they did not win a definite place on the stage till the later years of the Second Empire.  In some comedies the dialogue is unequalled by any writer since the days of Beaumarchais.  Taine says that De Musset has more real originality in some respects than Hugo, and possesses truer dramatic genius.  Two or three of his comedies will probably hold the stage longer than any dramatic work of the romantic school.  They contain the quintessence of romantic imaginative art; they show in full flow that unchecked freedom of fancy which, joined to the spirit of realistic comedy, produces the modern French drama.  Yet De Musset’s prose has in greater measure the qualities that endure.

The Duke of Orleans created De Musset Librarian in the Department of the Interior.  It was sometimes stated that there was no library at all.  It is certain that it was a sinecure, though the pay, 3,000 francs, was small.  In 1848 the Duke had the bad taste to ask for his resignation, but the Empire repaired the injury.  Alfred de Musset died in Paris, May 2, 1857.

                  Henride BORNIER
               de l’Academie Francaise.

THE CONFESSIONS OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY

BOOK 1.

PART I

CHAPTER I

TO THE READER

Before the history of any life can be written, that life must be lived; so that it is not my life that I am now writing.  Attacked in early youth by an abominable moral malady, I here narrate what happened to me during the space of three years.  Were I the only victim of that disease, I would say nothing, but as many others suffer from the same evil, I write for them, although I am not sure that they will give heed to me.  Should my warning be unheeded, I shall still have reaped the fruit of my agonizing in having cured myself, and, like the fox caught in a trap, shall have gnawed off my captive foot.

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.

The life of Europe centred in one man; men tried to fill their lungs with the air which he had breathed.  Yearly France presented that man with three hundred thousand of her youth; it was the tax to Caesar; without that troop behind him, he could not follow his fortune.  It was the escort he needed that he might scour the world, and then fall in a little valley on a deserted island, under weeping willows.