his researches in the _Chroniques florentines_ supplied the poet with
the subject for _Lorenzaccio_. It appears that George Sand and Musset
each treated this subject, and that a _Lorenzaccio_ by George Sand
exists. I have not read it, but I prefer Musset's version. They reached
Venice on January 19, 1834, and put up at the Hotel Danieli. By this
time they were at loggerheads.
The cause of their quarrel and disagreement is not really known, and the
activity of retrospective journalists has not succeeded in finding this
out. George Sand's letters only give details about their final quarrel.
On arriving, George Sand was ill, and this exasperated Musset. He was
annoyed, and declared that a woman out of sorts was very trying. There
are good reasons for believing that he had found her very trying for
some time. He was very elegant and she a learned "white blackbird."
He was capricious and she a placid, steady _bourgeois_ woman, very
hard-working and very regular in the midst of her irregularity. He used
to call her "personified boredom, the dreamer, the silly woman, the
nun," when he did not use terms which we cannot transcribe. The climax
was when he said to her: "I was mistaken, George, and I beg your pardon,
for I do not love you."
Wounded and offended, she replied: "We do not love each other any
longer, and we never really loved each other."
They therefore took back their independence. This is a point to note,
as George Sand considered this fact of the greatest importance, and she
constantly refers to it. She was from henceforth free, as regarded her
companion.
Illness kept them now at Venice. George Sand's illness first and then
Musset's alarming malady. He had high fever, accompanied by chest
affection and attacks of delirium which lasted six consecutive hours,
during which it took four men to hold him.
George Sand was an admirable nurse. This must certainly be acknowledged.
She sat up with him at night and she nursed him by day, and, astonishing
woman that she was, she was also able to work and to earn enough to pay
their common expenses. This is well known, but I am able to give another
proof of it, in the letters which George Sand wrote from Venice to
Buloz. These letters have been communicated to me by Madame Pailleron,
_nee_ Buloz, and by Madame Landouzy, _veuve_ Buloz, whom I thank for
the public and for myself. The following are a few of the essential
passages:
"February 4. _Read this when you are alone._
"MY DEAR BULOZ,--Your reproaches reach me at a miserable moment. If you
have received my letter, you already know that I do not deserve them.
A fortnight ago I was well again and working. Alfred was working too,
although he was not very well and had fits of feverishness. About five
days ago we were both taken ill, almost at the same time. I had an
attack of dysentery, which caused me horrible suffering. I have not yet
recovered from it, but I am strong enough, anyhow, to nurse him. He was
seized with a nervous and inflammatory fever, which has made such rapid
progress that the doctor tells me he does not know what to think about
it. We must wait for the thirteenth or fourteenth day before knowing
whether his life is in danger. And what will this thirteenth or
fourteenth day be? Perhaps his last one? I am in despair, overwhelmed
with fatigue, suffering horribly, and awaiting who knows what future?
How can I give myself up to literature or to anything in the world at
such a time? I only know that our entire fortune, at present, consists
of sixty francs, that we shall have to spend an enormous amount at the
chemist's, for the nurse and doctor, and that we are at a very expensive
hotel. We were just about to leave it and go to a private house. Alfred
cannot be moved now, and even if everything should go well, he probably
cannot be moved for a month. We shall have to pay one term's rent for
nothing, and we shall return to France, please God. If my ill-luck
continues, and if Alfred should die, I can assure you that I do not care
what happens after to me. If God allows Alfred to recover, I do not
know how we shall pay the expenses of his illness and of his return to
France. The thousand francs that you are to send me will not suffice,
and I do not know what we shall do. At any rate, do not delay sending
that, as, by the time it arrives, it will be more than necessary. I am
sorry about the annoyance you are having with the delay for publishing,
but you can now judge whether it is my fault. If only Alfred had a few
quiet days, I could soon finish my work. But he is in a frightful state
of delirium and restlessness. I cannot leave him an instant. I have been
nine hours writing this letter. Adieu, my friend, and pity me.
"GEORGE.
"Above everything, do not tell any one, not any one in the world, that
Alfred is ill. If his mother heard (and it only needs two persons for
telling a secret to all Paris) she would go mad. If she has to be told,
let who will undertake to tell her, but if in a fortnight Alfred is out
of danger, it is useless for her to grieve now. Adieu."
"February 13, 1834.
"My friend, Alfred is saved. There has been no fresh attack, and we
have nearly reached the fourteenth day without the improvement having
altered. After the brain affection inflammation of the lungs declared
itself, and this rather alarmed us for two days. . . . He is extremely
weak at present, and he wanders occasionally. He has to be nursed night
and day. Do not imagine, therefore, that I am only making pretexts for
the delay in my work. I have not undressed for eight nights. I sleep on
a sofa, and have to get up at any minute. In spite of this, ever since
I have been relieved in my mind about the danger, I have been able to
write a few pages in the mornings while he is resting. You may be sure
that I should like to be able to take advantage of this time to rest
myself. Be assured, my friend, that I am not short of courage, nor yet
of the will to work. You are not more anxious than I am that I should
carry out my engagements. You know that a debt makes me smart like a
wound. But you are friend enough to make allowances for my situation and
not to leave me in difficulties. I am spending very wretched days here
at this bedside, for the slightest sound, the slightest movement causes
me constant terror. In this disposition of mind I shall not write any
light works. They will be heavy, on the contrary, like my fatigue and my
sadness.
"Do not leave me without money, I beseech you, or I do not know what
will happen to me. I spend about twenty francs a day in medicine of all
sorts. We do not know how to keep him alive. . . ."
These letters give the lie to some of the gossip that has been spread
abroad with regard to the episode of the Hotel Danieli. And I too,
thanks to these letters, shall have put an end to a legend! In the
second volume of Wladimir Karenine's work on George Sand, on page 61, we
have the following words--
"Monsieur Plauchut tells us that, according to Buloz, Musset had been
enticed into a gambling hell during his stay in Venice, and had lost
about four hundred pounds there. The imprudent young man could not pay
this debt of honour, and he never would have been able to do so. He had
to choose between suicide or dishonour. George Sand did not hesitate a
moment. She wrote at once to the manager of the _Revue_, asking him to
advance the money." And this debt was on her shoulders for a long time.
The facts of the case are as follows, according to a letter from George
Sand to Buloz: "I beseech you, as a favour, to pay Alfred's debt and to
write to him that it is all settled. You cannot imagine the impatience
and the disturbance that this little matter cause him. He speaks to me
of it every minute, and begs me every day to write to you about it. He
owes these three hundred and sixty francs (L14 8_s_.) to a young man
he knows very little and who might talk of it to people. . . . You have
already advanced much larger sums to him. He has always paid you back,
and you are not afraid that this would make you bankrupt. If, through
his illness, he should not be able to work for a long time, my work
could be used for that, so be at ease. . . . Do this, I beseech you, and
write him a short letter to ease his mind at once. I will then read it
to him, and this will pacify one of the torments of his poor head. Oh,
my friend, if you only knew what this delirium is like! What sublime and
awful things he has said, and then what convulsions and shouts! I do not
know how he has had strength enough to pull through and how it is that I
have not gone mad myself. Adieu, adieu, my friend."
There really was a gambling debt, then, but we do not know exactly where
it was contracted. It amounted to three hundred and sixty francs,
which is very different from the ten thousand francs and the threat of
suicide.
And now we come to the pure folly! Musset had been attended by a young
doctor, Pietro Pagello. He was a straightforward sort of young man,
of rather slow intelligence, without much conversation, not speaking
French, but very handsome. George Sand fell in love with him. One night,
after having scribbled a letter of three pages, she put it into an
envelope without any address and gave it to Pagello. He asked her to
whom he was to give the letter. George Sand took the envelope back and
wrote on it: "To stupid Pagello." We have this declaration, and among
other things in the letter are the following lines: "You will not
deceive me, anyhow. You will not make any idle promises and false
vows. . . . I shall not, perhaps, find in you what I have sought for in
others, but, at any rate, I can always believe that you possess it.
. . . I shall be able to interpret your meditations and make your silence
speak eloquently. . . ." This shows us clearly the kind of charm George
Sand found in Pagello. She loved him because he was stupid.
The next questions are, when did they become lovers, and how did Musset
discover their intimacy? It is quite certain that he suspected it,
and that he made Pagello confess his love for George Sand.(20) A most
extraordinary scene then took place between the three of them, according
to George Sand's own account. "Adieu, then," she wrote to Musset, later
on, "adieu to the fine poem of our sacred friendship and of that ideal
bond formed between the three of us, when you dragged from him the
confession of his love for me and when he vowed to you that he would
make me happy. Oh, that night of enthusiasm, when, in spite of us, you
joined our hands, saying: 'You love each other and yet you love me,
for you have saved me, body and soul." Thus, then, Musset had solemnly
abjured his love for George Sand, he had engaged his mistress of the
night before to a new lover, and was from henceforth to be their best
friend. Such was the ideal bond, such the sacred friendship! This may be
considered the romantic escapade.
(20) On one of George Sand's unpublished letters to Buloz
the following lines are written in the handwriting of Buloz:
"In the morning on getting up he discovered, in an adjoining
room, a tea-table still set, but with only one cup.
"'Did you have tea yesterday evening?'
"'Yes,' answered George Sand, 'I had tea with the doctor.'
"'Ah, how is it that there is only one cup?'
"'The other has been taken away.'
"'No, nothing has been taken away. You drank out of the
same cup.'
"'Even if that were so, you have no longer the right to
trouble about such things.'
"'I have the right, as I am still supposed to be your lover.
You ought at least to show me respect, and, as I am leaving
in three days, you might wait until I have gone to do as you
like.'
"The night following this scene Musset discovered George
Sand, crouching on her bed, writing a letter.
"'What are you doing?' he asked.
"'I am reading,' she replied, and she blew out the candle.
"'If you are reading, why do you put the candle out?'
"'It went out itself: light it again.'
"Alfred de Musset lit it again.
"'Ah, so you were reading, and you have no book. Infamous
woman, you might as well say that you are writing to your
lover.' George Sand had recourse to her usual threat of
leaving the house. Alfred de Musset read her up: 'You are
thinking of a horrible plan. You want to hurry off to your
doctor, pretend that I am mad and that your life is in
danger. You will not leave this room. I will keep you from
anything so base. If you do go, I will put such an epitaph
on your grave that the people who read it will turn pale,'
said Alfred with terrible energy.
"George Sand was trembling and crying.
"'I no longer love you,' Alfred said scoffingly to George
Sand.
"'It is the right moment to take your poison or to go and
drown yourself.'
"Confession to Alfred of her secret about the doctor.
Reconciliation. Alfred's departure. George Sand's
affectionate and enthusiastic letters."
Such are the famous episodes of the _tea-cup_ and _the
letter_ as Buloz heard them told at the time.
Musset returned in March, 1834, leaving George Sand with Pagello in
Venice. The sentimental exaggeration continued, as we see from the
letters exchanged between Musset and George Sand. When crossing
the Simplon the immutable grandeur of the Alps struck Alusset with
admiration, and he thought of his two "great friends." His head was
evidently turned by the heights from which he looked at things. George
Sand wrote to him: "I am not giving you any message from Pagello,
except that he is almost as sad as I am at your absence." "He is a fine
fellow," answered Musset. "Tell him how much I like him, and that my
eyes fill with tears when I think of him." Later on he writes: "When I
saw Pagello, I recognized in him the better side of my own nature,
but pure and free from the irreparable stains which have ruined mine."
"Always treat me like that," writes Musset again. "It makes me feel
proud. My dear friend, the woman who talks of her new lover in this way
to the one she has given up, but who still loves her, gives him a proof
of the greatest esteem that a man can receive from a woman. . . ." That
romanticism which made a drama of the situation in _L'Ecole des Femmes_,
and another one out of that in the _Precieuses ridicules_, excels in
taking tragically situations that belong to comedy and in turning them
into the sublime.
Meanwhile George Sand had settled down in Venice with Pagello--and with
all the family, all the Pagello tribe, with the brother, the sister, to
say nothing of the various rivals who came and made scenes. It was the
vulgar, ordinary platitude of an Italian intimacy of this kind. In spite
of everything, she continued congratulating herself on her choice.
"I have my love, my stay here with me. He never suffers, for he is never
weak or suspicious. . . . He is calm and good. . . . He loves me and is
at peace; he is happy without my having to suffer, without my having to
make efforts for his happiness. . . . As for me, I must suffer for some
one. It is just this suffering which nurtures my maternal solicitude,
etc. . . ." She finally begins to weary of her dear Pagello's stupidity.
It occurred to her to take him with her to Paris, and that was the
climax. There are some things which cannot be transplanted from one
country to another. When they had once set foot in Paris, the absurdity
of their situation appeared to them.
"From the moment that Pagello landed in France," says George Sand, "he
could not understand anything." The one thing that he was compelled to
understand was that he was no longer wanted. He was simply pushed out.
George Sand had a remarkable gift for bringing out the characteristics
of the persons with whom she had any intercourse. This Pagello, thanks
to his adventure with her, has become in the eyes of the world a
personage as comic as one of Moliere's characters.
Musset and George Sand still cared for each other. He beseeched her
to return to him. "I am good-for-nothing," he says, "for I am simply
steeped in my love for you. I do not know whether I am alive, whether I
eat, drink, or breathe, but I know I am in love." George Sand was afraid
to return to him, and Sainte-Beuve forbade her. Love proved stronger
than all other arguments, however, and she yielded.
As soon as she was with him once more, their torture commenced again,
with all the customary complaints, reproaches and recriminations. "I was
quite sure that all these reproaches would begin again immediately after
the happiness we had dreamed of and promised each other. Oh, God, to
think that we have already arrived at this!" she writes.
What tortured them was that the past, which they had believed to be "a
beautiful poem," now seemed to them a hideous nightmare. All this, we
read, was a game that they were playing. A cruel sort of game, of which
Musset grew more and more weary, but which to George Sand gradually
became a necessity. We see this, as from henceforth it was she who
implored Musset. In her diary, dated December 24, 1834, we read: "And
what if I rushed to him when my love is too strong for me. What if I
went and broke the bell-pull with ringing, until he opened his door to
me. Or if I lay down across the threshold until he came out!" She cut
off her magnificent hair and sent it to him. Such was the way in which
this proud woman humbled herself. She was a prey to love, which seemed
to her a holy complaint. It was a case of Venus entirely devoted to her
prey. The question is, was this really love? "I no longer love you," she
writes, "but I still adore you. I do not want you any more, but I cannot
do without you." They had the courage to give each other up finally in
March, 1835.
It now remains for us to explain the singularity of this adventure,
which, as a matter of fact, was beyond all logic, even the logic of
passion. It is, however, readily understood, if we treat it as a case
of acute romanticism, the finest case of romanticism, that has been
actually lived, which the history of letters offers us.
The romanticism consists first in exposing one's life to the public, in
publishing one's most secret joys and sorrows. From the very beginning
George Sand and Musset took the whole circle of their friends into their
confidence. These friends were literary people. George Sand specially
informs Sainte-Beuve that she wishes her sentimental life from
thenceforth to be known. They were quite aware that they were on show,
as it were, subjects of an experiment that would be discussed by "the
gallery."
Romanticism consists next in the writer putting his life into his
books, making literature out of his emotions. The idea of putting their
adventure into a story occurred to the two lovers before the adventure
had come to an end. It was at Venice that George Sand wrote her first
_Lettres d'un voyageur_, addressed to the poet--and to the subscribers
of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Musset, to improve on this idea, decides
to write a novel from the episode which was still unfinished. "I will
not die," he says, "until I have written my book on you and on myself,
more particularly on you. No, my beautiful, holy fiancee, you shall not
return to this cold earth before it knows the woman who has walked on
it. No, I swear this by my youth and genius." Musset's contributions to
this literature were _Confession d'un enfant du siecle_, _Histoire d'un
merle blanc_, _Elle et Lui_, and all that followed.
In an inverse order, romanticism consists in putting literature into our
life, in taking the latest literary fashion for our rule of action. This
is not only a proof of want of taste; it is a most dangerous mistake.
The romanticists, who had so many wrong ideas, had none more erroneous
than their idea of love, and in the correspondence between George Sand
and Musset we see the paradox in all its beauty. It consists in saying
that love leads to virtue and that it leads there through change.
Whether the idea came originally from _her_ or from _him_, this was
their common faith.
"You have said it a hundred times over," writes George Sand, "and it
is all in vain that you retract; nothing will now efface that sentence:
'Love is the only thing in the world that counts.' It may be that it
is a divine faculty which we lose and then find again, that we must
cultivate, or that we have to buy with cruel suffering, with painful
experience. The suffering you have endured through loving me was perhaps
destined, in order that you might love another woman more easily.
Perhaps the next woman may love you less than I do, and yet she may be
more happy and more beloved. There are such mysteries in these things,
and God urges us along new and untrodden paths. Give in; do not attempt
to resist. He does not desert His privileged ones. He takes them by the
hand and places them in the midst of the sandbanks, where they are to
learn to live, in order that they may sit down at the banquet at which
they are to rest. . . ." Later on she writes as follows: "Do you imagine
that one love affair, or even two, can suffice for exhausting or taking
the freshness from a strong soul? I believed this, too, for a long
time, but I know now that it is quite the contrary. Love is a fire that
endeavours to rise and to purify itself. Perhaps the more we have failed
in our endeavours to find it, the more apt we become to discover it, and
the more we have been obliged to change, the more conservative we
shall become. Who knows? It is perhaps the terrible, magnificent and
courageous work of a whole lifetime. It is a crown of thorns which will
blossom and be covered with roses when our hair begins to turn white."
This was pure frenzy, and yet there were two beings ready to drink in
all this pathos, two living beings to live out this monstrous chimera.
Such are the ravages that a certain conception of literature may make.
By the example we have of these two illustrious victims, we may imagine
that there were others, and very many others, obscure and unknown
individuals, but human beings all the same, who were equally duped.
There are unwholesome fashions in literature, which, translated into
life, mean ruin. The Venice adventure shows up the truth of this in
bright daylight. This is its interest and its lesson.
V
THE FRIEND OF MICHEL (DE BOURGES)
LISZT AND COMTESSE D'AGOULT. _MAUPRAT_
We have given the essential features of the Venice adventure. The love
affair, into which George Sand and Musset had put so much literature,
was to serve literature. Writers of the romantic school are given to
making little songs with their great sorrows. When the correspondence
between George Sand and Musset appeared, every one was surprised to
find passages that were already well known. Such passages had already
appeared in the printed work of the poet or of the authoress. An idea,
a word, or an illustration used by the one was now, perhaps, to be found
in the work of the other one.
"It is I who have lived," writes George Sand, "and not an unreal being
created by my pride and my _ennui_." We all know the use to which Musset
put this phrase. He wrote the famous couplet of Perdican with it: "All
men are untruthful, inconstant, false, chatterers, hypocritical, proud,
cowardly, contemptible and sensual; all women are perfidious, artful,
vain, inquisitive and depraved. . . . There is, though, in this world
one thing which is holy and sublime. It is the union of these two
beings, imperfect and frightful as they are. We are often deceived in
our love; we are often wounded and often unhappy, but still we love, and
when we are on the brink of the tomb we shall turn round, look back,
and say to ourselves: 'I have often suffered, I have sometimes been
deceived, but I have loved. It is I who have lived, and not an unreal
being created by my pride and _ennui_.'" Endless instances of this kind
could be given. They are simply the sign of the reciprocal influence
exercised over each other by George Sand and Musset, an influence to be
traced through all their work.