From his earliest period, during and just after his time as a Prix de Rome student, Gounod's songs include some of his best, in the view of both Huebner and Johnson. Examples include "Où voulez-vous aller?" (words by Gautier, 1839) – which challenged comparison with Berlioz, who had already set the poem in his "Les Nuits d'été" – and "Venice" (Musset), 1842, described by Johnson as "astonishingly evocative with its turbulent interludes painting that city's ability both to intoxicate and disturb". Other early songs such as "Le vallon" and "Le soir" (both to words by Lamartine, c. 1840) demonstrate Gounod's ability to cope with large-scale Romantic verse.