With the artist's dislike of all that is positive and arbitrary, she
was, nevertheless, subject rather to her intellect than her emotions.
An insult to her intelligence was the one thing she found it hard
to pardon, and she allowed no external interference to disturb her
relations with her own reasoning faculty. She followed caprices, no
doubt, but she was never under any apprehension with regard to their
true nature, displaying in this respect a detachment which is usually
considered exclusively virile. _Elle et Lui_, which, perhaps because
it is short and associated with actual facts, is the most frequently
discussed in general conversation on her work, remains probably the
sanest account of a sentimental experiment which was ever written. How
far it may have seemed accurate to De Musset is not to the point.
Her version of her grievance is at least convincing. Without fear and
without hope, she makes her statement, and it stands, therefore, unique
of its kind among indictments. It has been said that her fault was an
excess of emotionalism; that is to say, she attached too much importance
to mere feeling and described it, in French of marvellous ease and
beauty, with a good deal of something else which one can almost condemn
as the high-flown. Not that the high-flown is of necessity unnatural,
but it is misleading; it places the passing mood, the lyrical note,
dependent on so many accidents, above the essential temperament and the
dominant chord which depend on life only.
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