The romanticism consists first in exposing one's life to the public, in publishing one's most secret joys and sorrows. From the very beginning George Sand and Musset took the whole circle of their friends into their confidence. These friends were literary people. George Sand specially informs Sainte-Beuve that she wishes her sentimental life from thenceforth to be known. They were quite aware that they were on show, as it were, subjects of an experiment that would be discussed by "the gallery." Romanticism consists next in the writer putting his life into his books, making literature out of his emotions. The idea of putting their adventure into a story occurred to the two lovers before the adventure had come to an end. It was at Venice that George Sand wrote her first _Lettres d'un voyageur_, addressed to the poet--and to the subscribers of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Musset, to improve on this idea, decides to write a novel from the episode which was still unfinished. "I will not die," he says, "until I have written my book on you and on myself, more particularly on you. No, my beautiful, holy fiancee, you shall not return to this cold earth before it knows the woman who has walked on it. No, I swear this by my youth and genius." Musset's contributions to this literature were _Confession d'un enfant du siecle_, _Histoire d'un merle blanc_, _Elle et Lui_, and all that followed. In an inverse order, romanticism consists in putting literature into our life, in taking the latest literary fashion for our rule of action. This is not only a proof of want of taste; it is a most dangerous mistake. The romanticists, who had so many wrong ideas, had none more erroneous than their idea of love, and in the correspondence between George Sand and Musset we see the paradox in all its beauty. It consists in saying that love leads to virtue and that it leads there through change. Whether the idea came originally from _her_ or from _him_, this was their common faith.