drama of Andrea del Sarto, which is rife with tense and tragic situations and deeply-moving scenes.  The affairs of the family turned out much better than had been expected, but Alfred de Musset continued to work with application and ardor.  His fine critical faculty kept his vagaries within bounds:  he knew better than anybody “how much good sense it requires to do without common sense”—­a dictum of his own.  Like every true artist, he took his subjects wherever he found them:  the dripping raindrops and tolling of the convent-bell suggested one of Chopin’s most enchanting Preludes; the accidental attitudes of women and children in the street have given painters and sculptors their finest groups; so a bunch of fresh roses which De Musset’s mother put upon his table one morning during his days of extravagant dissipation, saying, “All this for fourpence,” gave him a happy idea for unravelling the perplexity of Valentin in Les Deux Maitresses; and his unconscious exclamation, “Si je vous le disais pourtant que je vous aime,” which caused a passer-by in the street to laugh at him, furnished the opening of the Stances a Ninon, like Dante’s

    Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore.

These fortunate dispositions were interrupted by a meeting which affected his character and genius more than any other event in his life.  It is curious that Madame Sand and De Musset originally avoided making each other’s acquaintance.  She fancied that she should not like him, and he, although greatly struck by the genius of her first novel, Indiana, disliked her overloaded style of writing, and struck out in pencil a quantity of superfluous adjectives and other parts of speech in a copy which unluckily fell into her hands.  Their first encounter was followed by a sudden, almost instantaneous, mutual passion—­on his part the first and strongest if not the only one, of his life.  The first season of this intimacy was like a long summer holiday.  “It seemed,” writes the biographer, “as if a partnership in which existence was so gay, to which each brought such contributions of talent, wit, grace, youth, and good-humor, could never be dissolved.  It seemed as if such happy people should find nothing better to do than remain in a home which they had made so attractive for themselves and their friends....  I never saw such a happy company, nor one which cared so little about the rest of the world.  Conversation never flagged:  they passed their time in talking, drawing, and making music.  A childish glee reigned supreme.  They invented all sorts of amusements, not because they were bored, but because they were overflowing with spirits.”  But Paris became too narrow for them, and they fled—­first to Fontainebleau, then to Italy.  Musset’s mother was deeply opposed to the latter project, foreseeing misfortune with the prescience of affection, and he promised not to go without her consent, although his heart was set upon it.  The most incredible story in the biography is that Madame Sand actually surprised Madame de Musset into an interview, and, by appeals, eloquence, persuasion and vows, obtained her sorrowful acquiescence.