“In the morning on getting up he discovered, in an adjoining
     room, a tea-table still set, but with only one cup.

     “‘Did you have tea yesterday evening?’

     “‘Yes,’ answered George Sand, ‘I had tea with the doctor.’

     “‘Ah, how is it that there is only one cup?’

     “‘The other has been taken away.’

     “’No, nothing has been taken away.  You drank out of the
     same cup.’

     “’Even if that were so, you have no longer the right to
     trouble about such things.’

“’I have the right, as I am still supposed to be your lover.  You ought at least to show me respect, and, as I am leaving in three days, you might wait until I have gone to do as you like.’

     “The night following this scene Musset discovered George
     Sand, crouching on her bed, writing a letter.

     “‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

     “‘I am reading,’ she replied, and she blew out the candle.

     “‘If you are reading, why do you put the candle out?’

     “‘It went out itself:  light it again.’

     “Alfred de Musset lit it again.

“’Ah, so you were reading, and you have no book.  Infamous woman, you might as well say that you are writing to your lover.’  George Sand had recourse to her usual threat of leaving the house.  Alfred de Musset read her up:  ’You are thinking of a horrible plan.  You want to hurry off to your doctor, pretend that I am mad and that your life is in danger.  You will not leave this room.  I will keep you from anything so base.  If you do go, I will put such an epitaph on your grave that the people who read it will turn pale,’ said Alfred with terrible energy.

     “George Sand was trembling and crying.

     “‘I no longer love you,’ Alfred said scoffingly to George
     Sand.

     “’It is the right moment to take your poison or to go and
     drown yourself.’

     “Confession to Alfred of her secret about the doctor. 
     Reconciliation.  Alfred’s departure.  George Sand’s
     affectionate and enthusiastic letters.”

     Such are the famous episodes of the tea-cup and the
     letter as Buloz heard them told at the time.

Musset returned in March, 1834, leaving George Sand with Pagello in Venice.  The sentimental exaggeration continued, as we see from the letters exchanged between Musset and George Sand.  When crossing the Simplon the immutable grandeur of the Alps struck Alusset with admiration, and he thought of his two “great friends.”  His head was evidently turned by the heights from which he looked at things.  George Sand wrote to him:  “I am not giving you any message from Pagello, 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