Alfred de Musset

“ Was it merely charity that served as your divinity in that beautiful temple of verdure that you visited so bravely?”
Brigitte’s glance when I adopted this tone I shall never forget; I shuddered at it myself. “But, bah!” I thought, “she would do the same thing that my other mistress did—she would point me out as a ridiculous fool, and I should pay for it all in the eyes of the public.”
Between the man who doubts and the man who denies there is only a step. All philosophy is akin to atheism. Having told Brigitte that I suspected her past conduct, I began to regard it with real suspicion. ”

“ No, I can not abandon Brigitte; in these circumstances it would be cowardly. She has just lost her aunt, and is all alone; she is exposed to the power of I know not what enemy. Can it be Mercanson? He may have spoken of my conversation with him, and, seeing that I was jealous of Dalens, may have guessed the rest. Assuredly he is the snake who has been hissing about my well-beloved flower. I must punish him, and I must repair the wrong I have done Brigitte. Fool that I am! ”

“ Perhaps, before I knew you, another woman might have cured me; but now you alone, of all the world, have power to destroy me or to save me, for I bear in my heart the wound of all the evil I have done you. I have been an ingrate, blind and cruel. God be praised! You love me still. If you ever return to that home under whose lindens I first met you, look carefully about that deserted house; you will find a phantom there, for the man who left it, and went away with you, is not the man who entered it."
"Is it true?" said Brigitte, and her face, all radiant with love, was raised to heaven ”

“ Of those who have done as I, few would say those words; all have them in their hearts; I have found no others in mine.
Returning to Paris in the month of December, I passed the winter attending pleasure parties, masquerades, suppers, rarely leaving Desgenais, who was delighted with me: not so was I with him. The more I went about, the more unhappy I became. It seemed to me after a short time that the world which had at first appeared so strange would hamper me, so to speak, at every step; yet where I had expected to see a spectre, I discovered, upon closer inspection, a shadow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover, he had the slow yet jerky way of speaking that characterizes the pedant. Even his manner of walking, which was not that of youth and health, repelled me; as for his glance, it might be said that he had none. I do not know what to think of a man whose eyes have nothing to say. These are the signs which led me to an unfavorable opinion of Mercanson, an opinion which was unfortunately correct.
He sat down on a bench and began to talk about Paris, which he called the modern Babylon. He had been there, he knew every one; he knew Madame de B———, who was an angel ”

“ Whom did she receive as her friends?”
“In faith, sir, I have never seen her do otherwise than she does every day, that is to say, walk in the valley, play picquet with her aunt, and visit the poor. The peasants call her Brigitte la Rose; I have never heard a word against her except that she goes through the woods alone at all hours of the day and night; but that is when engaged in charitable work. She is the ministering angel in the valley. As for those she receives, there are only the cure and Monsieur de Dalens during vacation.” ”

“ On such days, contrary to my usual inclination, I liked to talk of Paris and speak of my life of debauchery as the most commendable thing in the world. "You are nothing but a saint," I would laughingly observe; "you do not understand what I say. There is nothing like those careless ones who make love without believing in it." Was that not the same as saying that I did not believe in it?
"Very well," Brigitte replied, "teach me how to please you always. I am perhaps as pretty as those mistresses whom you mourn; if I have not their skill to divert you, I beg that you will instruct me. ”

“ You see very well that I was only joking, and that I did it only to pass away the time.”
“Ah! my friend, my friend,” said Brigitte, “it is a pity that you must seek pastimes.”
A few days later I proposed that we go to the prefecture to see Madame Daniel dance; she unwillingly consented. While she was arranging her toilette, I sat near the window and reproached her for losing her former cheerfulness.
“What is the matter with you?” I asked. (I knew as well as she.) “Why that morose air that never leaves you? In truth, you make our life quite sad. ”

“ On account of Brigitte's tone of reserve in his presence, I did not think he was in her confidence. I therefore welcomed him with pleasure, although there was always a sort of awkward embarrassment in our meeting. He was asked to act as intermediary between Brigitte and her relatives after our departure. When we three were together, he noticed a certain coldness and restraint which he endeavored to banish by cheerful good humor. If he spoke of our liaison, it was with respect and as a man who looks upon love as a sacred bond ”

“ I sat down near her and kissed the child on its fat cheeks, as if to imbibe some of its innocence. Brigitte accorded me a timid greeting; she could see her troubled image in my eyes. For my part I avoided her glance; the more I admired her beauty and her air of candor, the more I was convinced that such a woman was either an angel or a monster of perfidy; I forced myself to recall each one of Mercanson’s words, and I confronted, so to speak, the man’s insinuations with her presence and her face. “She is very beautiful,” I said to myself, “and very dangerous if she knows how, to deceive ”

“ Since you have become mine, I realize what I have done; I have felt, in kissing you, that my lips were not, like yours, unsullied. In the name of heaven, help me live! God made me a better man than the one you see before you."
Brigitte held out her hands and caressed me tenderly. She begged me to tell her all that had led to this sad scene. I spoke of what I had learned from Larive, but did not dare confess that I had interviewed Mercanson. She insisted that I listen to her explanation. M. de Dalens had loved her; but he was a man of frivolous disposition, dissipated and inconstant ”

“ CHAPTER V A TORTURED SOUL It was Mercanson who had repeated in the village and in the chateau my conversation with him about Dalens and the suspicions that, in spite of myself, I had allowed him clearly to see. Every one knows how bad news travels in the provinces, flying from mouth to mouth and growing as it flies; that is what had happened in this case.
Brigitte and I found ourselves face to face with each other in a new position. However feebly she may have tried to flee, she had nevertheless made the attempt. It was on account of my prayers that she remained ”

“ With a Preface by HENRI DE BORNIER, of the French Academy
ALFRED DE MUSSET A poet has no right to play fast and loose with his genius. It does not belong to him, it belongs to the Almighty; it belongs to the world and to a coming generation. At thirty De Musset was already an old man, seeking in artificial stimuli the youth that would not spring again. Coming from a literary family the zeal of his house had eaten him up; his passion had burned itself out and his heart with it. ”

“ We separated at these words, and the coldness with which she had expressed her resolution saddened me more than usual. It was not the first time our liaison had been threatened by her relatives; but up to this time whatever letters Brigitte had received she had never taken them so much to heart. How could I bring myself to believe that Brigitte had been so affected by protests which in less happy moments had had no effect on her? Could it be merely the weakness of a woman who recoils from an act of final significance? ”

“ We shall not surprise our readers when we inform them that the authorship of Gamiani has always been attributed to the celebrated poet Alfred de Musset. His contemporaries were unanimous on this point, and we would observe, to any of the author's friends who might wish to discredit this assertion, that the private life of their favorite writer, especially in his twenty-fourth year, was anything but edifying, and it is quite sufficient to scan a faithful biography of the poet in his early years to understand and excuse such a youthful peccadillo. ”

“ I had taken Brigitte's hand, and, in a dream, doubtless, she had pronounced my name.
I arose and went to my room; a torrent of tears flowed from my eyes. I held out my arms as if to seize the past which was escaping me. "Is it possible," I repeated, "that I am going to lose you? I can love no one but you. What! you are going away? And forever? What! you, my life, my adored mistress, you flee me, I shall never see you more? Never! never!" I said aloud; and, addressing myself to the slumbering Brigitte as if she could hear me, I added: "Never, never ”

“ To give you an idea of my state of mind I can not do better than compare it to one of those rooms we see nowadays in which are collected and mingled the furniture of all times and countries. Our age has no impress of its own. We have impressed the seal of our time neither on our houses nor our gardens, nor on anything that is ours. On the street may be seen men who have their beards trimmed as in the time of Henry III, others who are clean-shaven, others who have their hair arranged as in the time of Raphael, others as in the time of Christ. ”

“ CHAPTER II REFLECTIONS During the wars of the Empire, while husbands and brothers were in Germany, anxious mothers gave birth to an ardent, pale, and neurotic generation. Conceived between battles, reared amid the noises of war, thousands of children looked about them with dull eyes while testing their limp muscles. From time to time their blood-stained fathers would appear, raise them to their gold-laced bosoms, then place them on the ground and remount their horses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His brother Paul de Musset, a very different person, was there instead—but we hope to have Alfred on another occasion. Do you know his poems? He is not capable of large grasps, but he has poet's life and blood in him, I assure you. He is said to be at the feet of Rachel just now, and a man may nearly as well be with a tigress in a cage. He began with the Princess Belgiojoso—followed George Sand—Rachel finishes, is likely to 'finish' in every sense. In the intervals, he plays at chess. There's the anatomy of a man! ”

“ Poor devoted soul! What didst thou suffer in seeing me turn pale before thee, in seeing my arms fall as though lifeless at my side! When the kiss died on my lips, and the full glance of love, that pure ray of God's light, fled from my eyes like an arrow turned by the wind! Ah! Brigitte! ”

“ After all that Brigitte had done, when our dreams seemed about to be realized, what could be the nature of a secret that destroyed our happiness and could not be confided to me? What! to conceal it from me! And yet I could not find it in my heart to suspect her. The appearance of suspicion revolted me and filled me with horror. On the other hand, how could I conceive of inconstancy or of caprice in that woman, as I knew her? I was lost in an abyss of doubt, and I could not discover a gleam of light, the smallest point, on which to base conjecture. ”

“ CHAPTER V TRUTH AT LAST What a frightful weapon is human thought! It is our defense and our safeguard, the most precious gift that God has made us. It is ours and it obeys us; we may launch it forth into space, but, once outside of our feeble brains, it is gone; we can no longer control it. ”

“ And when love is sure of itself and knows response in the object beloved, what serenity in the soul! Words die on the lips, for each one knows what the other is about to say before utterance has shaped the thought. Souls expand, lips are silent. Oh! what silence! What forgetfulness of all!
Although my love began the first day and had since grown to ardor, the respect I felt for Madame Pierson sealed my lips. ”

“ You have been pleased to try my patience, you have set my sorrow at defiance, perhaps that you might have the right to drive me from your presence; you have become tired of that sorrowful lover who suffered without complaint and who drank with resignation the bitter chalice of your disdain! You knew that, alone with you in the presence of these trees, in the midst of this solitude where my love had its birth, I could not be silent! ”

“ It is unfortunately true that there is in blasphemy a certain outlet which solaces the burdened heart. When an atheist, drawing his watch, gave God a quarter of an hour in which to strike him dead, it is certain that it was a quarter of an hour of wrath and of atrocious joy. It was the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to all celestial powers; it was a poor, wretched creature squirming under the foot that was crushing him; it was a loud cry of pain. Who knows? In the eyes of Him who sees all things, it was perhaps a prayer. ”