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     Accustomed to hide what I think
     Amusements they offered were either wearisome or repugnant
     Consoled himself with one of the pious commonplaces
     Dreaded the monotonous regularity of conjugal life
     Fawning duplicity
     Had not been spoiled by Fortune’s gifts
     How small a space man occupies on the earth
     Hypocritical grievances
     I am not in the habit of consulting the law
     I measure others by myself
     It does not mend matters to give way like that
     Like all timid persons, he took refuge in a moody silence
     More disposed to discover evil than good
     Nature’s cold indifference to our sufferings
     Never is perfect happiness our lot
     Opposing his orders with steady, irritating inertia
     Others found delight in the most ordinary amusements
     Plead the lie to get at the truth
     Sensitiveness and disposition to self-blame
     The ease with which he is forgotten
     There are some men who never have had any childhood
     Those who have outlived their illusions
     Timidity of a night-bird that is made to fly in the day
     To make a will is to put one foot into the grave
     Toast and white wine (for breakfast)
     Vague hope came over him that all would come right
     Vexed, act in direct contradiction to their own wishes
     Women:  they are more bitter than death
     Yield to their customs, and not pooh-pooh their amusements
     You have considerable patience for a lover
     You must be pleased with yourself—­that is more essential

CONFESSION OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY

(Confession d’un Enfant du Siecle)

By Alfred de musset

With a Preface by Henri de BORNIER, of the French Academy

ALFRED DE MUSSET

A poet has no right to play fast and loose with his genius.  It does not belong to him, it belongs to the Almighty; it belongs to the world and to a coming generation.  At thirty De Musset was already an old man, seeking in artificial stimuli the youth that would not spring again.  Coming from a literary family the zeal of his house had eaten him up; his passion had burned itself out and his heart with it.  He had done his work; it mattered little to him or to literature whether the curtain fell on his life’s drama in 1841 or in 1857.

Alfred de Musset, by virtue of his genial, ironical temperament, eminently clear brain, and undying achievements, belongs to the great poets of the ages.  We to-day do not approve the timbre of his epoch:  that impertinent, somewhat irritant mask, that redundant rhetoric, that occasional disdain for the metre.  Yet he remains the greatest poete de l’amour, the most spontaneous, the most sincere, the most emotional singer of the tender passion that modern times has produced.