[Alfred de Musset was born in the middle of old Paris, in the
year 1810. Musset is the Byron of the French; but at the age
when Byron was playing cricket in the grounds of Harrow, Alfred
and his brother Paul were poring day and night over old
romances, and dressing themselves up as knights and robbers, to
represent the characters of whom they read. At nineteen he began
to write, and, unlike Byron, his first book of poems was a
complete success. At twenty-three he went to Italy, in the
capacity of George Sand's private secretary, fell passionately
in love with her, was jilted, and returned home broken-hearted.
This, however, did not prevent him from falling in love, and out
again, like Byron, at constant intervals throughout his life,
and celebrating the event in verses infinitely sweet and bitter.
From Louis Philippe, who had been his school-fellow, he received
the post of Librarian to the Minister of the Interior, which,
however, he lost at the Revolution of 1848. In 1852 he was
elected to the French Academy; but, though only forty-two, his
health was already breaking. Like Byron, who loved to write at
midnight with a glass of gin-and-water at his elbow, Musset used
to prime himself with draughts of the still deadlier absinthe.
He sank, and died in May, 1857, leaving the greatest name of all
French poets except Victor Hugo, and a reputation as a writer of
prose stories which may be very fairly estimated by the specimen
which follows--the charming little story of "Camille."]