They started off in the mist, their coach being the thirteenth to leave the yard; but the two lovers were in a merry mood, and enjoyed themselves all the way from Paris to Marseilles.  By steamer they went to Leghorn; and finally, in January, 1834, they took an apartment in a hotel at Venice.  What had happened that their arrival in Venice should be the beginning of a quarrel, no one knows.  George Sand has told the story, and Paul de Musset—­ Alfred’s brother—­has told the story, but each of them has doubtless omitted a large part of the truth.

It is likely that on their long journey each had learned too much of the other.  Thus, Paul de Musset says that George Sand made herself outrageous by her conversation, telling every one of her mother’s adventures in the army of Italy, including her relations with the general-in-chief.  She also declared that she herself was born within a month of her parents’ wedding-day.  Very likely she did say all these things, whether they were true or not.  She had set herself to wage war against conventional society, and she did everything to shock it.

On the other hand, Alfred de Musset fell ill after having lost ten thousand francs in a gambling-house.  George Sand was not fond of persons who were ill.  She herself was working like a horse, writing from eight to thirteen hours a day.  When Musset collapsed she sent for a handsome young Italian doctor named Pagello, with whom she had struck up a casual acquaintance.  He finally cured Musset, but he also cured George Sand of any love for Musset.

Before long she and Pagello were on their way back to Paris, leaving the poor, fevered, whimpering poet to bite his nails and think unutterable things.  But he ought to have known George Sand.  After that, everybody knew her.  They knew just how much she cared when she professed to care, and when she acted as she acted with Pagello no earlier lover had any one but himself to blame.

Only sentimentalists can take this story seriously.  To them it has a sort of morbid interest.  They like to picture Musset raving and shouting in his delirium, and then, to read how George Sand sat on Pagello’s knees, kissing him and drinking out of the same cup.  But to the healthy mind the whole story is repulsive—­from George Sand’s appeal to Mme. de Musset down to the very end, when Pagello came to Paris, where his broken French excited a polite ridicule.

There was a touch of genuine sentiment about the affair with Jules Sandeau; but after that, one can only see in George Sand a half-libidinous grisette, such as her mother was before her, with a perfect willingness to experiment in every form of lawless love.  As for Musset, whose heart she was supposed to have broken, within a year he was dangling after the famous singer, Mme. Malibran, and writing poems to her which advertised their intrigue.