A love story

Episode 1

Chapter: 1

A LOVE STORY

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Chapter: 1

1549 words

A love story

We vaguely knew this story. The two lovers had taken care to maintain the public in their works. Although mysterious, it was the clearest part of their legend. And even outside of art, we continued to love them. Because, much more than for the last century, the enigmatic and famous novel of Mme d'Houdetot and Jean-Jacques (of which nothing precise will be known as long as the Arbouville family refuses to publish Rousseau's letters), the love story of George Sand and Musset will be the great novel of our century. ThereConfession and theNights, the impassioned tales of Lélia and the theater in freedom of Fantasio, disturbed and seduced three generations.

It was said of the poet, of the poet of youth, that the love of a woman had awakened his genius, to put it to death. We also knew that this mistress "who wanted to be beautiful, and did not know how to forgive" had crowned the most glorious career, with an old age surrounded by veneration. We dared not frankly pity one or excuse the other.

After the poet's death, George Sand was the first to claim to justify herself. Paul de Musset answered for his brother and other witnesses got involved in the quarrel: accusation and defense seemed equally suspicious. They therefore waited for the time to allow the private papers to be exhumed. After sixty-two years, the mystery unfolded.

Two well-documented articles appeared this summer, which shed new light on the wretchedness of poets: one by the Vicomte de Spoëlberch de Lovenjoul, the erudite Belgian bibliophile, quite sympathetic to George Sand, the other by M. Maurice Clouard, a fan of Musset, which would seem to indicate his preferences. But their conclusions don't sit well with the latest revelations.

Quite recently, I translated and published the diary of Dr. Pagello, where it is first told how George Sand declared her love for him, in the very room of Musset, seriously ill in Venice. The indirect and still undecided declaration of the novelist to the doctor1 was published in turn by Doctor Cabanès, during an interview with Pagello himself, which confirmed in every respect the assertions of the newspaper, even more precise for being barely subsequent to the events mentioned.

This diary was entrusted to me six years ago. I did not make it known until I had acquired proof that it was not absolutely unpublished. If Pagello is discreet about his happiness during the end of his stay at Musset, he does not conceal what kind of love George Sand had offered him. Until now, we only had vague data on this point.

Note 1: (feedback)I gave a sentence that can sum it up: “I love you because I like you; maybe soon I will hate you.

To shed light on these half-confidences, I thought I could, without indelicacy, also quote long fragments from an unpublished letter from George Sand to Pagello, in which she conceals nothing of their relations. This letter, of which I had taken a copy on the autograph (this for those who seemed to doubt the authenticity of my documents), brought the first decisive document on the misfortune of Mussetbefore leaving Venice.

Many have seen fit to declare these revelations indiscreet, while Musset and George Sand have themselves begun to confide in the public. I thought it useless, however, to give certain more intimate passages of the letter quoted, which would have left no doubt as to the nature of this liaison. The feminine Don Juan that was George Sand, without being pitiless when he ceased to love, nevertheless persisted, devoid of scruples as he was, in baffling curiosity about the legend of his victims. Why refuse Musset to have gone out as a gallant man of a love that was equally fatal to all those who tasted it?...

Perhaps there was bad grace in attaching oneself thus to the demonstration of the wrongs of a woman. But isn't George Sand's life the very reason for her genius? And this genius, instinctive, abundant, romantic and

INTRODUCTION 2

A love story

declamatory, does it not owe as much to his temperament as to his atavism and his education? “What is best in me is other people,” she wrote (or almost) to Flaubert. And recently, Mrs. Clésinger, justly offended by this sudden display of intimacy, which is one of the necessities of fame, did she not say in this regard: "For me, the feeling which guided my mother and determined her actions, it is the horror of loneliness. She needed movement around her, someone to talk to, someone to lean on, and someone to protect..."

There is no doubt that the serene goodness with which the old age of this stormy nature enveloped itself—even more beautiful in its storms—would absolve it, in the eyes of the moralist, of the anxieties of its youthful years. Its errors at least today belong to literary history: why not note them?

A great press uproar greeted these revelations. It was the event of the day, the fashionable literary question. Sandists and Mussettists epilogized on the adventure of Venice, while many chroniclers, while finding in it the rarest profit of "copy", cried out "scandal", and begged that the public be told no more than his great men had also been men.

The shade of Lélia saw rising for her an army of paladins. For a few days the memory of its poet remained without defenders. M. Émile Aucante, former secretary to George Sand (and legatee of her letters to Alfred de Musset), protested in the newspapers against the "legend of her infidelity". He formally declared that the Correspondence would give "proof written in Musset's hand that George Sand had not betrayed him." Could these letters afford such proof? We already knew some fragments from a fine monograph by Musset, published by Mrs. Arvède Barine, such as this astonishing passage from Elle à Lui: "O this night of enthusiasm, where,despite U.S, you joined our hands, saying to us: “You love each other and you love me, however. You saved me soul and body.”

Now M. Émile Aucante possessed only the letters of George Sand, and Mme Lardin de Musset energetically opposed the publication of those of her brother. friend, the supplicating, timid pages, wrung from Musset, in his weakness before love, the subtle psychology of a mistress who, without perversity perhaps, but still incapable of admitting a weakness, had managed to to suggest to his victim words of gratitude?... For here is the interesting case of this banal adventure.

It was a vulgar evil and well known to men....

And myself, telling for the first time the "True story of the Lovers of Venice", I had thought it necessary to take less account of the singular fragments of these letters of the unfortunate poet, than of the honest memorial of Pagello and the intimate confessions by George Sand.

The restitution of this story, now precise as to the facts, therefore remained enigmatic as to the tormented mythologies which had led them. The revelations continued.The Paris Reviewpublished George Sand's letters to Musset. A great noise was made. It is not doubtful that a return of the opinion did not then occur in favor of Lélia. The same journal then gave its letters to Sainte-Beuve. They specified experiences prior to the liaison with Musset, which allowed mistrust. This time public opinion was unfavorable to George Sand.

Now, what does this book bring? A story, as close as possible, of this endearing love affair, a synthetic presentation of the life of the two great writers from their meeting until their separation. Musset's letters, hitherto completely unpublished, were generously lent to me by the poet's sister, Madame Lardin de Musset, who keeps the pious worship of his memory. What receives here the homage of my respectful gratitude. She is convinced that her brother Paul, both in his Biography of Alfred de Musset and in his novel,Him and her, has not once betrayed the truth. We will also look for it, aided by all the new documents that we are going to produce.

INTRODUCTION 3

A love story

Was it necessary or interesting to exhume in its details an intimate episode sixty years old?—I believe that without incurring any reproach of indiscretion or indelicacy one has the right, for great works, to go back to the sources secrets of their generation. Sainte-Beuve himself taught us not to isolate work from life. Where does the biography of a great man end? Where it ceases to interest us, that is to say, to be necessary for the explanation of his masterpieces.

December 1896.

SUMMARY

I.—GEORGE SAND AND ALFRED DE MUSSET IN 1833.

II.—GEORGE SAND AND FRIENDS (January-June 1833).

III.—THE FIRST LOVE OF GEORGE SAND AND MUSSET (June-December 1833). IV.—THE ROMAN DE VENICE (January 19-March 30, 1834).

V.—LIFE OF GEORGE SAND AND DR. PAGELLO IN VENICE (April-August 1834).