ill. "J'y ai vomi la verite," he said. It is not the happiest way of
communicating truth, and the moral of the book, that debauchery ends
in cynicism, was not left for Musset to discover. Some of his shorter
tales have the charm of fancy or the charm of tenderness, with
breathings of nature here, and there the musky fragrance of a
Louis-Quinze boudoir. _Pierre et Camille_, with its deaf-and-dumb
lovers, and their baby, who babbles in the presence of the relenting
grandfather "Bonjour, papa," has a pretty innocence. _Le Fils de
Titien_ returns to the theme of fallen art, the ruin of self-indulgence.
_Frederic et Bernerette_ and _Mimi Pinson_ may be said to have created
the poetic literature of the grisette--gay and good, or erring and
despairful--making a flower of what had blossomed in the stories of
Paul de Kock as a weed.

Next to the most admirable of his lyric and elegiac poems, Musset's
best _Comedies_ and _Proverbes_ (proverbial sayings exemplified in
dramatic action), deserve a place. Written in prose for readers of
the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, their scenic qualities were discovered
only in 1847, when the actress Madame Allan presented _Un Caprice_
and _Il faut qu'une Porte soit ouverte ou fermee_ at St. Petersburg.
The ambitious Shakespearian drama of political conspiracy,
_Lorenzaccio_, was an effort beyond the province and the powers of
Musset. His _Andre del Sarto_, a tragic representation of the great
painter betrayed by his wife and his favourite pupil, needed the
relief of his happier fantasy. It is in such delicate creations of
a world of romance, a world of sunshine and of perpetual spring, as
_On ne badine pas avec l'Amour_, _Les Caprices de Marianne_, _Le
Chandelier_, _Il ne faut jurer de rien_, that Musset showed how
romantic art could become in a high sense classic by the balance of
sensibility and intelligence, of fantasy and passion. The graces of
the age of Madame de Pompadour ally themselves here with the freer
graces of the Italian Renaissance. Something of the romance of
Shakespeare's more poetic comedies mingles with the artificial
elegance of Marivaux. Their subject is love, and still repeated love;
sentiment is relieved by the play of gaiety; the grotesque approaches
the beautiful; we sail in these light-timbered barques to a land that
lies not very far from the Illyria and Bohemia and Arden forest of
our own great enchanter.

VI

Lyrical self-confession reached its limit in the poetry