. There is a chance of safety for the present in trusting to you.

You were always good-natured, Charlotte. And," turning his watery eye full

on her, "you loved me once."

"Possibly," coolly. "But last year's loves are as tedious reading as last

year's newspapers. Better trust my good-nature. You show your shrewdness in

that. I don't interfere with people. The world uses me very well. It's a

hogshead that gives the best of wine--if you know how to tap it."

"You've tapped it with a will. You go through life perpetually drunk," he

thought as she ran lightly before him up the steps. He habitually made such

complacent moral reflections upon his companions to himself, and took

spiritual comfort in them.

The hall was wide and sunny, made homelike by low seats and growing plants:

it was occupied by half a dozen committee-men, who were waiting impatiently

to see Mr. Van Ness. The princess seated herself, attentive, her head on

one side like some bright-eyed tropical bird.

Van Ness, without even a glance toward her, took up his business of

Christian financier. "Do not go, I beg," as the captain opened the inner

door for Rhodes and the ladies to retire. "Our affairs are conducted in the

eyes of the public. Sound integrity has no secrets to keep. That is our

pride.--Ah, gentlemen?"

The captain was glad to stay. Surely, Jane would be impressed with the vast

influence of this good man. Van Ness did not look at her once. But he saw

nobody but her, and spoke directly to her ear.

Asylums, workingmen's homes, hospitals, in all of which he was a director,

were brought up and dismissed with a few hopeful, earnest words. The vast

system of organized charities through which the kindly wealthy class touch

the poor beneath them was opened. Mrs. Wilde, a manager in many of them,

joined in the discussion.

"What a useless creature I am!" thought Jane. "But the money," doggedly,

"is mine, and I choose to give it to father if the whole world go hungry."

She turned, however, from one representative of these asylums to the other

with a baited look. Was it this one or that whom she had robbed?

"Now, as to Temperance City--_our_ city?" demanded a puffy little man

importantly. "You are the fountain-head of information there. We look to

you, Mr. Van Ness."

"You shall have the annual report next week.--Temperance City," turning to

Rhodes, his balmy gaze aimed straight over her head, "is a scheme to

protect people of small means in the churches, especially women, from

wrecking their little all in unwise investments. It is a town on the line

of the Pacific Railroad. Lots are only sold to colonists who are

tee-totallers and members of some church. The stock is owned largely by the

same class."

"Oh, almost altogether!" cried the little man enthusiastically. "Mr. Van

Ness's name, as you will understand, gives it authority among all religious

people. We distribute prospectuses at camp-meetings and at all sectarian

seaside resorts. Shares go off this summer like hot cakes. There's nothing

like religion, sir, to back up business enterprise. There's Stokes, for

instance. His shoes are sold from New Jersey to Oregon on the strength of

the hymns he has written."

"Yes," said the judge solemnly. "We used to keep religion too much in the

chimney-corner--spoke of it with bated breath. But it's in trade now, sir.

We hear every day of our Christian shoe-makers and railway kings and

statesmen. The world moves!"

"Moves? Oh there's no lever like religion!" gasped the little man. "No

advertisement to equal it. And a good man ought to succeed! Are the

swindlers to take all the fat of the land? Does not the good Book say, 'To

the laborers belong the spoils'?"

"But this is so charming to me!" cried the princess. "We foreigners have so

few opportunities of looking into the workings of your politics and trade!"

Van Ness bowed respectfully.

"And the State Home for destitute children?" asked a raw-boned

Scotch-Irishman. "We're interested in that here in New York. We've

subscribed largely, as you're aware, Mr. Van Ness. May I ask when you wull

begin the buildin'?"

"In the spring, I trust. If enough funds are collected."

"And hoo air the funds invested in the mean while?"

"Oh, in corner-lots in Temperance City."

The committee-men had hurried away to catch the next train: lunch was over,

and Mr. Van Ness stood apart on the lawn under the drooping branches of a

willow, when the princess tripped lightly out to him.

"You have an object in coming here? You had an object in bringing those men

to-day and opening out your affairs. What is it?"

He regarded her composedly for a moment without answering: "You always

erred, Charlotte, in ascribing your own skill in intrigue to me. It was a

flattering mistake. What I am to others I am to myself."

She laughed, a merry, hearty laugh: "Yes, Pliny, because you are not

satisfied with cheating the world and the God that made you into the belief

that you are a Christian, but you parade in your godliness before yourself.

There is not a spot within you sound enough for your real soul to lodge in.

It is all like that," setting her foot viciously on a fallen apple. "Rotten

to the core!"

A shadow of disgust passed over his handsome face. Van Ness had a

fastidious taste. Her melodramatic poses had been familiar to him for

years: they always had annoyed and bored him.

"What is it that brings you here? A woman?"

He hesitated a moment: "Yes."

"This yellow-haired girl? You mean to marry her?"

"I may marry her," cautiously.

Their eyes met. "I did not think you would push me so far," she said

thoughtfully.

"It is to your interest not to interfere. You are mad, Charlotte. But you

never lose sight of the dirty dollar in your madness."

"That is for Ted's sake," quietly. "I dislike that girl. She's so damnably

clean! She's of the sort that would walk straight on and trample me under

foot like a slug if she knew what I was. I owe her an old grudge, too. But

that's nothing," laughing good-humoredly. "It was the most ridiculous

scene! But it lost me a year's income. She nearly recognized me to-day. On

the whole, I'll not interfere. Marry her. She deserves just such a

punishment. By the way, there is my card. You can send the back payments

that are due, to-morrow."

Van Ness received the card and command with a smile and bow, meant for the

bystanders: "Of course, Charlotte, you understand that these payments must

soon stop. I shall rid myself of any legal claims you have upon me before

marrying another woman."

"Oh, I've no doubt you'll walk strictly according to law! You will not run

the risk of a lawsuit, much less prosecution, even for Miss Swendon. You

will have no trouble in gaining your freedom from me," shrilly.

"None whatever," stripping the leaves from a willow wand. She left him

without a word, going to the house.

Mrs. Wilde had just summoned her carriage. "Where is the princess?" looking

lazily around.

"Is Madame Trebizoff a guest in your house?" asked Jane suddenly.

"Yes."

"I will call her. I have something to say to her."

She went to meet her with the grave motherly firmness with which she would

have gone to give a scolding to black Buff or a lazy chambermaid. The

princess, crossing the grass, slender, dark, sparkling, had no doubt of her

own smouldering passionate hate against her. It was the proper thing for

Hagar to hate Sarah. Life was thin and insipid without great remorses,

revenges, loves. The poor little creature was always aiming at them, and

falling short. She was wondering now why Jane wore no jewelry. "Not an

earring! Not a hoop on her finger! If I had her money!" glancing down at

the blaze of rubies on her breast.

They met under a clump of lilacs.

"Stop one moment," said Jane, looking down at her not unkindly. "You must

not let this go too far, you know."

"What do you mean?" The princess fixed her eye upon her, with a somewhat

snaky light in it. Indeed, when she assumed that attitude toward Van Ness

or any other man she could frighten and hold him at bay as if she had been

a cobra about to strike. But the lithe dark body, the vivid color, the

beady eye only reminded Jane oddly of a darting little lizard, and tempted

her to laugh.

"No. You really must keep within bounds. Because I have my eye upon you. I

can't let you cheat that good soul, who brought you here, to her damage."

The princess gasped and whitened as though a cold calm hand was laid on her

miserable sham of a body.

"Do you know who I am?" stiffening herself into her idea of regal bearing.

"Not exactly. It does not matter in the least, either. I took your means of

earning a living from you once, you told me, and I don't wish to do it

again. I will not interfere as long as you hurt nobody."

The princess stared at her and burst into an hysteric laugh: "I believe, in

my soul, you mean just what you say! You are the shrewdest or stupidest

woman I ever saw! Do you sympathize with me? Do you feel for me?"

tragically, "or are you trying to worm my secret from me?"

"Neither one nor the other," coolly. "I know your secret. You are no spirit

and no princess. I shall pity you perhaps when you go to some honest work.

Why," with sudden interest, "I can find steady work for you at once. A

staymaker in the village told me the other day--"

"_I_ make stays!"

They both laughed. Jane's chief thought probably was how bony and sickly

this poor woman was: her own solid white limbs seemed selfish to her for

the instant. She took the twitching, ringed fingers in her hand.

"Play out your own play," she said good-humoredly. "You will not hurt

anybody very seriously, I fancy."

They walked in silence to the house.

The princess bent forward in the carriage-window as they drove away to look

back at her. "I wish my son knew such women as that!" she cried.

"Son?" said the startled Mrs. Wilde. "You have not spoken before to me of

your son, madame."

"I have always kept him under tutors--at Leipsic."

She leaned back as they drove through the sunshine, her filmy handkerchief

to her painted eyes, seeing nothing but an ugly, honest-faced boy hard at

work in a bare Presbyterian chapel. He would never know nor guess the life

of shame which his mother led! Her tears were real now.

She even had wild, visionary thoughts of a confession, of staymaking, of so

many dollars a week regularly. But she remembered the time when some fussy,

good women had put her in charge of a fashionable Kindergarten. There was a

fat salary! The house was luxurious: the teachers did the work. But one

night she had broken the finical apparatus to pieces, left a heap of

bonbons for the children, scrawled a verse of good-bye with chalk on the

blackboard, and taken to the road again without a penny.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

It is twenty years since the death of Alfred de Musset, a poet whose

popularity and influence, both in his own country and out of it, can be

compared only to Byron's. Not that the Frenchman is known in England as the

Englishman is known in France, but the latter country may be called the

open side of the Channel, and in establishing a comparison between the

relative fame and familiarity of foreign names and ideas there and on the

isolated side, it is proportion rather than quantity which must be kept in

view. While Byron is out of fashion in his own country, the rage for

Musset, which for a long time made him appear not so much the favorite

modern poet of France as the only one, has subsided into a steady

admiration and affection, a permanent preference. New editions of his

works, both cheaper and more costly, are being constantly issued, portraits

of him are multiplied, his pieces are regularly performed at the Théâtre

Français, his verses are on every one's lips, his tomb is heaped with

flowers on All Souls' Day. Until after his death it would have been easy to

count those who knew even his name in this country and England: as usual in

such matters, we preceded the English in our acquaintance with him. The

freedom with which Owen Meredith and Mr. Swinburne helped themselves from

his poems proves how unfamiliar the general public was with him ten years

ago, but his distinction is now so well recognized in that island, so

remote from external impressions, that some knowledge of his life and

writings formed part of the French course last year in the higher local

examinations of Cambridge University.

Alfred de Musset belongs to the class of poets whose inner history excites

most curiosity, because his readers feel that there lies the spring of his

power, the secret of his charm, as well as the key to the riddles and

inconsistencies which his writings present: they are so imbued with the

essence of a common humanity that the heart that beats, the tears which

start, the blood which courses through them, keep time with our own. The

desire to penetrate still further into the intimacy to which they admit us

is quite distinct from the vulgar inquisitiveness which pursues celebrity,

or merely notoriety, into privacy. His biography has lately been published

by one who recognizes the true nature of this curiosity: Paul de Musset has

reserved the right of telling his brother's story, regarding it, he says,

"not only as a duty I owe to the man I loved best, and whose most intimate

and confidential friend I was, but as a necessary complement to the perfect

understanding of his works, for his work was himself."

The way in which this task has been performed is not entirely satisfactory,

and many passionate admirers of the poet, the order of readers to whom it

is dedicated, will feel disappointment and a regretful sense of its failing

to fulfil what it undertook, increased by the conviction that, having been

undertaken by the hand best fitted for it by natural propriety, it cannot

be done again. The book bears the relation to what one desired and expected

that a bare diary does to the journal, or memoranda to the lecture. It is a

collection of notes on the life of Alfred de Musset, rather than a full

memoir. This inadequacy arises principally from the biographer himself.

Paul de Musset, the poet's elder and only brother, is a man of taste and

cultivation, a judge of art, literature, music and the drama, a person of

charming manners and conversation, dignified, kindly, courteous, easy: he

was until middle age a busy, working man, whose leisure moments were

occupied with writings that have found little favor, except the _Femmes de

la Règence_ and the pretty child's story of _M. le Vent et Mme. la Pluie_,

which latter has been translated. He was the devoted, unselfish friend and

mentor of Alfred, to whose juniority and genius he extended an indulgence

of which he needed no share for himself: in fact, he was the elder brother

of the Prodigal in everything but want of generosity. A more amiable

portrait cannot be imagined than the one to be drawn of him from the

history of his intercourse with his brother and from Alfred's own letters

and verses to him. This, however, was not the person to give us such an

account and analysis of the life and character of Alfred de Musset as the

subject called for: he has neither the necessary impartiality nor ability.

He is now seventy years old, and although, like his brother, he has the

gift of appearing a decade less than his age, he is forced to remember that

the time must come when he will no longer be here to defend his brother's

memory, which has suffered more than one cruel attack. Having once had to

silence calumny under cover of fiction, he naturally wished to put his name

beyond the reach of being further traduced. Whatever the shortcomings of

the performance, it could not fail to be interesting. It is written in an

easy, well-bred style, like the author's way of talking--not without a

sense of humor, with touching pride in his brother's endowments, and

tenderness toward faults which he does not deny. In place of comprehensive

views and sound judgment of Alfred de Musset's genius and career, we have

the knowledge of absolute intimacy and sympathy, candor, a hoard of

reminiscences and details which could be gained from no other source, and,

more than all, that certainty as to events and motives which can exist only

where there has been a lifelong daily association without disguise or

distrust.

The family of Musset is old and gentle, and was adorned in early centuries

by soldiers of mark and statesmen of good counsel--the sort of lineage

which should bequeath high and honorable ideas, an inheritance of which

neither Paul nor Alfred de Musset nor their immediate forbears were

unworthy. A disposition to letters and poetry appears among their ancestry

on both sides, beginning in the twelfth century with Colin de Musset, a

sort of troubadour, a friend of Thibaut, count of Champagne, while the

poet's paternal grandmother bore the name of Du Bellay, so illustrious in

the annals of French literature. Alfred de Musset's parents were remarkable

for goodness of heart and high principle: both possessed an ideality which

showed itself with them in elevation of moral sentiments, and which passed

into the imaginative qualities of their sons. From remoter relatives on

both sides came a legacy of wit, promptness and point in retort, gayety

and good spirits. Alfred de Musset was born on the 11th of December, 1810,

in the old quarter of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. The stories of

his childhood--which are pretty, like all true stories about children--show

a sensitive, affectionate, vivacious, impetuous, perverse nature,

precocious observation and intelligence. He was one of those beautiful,

captivating children whom nobody can forbear to spoil, and who, with the

innocent cunning of their age, reckon on the effect of their own charms. He

was not four years old when he first fell in love, as such mere babies,

both girls and boys, occasionally do: these infantine passions exhibit most

of the phenomena of maturer ones, and show how intense and absorbing a

passion may be which belongs exclusively to the region of sentiment and

imagination. Alfred de Musset's first love was his cousin, a young girl

nearly grown up when he first saw her: he left his playthings to listen to

her account of a journey she had made from Belgium, then the seat of war,

and from that day, whenever she came to the house, insisted on her telling

him stories, which she did with the patience and invention of Scheherazade.

At last he asked her to marry him, and, as she did not refuse, considered

her his betrothed wife. After some time she returned to her home in Liége:

there were tears on both sides--on his genuine and excessive grief. "Do not

forget me," said Clélia.--"Forget you! Don't you know that your name is cut

upon my heart with a pen-knife?" He set himself to learn to read and write

with incredible application, that he might be able to correspond with his

beloved. His attachment did not abate with absence, so that when Clélia

really married, the whole family thought it necessary to keep it a secret

from her little lover, and he remained in ignorance of it for years,

although he betrayed extraordinary suspicion and misgiving on the subject.

He was a schoolboy of eight or nine before he learned the truth, and was at

first extremely agitated: he asked tremblingly if Clélia had been making

fun of him, and being assured that she had not, but that they had not

allowed her to wait for him, and that she loved him like an elder sister,

he grew calm and said, "I will be satisfied with that." The cousins seldom

met in after-life, but preserved a tender affection for each other, which

served to avert a lawsuit and rupture that threatened to grow out of a

business disagreement between the two branches of the family. In 1852,

Clélia came to Paris to be present at Alfred's reception by the French

Academy. He had great confidence in her taste and judgment, and the last

time they met he said to her, "If there should ever be a handsome edition

of my works, I will have a copy bound for you in white vellum with a gold

band, as an emblem of our friendship."

His first literary passion was the _Arabian Nights_, which filled the

imagination of both brothers with magical lamps, wishing-carpets and secret

caverns for nearly a twelvemonth, during which they were incessantly trying

to carry out their fancies by constructing enchanted towers and palaces

with the furniture of their apartment. The Eastern stories were superseded

by tales of chivalry: Paul lit upon the _Four Sons of Aymon_ in his

grandfather's library, and a new world opened before him in which he

hastened to lose himself, taking his younger brother by the hand. The

children devoured _Jerusalem Delivered_, _Orlando Furioso_, _Amadis de

Gaule_, and all the poems, tales and traditions of knighthood on which they

could lay hands. Their games now were of nothing but tilts and jousts,

single combats, adventures and deeds of arms: the paladins were their

imaginary playfellows. A little comrade, who charged with an extraordinary

rush in the excitement of the tournament, generally represented Roland:

Alfred, being the youngest and smallest of the three, was allowed to bear

the enchanted lance, the first touch of which unseated the boldest rider

and bravest champion--a pretty device of the elder brother's, in which one

hardly knows whether to be most charmed with the poetic fancy or the

protecting affection which it displayed. The delightful infatuation lasted

for several years, undergoing some gradual modifications. Until he was

nine, Alfred had been chiefly taught at home by a tutor, but at that age he

was sent to school, where the first term dispelled his belief in the

marvellous. His brother was by this time at boarding-school, and they met

only on Sunday, when they renewed their knightly sports, but with

diminished ardor. One day Alfred asked Paul seriously what he thought of

magic, and Paul confessed his scepticism. The loss of this dear delusion

was a painful shock to Alfred, as it is to many children. Who cannot

remember the change which came over the world when he first learned that

Krisskinkle _alias_ Santa Claus did not fill the Christmas stocking--that

the fairies had not made the greener ring in the grass, where he had firmly

believed he might have seen them dancing in the moonlight if he could only

have sat up late enough? The Musset children fell back upon the mysterious

machinery of old romance--trap-doors, secret staircases, etc.--and began

tapping and sounding the walls for private passages and hidden doorways;

but in vain. It was at this stage of the fever that _Don Quixote_ was given

to them; and it is a singular illustration both of the genius of the book

and the intelligence of the little readers that it put their giants, dwarfs

and knights to flight. During the following summer they passed a few weeks

at the manor-house of Cogners with an uncle, the marquis de Musset, the

head of the family: to their great joy, the room assigned them had

underneath the great canopied bedstead a trap leading into a small chamber

built in the thickness of the floor between the two stories of the old

feudal building. Alfred could not sleep for excitement, and wakened his

brother at daybreak to help him explore: they found the secret chamber full

of dust and cobwebs, and returned to their own room with the sense that

their dreams had been realized a little too late. On looking about them

they saw that the tapestry on their walls represented scenes from _Don

Quixote:_ they burst out laughing, and the days of chivalry were over.

Alfred de Musset was nine years old, as we have said, when he began to

attend the Collége Henri IV. (now Corneille), on entering which he took his

place in the sixth form, among boys for the most part of twelve or upward.

He was sent to school on the first day with a deep scalloped collar and his

long light curls falling upon his shoulders, and being greeted with jeers

and yells by his schoolmates, went home in tears, and the curls were cut

off forthwith. He was an ambitious rather than an assiduous scholar, and

kept his place on the bench of honor by his facility in learning more than

by his industry; but it was a source of keen mortification to him if he

fell behindhand. His talents soon attracted the attention of the masters

and the envy of the pupils, the latter of whom were irritated and

humiliated by seeing the little curly-pate, the youngest of them all,

always at the head of the class. The laziest and dullest formed a league

against him: every day, when school broke up, he was assaulted with a

brutality equal to that of an English public school, but which certainly

would not have been roused against him there by the same cause. He had to

run amuck through the courtyard to the gate, where a servant was waiting

for him, often reaching it with torn clothes and a bloody face. This

persecution was stopped by his old playfellow, Orlando Furioso, who was two

years his senior: he threw himself into the crowd one day and dealt his

redoubtable blows with so much energy that he scattered the bullies once

for all. Among their schoolmates was the promising duke of Orleans, who was

then duc de Chartres, his father, afterward King Louis Philippe, bearing at

that time the former title. He took a strong fancy to Alfred de Musset,

which he showed by writing him a profusion of notes during recitation, most

of them invitations to dinner at Neuilly, where he occasionally went with

other school-fellows of the young prince. For a time after leaving school

De Chartres--as he was called by his young friends--kept up a lively

correspondence with Alfred, and when their boyish intimacy naturally

expired the recollection of it remained fresh and lively in the prince's

mind, as was afterward proved.

De Musset left college at the age of sixteen, having taken a prize in

philosophy for a Latin metaphysical essay. His disposition to inquire and

speculate had already manifested itself by uneasy questions in the classes

of logic and moral philosophy; and although few will agree with his brother

that his writings show unusual aptitude and profound knowledge in these

sciences, or that, as he says, "the thinker was always on a level with the

poet," nobody can deny the constant questioning of the Sphinx, the eager,

restless pursuit of truth, which pervades his pages. He pushed his search

through a long course of reading,--Descartes, Spinoza, Cabanis, Maine de

Biran--only to fall back upon an innate faith in God which never forsook

him, although it was strangely disconnected with his mode of life.

I have lingered over the early years of Alfred de Musset because the

childhood of a poet is the mirror wherein the image of his future is seen,

and because there is something peculiarly touching in this season of

innocence and unconsciousness of self in the history of men whose after

lives have been torn to pieces by the storms of vicissitude and passion. So

far, he had not begun to rhyme--an unusual case, as boys who can make two

lines jingle, whether they be poets or not, generally scribble plentifully

before leaving school. At the age of fourteen he wrote some verses to his

mother on her birthday, but it is fair to suppose that they gave no hint of

talent, as they have not been preserved: it was only from his temperament

that his destiny might be guessed. The impressions of his infancy were

singularly vivid and deep, and acted directly upon his imagination: they

are reflected in his works in pictures and descriptions full of grace or

power. The ardent Bonapartism of his family, particularly of his mother,

whom he loved and revered, took form from his recollections in the

magnificent opening of the _Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle,_ which has

the double character of a prose poem and a kindling oration, while by the

volume and sonorous beauty of the phrase it reminds one of a grand musical

composition. When he was between seven and eight years old his family

passed the summer at an old country-place to which belonged a farm, and he

and his brother found inexhaustible amusement among the tenants and their

occupations. He never saw it again, but it is reproduced with perfect

fidelity in the tale of _Margot_. The chivalric mania left, as Paul de

Musset observes, a love of the romantic and fantastic, a tendency to look

upon life as a novel, an enjoyment of what was unexpected and unlikely, a

disposition to trust to chance and the course of events. The motto of the

Mussets was a condensed expression of the gallant love-making, Launcelot

side of knightly existence--_Courtoisie, Bonne Aventure aux Preux_

("Courtesy, Good Luck to the Paladin;" or, to translate the latter clause

more freely, yet more faithfully to the spirit of the original, "None but

the Brave Deserve the Fair"). It came from two estates--_Courtoisie_, which

passed out of the family in the last century, and _Bonne Aventure_, a

property on the Loire, which was not part of Alfred's patrimony. The

fairies who endowed him at his christening with so many gifts and graces

must have meant to complete his outfit when they presented him with such a

device, which might have been invented for him at nineteen. On leaving

college he continued his education by studying languages, drawing, and

music to please himself, and attempting several professions to satisfy the

reasonable expectations of his father. He found law dry, medicine

disgusting, and, discouraged by these failures, he fell into low spirits,

to which he was always prone even at the height of his youthful

joyousness--declared to his brother that he was and ever should be good for

nothing, that he never should be able to practise a profession, and never

could resign himself to being _any particular kind of man._ His talent for

drawing led him to work in a painter's studio and in the galleries of the

Louvre with some success, and for a time he was in high spirits at the

idea of having found his calling, and pursued it while attending lectures

and classes on other subjects. This uncertainty lasted a couple of years,

during which he began to venture a little into society, of which, like most

lively, versatile young people, he was extravagantly fond. His Muse was

still dormant, but his love for poetry was strongly developed; a volume of

André Chenier was always in his pocket, and he delighted to read it under

the trees in the avenues of the Bois on his daily walk out of Paris to the

suburb of Auteuil, where his family lived at that time. Under this

influence he wrote a poem, which he afterward destroyed, excepting a few

good descriptive lines which he introduced into one of later date.

Meanwhile, he had been presented to the once famous Cénacle, the nucleus of

the romantic school, then in the pride and flush of youth and rapidly

increasing popularity; its head-quarters were at the house of Victor Hugo

_facile princeps ordinis_ even among its chiefs. There he met Alfred de

Vigny, Mérimée, Sainte-Beuve and others, whose talents differed essentially

in kind and degree, but who were temporarily drawn together by similarity

of literary principles and tastes. Their meetings were entirely taken up

with intellectual discussions, or the reading of a new production, or in

walks which have been commemorated by Mérimée and Sainte-Beuve, when they

carried their romanticism to the towers of Notre Dame to see the sun set or

the moon rise over Paris.

Stimulated by this companionship, Alfred de Musset began to compose. His

first attempt at publication was anonymous, a ballad called "A Dream,"

which, through the good offices of a friend, was accepted by _Le

Provincial,_ a tri-weekly newspaper of Dijon: it did not pass unnoticed,

but excited a controversy in print between the two editors, to the extreme

delight of the young poet, who always fondly cherished the number of the

paper in which it appeared. At length, one morning he woke up Sainte-Beuve

with the laughing declaration that he too was a poet, and in support of

his assertion recited some of his verses to that keenly attentive and

appreciative ear. Sainte-Beuve at once announced that there was "a boy full

of genius among them," and as long as he lived, whatever Paul de Musset's

fraternal sensitiveness may find to complain of, he never retracted or

qualified that first judgment. The _Contes d'Italie et d'Espagne_ followed

fast, and were recited to an enthusiastic audience, who were the more

lenient to the exaggerations and affectations of which, as in most youthful

poetry, there were plenty, since these bore the stamp of their own mint.

Alfred de Musset's first steps in life were made at the same time with his

first essays in poetry. He was so handsome, high-spirited and gay that

women did not wait to hear that he was a genius to smile upon him. His

brother, who is tall, calls him of medium height, five feet four inches

(about five feet nine, English measure), slender, well-made and of good

carriage: his eyes were blue and full of fire; his nose was aquiline, like

the portraits of Vandyke; his profile was slightly equine in type: the

chief beauty of his face was his forehead, round which clustered the

many-shaded masses of his fair hair, which never turned gray: the

countenance was mobile, animated and sensitive; the predominating

expression was pride. Paul relates without reserve how one married woman

encouraged his brother and trifled with him, using his devotion to screen a

real intrigue which she was carrying on, and that another, who was lying in

wait for him, undertook his consolation. One morning Alfred made his

appearance in spurs, with his hat very much on one side and a huge bunch of

hair on the other, by which signs his brother understood that his vanity

was satisfied. He was just eighteen. That a man of respectable life and

notions like Paul de Musset should take these adventures as a matter of

course makes it difficult for an American to find the point of view whence

to judge a society so abominably corrupt. Thus at the age of a college-boy

in this country he was started on the career which was destined to lead to

so much unhappiness, and in the end to his destruction. Dissipation of

every sort followed, debts, from which he was never free, and the habit of

drinking, which proved fatal at last. To the advice and warnings of his

brother he only replied that he wished to know everything by experience,

not by hearsay--that he felt within him two men, one an actor, the other a

spectator, and if the former did a foolish thing the latter profited by it.

On this pernicious reasoning he pursued for three years a dissolute mode of

life, which, thanks to the remarkable strength and elasticity of his

constitution, did not prevent his carrying on his studies and going with

great zest into society, where he became more and more welcome, besides

writing occasionally. He translated De Quincey's _Confessions of an English

Opium-Eater_, introducing some reveries of his own, but the work attracted

no attention. During this period his father, naturally anxious about his

son's unprofitable courses, one morning informed him that he had obtained a

clerkship for him in an office connected with the military commissariat.

Alfred did not venture to demur, but the confinement and routine of an

office were intolerable, and he resolved to conquer his liberty by every

effort of which he was capable. He offered his manuscripts for publication

to M. Canel, the devoted editor of the romantic party: they fell short by

five hundred lines of the number of pages requisite for a volume of the

usual octavo bulk. He obtained a holiday, which he spent with a favorite

uncle who lived in the provinces, and came back in three weeks with the

poem of "Mardoche." He persuaded his father to give a literary party, to

which his friends of the Cénacle were invited, and repeated his latest

compositions to them, including "Mardoche." Here we have another example of

manners startling to our notions: the keynote of these verses was rank

libertinism, yet in his mother's drawing-room and apparently in the

presence of his father, a dignified, reputable man, venerated by his

children, this young rake declaimed stanzas more licentious than any in

Byron's _Don Juan_. But it caused no scandal: the friends were rapturous,

and predicted the infallible success of the poems, in which they were

justified by the event. "Rarely," says Paul de Musset, "has so small a

quantity of paper made so much noise." There was an uproar among the

newspapers, some applauding with all their might, others denouncing the

exaggeration of the romantic tendency: the romanticists themselves were

disconcerted to find the "Ballade à la Lune," which they had taken as a

good joke, turned into a joke against themselves. At all events, the young

man was launched, and his vocation was thenceforth decided. In reading

these first productions of Alfred de Musset's without the prejudice or

partiality of faction, it cannot be denied that if not sufficient in

themselves to ensure his immortality, they contain lines of finished beauty

as perfect as the author ever produced--ample guarantee of what might be

expected from the development of his genius.

He now began to be tired of sowing wild oats, and became less irregular in

his mode of life. A lively, pretty little comedy called _Une Nuit

Vénitienne_, which he wrote at the request of the director of the Odéon,

for some inexplicable cause fell flat, which, besides turning him aside

from writing for the stage during a number of years, discouraged him

altogether for some time. Before he entirely recovered from the check he

lost his father, who died suddenly of cholera in 1832. The shock left him

sobered and calm, anxious to fulfil his duties toward his mother and young

sister, whose means, it was feared, would be greatly diminished by the loss

of M. de Musset's salary. Alfred resolved to publish another volume of

poetry, and, if this did not succeed to a degree to warrant his considering

literature a means of support, to get a commission in the army. He set

himself industriously to work, and inspiration soon rewarded the effort: in

six months his second volume appeared, comprising "Le Saule," "Vœux

Stériles," "La Coupe et les Lèvres," "A quoi rèvent les jeunes filles,"

"Namouna," and several shorter pieces. Among those enumerated there are

splendid passages, second in beauty and force to but a few of his later

poems, the sublime "Nuits," "Souvenir," and the incomparable opening of

"Rolla." Again he convoked the friends who three years before had greeted

the _Contes d'Espagne_ with acclamation, but, to the unutterable surprise

and disappointment of both brothers, there was not a word of sympathy or

applause: Mérimée alone expressed his approbation, and assured the young

poet that he had made immense progress. Perhaps the others took in bad part

their former disciple's recantation of romanticism, which he makes in the

dedication of "La Coupe et les Lèvres" after the following formula:

For my part, I hate those snivellers in boats,

Those lovers of waterfalls, moonshine and lakes,

That breed without name, which with journals and notes,

Tears and verses, floods every step that it takes:

Nature no doubt but gives back what you lend her;

After all, it may be that they do comprehend her,

But them I do certainly not comprehend.

The chill of this introduction was not carried off by the public reception

of the _Spectacle dans un Fauteuil_ (as the new collection was entitled),

which remained almost unnoticed for some weeks, until Sainte-Beuve in the

_Revue des Deux Mondes_ of January 15, 1833, published a review of this and

the earlier poems, indicating their beauty and originality, the promise of

the one and progress of the other, with his infallible discernment and

discrimination. A few critics followed his lead, others differed, and

discussions began again which could not but spread the young man's fame.

The _Revue des Deux Mondes_ was now open to him, and henceforth, with a few

exceptions, whatever he wrote appeared in that periodical. He made his

entry with the drama of _Andrea del Sarto_, which is rife with tense and

tragic situations and deeply-moving scenes. The affairs of the family

turned out much better than had been expected, but Alfred de Musset

continued to work with application and ardor. His fine critical faculty

kept his vagaries within bounds: he knew better than anybody "how much good

sense it requires to do without common sense"--a dictum of his own. Like

every true artist, he took his subjects wherever he found them: the

dripping raindrops and tolling of the convent-bell suggested one of

Chopin's most enchanting _Preludes;_ the accidental attitudes of women and

children in the street have given painters and sculptors their finest

groups; so a bunch of fresh roses which De Musset's mother put upon his

table one morning during his days of extravagant dissipation, saying, "All

this for fourpence," gave him a happy idea for unravelling the perplexity

of Valentin in _Les Deux Maîtresses;_ and his unconscious exclamation, "Si

je vous le disais pourtant que je vous aime," which caused a passer-by in

the street to laugh at him, furnished the opening of the _Stances à Ninon_,

like Dante's

Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore.

These fortunate dispositions were interrupted by a meeting which affected

his character and genius more than any other event in his life. It is

curious that Madame Sand and De Musset originally avoided making each

other's acquaintance. She fancied that she should not like him, and he,

although greatly struck by the genius of her first novel, _Indiana_,

disliked her overloaded style of writing, and struck out in pencil a

quantity of superfluous adjectives and other parts of speech in a copy

which unluckily fell into her hands. Their first encounter was followed by

a sudden, almost instantaneous, mutual passion--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 Lèvres:" the idea recurs throughout his works,

conspicuously in the _Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle_, 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 of music from his young

sister's piano, a game of chess with his mother in the evening, were his

only recreations--his only excitement the letters which still came from

Venice, for which he looked with a sick longing, at which one cannot wonder

on reading them and remembering what a companionship it was that he had

lost. Urged by his brother and his friend M. Buloz, the director of the

_Revue des Deux Mondes_, to try the efficacy of work, he completed his play

of _On ne badine pas avec l'Amour_, already sketched, in which, of all his

dramatic writings, the cry of the heart is most thrilling. Aided by this

effort, he made a journey to Baden in September, five months after his

miserable return to Paris. The change of air and scene restored him, and

his votive offering for the success of his pilgrimage was the charming poem

called "Une Bonne Fortune." Although he had determined not to see Madame

Sand again, their connection was renewed, in spite of himself, when she

came back from Italy: it lasted for a short period, full of angry and

melancholy scenes, quarrels and reconciliations. Then he broke loose for

ever, and went back to the world and his work.

This episode, of which I have briefly given the outline, was the principal

event of Alfred de Musset's life, the one which marked and colored it most

deeply, which brought his genius to perfection by a cruel and fiery

torture, and left a lasting imprint upon his writings. Although he never

produced anything finer than certain passages of "Rolla," which was

published in 1833, yet previous to that--or more accurately to 1835, when

he began to write again--he had composed no long poem of equal merit

throughout, none in which the flight was sustained from first to last. The

magnificent series of the "Nights" of May, December, August and October,

the "Letter to Lamartine," "Stanzas on the Death of Malibran," "Hope in

God," and a number of others of not less melody and vigor, but less exalted

and serious in tone; several plays, among them _Lorenzaccio_, which missed

only by a very little being a fine tragedy; the greater part of his prose

tales and criticisms, including _Le Fils de Titien_, the most charming of

his stories, and the _Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle_, which shows as

much genius as any of his poems,--belong to the period from 1835 to 1840,

his apogee. Of the last work, notwithstanding its unmistakable personal

revelations--which, if they do not tell the author's story, at least

reflect his state of mind--Paul de Musset says, what everybody who has read

his brother's writings carefully will feel to be true, that neither in the

hero nor any other single personage must we look for Alfred's entire

individuality. In the complexity of his character and emotions, and the

contradictions which they united, are to be found the eidolon of every

young man in his collection, even "the two heroes of _Les Caprices de

Marianne_, Octave and Cœlio," says Paul, "although they are the antipodes

of one another." Neither is it as easy as it would seem on the surface to

trace the thread of any one incident of his life through his writings.

Although containing some irreconcilable passages, the four "Nights"

appeared to have been born of the same impulse and to exact the same

dedication: it is undeniably a shock to have their inconsistencies

explained by hearing that while the "Nuits de Mai," "d'Août" and

"d'Octobre" refer to his passion for Madame Sand, the "Nuit de Décembre"

and "Lettre à Lamartine," which naturally belong to this series, were

dictated by another attachment and another disappointment. I will not stop

to moralize upon this: the story of De Musset's life is really only the

story of his loves. His brother says that he was always in love with

somebody: it was a necessity of his nature and his genius. Before he was

twenty-seven, six different love-affairs are enumerated, without taking

into account numerous affairs of gallantry; nor was the sixth the last. The

"Nuit d'Octobre" was written two years and a half after his return from

Italy, and its terrible malediction is the outbreak of the rankling memory

of his wrong and suffering. It was psychologically in order that while his

love (which does not die in an hour, like trust and respect) survived, it

should surround its object with lingering tenderness, but that as it slowly

expired indignation, scorn and the sense of injury should increase: this is

their final utterance, followed by pardon, a vow of forgetfulness and

farewell, but not a final farewell. That was spoken years afterward, in

1841, when, once again seeing by chance the forest of Fontainebleau, and

about the same time casually encountering Madame Sand, he poured forth his

"Souvenir," a poem of matchless sweetness and beauty, vibrating with

feeling and most musical in expression--an exquisite combination of lyric

and elegy. In this he calls her

Ma seule amie à jamais la plus chère.

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

Décembre" 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, passionate nature, independent

in her position, and who bought the poet's books." An acquaintance, a

friendship, a correspondence, a serious passion followed, and became a

relation which lasted two years "without quarrel, storm, coolness or

subject of umbrage or jealousy--two years of love without a cloud, of true

happiness." Why did it not last for ever? The biographer does not give the

answer. It is hinted in a letter to Alfred's friend, the duchesse de

Castries, dated September, 1840, in his _Œuvres posthumes_: "I have told

you how about a year ago an absurd passion, totally useless and somewhat

ridiculous, made me break with all my habits. I forsook all my

surroundings, my friends of both sexes, the current in which I was living,

and one of the prettiest women in Paris. I did not succeed in my foolish

dream, you must understand; and now I find myself cured, it is true, but

high and dry like a fish in a grain-field." This is probably the clue, and

the foolish dream was for a woman to whom his brother refers as having

repelled Alfred's homage with harshness, and having called forth from him

some short and extremely bitter verses beginning "Oui, femme," and another

called "Adieu!" in which there prevails a tone of quiet but deep feeling.

This is a sad story: he apparently united the volatility and vagrancy of

fancy, the inconstancy of light shallow natures, with the ardor and

intensity of passion and the capacity for suffering which belong to strong

and steadfast ones. There was a childlike quality in his disposition, which

showed itself in a sort of simplicity and spontaneousness in the midst of a

corrupt existence, and still more in the uncontrollable, absorbing violence

of his emotions: they swept over him, momentarily devastating his present

and blotting out the horizon, but unlike the tempests of childhood their

ravages did not disappear when the clouds dispersed and the torrents

subsided. The life of debauchery which had preceded his journey to Italy

was replaced, for some years, by a less excessive degree of dissipation,

during which he lived with a fast set, who, however, were men of talent and

accomplishments, the foremost among them being Prince Belgiojoso. The

influence of the two fortunate years, 1837-38, not only the happiest but

the most fertile of his short career, seems to have weakened these

associations and led him into calmer paths. He had formed several

friendships with women of a sort which both parties may regard with pride,

in particular with the Princess Belgiojoso, one of the most striking and

original figures of our monotonous time, and Madame Maxime Jaubert, a

clever, attractive young woman with a delightful house, whom he called his

_Marraine_ because she had given him a nickname. These women, and

others--but these two above the rest--were sincerely and loyally attached

to him with a disinterested regard which did not spare advice, nor even

rebuke, or relax under his loss of health and brilliancy or neglect of

their kindness, which nevertheless he felt and valued. His purest source of

pleasure was in the talent of others, which gave him a generous and

sympathetic enjoyment. The appearance of Pauline Garcia--now Madame

Viardot--and Rachel, who came out almost simultaneously at the age of

seventeen, added delight to the two happy years. He has left notices of the

first performances of these artistes, the former in opera, the latter on

the stage (for he was musical himself and a _connoisseur_) which are

excellent criticisms, and have even more interest than when they appeared,

now that the career of one has long been closed and that of the other long

completed. His relations with Rachel lasted for many years, interrupted by

the gusts and blasts which the contact of two such natures inevitably

begets. She constantly urged him to write a play for her, and in the year

after her _début_ he wrote a fragment of a drama on the story of

Frédegonde, which she learned by heart and occasionally recited in private;

but there were endless delays and difficulties on both sides, and the rest

was not written. After various episodes and passages between them, De

Musset was dining with her one evening when she had become a great lady and

queen of the theatre, and her other guests were all rich men of fashion.

One of them admired an extremely beautiful and costly ring which she wore.

It was first passed round the table from hand to hand, and then she said

they might bid for it. One immediately offered five hundred francs, another

fifteen, and the ring went up at once to three thousand: "And you, my poet,

why do not you bid? What will you give?" "I will give you my heart," he

replied. "The ring is yours," cried Rachel, taking it off and throwing it

into his plate. After dinner De Musset tried to restore it to her, but she

refused to take it back: he urged and insisted, when she, suddenly falling

on her knee with that sovereign charm of seduction for which she was as

renowned as for her tragic power, entreated him to keep it as a pledge for

the piece he was to write for her. The poet took the ring, and went home

excited and wrought up to the resolve that nothing should interfere with

the completion of his task. But it was the old story again--whims and

postponements on Rachel's part, possibly temper and pique on his--until six

months afterward, at the end of an angry conversation, he silently replaced

the ring on her hand, and she did not resist. Four years later the compact

was renewed, and although by this time De Musset had to all intents and

purposes ceased to write, he struck off the first act of a play called

_Faustina_, the scene of which was laid in Venice in the fourteenth

century; but he put off finishing it, and finally let it drop altogether.

In December, 1840, Alfred de Musset was thirty years old, and on his

birthday he had one of those reckonings with himself, which the most

deliberately careless and volatile men cannot escape. At twenty-one he had

held a similar settlement: he was then uncertain of his genius,

dissatisfied with his way of life and with the use he made of his time: the

result was his adoption of a more serious line of study and conduct, which

had led him, in spite of interruptions and aberrations, to the brilliant

display of his beautiful and splendid talents, the full exercise of his

wonderful powers. Now another review of his past and survey of his future

left him in a mood of discontent and depression. He felt that he could not

always go on being a boy. The year behind him had been almost sterile, and

marked by the loss of many of what he called his illusions. He had been

implored and urged to write by his friends and editors, had made and broken

promises without number to the latter, and had become involved in money

difficulties to a degree which kept him in constant anxiety and torment.

Yet he steadily rejected all his brother's affectionate advice and

importunities to shake off the deepening lethargy. He would not write

poetry because the Muse did not come of her free will, and he would never

do her violence. He had forsworn prose, because he said everybody wrote

that, and many so ill that he would not swell the number of magazine

story-writers, who, he foresaw, were to lower the standard of fiction and

style. In short, he always had an excuse for doing nothing, and although he

hated above all things to leave Paris, and seldom 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 Poète déchu_, 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, Sœur 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 joyousness of a child, the fancies of

a page, like Cherubino in the _Marriage of Figaro_. All the difficulties

and subjects of despair which preceded his malady had vanished in a

rose-colored distance. He passed his days in reading interminable

books--_Clarissa Harlowe_, which he already knew, the _Memorial of St.

Helena_, and all the memoirs relating to the Empire. In the evening we all

gathered about his writing-table to draw and chat, while Sœur Marcelline

sat by knitting in bright worsteds. Auguste Barre, our neighbor, came to

work at an album of caricatures in the style of Töppfer's, and we all

amused ourselves with the comic illustrations: Alfred and Barre had the

pencil, the rest of us composed a text as absurd as the drawings. Who will

give us back those delicious evenings of laughter, jest and chat, when

without stirring from home or depending on anything from without our whole

household was so happy?" Alas! they were not of long duration. By and by

Sister Marcelline went away, leaving her patient a pen on which she had

embroidered, "Remember your promises." He was afflicted by her departure,

and wrote some lines to her, who, as he said, did not know what poetry

meant, but he could never be induced to show them, although he repeated

them to Paul and their friend Alfred Tattet, who between them contrived to

note down the four following verses:

Poor girl! thou art no longer fair.

By watching Death with patient care

Thou pale as he art grown:

By tending upon human pain

Thy hand is worn as coarse in grain

As horny Labor's own.

But weariness and courage meek

Illuminate thy pallid cheek

Beside the dying bed:

To the poor suffering mortal's clutch

Thy hard hand hath a gentle touch,

With tears and warm blood fed.

* * * * *

Tread to the end thy lonely road,

All for thy task and toward thy God,

Thy footsteps day by day.

That evil must exist, we prate,

And wisely leave it to its fate,

And pass another way;

But thy pure conscience owns it not,

Though ceaseless warfare is thy lot

Against disease and woe;

No ills for thee have power to sting,

Nor to thy lip a murmur bring,

Save those that others know.

De Musset held in peculiar sacredness and reverence whatever was connected

with this good woman and his feeling for her: seventeen years after this

illness the embroidered pen and a piece of her knitting were buried with

him by almost his last request.

Seventeen years! a large bit of any one's life--more than a third of Alfred

de Musset's own term--yet there is hardly anything to say about it. The

"Souvenir," which was written about six months after his recovery, is the

last poem in which all his strength, beauty and pathos find expression: he

never wrote again in this vein: it was the last echo of his youth. He

composed less and less frequently, and though what he wrote was redolent of

sentiment, wit, grace and elegance, and some of the short occasional verses

have a consummate charm of finish, the soul seems gone out of his poetry.

His brother mentions a number of compositions begun, but thrown aside;

there were projects of travel never carried out; he gradually gave up the

society of even his oldest friends: everything indicated a rapid decline of

the active faculties. Unhappily, that of suffering seemed only to

increase--no longer the sharp anguish of unspent force which had wrung from

him the passionate cries and plaintive murmurs of former years, but the

dull numbness of hopelessness. His existence was monotonous, and the few

occurrences which varied it were of a sad or unpleasant nature. His sister

married and left Paris, and his mother subsequently went to live with her

in the country, thus breaking up their family circle; Paul de Musset was

absent from France for considerable spaces of time, so that for the first

time Alfred de Musset was compelled to live alone. Friends scattered, some

died: the Orleans family, for whom he had a real affection, was driven from

France; he fancied that his genius was unappreciated--a notion which,

strangely enough, his brother shared--and although he was the last man to

rage or mope over misapprehension, the idea certainly added to his gloom.

Through the good graces of the duke of Orleans he had been appointed

librarian of the Home Office, a post of which he was instantly deprived on

the change of government; but a few years later he was unexpectedly given a

similar one in the Department of Public Education. In 1852 he was elected

to the French Academy, that honor so limited by the small number of

members, so ridiculed by unsuccessful aspirants, yet without which no

French author feels his career to be complete. His plays were being

performed with great favor, his poems and tales were becoming more and more

popular, his verses were set to music, his stories were illustrated: but

all this brought no cheer or consolation to the sick spirit. He lived more

and more alone: the Théâtre Français, a silent game of chess at his café,

the deadly absinthe, were his only sources of excitement. It is a comfort

to learn that the last ray of pleasure which penetrated his moral dungeon,

reviving for an instant the generous glow of enthusiasm, was the appearance

of Ristori: inspired by her, he began a poetical address which he never

finished, nor even wrote down, but a fragment of it was preserved orally by

one or two who heard it:

For Pauline and Rachel I sang of hope,

And over Malibran a tear I shed;

But, thanks to thee, I see the mighty scope

Of strength and genius wed.

Ah keep them long! The heart which breathes the prayer

When genius calls has ever made reply,

Bear smiling home to Italy the fair,

A flower from our sky.

* * * * *

They tell me that in spite of grief and wrong,

And pride bent earthward by a tyrant's heel,

A noble race, though crushed and conquered long,

Has not yet learned to kneel.

Rome's godlike dwellers of a bygone age,

The marble, porphyry, alabaster forms,

Still live: at night, to speech upon the stage,

An ancient statue warms.

* * * * *

What was the cause of De Musset's unhappiness and impotence? His brother

tries to account for them by an enumeration of the distresses and

annoyances mentioned above, and others of the same order; but when one

remembers how the poet's great sorrows, his father's death and the betrayal

of his affection by the first woman he really loved, had given him his

finest conceptions in verse and prose, it is impossible to accept so

insufficient an explanation. Nor can we allow that De Musset sank into a

condition of puerile impatience and senile querulousness. Judged by our

standard, all the Latin races lack manhood, as we may possibly do by

theirs: De Musset was only as much more sensitive than the rest of his

countrymen as those of the poetic temperament are usually found to be in

all countries. Nor had he seen his talent slowly expire: the spring did not

run dry by degrees: it suddenly sank into the ground. He had made a fearful

mistake at the outset, which he discovered too late if at all. Considering

what life is sure to bring to every one in the way of trial and sorrow, it

is not worth while to go in search of emotions and experience which are

certain to find us out; nor is it in the slums of life that its meaning is

to be sought. He had foretold his own end in the prophetic warning of his

Muse:

Quand les dieux irrités m'ôteront ton génie,

Si je tombe des cieux que me répondras-tu?

His light was not lost in a storm-cloud nor eclipse, but in the awful

Radnorok, the Götterdämmerung, when sun and stars fall from a blank heaven.

His health and habits constantly grew worse--he had organic disease of the

heart--but his existence dragged on until May 1st, 1857, when an acute

attack carried him off after a few days' illness. He died in his brother's

arms, and his last words were, "Sleep! at last I shall sleep." He had

killed himself physically and intellectually as surely as the wages of sin

are death.

But let not this be the last word on one so beloved as a poet and a man.

Mental qualities alone never endear their possessor to every being that

comes into contact with him, and Alfred de Musset was idolized by people

who could not even read. There was not a generous or amiable quality in

which he was wanting: he had an inextinguishable ardor for genius and

greatness in every form; he was tender-hearted to excess, could not endure

the sight of suffering, and delighted in giving pleasure; his sympathy was

ready and entire, his loyalty of the truest metal. "He never abused

anybody," says his brother, "nor sacrificed an absent person for the sake

of a good story." He loved animals and children, and they loved him in

return.

He can never cease to be the poet of the many, for he has melody,

sentiment, passion, all that charms the popular ear and heart--a

personality which is the expression of human nature in a language which, as

he himself says, few speak, but all understand. He can never cease to be

the poet of the few, because, while his poems are a very concentration and

elixir of the most intense and profound feelings of which we are all

capable, they give words to the more exquisite and intimate emotions

peculiar to those of a keener and more refined susceptibility, of a more

exalted and aërial range. Sainte-Beuve says somewhere, though not in his

final verdict on De Musset, that his chief merit is having restored to

French literature the wit which had been driven out of it by the

sentimentalists. His wit is indeed delightful and irresistible, but it is

not his magic key to souls. In other countries every generation has its own

poet: younger ears are deaf to the music which so long charmed ours; but De

Musset will be the poet of each new generation for a certain season--the

sweetest of all, because, as has been well said, he is the poet of youth.

And if doubt breathes through some of his grandest strophes, Faith finds

her first and last profession in the lines--

Une immense espérance a traversé la terre;

Malgré nous vers le ciel il faut lever les yeux.

SARAH B. WISTER.

THE BEE.

What time I paced, at pleasant morn,

A deep and dewy wood,

I heard a mellow hunting-horn

Make dim report of Dian's lustihood

Far down a heavenly hollow.

Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow:

_Tara!_ it twang'd, _tara-tara!_ it blew,

Yet wavered oft, and flew

Most ficklewise about, or here, or there,

A music now from earth and now from air.

But on a sudden, lo!

I marked a blossom shiver to and fro

With dainty inward storm; and there within

A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine

A bee

Thrust up its sad-gold body lustily,

All in a honey madness hotly bound

On blissful burglary.

A cunning sound

In that wing-music held me: down I lay

In amber shades of many a golden spray,

Where looping low with languid arms the Vine

In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine

Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight

Herself unto her own true stalwart knight.

As some dim blur of distant music nears

The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears

To forms of time and apprehensive tune,

So, as I lay, full soon

Interpretation throve: the bee's fanfare,

Through sequent films of discourse vague as air,

Passed to plain words, while, fanning faint perfume,

The bee o'erhung a rich unrifled bloom:

"O Earth, fair lordly Blossom, soft a-shine

Upon the star-pranked universal vine,

Hast naught for me?

To thee

Come I, a poet, hereward haply blown,

From out another worldflower lately flown.

Wilt ask, _What profit e'er a poet brings?_

He beareth starry stuff about his wings

To pollen thee and sting thee fertile: nay,

If still thou narrow thy contracted way,

--Worldflower, if thou refuse me--

--Worldflower, if thou abuse me,

And hoist thy stamen's spear-point high

To wound my wing and mar mine eye--

Natheless I'll drive me to thy deepest sweet,

Yea, richlier shall that pain the pollen beat

From me to thee, for oft these pollens be

Fine dust from wars that poets wage for thee.

But, O beloved Earthbloom soft a-shine

Upon the universal jessamine,

Prithee abuse me not,

Prithee refuse me not;

Yield, yield the heartsome honey love to me

Hid in thy nectary!"

And as I sank into a suaver dream

The pleading bee-song's burthen sole did seem,

"Hast ne'er a honey-drop of love for me

In thy huge nectary?"

SIDNEY LANIER.

"OUR JOOK."

"Königin," said I, as I poked the fire, "what do you think of the people in

the house?"

On second thoughts it was not "Königin" that I said, for it was only that

night that she received the title. It is of no consequence what I did call

her, however, for from that time she was never anything but Königin to me.

We began to "talk things over," as we had a way of doing; and very good fun

it was and quite harmless, provided the ventilator was not open. That had

happened once or twice, and got us into quite serious scrapes. People have

such an utterly irrational objection to your amusing yourself in the most

innocent way at what they consider their expense.

Königin and I had come to the boarding-house that very day. We were by

ourselves, for our male protectors were off "a-hunting the wild deer and

following the roe"--or its Florida equivalent, whatever that may be--and we

did not fancy staying at a hotel under the circumstances. Now, we had taken

our observations, and were prepared to pronounce our opinions on our

fellow-boarders. One after another was canvassed and dismissed. Mr. A. had

eccentric table-manners; Miss B. wriggled and squirmed when she talked;

Mrs. C. was much too lavish of inappropriate epithets; Mr. X.'s

conversation, on the contrary, was quite bald and bare from the utter lack

of those parts of speech; Miss Y. had a nice face, and Mrs. Z. a pretty

hand.

Just here Königin suddenly burst out laughing. "Really," she said, "we go

about the world criticising people as if we were King Solomon and the queen

of Sheba."

"'Die Königin von Seba,'" said I. "That, I suppose, is you and our motto

should be, 'Wir sind das Volk und die Weisheit stirbt mit uns.'"

I was not at all sure of the accuracy of my translation, but its

appropriateness was unquestionable.

"What do you think of the Englishman, Königin?" I asked, giving the fire

another poke, not from shamefacedness, but because it really needed it, for

the evening was damp and chilly.

"I like him," said Königin decidedly.

Königin and I were always prepared with decided opinions, whether we knew

anything about the subject in hand or not.

"He has a fine head," Königin went on, "quite a ducal contour, according to

our republican ideas of what a duke ought to be. I like the steady intense

light of his eyes under those straight dark brows, and that little frown

only increases the effect. Then his laugh is so frank and boyish. Yes, I

like him very much."

"He has a nice gentlemanly voice," I suggested--"rather on the

'gobble-gobble' order, but that is the fault of his English birth."

This is enough of that conversation, for, after all, neither of us is the

heroine of this tale. It is well that this should be distinctly understood

at the start. Somehow, "the Jook" (as we generally called him, in memory of

Jeames Yellowplush) and I became very intimate after that, but it was never

anything more than a sort of _camaraderie_. Königin knew all about it, and

she pronounced it the most remarkable instance of a purely intellectual

flirtation which she had ever seen; which was all quite correct, except for

the term "flirtation," of which it never had a spice.

One of the Jook's most striking peculiarities, though by no means an

uncommon one among his countrymen, was a profound distrust of new

acquaintances and an utter incapacity of falling into the free and easy

ways which prevail more strongly perhaps in Florida than in any other part

of America. There really was some excuse for him, though, for, not to put

it too strongly, society is a little mixed in Florida, and it is hard for a

foreigner to discriminate closely enough to avoid being drawn into

unpleasant complications if he relaxes in the slightest degree his rules of

reserve. Besides which, the Jook was a man of the most morbid and ultra

refinement. "Refinement" was the word he preferred, but I should have

called it an absurd squeamishness. He could make no allowance for personal

or local peculiarities, and eccentricities in our neighbors which delighted

Königin and me and sent us into fits of laughter excited in his mind only

the most profound disgust. Therefore, partly in the fear of having his

sensibilities unpleasantly jarred upon, partly from the fear of making

objectionable acquaintances whom he might afterward be unable to shake

off, and partly from an inherent and ineradicable shyness, he went about

clad in a mantle of gloomy reserve, speaking to no one, looking at no

one--"grand, gloomy and peculiar." It was currently reported that previous

to our arrival he had never spoken to a creature in the boarding-house,

though he had been an inmate of it for six weeks. For the rest, he was

clever and intelligent, with frank, honest, boyish ways, which I liked,

even though they were sometimes rather exasperating.

It was not quite pleasant, for instance, to hear him speak of Americans in

the frank and unconstrained manner which he adopted when talking to us. We

could hardly wonder at it when we looked at the promiscuous crowd which

formed his idea of American society. Refined and well-bred people there

certainly were, but these were precisely the ones who never forced

themselves upon his notice, leaving him to be struck and stunned by fast

and hoydenish young ladies, ungrammatical and ill-bred old ones, and men of

all shades of boorishness and swagger, such as make themselves conspicuous

in every crowd. Unluckily, both Königin and I have English blood in our

veins, and the Jook could not be convinced that we did not eagerly snatch

at the chance thus presented of claiming the title of British subjects. It

is quite hopeless to attempt to convince Englishmen that any American would

not be British if he could. Pride in American citizenship is an idea

utterly monstrous and inconceivable to them, and they can look on the

profession of it in no other light than that of a laudable attempt at

making the best of a bad case. Therefore, the Jook persisted in ignoring

our protestations of patriotic ardor, and in paying us the delicate

compliment of considering us English and expressing his views on America

with a beautiful frankness which kept us in a frame of mind verging on

delirium.

What was to be done with such a man? Clearly, but one thing, and I sighed

for one of our American belles who should come and see and conquer this

impracticable Englishman. At present, things seemed quite hopeless. There

was no one within reach who would have the slightest chance of success in

such an undertaking. Though outsiders gave me the credit of his

subjugation, I knew quite well that there not only was not, but never could

be, the necessary tinge of sentimentality in our intercourse. We were much

too free and easy for that, and we laughed and talked, rambled and boated

together, "like two babes in the woods," as Königin was fond of remarking.

It was in Florida that all this took place--in shabby, fascinating

Jacksonville, where one meets everybody and does nothing in particular

except lounge about and be happy. So the Jook and I lounged and were happy

with a placid, unexciting sort of happiness, until the day when Kitty Grey

descended upon us with the suddenness of a meteor, and very like one in her

bewildering brightness.

Kitty was by no means pretty, but, though women recognized this fact, the

man who could be convinced of it remains yet to be discovered. You might

force them to confess that Kitty's nose was flat, her eyes not well shaped,

her teeth crooked, her mouth slightly awry, but it always came back to the

same point: "Curious that with all these defects she should still be so

exquisitely pretty!"

Really, I did not so much wonder at it myself sometimes when I saw Kitty's

pale cheeks flush with that delicious pink, her wide hazel eyes deepen and

glow, her little face light up with elfish mirth, and her round, childish

figure poise itself in some coquettish attitude. Then she had such absurd

little hands, with short fingers and babyish dimples, such tiny feet, and

such a wealth of crinkled dark-brown hair--such bewitching little helpless

ways, too, a fashion of throwing herself appealingly on your compassion

which no man on earth could resist! At bottom she was a self-reliant,

independent little soul, but no mortal man ever found that out: Kitty was

far too wise.

Of course, as soon as I saw Kitty I thought of the Jook. Would he or

wouldn't he? On the whole, I was rather afraid he wouldn't, for Kitty's

laugh sometimes rang out a little too loud, and Kitty's spirits sometimes

got the better of her and set her frisking like a kitten, and I was afraid

the modest sense of propriety which was one of the Jook's strong points

would not survive it. However, I concluded to risk it, but just here a

sudden and unforeseen obstacle checked my triumphant course.

"Mr. Warriner," I said sweetly (I was always horribly afraid I should call

him Mr. Jook, but I never did), "I want to introduce you to my friend, Miss

Grey."

The Jook looked at me with his most placid smile, and replied blandly,

"Thank you very much, but _I'd rather not_."

Did any one ever hear of such a man? I understood his reasons well enough,

though he did not take the trouble to explain them: it was only

exclusiveness gone mad. And he prided himself upon his race and breeding,

and considered our American men boors!

After that I nearly gave up his case as hopeless, and devoted myself to

Kitty, whom I really believe the Jook did not know by sight after having

been for nearly a week in the same house with her.

Kitty once or twice mildly insinuated her desire to know him. "He has such

a nice face," she said plaintively, "and such lovely little curly brown

whiskers! He is the only man in the house worth looking at, but if I happen

to come up when he is talking to you, he instantly disappears. He must

think me _very_ ugly."

It was really very embarrassing to me, for of course I could not tell her

that the Jook had declined the honor of an introduction. I knew, as well as

if she had told me so, that Kitty in her secret heart accused me of a mean

and selfish desire to keep him all to myself, but I was obliged meekly to

endure the obloquy, undeserved as it was. Königin used to go into fits of

laughter at my dilemma, and just at this period my admiration of the Jook

went down to the lowest ebb. "He is a selfish, conceited creature!" I

exclaimed in my wrath. "I really believe he thinks that bewitching little

Kitty would fall in love with him forthwith if he submitted to an

introduction. Oh, I _do_ wish he knew what we thought of him! _Why_ doesn't

he listen outside of ventilators?"

"My dear," said Königin, still laughing, though sympathetic, "it strikes me

that we began by making rather a demi-god of the man, and are ending by

stripping him of even the good qualities which he probably does possess."

Well! things went on in this exasperating way for a week or so longer. Of

course I washed my hands of the Jook, for I was too much exasperated to be

even civil to him. Kitty was as bright and good-natured as ever, ready to

enjoy all the little pleasures that came in her way, though now and then I

fancied that I detected a stealthy, wistful look at the Jook's impassive

face.

It was lovely that day, but fearfully hot. The sun showered down its

burning rays upon the white Florida sands, the sky was one arch of

cloudless blue, and the water-oaks swung their moss-wreaths languidly over

the deserted streets. We had been dreaming and drowsing away the morning,

Königin, Kitty and I, in the jelly-fish-like state into which one naturally

falls in Florida.

Suddenly Kitty sprang to her feet. "I can't stand this any longer," she

said: "I shall turn into an oyster if I vegetate here. Please, do you see

any shells sprouting on my back yet?"

"What do you want to do?" I asked drowsily. "You can't walk in this heat,

and if you go on the river the sun will take the skin off your face, and

where are you then, Miss Kitty?"

"I can't help that," retorted Kitty in a tone of desperation. "I don't

exactly know where I shall go, but I think in pursuit of some yellow

jessamine."

I sat straight up and gazed at her: "Are you mad, Kitty? Has the heat

addled your brain already? You would have to walk at least a mile before

you could find any; and what's the good of it, after all? It would all be

withered before you could get home."

"Can't help that," repeated Kitty: "I shall have had it, at all events.

Any way, I'm going, and you two can finish your dreams in peace."

It was useless to argue with Kitty when she was in that mood, so I

contented myself with giving her directions for reaching the nearest copse

where she would be likely to find the fragrant beauty.