ous 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.

This influence was of a different kind and of unequal degree. It was
George Sand who first made literature of their common recollections.
Some of these recollections were very recent ones and were impregnated
with tears. The two lovers had only just separated when George Sand made
the excursion described in the first _Lettre d'un voy