except that he is almost as sad as I am at your absence." "He is a fine
fellow," answered Musset. "Tell him how much I like him, and that my
eyes fill with tears when I think of him." Later on he writes: "When I
saw Pagello, I recognized in him the better side of my own nature,
but pure and free from the irreparable stains which have ruined mine."
"Always treat me like that," writes Musset again. "It makes me feel
proud. My dear friend, the woman who talks of her new lover in this way
to the one she has given up, but who still loves her, gives him a proof
of the greatest esteem that a man can receive from a woman. . . ." That
romanticism which made a drama of the situation in _L'Ecole des Femmes_,
and another one out of that in the _Precieuses ridicules_, excels in
taking tragically situations that belong to comedy and in turning them
into the sublime.

Meanwhile George Sand had settled down in Venice with Pagello--and with
all the family, all the Pagello tribe, with the brother, the sister, to
say nothing of the various rivals who came and made scenes. It was the
vulgar, ordinary platitude of an Italian intimacy of this kind. In spite
of everything, she continued congratulating herself on her choice.

"I have my love, my stay here with me. He never suffers, for he is never
weak or suspicious. . . . He is calm and good. . . . He loves me and is
at peace; he is happy without my having to suffer, without my having to
make efforts for his happiness. . . . As for me, I must suffer for some
one. It is just this suffering which nurtures my maternal solicitude,
etc. . . ." She finally begins to weary of her dear Pagello's stupidity.
It occurred to her to take him with her to Paris, and that was the
climax. There are some things which cannot be transplanted from one
country to another. When they had once set foot in Paris, the absurdity
of their situation appeared to them.