Allemand', for example, shows that at times he can still gather up all
his powers. The poet becomes lazy and morose, his will is sapped by a
wild and reckless life, and one is more than once tempted to wish that
his lyre had ceased to sing.

De Musset's prose is more abundant than his lyrics or his dramas. It is
of immense value, and owes its chief significance to the clearness with
which it exhibits the progress of his ethical disintegration. In
'Emmeline (1837) we have a rather dangerous juggling with the psychology
of love. Then follows a study of simultaneous love, 'Les Deux
Mattresses' (1838), quite in the spirit of Jean Paul. He then wrote
three sympathetic depictions of Parisian Bohemia: 'Frederic et
Bernadette, Mimi Pinson, and Le Secret de Javotte', all in 1838.
'Le Fils de Titien (1838) and Croiselles' (1839) are carefully elaborated
historical novelettes; the latter is considered one of his best works,
overflowing with romantic spirit, and contrasting in this respect
strangely with 'La Mouche' (1853), one of the last flickerings of his
imagination. 'Maggot' (1838) bears marks of the influence of George Sand;
'Le Merle Blanc' (1842) is a sort of allegory dealing with their quarrel.
'Pierre et Camille' is a pretty but slight tale of a deaf-mute's love.
His greatest work, 'Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle', crowned with
acclaim by the French Academy, and classic for all time, was written in
1836, when the poet, somewhat recovered from the shock, relates his
unhappy Italian experience. It is an ambitious and deeply interesting
work, and shows whither his dread of all moral compulsion and self-
control was leading him.

De Musset also wrote some critical essays, witty and satirical in tone,
in which his genius appears in another light. It is not generally known
that he was the translator into French of De Quincey's 'Confessions of an