to Lamartine,” “Stanzas on the Death of Malibran,” “Hope in God,” and a number of others of not less melody and vigor, but less exalted and serious in tone; several plays, among them Lorenzaccio, which missed only by a very little being a fine tragedy; the greater part of his prose tales and criticisms, including Le Fils de Titien, the most charming of his stories, and the Confession d’un Enfant du Siecle, which shows as much genius as any of his poems,—­belong to the period from 1835 to 1840, his apogee.  Of the last work, notwithstanding its unmistakable personal revelations—­which, if they do not tell the author’s story, at least reflect his state of mind—­Paul de Musset says, what everybody who has read his brother’s writings carefully will feel to be true, that neither in the hero nor any other single personage must we look for Alfred’s entire individuality.  In the complexity of his character and emotions, and the contradictions which they united, are to be found the eidolon of every young man in his collection, even “the two heroes of Les Caprices de Marianne, Octave and Coelio,” says Paul, “although they are the antipodes of one another.”  Neither is it as easy as it would seem on the surface to trace the thread of any one incident of his life through his writings.  Although containing some irreconcilable passages, the four “Nights” appeared to have been born of the same impulse and to exact the same dedication:  it is undeniably a shock to have their inconsistencies explained by hearing that while the “Nuits de Mai,” “d’Aout” and “d’Octobre” refer to his passion for Madame Sand, the “Nuit de Decembre” and “Lettre a Lamartine,” which naturally belong to this series, were dictated by another attachment and another disappointment.  I will not stop to moralize upon this:  the story of De Musset’s life is really only the story of his loves.  His brother says that he was always in love with somebody:  it was a necessity of his nature and his genius.  Before he was twenty-seven, six different love-affairs are enumerated, without taking into account numerous affairs of gallantry; nor was the sixth the last.  The “Nuit d’Octobre” was written two years and a half after his return from Italy, and its terrible malediction is the outbreak of the rankling memory of his wrong and suffering.  It was psychologically in order that while his love (which does not die in an hour, like trust and respect) survived, it should surround its object with lingering tenderness, but that as it slowly expired indignation, scorn and the sense of injury should increase:  this is their final utterance, followed by pardon, a vow of forgetfulness and farewell, but not a final farewell.  That was spoken years afterward, in 1841, when, once again seeing by chance the forest of Fontainebleau, and about the same time casually encountering Madame Sand, he poured forth his “Souvenir,” a poem of matchless sweetness and beauty, vibrating with feeling and most musical in expression—­an exquisite combination of lyric and elegy.  In this he calls her