The young poet was welcomed to the French Academy, but was not very faithful to his duties. Said one of the members: “Musset absents himself too much.” To which the answer was: “Musset absinthes himself too much.” He was an old roué at the age of thirty, and there was nothing left but to die. Long afterwards George Sand published a novel in which she told the intimate details of their love affair; and that, of course, was fine copy, and a tremendous thrill. The title of the novel was “She and He,” and Musset’s brother came back with a book entitled “He and She.” It appears that George Sand had been unfaithful to Musset in the midst of their amour; but we cannot get up much sympathy for the unhappy “child of his age.” His brother delicately tells us how, in the days of his beautiful youth, lying in bed at night, the young poet would impart shy confidences about his amorous triumphs. He was seducing other men’s wives and daughters and sisters, and was apparently not concerning himself with any brain fevers these men might have, or with any tears of grief they might shed in between their games of chess. Two of the most beautiful and eloquent of Musset’s poems are entitled, respectively, “A Night of May” and “A Night of December.” Each of them portrays the poet as falling sorrowfully out of love. The world had naturally assumed that the two poems related to the same mistress; but the poet’s brother revealed that the two poems had a different “motive,” and also that there was another “motive” in between the May “motive” and the December “motive.” And there were many other “motives”--since numbers of elegant ladies in Paris aspired to become the theme of one of the “Nights” of this delicate if drunken genius. We shall see a long string of poets of this sort for a hundred years in France--and some, alas! in England and America. The lesson of their lives is always the same--that poetry without social vision and moral backbone is merely a snare for the human spirit. CHAPTER LXIV PRAYER IN ADULTERY The problem of the relationship of art to morality is most interestingly illustrated by the case of George Sand. This woman-writer was promiscuous, and she was predatory, in the sense that she turned her adventures into copy and sold them in the market. But she had a mind, and she used it to investigate all the new ideas of her time. She was moved, not merely by her own desire for pleasure, but by the sufferings and strivings of her fellow human beings. She poured all these things into her books, and made herself one of the civilizing forces of her time.