Lamartine now began to pay off his debts by literary labor. _Les Confidences_, containing _Graziella_ and the ever popular _Raphael_ came from the press in 1849, followed by the _Nouvelles Confidences_ in 1851. Among his other works are: _Genièvre_, 1849; _Le Tailleur de Pierres de Saint Point_, 1851; _Fior d'Aliza_, 1866; and the histories, _Histoire de la Restauration_, 1851-1853; _Histoire de la Turquie_, 1854; _Histoire de la Russie_, 1855. His wife died in 1863. He had not been able to save much money, and, in 1867, when he was an old man, the Government of France came to his assistance with a pension of 25,000 francs. He died, March 1, 1869, having profoundly influenced the literature of his time. His works have been translated into many languages. A beautiful monument to his memory was erected by public subscription near Mâcon, in 1874. C.C.S. ILLUSTRATIONS: ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE RAPHAEL'S DEVOTION THE LOVERS' COMPACT RAPHAEL SEES JULIE IN PARIS PROLOGUE The real name of the friend who wrote these pages was not Raphael. We often called him so in sport, because in his boyhood he much resembled a youthful portrait of Raphael, which may be seen in the Barberini gallery at Rome, at the Pitti palace in Florence, and at the Museum of the Louvre. We had given him the name, too, because the distinctive feature of this youth's character was his lively sense of the beautiful in Nature and Art,--a sense so keen, that his mind was, so to speak, merely the shadowing forth of the ideal or material beauty scattered through-out the works of God and man. This feeling was the result of his exquisite and almost morbid sensibility,--morbid, at least, until time had somewhat blunted it. We would sometimes, in allusion to those who, from their ardent longings to revisit their country, are called home-sick, say that he was heaven-sick, and he would smile, and say that we were right. This love of the beautiful made him unhappy; in another situation it might have rendered him illustrious. Had he held a pencil he would have painted the Virgin of Foligno; as a sculptor, he would have chiselled the Psyche of Canova; had he known the language in which sounds are written, he would have noted the aerial lament of the sea breeze sighing among the fibres of Italian pines, or the breathing of a sleeping girl who dreams of one she will not name; had he been a poet, he would have written the stanzas of Tasso's "Erminia," the moonlight talk of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," or Byron's portrait of Haidee.