the mail-coach. On the boat from Lyons to Avignon they met with a big,
intelligent-looking man. This was Beyle-Stendhal, who was then Consul at
Civita-Vecchia. He was on his way to his post. They enjoyed his lively
conversation, although he made fun of their illusions about Italy and
the Italian character. He made fun, though, of everything and of every
one, and they felt that he was only being witty and trying to appear
unkind. At dinner he drank too much, and finished by dancing round the
table in his great fur-lined boots. Later on he gave them some specimens
of his obscene conversation, so that they were glad to continue their
journey without him.

On the 28th the travellers reached Florence. The aspect of this city and
his researches in the _Chroniques florentines_ supplied the poet with
the subject for _Lorenzaccio_. It appears that George Sand and Musset
each treated this subject, and that a _Lorenzaccio_ by George Sand
exists. I have not read it, but I prefer Musset's version. They reached
Venice on January 19, 1834, and put up at the Hotel Danieli. By this
time they were at loggerheads.

The cause of their quarrel and disagreement is not really known, and the
activity of retrospective journalists has not succeeded in finding this
out. George Sand's letters only give details about their final quarrel.
On arriving, George Sand was ill, and this exasperated Musset. He was
annoyed, and declared that a woman out of sorts was very trying. There
are good reasons for believing that he had found her very trying for
some time. He was very elegant and she a learned "white blackbird."
He was capricious and she a placid, steady _bourgeois_ woman, very
hard-working and very regular in the midst of her irregularity. He used
to call her "personified boredom, the dreamer, the silly woman, the
nun," when he did not use terms which we cannot transcribe. The climax