But of all De Musset's stories, _Emmeline_ is certainly the most charming. It was inspired by the author's own first worthy attachment after his quarrel with George Sand--a short but happy one, which in its main features resembled that of the story. A young man falls violently in love with a young married lady, whose charms are painted in the most delicate colours, but colours chosen with an accurately observing eye. There is nothing in recent literature which can be compared with this art except Turgenev's most delicate delineations of female character; but Turgenev's women are more spiritual, less real, are beheld with the lover's less critical eye and represented with less artistic boldness. After long admiring the lady without any hope of awakening her interest in him, the young man wins her love and she gives herself to him. Then they abruptly part for ever, because she is too truthful to deceive her husband, and her lover has too much delicacy of feeling to remain in her neighbourhood under such circumstances. A poem in this story, which the young lover asks his lady to read, seems to me to be the most beautiful of the love poems of De Musset's second period. It speaks the language of ideal feeling. It is the well-known "Si je vous disais pourtant que je vous aime." One verse runs: "J'aime, et je sais répondre avec indifférence; J'aime, et rien ne le dit; j'aime et seul je le sais; Et mon secret est cher, et chère ma souffrance; Et j'ai fait le serment d'aimer sans espérance, Mais non pas sans bonheur;--je vous vois, c'est assez."