Alfred Louis Charles de Musset was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. After attempts at careers in medicine, law, drawing, English, and piano, he became one of the first Romantic writers. He was the librarian of the French Ministry of the Interior under the July Monarchy, but was dismissed from his post as librarian after the revolution of 1848. He was appointed librarian of the Ministry of Public Instruction during the Second Empire. Musset received the Legion d'Honneur on April 24, 1845, at the same time as Balzac, and was elected to the Academie Francaise in 1852. The Confessions of a Child of the Century is an autobiographical novel detailing his two year love affair with the writer George Sand. The relationship between two of the nineteenth century's most headstrong Romanticists took place in the upper realms of French society in the early 1830s. Set against a backdrop of great artistic tumult and social upheaval, with Hugo, Delacroix, Berlioz, Balzac, and Merimee all active, it became the celebrity coupling of their day. Alfred de Musset died in his sleep in Paris in 1857. The cause was heart failure, the combination of alcoholism and a longstanding aortic insufficiency. One symptom that had been noticed by his brother was a bobbing of the head as a result of the amplification of the pulse; this was later called de Musset's sign. He was buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris."