Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/93

Rh circumstances, the alleged disastrous consequences to a child of genius less wise and fortunate than herself, which have given an otherwise disproportionate notoriety to this brief episode.

George Sand was no doubt fatally in error when she persuaded herself, and even succeeded in persuading the poet's anxious mother, that she had it in her to be his guardian angel, and reform him miraculously in a short space of time; and that because he had fallen in love with her she would know how to make him alter a way of life he had no abiding desire to abandon. Such a task demands a readiness not merely for self-sacrifice, but for self-suppression; and her individuality was far too pronounced to merge itself for long in ministering to another's. She never seems to have possessed the slightest moral ascendancy over him, beyond the power of wounding him very deeply by the change in her sentiments, however much he might feel himself to blame for it.

The history of the separation of the lovers—of De Musset's illness, jealousy, and departure from Venice alone—is a thrice-told tale. Like the subject of "The Ring and the Book," it has been set forth, by various persons, variously interested, with correspondingly various colouring. The story, as told by George Sand in her later novel, Elle et Lui, is substantially the same as one related by De Musset in his Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle, published two years after these