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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 138 ***
+
+GEORGE SAND
+
+Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings
+
+by Rene Doumic
+
+Translated by Alys Hallard
+
+
+
+
+First published in 1910. This volume is dedicated to Madame L. Landouzy
+with gratitude and affection
+
+
+This book is not intended as a study of George Sand. It is merely a
+series of chapters touching on various aspects of her life and writings.
+My work will not be lost if the perusal of these pages should inspire
+one of the historians of our literature with the idea of devoting to the
+great novelist, to her genius and her influence, a work of this kind.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I    AURORE DUPIN
+     II   BARONNE DUDEVANT
+     III  A FEMINIST OF 1832
+     IV   THE ROMANTIC ESCAPADE
+     V    THE FRIEND OF MICHEL (DE BOURGES)
+     VI   A CASE OF MATERNAL AFFECTION IN LOVE
+     VII  THE HUMANITARIAN DREAM
+     VIII 1848
+     IX   THE 'BONNE DAME' OF NOHANT
+     X    THE GENIUS OF THE WRITER
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+     GEORGE SAND (From a photogravure by N. Desmardyl, after a Painting
+     by A. Charpentier)
+     GEORGE SAND (From an engraving by L. Calamatia)
+     JULES SANDEAU (From an etching by M. Desboutins)
+     ALFRED DE MUSSET (From a lithograph)
+     FACSIMILE OF AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER OF GEORGE SAND (Written from
+     Venice to Hipp. Chatiron)
+     GEORGE SAND (From a lithograph)
+     F. CHOPIN (From a photograph)
+     PIERRE LEROUX (From a lithograph by A. Collette)
+     GEORGE SAND (From a lithograph)
+
+
+
+GEORGE SAND
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+AURORE DUPIN
+
+PSYCHOLOGY OF A DAUGHTER OF ROUSSEAU
+
+
+In the whole of French literary history, there is, perhaps, no subject
+of such inexhaustible and modern interest as that of George Sand. Of
+what use is literary history? It is not only a kind of museum, in which
+a few masterpieces are preserved for the pleasure of beholders. It is
+this certainly, but it is still more than this. Fine books are, before
+anything else, living works. They not only have lived, but they continue
+to live. They live within us, underneath those ideas which form our
+conscience and those sentiments which inspire our actions. There is
+nothing of greater importance for any society than to make an inventory
+of the ideas and the sentiments which are composing its moral atmosphere
+every instant that it exists. For every individual this work is the very
+condition of his dignity. The question is, should we have these ideas
+and these sentiments, if, in the times before us, there had not been
+some exceptional individuals who seized them, as it were, in the air and
+made them viable and durable? These exceptional individuals were capable
+of thinking more vigorously, of feeling more deeply, and of expressing
+themselves more forcibly than we are. They bequeathed these ideas
+and sentiments to us. Literary history is, then, above and beyond all
+things, the perpetual examination of the conscience of humanity.
+
+There is no need for me to repeat what every one knows, the fact that
+our epoch is extremely complex, agitated and disturbed. In the midst of
+this labyrinth in which we are feeling our way with such difficulty, who
+does not look back regretfully to the days when life was more simple,
+when it was possible to walk towards a goal, mysterious and unknown
+though it might be, by straight paths and royal routes?
+
+George Sand wrote for nearly half a century. For fifty times three
+hundred and sixty-five days, she never let a day pass by without
+covering more pages than other writers in a month. Her first books
+shocked people, her early opinions were greeted with storms. From that
+time forth she rushed head-long into everything new, she welcomed
+every chimera and passed it on to us with more force and passion in it.
+Vibrating with every breath, electrified by every storm, she looked up
+at every cloud behind which she fancied she saw a star shining. The work
+of another novelist has been called a repertory of human documents. But
+what a repertory of ideas her work was! She has said what she had to say
+on nearly every subject; on love, the family, social institutions and on
+the various forms of government. And with all this she was a woman.
+Her case is almost unique in the history of letters. It is intensely
+interesting to study the influence of this woman of genius on the
+evolution of modern thought.
+
+I shall endeavour to approach my subject conscientiously and with all
+due respect. I shall study biography where it is indispensable for the
+complete understanding of works. I shall give a sketch of the original
+individuals I meet on my path, portraying these only at their point
+of contact with the life of our authoress, and it seems to me that
+a gallery in which we see Sandeau, Sainte-Beuve, Musset, Michel (of
+Bourges), Liszt, Chopin, Lamennais, Pierre Leroux, Dumas _fils_,
+Flaubert and many, many others is an incomparable portrait gallery. I
+shall not attack persons, but I shall discuss ideas and, when necessary,
+dispute them energetically. We shall, I hope, during our voyage, see
+many perspectives open out before us.
+
+I have, of course, made use of all the works devoted to George Sand
+which were of any value for my study, and among others of the two
+volumes published, under the name of Wladimir Karenine,(1) by a woman
+belonging to Russian aristocratic society. For the period before
+1840, this is the most complete work that has been written. M. Samuel
+Rocheblave, a clever University professor and the man who knows more
+than any one about the life and works of George Sand, has been my guide
+and has helped me greatly with his wise advice. Private collections
+of documents have also been placed at my service most generously. I am
+therefore able to supply some hitherto unpublished writings. George Sand
+published, in all, about a hundred volumes of novels and stories, four
+volumes of autobiography, and six of correspondence. In spite of all
+this we are still asked for fresh documents.
+
+     (1) WLADIMIR KARENINE:  _George Sand, Sa vie et ses
+     oeuvres._ 2 Vols.  Ollendorf.
+
+It is interesting, as a preliminary study, to note the natural gifts,
+and the first impressions of Aurore Dupin as a child and young girl, and
+to see how these predetermined the woman and the writer known to us as
+George Sand.
+
+Lucile-Amandine-Aurore Dupin, legitimate daughter of Maurice Dupin and
+of Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, was born in Paris, at 15 Rue Meslay, in
+the neighbourhood of the Temple, on the 1st of July, 1804. I would call
+attention at once to the special phenomenon which explains the problem
+of her destiny: I mean by this her heredity, or rather the radical and
+violent contrast of her maternal and paternal heredity.
+
+By her father she was an aristocrat and related to the reigning houses.
+
+Her ancestor was the King of Poland, Augustus II, the lover of the
+beautiful Countess Aurora von Koenigsmarck. George Sand's grandfather
+was Maurice de Saxe. He may have been an adventurer and a _condottiere_,
+but France owes to him Fontenoy, that brilliant page of her history.
+All this takes us back to the eighteenth century with its brilliant,
+gallant, frivolous, artistic and profligate episodes. Maurice de Saxe
+adored the theatre, either for itself or for the sake of the women
+connected with it. On his campaign, he took with him a theatrical
+company which gave a representation the evening before a battle. In this
+company was a young artiste named Mlle. de Verrieres whose father was
+a certain M. Rinteau. Maurice de Saxe admired the young actress and a
+daughter was born of this _liaison_, who was later on recognized by
+her father and named Marie-Aurore de Saxe. This was George Sand's
+grandmother. At the age of fifteen the young girl married Comte de Horn,
+a bastard son of Louis XV. This husband was obliging enough to his wife,
+who was only his wife in name, to die as soon as possible. She then
+returned to her mother "the Opera lady." An elderly nobleman, Dupin de
+Francueil, who had been the lover of the other Mlle. Verrieres, now
+fell in love with her and married her. Their son, Maurice Dupin, was
+the father of our novelist. The astonishing part of this series
+of adventures is that Marie-Aurore should have been the eminently
+respectable woman that she was. On her mother's side, though, Aurore
+Dupin belonged to the people. She was the daughter of Sophie-Victoire
+Delaborde milliner, the grandchild of a certain bird-seller on the
+Quai des Oiseaux, who used to keep a public-house, and she was the
+great-granddaughter of Mere Cloquart.
+
+This double heredity was personified in the two women who shared George
+Sand's childish affection. We must therefore study the portraits of
+these two women.
+
+The grandmother was, if not a typical _grande dame_, at least a typical
+elegant woman of the latter half of the eighteenth century. She was very
+well educated and refined, thanks to living with the two sisters, Mlles.
+Verrieres, who were accustomed to the best society. She was a good
+musician and sang delightfully. When she married Dupin de Francueil, her
+husband was sixty-two, just double her age. But, as she used to say
+to her granddaughter, "no one was ever old in those days. It was the
+Revolution that brought old age into the world."
+
+Dupin was a very agreeable man. When younger he had been _too_
+agreeable, but now he was just sufficiently so to make his wife very
+happy. He was very lavish in his expenditure and lived like a prince,
+so that he left Marie-Aurore ruined and poor with about three thousand a
+year. She was imbued with the ideas of the philosophers and an enemy of
+the Queen's _coterie_. She was by no means alarmed at the Revolution and
+was very soon taken prisoner. She was arrested on the 26th of November,
+1793, and incarcerated in the _Couvent des Anglaises_, Rue des
+Fosse's-Saint-Victor, which had been converted into a detention house.
+On leaving prison she settled down at Nohant, an estate she had recently
+bought. It was there that her granddaughter remembered her in her early
+days. She describes her as tall, slender, fair and always very calm. At
+Nohant she had only her maids and her books for company. When in Paris,
+she delighted in the society of people of her own station and of her
+time, people who had the ideas and airs of former days. She continued,
+in this new century, the shades of thought and the manners and Customs
+of the old _regime._
+
+As a set-off to this woman of race and of culture, Aurore's mother
+represented the ordinary type of the woman of the people. She was small,
+dark, fiery and violent. She, too, the bird-seller's daughter, had been
+imprisoned by the Revolution, and strangely enough in the _Couvent des
+Anglaises_ at about the same time as Maurice de Saxe's granddaughter.
+It was in this way that the fusion of classes was understood under the
+Terror. She was employed as a _figurante_ in a small theatre. This was
+merely a commencement for her career. At the time when Maurice Dupin met
+her, she was the mistress of an old general. She already had one child
+of doubtful parentage. Maurice Dupin, too, had a natural son, named
+Hippolyte, so that they could not reproach each other. When Maurice
+Dupin married Sophie-Victoire, a month before the birth of Aurore, he
+had some difficulty in obtaining his mother's consent. She finally
+gave in, as she was of an indulgent nature. It is possible that
+Sophie-Victoire's conduct was irreproachable during her husband's
+lifetime, but, after his death, she returned to her former ways. She was
+nevertheless of religious habits and would not, upon any account, have
+missed attending Mass. She was quick-tempered, jealous and noisy and,
+when anything annoyed her, extremely hot-headed. At such times she would
+shout and storm, so that the only way to silence her was to shout still
+more loudly. She never bore any malice, though, and wished no harm
+to those she had insulted. She was of course sentimental, but more
+passionate than tender, and she quickly forgot those whom she had loved
+most fondly. There seemed to be gaps in her memory and also in her
+conscience. She was ignorant, knowing nothing either of literature or of
+the usages of society. Her _salon_ was the landing of her flat and her
+acquaintances were the neighbours who happened to live next door to her.
+It is easy to imagine what she thought of the aristocrats who visited
+her mother-in-law. She was amusing when she joked and made parodies
+on the women she styled "the old Countesses." She had a great deal of
+natural wit, a liveliness peculiar to the native of the faubourgs, all
+the impudence of the street arab, and a veritable talent of mimicry.
+She was a good housewife, active, industrious and most clever in turning
+everything to account. With a mere nothing she could improvise a dress
+or a hat and give it a certain style. She was always most skilful with
+her fingers, a typical Parisian work-girl, a daughter of the street and
+a child of the people. In our times she would be styled "a midinette."
+
+Such are the two women who shared the affection of Aurore Dupin. Fate
+had brought them together, but had made them so unlike that they were
+bound to dislike each other. The childhood of little Aurore served as
+the lists for their contentions. Their rivalry was the dominating note
+in the sentimental education of the child.
+
+As long as Maurice Dupin lived, Aurore was always with her parents in
+their little Parisian dwelling. Maurice Dupin was a brilliant officer,
+and very brave and jovial. In 1808, Aurore went to him in Madrid, where
+he was Murat's _aide-de-camp_. She lived in the palace of the Prince
+of Peace, that vast palace which Murat filled with the splendour of his
+costumes and the groans caused by his suffering. Like Victor Hugo,
+who went to the same place at about the same time and under similar
+conditions, Aurore may have brought back with her:
+
+     _de ses courses lointaines_
+     _Comme un vaguefaisceau de lueurs incertaines._
+
+This does not seem probable, though. The return was painful, as they
+came back worried and ill, and were glad to take refuge at Nohant.
+They were just beginning to organize their life when Maurice Dupin died
+suddenly, from an accident when riding, leaving his mother and his wife
+together.
+
+From this time forth, Aurore was more often with her grandmother at
+Nohant than with her mother in Paris. Her grandmother undertook the care
+of her education. Her half-brother, Hippolyte Chatiron, and she received
+lessons from M. Deschartres, who had educated Maurice Dupin. He was
+steward and tutor combined, a very authoritative man, arrogant and a
+great pedant. He was affectionate, though, and extremely devoted. He
+was both detestable and touching at the same time, and had a warm heart
+hidden under a rough exterior. Nohant was in the heart of Berry, and
+this meant the country and Nature. For Aurore Dupin Nature proved to be
+an incomparable educator.
+
+There was only one marked trait in the child's character up to this
+date, and that was a great tendency to reverie. For long hours she would
+remain alone, motionless, gazing into space. People were anxious about
+her when they saw her looking so _stupid_, but her mother invariably
+said: "Do not be alarmed. She is always ruminating about something."
+Country life, while providing her with fresh air and plenty of exercise,
+so that her health was magnificent, gave fresh food and another turn to
+her reveries. Ten years earlier Alphonse de Lamartine had been sent
+to the country at Milly, and allowed to frequent the little peasant
+children of the place. Aurore Dupin's existence was now very much the
+same as that of Lamartine. Nohant is situated in the centre of the Black
+Valley. The ground is dark and rich; there are narrow, shady paths. It
+is not a hilly country, and there are wide, peaceful horizons. At all
+hours of the day and at all seasons of the year, Aurore wandered along
+the Berry roads with her little playfellows, the farmers' children.
+There was Marie who tended the flock, Solange who collected leaves, and
+Liset and Plaisir who minded the pigs. She always knew in what meadow or
+in what place she would find them. She played with them amongst the hay,
+climbed the trees and dabbled in the water. She minded the flock with
+them, and in winter, when the herdsmen talked together, assembled round
+their fire, she listened to their wonderful stories. These credulous
+country children had "seen with their own eyes" Georgeon, the evil
+spirit of the Black Valley. They had also seen will-o'-the-wisps,
+ghosts, the "white greyhound" and the "Big Beast"! In the evenings, she
+sat up listening to the stories told by the hemp-weaver. Her fresh
+young soul was thus impregnated at an early age with the poetry of the
+country. And it was all the poetry of the country, that which comes from
+things, such as the freshness of the air and the perfume of the flowers,
+but also that which is to be found in the simplicity of sentiments and
+in that candour and surprise face to face with those sights of Nature
+which have remained the same and have been just as incomprehensible ever
+since the beginning of the world.
+
+The antagonism of the two mothers increased, though. We will not go into
+detail with regard to the various episodes, but will only consider the
+consequences.
+
+The first consequence was that the intelligence of the child became more
+keen through this duality. Placed as she was, in these two different
+worlds, between two persons with minds so unlike, and, obliged as she
+was to go from one to the other, she learnt to understand and appreciate
+them both, contrasts though they were. She had soon reckoned each of
+them up, and she saw their weaknesses, their faults, their merits and
+their advantages.
+
+A second consequence was to increase her sensitiveness. Each time that
+she left her mother, the separation was heartrending. When she was
+absent from her, she suffered on account of this absence, and still more
+because she fancied that she would be forgotten. She loved her mother,
+just as she was, and the idea that any one was hostile or despised her
+caused the child much silent suffering. It was as though she had an
+ever-open wound.
+
+Another consequence, and by no means the least important one, was to
+determine in a certain sense the immense power of sympathy within her.
+For a long time she only felt a sort of awe, when with her reserved and
+ceremonious grandmother. She felt nearer to her mother, as there was
+no need to be on ceremony with her. She took a dislike to all those who
+represented authority, rules and the tyranny of custom. She considered
+her mother and herself as oppressed individuals. A love for the people
+sprang up in the heart of the daughter of Sophie-Victoire. She belonged
+to them through her mother, and she was drawn to them now through the
+humiliations she underwent. In this little enemy of reverences and of
+society people, we see the dawn of that instinct which, later on, was to
+cause her to revolt openly. George Sand was quite right in saying,
+later on, that it was of no use seeking any intellectual reason as the
+explanation of her social preferences. Everything in her was due to
+sentiment. Her socialism was entirely the outcome of her suffering and
+torments as a child.
+
+Things had to come to a crisis, and the crisis was atrocious. George
+Sand gives an account of the tragic scene in her _Histoire de ma vie_.
+Her grandmother had already had one attack of paralysis. She was anxious
+about Aurore's future, and wished to keep her from the influence of her
+mother. She therefore decided to employ violent means to this end. She
+sent for the child to her bedside, and, almost beside herself, in a
+choking voice, she revealed to her all that she ought to have concealed.
+She told her of Sophie-Victoire's past, she uttered the fatal word
+and spoke of the child's mother as a lost woman. With Aurore's extreme
+sensitiveness, it was horrible to receive such confidences at the age of
+thirteen. Thirty years later, George Sand describes the anguish of the
+terrible minute. "It was a nightmare," she says. "I felt choked, and it
+was as though every word would kill me. The perspiration came out on my
+face. I wanted to interrupt her, to get up and rush away. I did not want
+to hear the frightful accusation. I could not move, though; I seemed to
+be nailed on my knees, and my head seemed to be bowed down by that voice
+that I heard above me, a voice which seemed to wither me like a storm
+wind."
+
+It seems extraordinary that a woman, who was in reality so kind-hearted
+and so wise, should have allowed herself to be carried away like this.
+Passion has these sudden and unexpected outbursts, and we see here a
+most significant proof of the atmosphere of passion in which the child
+had lived, and which gradually insinuated itself within her.
+
+Under these circumstances, Aurore's departure for the convent was a
+deliverance. Until just recently, there has always been a convent in
+vogue in France in which it has been considered necessary for girls in
+good society to be educated. In 1817, _the Couvent des Anglaises_ was in
+vogue, the very convent which had served as a prison for the mother
+and grandmother of Aurore. The three years she spent there in that "big
+feminine family, where every one was as kind as God," she considered the
+most peaceful and happy time of her life. The pages she devotes to them
+in her _Histoire de ma vie_ have all the freshness of an oasis.
+She describes most lovingly this little world, apart, exclusive and
+self-sufficing, in which life was so intense.
+
+The house consisted of a number of constructions, and was situated
+in the neighbourhood given up to convents. There were courtyards and
+gardens enough to make it seem like a small village. There was also
+a labyrinth of passages above and underground, just as in one of
+Anne Radcliffe's novels. There were old walls overgrown with vine and
+jasmine. The cock could be heard at midnight, just as in the heart of
+the country, and there was a bell with a silvery tone like a woman's
+voice. From her little cell, Aurore looked over the tops of the great
+chestnut trees on to Paris, so that the air so necessary for the lungs
+of a child accustomed to wanderings in the country was not lacking
+in her convent home. The pupils had divided themselves into three
+categories: the _diables_, the good girls, who were the specially
+pious ones, and the silly ones. Aurore took her place at once among
+the _diables_. The great exploit of these convent girls consisted in
+descending into the cellars, during recreation, and in sounding the
+walls, in order to "deliver the victim." There was supposed to be an
+unfortunate victim imprisoned and tortured by the good, kindhearted
+Sisters. Alas! all the _diables_ sworn to the task in the _Couvent des
+Anglaises_ never succeeded in finding the victim, so that she must be
+there still.
+
+Very soon, though, a sudden change-took place in Aurore's soul. It
+would have been strange had it been otherwise. With so extraordinarily
+sensitive an organization, the new and totally different surroundings
+could not fail to make an impression. The cloister, the cemetery, the
+long services, the words of the ritual, murmured in the dimly-lighted
+chapel, and the piety that seems to hover in the air in houses where
+many prayers have been offered up--all this acted on the young girl. One
+evening in August, she had gone into the church, which was dimly lighted
+by the sanctuary lamp. Through the open window came the perfume of
+honeysuckle and the songs of the birds. There was a charm, a mystery
+and a solemn calm about everything, such as she had never before
+experienced. "I do not know what was taking place within me," she said,
+when describing this, later on, "but I breathed an atmosphere that was
+indescribably delicious, and I seemed to be breathing it in my very
+soul. Suddenly, I felt a shock through all my being, a dizziness came
+over me, and I seemed to be enveloped in a white light. I thought I
+heard a voice murmuring in my ear: _'Tolle Lege.'_ I turned round, and
+saw that I was quite alone. . . ."
+
+Our modern _psychiatres_ would say that she had had an hallucination of
+hearing, together with olfactory trouble. I prefer saying that she
+had received the visit of grace. Tears of joy bathed her face and she
+remained there, sobbing for a long time.
+
+The convent had therefore opened to Aurore another world of sentiment,
+that of Christian emotion. Her soul was naturally religious, and the
+dryness of a philosophical education had not been sufficient for it. The
+convent had now brought her the aliment for which she had instinctively
+longed. Later on, when her faith, which had never been very enlightened,
+left her, the sentiment remained. This religiosity, of Christian form,
+was essential to George Sand.
+
+The convent also rendered her another eminent service. In the _Histoire
+de ma vie_, George Sand retraces from memory the portraits of several of
+the Sisters. She tells us of Madame Marie-Xavier, and of her despair
+at having taken the vows; of Sister Anne-Joseph, who was as kind as an
+angel and as silly as a goose; of the gentle Marie-Alicia, whose
+serene soul looked out of her blue eyes, a mirror of purity, and of the
+mystical Sister Helene, who had left home in spite of her family, in
+spite of the supplications and the sobs of her mother and sisters, and
+who had passed over the body of a child on her way to God. It is like
+this always. The costumes are the same, the hands are clasped in the
+same manner, the white bands and the faces look equally pale, but
+underneath this apparent uniformity what contrasts! It is the inner life
+which marks the differences so vigorously, and shows up the originality
+of each one. Aurore gradually discovered the diversity of all these
+souls and the beauty of each one. She thought of becoming a nun, but
+her confessor did not advise this, and he was certainly wise. Her
+grandmother, who had a philosopher's opinion of priests, blamed their
+fanaticism, and took her little granddaughter away from the convent.
+Perhaps she felt the need of affection for the few months she had still
+to live. At any rate, she certainly had this affection. One of the first
+results of the larger perspicacity which Aurore had acquired at the
+convent was to make her understand her grandmother at last. She was able
+now to grasp the complex nature of her relative and to see the delicacy
+hidden under an appearance of great reserve. She knew now all that
+she owed to her grandmother, but unfortunately it was one of those
+discoveries which are made too late.
+
+The eighteen months which Aurore now passed at Nohant, until the death
+of her grandmother, are very important as regards her psychological
+biography. She was seventeen years old, and a girl who was eager to live
+and very emotional. She had first been a child of Nature. Her convent
+life had taken her away from Nature and accustomed her to falling back
+on her own thoughts. Nature now took her back once more, and her beloved
+Nohant feted her return.
+
+"The trees were in flower," she says, "the nightingales were singing,
+and, in the distance, I could hear the classic, solemn sound of the
+labourers. My old friends, the big dogs, who had growled at me the
+evening before, recognized me again and were profuse in their caresses.
+. . ."
+
+She wanted to see everything again. The things themselves had not
+changed, but her way of looking at them now was different. During her
+long, solitary walks every morning, she enjoyed seeing the various
+landscapes, sometimes melancholy-looking and sometimes delightful. She
+enjoyed, too, the picturesqueness of the various things she met, the
+flocks of cattle, the birds taking their flight, and even the sound of
+the horses' feet splashing in the water. She enjoyed everything, in
+a kind of voluptuous reverie which was no longer instinctive, but
+conscious and a trifle morbid.
+
+Added to all this, her reading at this epoch was without any order or
+method. She read everything voraciously, mixing all the philosophers
+up together. She read Locke, Condillac, Montesquieu, Bossuet, Pascal,
+Montaigne, but she kept Rousseau apart from the others. She devoured
+the books of the moralists and poets, La Bruyere, Pope, Milton, Dante,
+Virgil, Shakespeare. All this reading was too much for her and excited
+her brain. She had reserved Chateaubriand's _Rene_, and, on reading
+that, she was overcome by the sadness which emanates from these
+distressing pages. She was disgusted with life, and attempted to commit
+suicide. She tried to drown herself, and only owed her life to the
+healthy-mindedness of the good mare Colette, as the horse evidently had
+not the same reasons as its young mistress for wishing to put an end to
+its days.
+
+All this time Aurore was entirely free to please herself. Deschartres,
+who had always treated her as a boy, encouraged her independence. It
+was at his instigation that she dressed in masculine attire to go out
+shooting. People began to talk about her "eccentricities" at Landerneau,
+and the gossip continued as far as La Chatre. Added to this,
+Aurore began to study osteology with a young man who lived in the
+neighbourhood, and it was said that this young man, Stephane Ajasson de
+Grandsaigne, gave her lessons in her own room. This was the climax.
+
+We have a curious testimony as regards the state of the young girl's
+mind at this epoch. A review, entitled _Le Voile de pourpre_, published
+recently, in its first number, a letter from Aurore to her mother, dated
+November 18, 1821. Her mother had evidently written to her on hearing
+the gossip about her, and had probably enlarged upon it.
+
+"You reproach me, mother, with neither having timidity, modesty,
+nor charm," she writes, "or at least you suppose that I have these
+qualities, but that I refrain from showing them, and you are quite
+certain that I have no outward decency nor decorum. You ought to know me
+before judging me in this way. You would then be able to form an opinion
+about my conduct. Grandmother is here, and, ill though she is, she
+watches over me carefully and lovingly, and she would not fail to
+correct me if she considered that I had the manners of a dragoon or of a
+hussar."
+
+She considered that she had no need of any one to guide or protect her,
+and no need of leading-strings.
+
+"I am seventeen," she says, "and I know my way about."
+
+If this Monsieur de Grandsaigne had ventured to take any liberty with
+her, she was old enough to take care of herself.
+
+Her mother had blamed her for learning Latin and osteology. "Why should
+a woman be ignorant?" she asks. "Can she not be well educated without
+this spoiling her and without being pedantic? Supposing that I should
+have sons in the future, and that I had profited sufficiently by my
+studies to be able to teach them, would not a mother's lessons be as
+good as a tutor's?"
+
+She was already challenging public opinion, starting a campaign against
+false prejudices, showing a tendency to generalize, and to make the
+cause of one woman the cause of all women.
+
+We must now bear in mind the various traits we have discovered, one
+after another, in Aurore's character. We must remember to what parentage
+she owed her intellectuality and her sentimentality. It will then
+be more easy to understand the terms she uses when describing her
+fascination for Rousseau's writings.
+
+"The language of Jean-Jacques and the form of his deductions impressed
+me as music might have done when heard in brilliant sunshine. I compared
+him to Mozart, and I understood everything."
+
+She understood him, for she recognized herself in him. She sympathized
+with that predominance of feeling and imagination, that exaggeration of
+sentiment, that preference for life according to Nature, that emotion
+on beholding the various sights of the country, that distrust of people,
+those effusions of religious sentimentality, those solitary reveries,
+and that melancholy which made death seem desirable to him. All this
+was to Aurore Dupin the gospel according to Rousseau. The whole of her
+psychology is to be found here.
+
+She was an exceptional being undoubtedly; but in order to be a genial
+exception one must have within oneself, and then personify with great
+intensity all the inspirations which, at a certain moment, are dispersed
+in the atmosphere. Ever since the great agitation which had shaken
+the moral world by Rousseau's preaching, there had been various vague
+currents and a whole crowd of confused aspirations floating about.
+It was this enormous wave that entered a feminine soul. Unconsciously
+Aurore Dupin welcomed the new ideal, and it was this ideal which was
+to operate within her. The question was, what would she do with it,
+in presence of life with all its everyday and social realities. This
+question is the object of our study. In the solution of it lies the
+interest, the drama and the lesson of George Sand's destiny.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+BARONNE DUDEVANT MARRIAGE AND FREEDOM--THE ARRIVAL IN PARIS--JULES
+SANDEAU
+
+We must now endeavour to discover what the future George Sand's
+experiences of marriage were, and the result of these experiences on the
+formation of her ideas.
+
+"You will lose your best friend in me," were the last words of the
+grandmother to her granddaughter on her death-bed. The old lady spoke
+truly, and Aurore was very soon to prove this. By a clause in her will,
+Madame Dupin de Francueil left the guardianship of Aurore to a cousin,
+Rene de Villeneuve. It was scarcely likely, though, that Sophie-Victoire
+should consent to her own rights being frustrated by this illegal
+clause, particularly as this man belonged to the world of the "old
+Countesses." She took her daughter with her to Paris. Unfortunately for
+her, Aurore's eyes were now open, and she was cultured enough to have
+been in entire sympathy with her exquisite grandmother. It was no longer
+possible for her to have the old passionate affection and indulgence for
+her mother, especially as she felt that she had hitherto been deserted
+by her. She saw her mother now just as she was, a light woman belonging
+to the people, a woman who could not resign herself to growing old. If
+only Sophie-Victoire had been of a tranquil disposition! She was most
+restless, on the contrary, wanting to change her abode and change her
+restaurant every day. She would quarrel with people one day, make it up
+the next; wear a different-shaped hat every day, and change the colour
+of her hair continually. She was always in a state of agitation. She
+loved police news and thrilling stories; read the _Sherlock Holmes_ of
+those days until the middle of the night. She dreamed of such stories,
+and the following day went on living in an atmosphere of crime. When
+she had an attack of indigestion, she always imagined that she had been
+poisoned. When a visitor arrived, she thought it must be a burglar.
+She was most sarcastic about Aurore's "fine education" and her literary
+aspirations. Her hatred of the dead grandmother was as strong as ever.
+She was constantly insulting her memory, and in her fits of anger said
+unheard-of things. Aurore's silence was her only reply to these storms,
+and this exasperated her mother. She declared that she would correct her
+daughter's "sly ways." Aurore began to wonder with terror whether her
+mother's mind were not beginning to give way. The situation finally
+became intolerable.
+
+Sophie-Victoire took her daughter to spend two or three days with some
+friends of hers, and then left her there. They lived in the country at
+Plessis-Picard, near Melun. Aurore was delighted to find a vast park
+with thickets in which there were roebucks bounding about. She loved
+the deep glades and the water with the green reflections of old willow
+trees. Monsieur James Duplessis and his wife, Angele, were excellent
+people, and they adopted Aurore for the time being. They already had
+five daughters, so that one more did not make much difference. They
+frequented a few families in the neighbourhood, and there was plenty of
+gaiety among the young people. The Duplessis took Aurore sometimes to
+Paris and to the theatre.
+
+"One evening," we are told in the _Histoire de ma vie_, "we were having
+some ices at Tortoni's after the theatre, when suddenly my mother Angele
+said to her husband, 'Why, there's Casimir!' A young man, slender and
+rather elegant, with a gay expression and a military look, came and
+shook hands, and answered all the questions he was asked about his
+father, Colonel Dudevant, who was evidently very much respected and
+loved by the family."
+
+This was the first meeting, the first appearance of Casimir in the
+story, and this was how he entered into the life of Aurore.
+
+He was invited to Plessis, he joined the young people good-humouredly in
+their games, was friendly with Aurore, and, without posing as a suitor,
+asked for her hand in marriage. There was no reason for her to refuse
+him. He was twenty-seven years of age, had served two years in the army,
+and had studied law in Paris. He was a natural son, of course, but he
+had been recognized by his father, Colonel Dudevant. The Dudevant family
+was greatly respected. They had a _chateau_ at Guillery in Gascony.
+Casimir had been well brought up and had good manners. Aurore might as
+well marry him as any other young man. It would even be preferable to
+marry him rather than another young man. He was already her friend, and
+he would then be her husband. That would not make much difference.
+
+The marriage almost fell through, thanks to Sophie-Victoire. She did
+not consider Casimir good-looking enough. She was not thinking of her
+daughter, but of herself. She had made up her mind to have a handsome
+son-in-law with whom she could go out. She liked handsome men, and
+particularly military men. Finally she consented to the marriage, but, a
+fortnight before the ceremony, she arrived at Plessis, like a veritable
+thunderbolt. An extraordinary idea had occurred to her. She vowed that
+she had discovered that Casimir had been a waiter at a _cafe_. She had
+no doubt dreamt this, but she held to her text, and was indignant at the
+idea of her daughter marrying a waiter! . . .
+
+Things had arrived at this crisis when Casimir's mother, Madame
+Dudevant, who had all the manners of a _grande dame_, decided to pay
+Sophie-Victoire an official visit. The latter was greatly flattered,
+for she liked plenty of attention paid to her. It was in this way that
+Aurore Dupin became Baronne Dudevant.
+
+
+She was just eighteen years of age. It is interesting to read her
+description of herself at this time. In her _Voyage en Auvergne_, which
+was her first writing, dated 1827, she traces the following portrait,
+which certainly is not exaggerated.
+
+"When I was sixteen," she says, "and left the convent, every one could
+see that I was a pretty girl. I was fresh-looking, though dark. I was
+like those wild flowers which grow without any art or culture, but with
+gay, lively colouring. I had plenty of hair, which was almost black. On
+looking at myself in the glass, though, I can truthfully say that I was
+not very well pleased with myself. I was dark, my features were well
+cut, but not finished. People said that it was the expression of my face
+that made it interesting. I think this was true. I was gay but dreamy,
+and my most natural expression was a meditative one. People said, too,
+that in this absent-minded expression there was a fixed look which
+resembled that of the serpent when fascinating his prey. That, at any
+rate, was the far-fetched comparison of my provincial adorers."
+
+They were not very far wrong, these provincial adorers. The portraits
+of Aurore at this date show us a charming face of a young girl,
+as fresh-looking as a child. She has rather long features, with a
+delicately-shaped chin. She is not exactly pretty, but fascinating, with
+those great dark eyes, which were her prominent feature, eyes which,
+when fixed on any one, took complete possession of them--dreamy,
+passionate eyes, sombre because the soul reflected in them had profound
+depths.
+
+It is difficult to define that soul, for it was so complex. To judge by
+appearances, it was a very peaceful soul, and perhaps, too, it was in
+reality peaceful. George Sand, who knew herself thoroughly, frequently
+spoke of her laziness and of her apathy, traits peculiar to the natives
+of Berry. Superficial observers looked no further, and her mother used
+to call her "St. Tranquillity." The nuns, though, of her convent had
+more perspicacity. They said, when speaking of her: "Still waters run
+deep." Under the smooth surface they fancied that storms were gathering.
+Aurore had within her something of her mother and of her grandmother,
+and their opposite natures were blended in her. She had the calmness of
+Marie-Aurore, but she also had the impetuousness of Sophie-Victoire,
+and undoubtedly, too, something of the free and easy good humour of her
+father, the break-neck young officer. It certainly is not surprising to
+find a love of adventure in a descendant of Maurice de Saxe.
+
+Beside all these inner contrasts, the observer was particularly struck
+by her sudden changes of humour, by the way in which, after a fit of
+melancholy sadness, she suddenly gave way to the most exuberant gaiety,
+followed by long fits of depression and nervous exhaustion. Personally,
+I do not believe much in the influence of the physical over the moral
+nature, but I am fully convinced of the action of the moral over
+the physical nature. In certain cases and in presence of extremely
+accentuated conditions, physiological explanations must be taken into
+account. All these fits of melancholy and weeping, this prostration,
+these high spirits and the long walks, in order to sober down, denote
+the exigencies of an abnormal temperament. When once the crisis was
+passed, it must not be supposed that, as with many other people, nothing
+remained of it all. This was by no means the case, as in a nature so
+extraordinarily organized for storing up sensations nothing was lost,
+nothing evaporated, and everything increased. The still water seemed
+to be slumbering. Its violence, though held in check, was increasing in
+force, and when once let loose, it would carry all before it.
+
+Such was the woman whom Casimir Dudevant was to marry. The fascination
+was great; the honour rather to be feared, for all depended on his skill
+in guiding this powerful energy.
+
+The question is whether he loved her. It has been said that it was a
+marriage of interest, as Aurore's fortune amounted to twenty thousand
+pounds, and he was by no means rich. This may have been so, but there is
+no reason why money should destroy one's sentiments, and the fact that
+Aurore had money was not likely to prevent Casimir from appreciating
+the charms of a pretty girl. It seems, therefore, very probable that he
+loved his young wife, at any rate as much as this Casimir was capable of
+loving his wife.
+
+The next question is whether she loved him. It has been said that she
+did, simply because she declared that she did not. When, later on, after
+her separation, she spoke of her marriage, all her later grievances were
+probably in her mind. There are her earlier letters, though, which some
+people consider a proof that she cared for Casimir, and there are also a
+few words jotted down in her notebook. When her husband was absent, she
+was anxious about him and feared that he had met with an accident.
+It would be strange indeed if a girl of eighteen did not feel some
+affection for the man who had been the first to make love to her, a man
+whom she had married of her own free-will. It is rare for a woman to
+feel no kind of attachment for her husband, but is that attachment love?
+When a young wife complains of her husband, we hear in her reproaches
+the protest of her offended dignity, of her humbled pride. When a woman
+loves her husband, though, she does not reproach him, guilty though he
+may be, with having humiliated and wounded her. What she has against him
+then, is that he has broken her heart by his lack of love for her. This
+note and this accent can never be mistaken, and never once do we find
+it with Aurore. We may therefore conclude that she had never loved her
+husband.
+
+Casimir did not know how to win her affection. He did not even realize
+that he needed to win it. He was very much like all men. The idea never
+occurs to them that, when once they are married, they have to win their
+wife.
+
+He was very much like all men. . . . That is the most faithful portrait
+that can be traced of Casimir at this epoch. He had not as yet the vices
+which developed in him later on. He had nothing to distinguish him from
+the average man. He was selfish, without being disagreeable, rather
+idle, rather incapable, rather vain and rather foolish. He was just
+an ordinary man. The wife he had married, though, was not an ordinary
+woman. That was their misfortune. As Emile Faguet has very wittily put
+it, "Monsieur Dudevant, about whom she complained so much, seems to have
+had no other fault than that of being merely an ordinary man, which, of
+course, is unendurable to a superior woman. The situation was perhaps
+equally unendurable for the man." This is quite right, for Casimir was
+very soon considerably disconcerted. He was incapable of understanding
+her psychology, and, as it seemed impossible to him that a woman was
+not his inferior, he came to the logical conclusion that his wife was
+"idiotic." This was precisely his expression, and at every opportunity
+he endeavoured to crush her by his own superiority. All this seems to
+throw some light on his character and also on the situation. Here was
+a man who had married the future George Sand, and he complained, in all
+good faith, that his wife was "idiotic"!
+
+Certainly, on comparing the _Correspondance_ with the _Histoire de ma
+vie_, the difference of tone is most striking. The letters in
+which Baronne Dudevant tells, day by day, of her home life are too
+enthusiastic for the letters of an unhappy wife. There are receptions at
+Nohant, lively dinners, singing and dancing. All this is, at any rate,
+the surface, but gradually the misunderstandings are more pronounced,
+and the gulf widens.
+
+There may have been a misunderstanding at the very beginning of their
+married life, and Aurore may have had a surprise of the nature of the
+one to which Jane de Simerose confesses in _L'Ami des femmes_. In an
+unpublished letter written much later on, in the year 1843, from George
+Sand to her half-brother Hippolyte Chatiron on the occasion of his
+daughter's engagement, the following lines occur: "See that your
+son-in-law is not brutal to your daughter the first night of their
+marriage. . . . Men have no idea that this amusement of theirs is a
+martyrdom for us. Tell him to sacrifice his own pleasure a little, and
+to wait until he has taught his wife gradually to understand things
+and to be willing. There is nothing so frightful as the horror, the
+suffering and the disgust of a poor girl who knows nothing and who is
+suddenly violated by a brute. We bring girls up as much as possible like
+saints, and then we hand them over like fillies. If your son-in-law
+is an intelligent man and if he really loves your daughter, he will
+understand his _role_, and will not take it amiss that you should speak
+to him beforehand."(2)
+
+     (2) Communicated by M. S. Rocheblave.
+
+Is George Sand recalling here any hidden and painful memories? Casimir
+had, at bottom, a certain brutality, which, later on, was very evident.
+The question is whether he had shown proofs of it at a time when it
+would have been wiser to have refrained.
+
+However that may be, the fundamental disagreement of their natures was
+not long in making itself felt between the husband and wife. He was
+matter-of-fact, and she was romantic; he only believed in facts, and
+she in ideas; he was of the earth, earthy, whilst she aspired to the
+impossible. They had nothing to say to each other, and when two people
+have nothing to say, and love does not fill up the silences, what
+torture the daily _tete-a-tete_ must be. Before they had been married
+two years, they were bored to death. They blamed Nohant, but the fault
+was in themselves. Nohant seemed unbearable to them, simply because they
+were there alone with each other. They went to Plessis, perhaps in the
+hope that the remembrance of the days of their engagement might have
+some effect on them. It was there, in 1824, that the famous scene of the
+blow took place. They were playing at a regular children's game in the
+park, and throwing sand at each other. Casimir lost his patience and
+struck his wife. It was certainly impolite, but Aurore did not appear
+to have been very indignant with her husband at the time. Her grievances
+were quite of another kind, less tangible and much more deeply felt.
+
+From Plessis they went to Ormesson. We do not know what took place
+there, but evidently something which made a deep impression morally,
+something very serious. A few years later, referring to this stay at
+Ormesson, George Sand wrote to one of her friends: "You pass by a wall
+and come to a house. . . . If you are allowed to enter you will find a
+delightful English garden, at the bottom of which is a spring of water
+hidden under a kind of grotto. It is all very stiff and uninteresting,
+but it is very lonely. I spent several months there, and it was there
+that I lost my health, my confidence in the future, my gaiety and my
+happiness. It was there that I felt, and very deeply too, my first
+approach of trouble. . . ."(3)
+
+     (3) Extract from the unpublished letters of George Sand to
+     Dr. Emile Regnault.
+
+They left Ormesson for Paris, and Paris for Nohant, and after that, by
+way of trying to shake off the dulness that was oppressing them, they
+had recourse to the classical mode of diversion--a voyage.
+
+
+They set off on the 5th of July, 1825, for that famous expedition to the
+Pyrenees, which was to be so important a landmark in Aurore Dudevant's
+history. On crossing the Pyrenees, the scenery, so new to her--or
+rather the memory of which had been lying dormant in her mind since
+her childhood--filled her with wild enthusiasm. This intense emotion
+contributed to develop within her that sense of the picturesque which,
+later on, was to add so considerably to her talent as a writer. She had
+hitherto been living in the country of plains, the Ile-de-France and
+Berry. The contrast made her realize all the beauties of nature, and,
+on her return, she probably understood her own familiar scenery, and
+enjoyed it all the more. She had hitherto appreciated it vaguely.
+Lamartine learnt to love the severe scenery of Milly better on returning
+to it after the softness of Italy.
+
+The Pyrenees served, too, for Baronne Dudevant as the setting for an
+episode which was unique in her sentimental life.
+
+In the _Histoire de ma vie_ there is an enigmatical page in which George
+Sand has intentionally measured and veiled every expression. She speaks
+of her moral solitude, which, at that time, was profound and absolute,
+and she adds: "It would have been mortal to a tender mind and to a girl
+in the flower of her youth, if it had not been filled with a dream which
+had taken the importance of a great passion, not in my life, as I had
+sacrificed my life to duty, but in my thoughts. I was in continual
+correspondence with an absent person to whom I told all my thoughts, all
+my dreams, who knew all my humble virtues, and who heard all my platonic
+enthusiasm. This person was excellent in reality, but I attributed to
+him more than all the perfections possible to human nature. I only saw
+this man for a few days, and sometimes only for a few hours, in the
+course of a year. He was as romantic, in his intercourse with me, as I
+was. Consequently he did not cause me any scruples, either of religion
+or of conscience. This man was the stay and consolation of my exile,
+as regards the world of reality." It was this dream, as intense as any
+passion, that we must study here. We must make the acquaintance of this
+excellent and romantic man.
+
+Aurelien de Seze was a young magistrate, a few years older than Aurore.
+He was twenty-six years of age and she was twenty-one. He was the
+great-nephew of the counsel who pleaded for Louis XVI. There was,
+therefore, in his family a tradition of moral nobility, and the young
+man had inherited this. He had met Aurore at Bordeaux and again at
+Cauterets. They had visited the grottoes of Lourdes together. Aurelien
+had appreciated the young wife's charm, although she had not attempted
+to attract his attention, as she was not coquettish. She appreciated in
+him--all that was so lacking in Casimir--culture of mind, seriousness of
+character, discreet manners which people took at first for coldness, and
+a somewhat dignified elegance. He was scrupulously honest, a magistrate
+of the old school, sure of his principles and master of himself. It was,
+probably, just that which appealed to the young wife, who was a true
+woman and who had always wished to be dominated. When they met again at
+Breda, they had an explanation. This was the "violent grief" of which
+George Sand speaks. She was consoled by a friend, Zoe Leroy, who found
+a way of calming this stormy soul. She came through this crisis crushed
+with emotion and fatigue, but calm and joyful. They had vowed to love
+each other, but to remain without reproach, and their vow was faithfully
+kept.
+
+Aurore, therefore, had nothing with which to reproach herself, but with
+her innate need of being frank, she considered it her duty to write a
+letter to her husband, informing him of everything. This was the
+famous letter of November 8, 1825. Later on, in 1836, when her case for
+separation from her husband was being heard, a few fragments of it were
+read by her husband's advocate with the idea of incriminating her. By
+way of reply to this, George Sand's advocate read the entire letter in
+all its eloquence and generosity. It was greeted by bursts of applause
+from the audience.
+
+All this is very satisfactory. It is exactly the situation of the
+Princess of Cleves in Madame de Lafayette's novel. The Princess of
+Cleves acknowledges to her husband the love she cannot help feeling for
+Monsieur de Nemours, and asks for his help and advice as her natural
+protector. This fine proceeding is usually admired, although it cost
+the life of the Prince of Cleves, who died broken-hearted. Personally, I
+admire it too, although at times I wonder whether we ought not rather
+to see in it an unconscious suggestion of perversity. This confession of
+love to the person who is being, as it were, robbed of that love, is in
+itself a kind of secret pleasure. By speaking of the love, it becomes
+more real, we bring it out to light instead of letting it die away in
+those hidden depths within us, in which so many of the vague sentiments
+which we have not cared to define, even to ourselves, die away. Many
+women have preferred this more silent way, in which they alone have been
+the sufferers. But such women are not the heroines of novels. No one has
+appreciated their sacrifice, and they themselves could scarcely tell all
+that it has cost them.
+
+Aurelien de Seze had taken upon himself the _role_ of confidant to this
+soul that he had allotted to himself. He took his _role_ very seriously,
+as was his custom in all things. He became the young wife's director in
+all matters of conscience. The letters which he wrote to her have
+been preserved, and we know them by the extracts and the analysis that
+Monsieur Rocheblave has given us and by his incisive commentaries of
+them.(4) They are letters of guidance, spiritual letters. The laic
+confessor endeavours, before all things, to calm the impatience of this
+soul which is more and more ardent and more and more troubled every day.
+He battles with her about her mania of philosophizing, her wish to sift
+everything and to get to the bottom of everything. Strong in his own
+calmness, he kept repeating to her in a hundred different ways the
+words: "Be calm!" The advice was good; the only difficulty was the
+following of the advice.
+
+     (4) "George Sand avant George Sand," by S. Rocheblave
+     (_Revue de Paris_, December 15, 1894).
+
+Gradually the professor lost his hold on his pupil, for it seems as
+though Aurore were the first to tire. Aurelien finally began to doubt
+the efficacy of his preaching. The usual fate of sentiments outside
+the common order of things is that they last the length of time that a
+crisis of enthusiasm lasts. The best thing that can happen then is that
+their nature should not change, that they should not deteriorate, as is
+so often the case. When they remain intact to the end, they leave behind
+them, in the soul, a trail of light, a trail of cold, pure light.
+
+The decline of this platonic _liaison_ with Aurelien de Seze dates from
+1828. Some grave events were taking place at Nohant about this time. For
+the last few years Casimir had fallen into the vices of certain country
+squires, or so-called gentlemen farmers. He had taken to drink, in
+company with Hippolyte Chatiron, and it seems that the intoxication
+peculiar to the natives of Berry takes a heavy and not a gay form. He
+had also taken to other bad habits, away from home at first, and
+later on under the conjugal roof. He was particularly partial to
+the maid-servants, and, the day following the birth of her daughter,
+Solange, Aurore had an unpleasant surprise with regard to her husband.
+From that day forth, what had hitherto been only a vague wish on her
+part became a fixed idea with her, and she began to form plans. A
+certain incident served as a pretext. When putting some papers in order,
+Aurore came upon her husband's will. It was a mere diatribe, in which
+the future "deceased" gave utterance to all his past grievances against
+his _idiotic_ wife. Her mind was made up irrevocably from this moment.
+She would have her freedom again; she would go to Paris and spend three
+months out of six there. She had a young tutor from the south of France,
+named Boucoiran, educating her children. This Boucoiran needed to be
+taken to task constantly, and Baronne Dudevant did not spare him.(5)
+
+     (5) An instance of her disposition for lecturing will be
+     seen in the following curious letter sent by George Sand to
+     her friend and neighbour, Adolphe Duplomb.  This letter has
+     never been published before, and we owe our thanks for it to
+     Monsieur Charles Duplomb.
+
+     _Nohant, July_ 23,1830.
+
+     "Are you so very much afraid of me, my poor Hydrogene?  You
+     expect a good lecture and you will not expect in vain.  Have
+     patience, though.  Before giving you the dressing you
+     deserve, I want to tell you that I have not forgotten you,
+     and that I was very vexed on returning from Paris, to find
+     my great simpleton of a son gone. I am so used to seeing
+     your solemn face that I quite miss it. You have a great many
+     faults, but after all, you are a good sort, and in time you
+     will get reasonable.  Try to remember occasionally, my dear
+     Plombeus, that you have friends.  If I were your only
+     friend, that would be a great deal, as I am to be depended
+     on, and am always at my post as a friend, although I may not
+     be very tender. I am not very polite either, as I speak the
+     truth plainly. That is my characteristic, though.  I am a
+     firm friend nevertheless, and to be depended on.  Do not
+     forget what I have said now, as I shall not often repeat
+     this.  Remember, too, that happiness in this world depends
+     on the interest and esteem that we inspire. I do not say
+     this to every one, as it would be impossible, but just to a
+     certain number of friends.  It is impossible to find one's
+     happiness entirely in one's self, without being an egoist,
+     and I do not think so badly of you that I imagine you to be
+     one. A man whom no one cares for is wretched, and the man
+     who has friends is afraid of grieving them by behaving
+     badly.  As Polyte says, all this is for the sake of letting
+     you know that you must do your best to behave well, if you
+     want to prove to me that you are not ungrateful for my
+     interest in you.  You ought to get rid of the bad habit of
+     boasting that you have adopted through frequenting young men
+     as foolish as yourself.  Do whatever your position and your
+     health allow you to do, provided that you do not compromise
+     the honour or the reputation of any one else. I do not see
+     that a young man is called upon to be as chaste as a nun.
+     But keep your good or bad luck in your love affairs to
+     yourself. Silly talk is always repeated, and it may chance
+     to get to the ears of sensible people who will disapprove.
+     Try, too, not to make so many plans, but to carry out just
+     one or two of them.  You know that is why I quarrel with you
+     always.  I should like to see more constancy in you.  You
+     tell Hippolyte that you are very willing and courageous.  As
+     to physical courage, of the kind that consists in enduring
+     illness and in not fearing death, I dare say you have that,
+     but I doubt very much whether you have the courage necessary
+     for sustained work, unless you have very much altered.
+     Everything fresh delights you, but after a little time you
+     only see the inconveniences of your position.  You will
+     scarcely find anything without something that is annoying
+     and troublesome, but if you cannot learn to put up with
+     things you will never be a man.
+
+     "This is the end of my sermon.  I expect you have had enough
+     of it, especially as you are not accustomed to reading my
+     bad handwriting. I shall be glad to hear from you, but do
+     not consider your letter as a State affair, and do not
+     torment yourself to arrange well-turned phrases.  I do not
+     care for such phrases at all. A letter is always good enough
+     when the writer expresses himself naturally, and says what
+     he thinks.  Fine pages are all very well for the
+     schoolmaster, but I do not appreciate them at all. Promise
+     me to be reasonable, and to think of my sermons now and
+     then. That is all I ask.  You may be very sure that if it
+     were not for my friendship for you I should not take the
+     trouble to lecture you. I should be afraid of annoying you
+     if it were not for that. As it is, I am sure that you are
+     not displeased to have my lectures, and that you understand
+     the feeling which dictates them.
+
+     "Adieu, my dear Adolphe.  Write to me often and tell me
+     always about your affairs.  Take care of yourself, and try
+     to keep well; but if you should feel ill come back to your
+     native place. There will always be milk and syrup for you,
+     and you know that I am not a bad nurse.  Every one wishes to
+     be remembered to you, and I send you my holy blessing.
+
+     "AURORE D----"
+
+She considered him idle, and reproached him with his lack of dignity and
+with making himself too familiar with his inferiors. She could not admit
+this familiarity, although she was certainly a friend of the people
+and of the peasants. Between sympathy and familiarity there was a
+distinction, and Aurore took care not to forget this. There was always
+something of the _grande dame_ in her. Boucoiran was devoted, though,
+and she counted on him for looking after her children, for keeping
+her strictly _au courant_, and letting her know in case of illness.
+Perfectly easy on this score, she could live in Paris on an income of
+sixty pounds by adding to it what she could earn.
+
+Casimir made no objections. All that happened later on in this
+existence, which was from henceforth so stormy, happened with his
+knowledge and with his consent. He was a poor sort of man.
+
+Let us consider now, for a moment, Baronne Dudevant's impressions after
+such a marriage. We will not speak of her sadness nor of her disgust. In
+a union of this kind, how could the sacred and beneficial character
+of marriage have appeared to her? A husband should be a companion.
+She never knew the charm of true intimacy, nor the delight of thoughts
+shared with another. A husband is the counsellor, the friend. When she
+needed counsel, she was obliged to go elsewhere for it, and it was from
+another man that guidance and encouragement came. A husband should be
+the head and, I do not hesitate to say, the master. Life is a ceaseless
+struggle, and the man who has taken upon himself the task of defending a
+family from all the dangers which threaten its dissolution, from all the
+enemies which prowl around it, can only succeed in his task of protector
+if he be invested with just authority. Aurore had been treated brutally:
+that is not the same thing as being dominated. The sensation which never
+left her was that of an immense moral solitude. She could no longer
+dream in the Nohant avenues, for the old trees had been lopped, and the
+mystery chased away. She shut herself up in her grandmother's little
+boudoir, adjoining her children's room, so that she could hear them
+breathing, and whilst Casimir and Hippolyte were getting abominably
+intoxicated, she sat there thinking things over, and gradually becoming
+so irritated that she felt the rebellion within her gathering force. The
+matrimonial bond was a heavy yoke to her. A Christian wife would
+have submitted to it and accepted it, but the Christianity of Baronne
+Dudevant was nothing but religiosity. The trials of life show up the
+insufficiency of religious sentiment which is not accompanied by faith.
+Marriage, without love, friendship, confidence and respect, was for
+Aurore merely a prison. She endeavoured to escape from it, and when she
+succeeded she uttered a sigh of relief at her deliverance.
+
+Such, then, is the chapter of marriage in Baronne Dudevant's psychology.
+It is a fine example of failure. The woman who had married badly now
+remained an individual, instead of harmonizing and blending in a general
+whole. This ill-assorted union merely accentuated and strengthened
+George Sand's individualism.
+
+Aurore Dudevant arrived in Paris the first week of the year 1831. The
+woman who was rebellious to marriage was now in a city which had just
+had a revolution.
+
+The extraordinary effervescence of Paris in 1831 can readily be
+imagined. There was tempest in the air, and this tempest was bound to
+break out here or there, either immediately or in the near future, in an
+insurrection. Every one was feverishly anxious to destroy everything, in
+order to create all things anew. In everything, in art, ideas and even
+in costume, there was the same explosion of indiscipline, the same
+triumph of capriciousness. Every day some fresh system of government was
+born, some new method of philosophy, an infallible receipt for bringing
+about universal happiness, an unheard-of idea for manufacturing
+masterpieces, some invention for dressing up and having a perpetual
+carnival in the streets. The insurrection was permanent and masquerade
+a normal state. Besides all this, there was a magnificent burst of youth
+and genius. Victor Hugo, proud of having fought the battle of _Hernani_,
+was then thinking of _Notre-Dame_ and climbing up to it. Musset had just
+given his _Contes d'Espagne el d'Italie_. Stendhal had published _Le
+Rouge et le Noir_, and Balzac _La Peau de Chagrin_. The painters of the
+day were Delacroix and Delaroche. Paganini was about to give his
+first concert at the Opera. Such was Paris in all its impatience and
+impertinence, in its confusion and its splendour immediately after the
+Revolution.
+
+The young wife, who had snapped her bonds asunder, breathed voluptuously
+in this atmosphere. She was like a provincial woman enjoying Paris to
+the full. She belonged to the romantic school, and was imbued with the
+principle that an artist must see everything, know everything, and have
+experienced himself all that he puts into his books. She found a little
+group of her friends from Berry in Paris, among others Felix Pyat,
+Charles Duvernet, Alphonse Fleury, Sandeau and de Latouche. This was
+the band she frequented, young men apprenticed either to literature,
+the law, or medicine. With them she lived a student's life. In order to
+facilitate her various evolutions, she adopted masculine dress. In her
+_Histoite de ma vie_ she says: "Fashion helped me in my disguise, for
+men were wearing long, square frock-coats styled a _la proprietaire_.
+They came down to the heels, and fitted the figure so little that my
+brother, when putting his on, said to me one day at Nohant: 'It is a
+nice cut, isn't it? The tailor takes his measures from a sentry-box, and
+the coat then fits a whole regiment.' I had 'a sentry-box coat' made, of
+rough grey cloth, with trousers and waistcoat to match. With a grey
+hat and a huge cravat of woollen material, I looked exactly like a
+first-year student. . . ."
+
+Dressed in this style, she explored the streets, museums, cathedrals,
+libraries, painters' studios, clubs and theatres. She heard Frederick
+Lemaitre one day, and the next day Malibran. One evening it was one of
+Dumas' pieces, and the next night _Moise_ at the Opera. She took her
+meals at a little restaurant, and she lived in an attic. She was not
+even sure of being able to pay her tailor, so she had all the joys
+possible. "Ah, how delightful, to live an artist's life! Our device is
+liberty!" she wrote.(6) She lived in a perpetual state of delight,
+and, in February, wrote to her son Maurice as follows: "Every one is at
+loggerheads, we are crushed to death in the streets, the churches are
+being destroyed, and we hear the drum being beaten all night."(7) In
+March she wrote to Charles Duvernet: "Do you know that fine things are
+happening here? It really is amusing to see. We are living just as gaily
+among bayonets and riots as if everything were at peace. All this amuses
+me."(8)
+
+     (6) _Correspondance_:  To Boucoiran, March 4, 1831.
+
+     (7) _Ibid_. To Maurice Dudevant, February 15, 1831.
+
+     (8) _Ibid_. To Charles Duvernet, March 6, 1831.
+
+She was amused at everything and she enjoyed everything. With her keen
+sensitiveness, she revelled in the charm of Paris, and she thoroughly
+appreciated its scenery.
+
+"Paris," she wrote, "with its vaporous evenings, its pink clouds above
+the roofs, and the beautiful willows of such a delicate green around
+the bronze statue of our old Henry, and then, too, the dear little
+slate-coloured pigeons that make their nests in the old masks of the
+Pont Neuf . . ."(9)
+
+     (9) Unpublished letters of Dr. Emile Regnault.
+
+She loved the Paris sky, so strange-looking, so rich in colouring, so
+variable.(10)
+
+     (10) _Ibid_.
+
+She became unjust with regard to Berry. "As for that part of the world
+which I used to love so dearly and where I used to dream my dreams," she
+wrote, "I was there at the age of fifteen, when I was very foolish, and
+at the age of seventeen, when I was dreamy and disturbed in my mind. It
+has lost its charm for me now."(11)
+
+     (11) _Ibid_.
+
+She loved it again later on, certainly, but just at this time she was
+over-excited with the joy of her newly-found liberty. It was that really
+which made her so joyful and which intoxicated her. "I do not want
+society, excitement, theatres, or dress; what I want is freedom,"
+she wrote to her mother. In another letter she says: "I am absolutely
+independent. I go to La Chatre, to Rome. I start out at ten o'clock or
+at midnight. I please myself entirely in all this."(12)
+
+     (12) _Correspondance_:  To her mother, May 31, 1831.
+
+She was free, and she fancied she was happy. Her happiness at that epoch
+meant Jules Sandeau.
+
+In a letter, written in the humoristic style in which she delighted, she
+gives us portraits of some of her comrades of that time. She tells us of
+Duvernet, of Alphonse Fleury, surnamed "the Gaulois," and of Sandeau.
+
+"Oh, fair-haired Charles!" she writes, "young man of melancholy
+thoughts, with a character as gloomy as a stormy day. . . . And you,
+gigantic Fleury, with your immense hands and your alarming beard. . . .
+And you, dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of
+fragrant savannahs!"(13)
+
+     (13) _Correspondance_:  December 1, 1830.
+
+The "dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of
+fragrant savannahs," was to be Baronne Dudevant's Latin Quarter
+_liaison_. Her biographers usually pass over this _liaison_ quickly,
+as information about it was not forthcoming. Important documents exist,
+though, in the form of fifty letters written by George Sand to Dr. Emile
+Regnault, then a medical student and the intimate friend and confidant
+of Jules Sandeau, who kept nothing back from him. His son, Dr. Paul
+Regnault, has kindly allowed me to see this correspondence and to
+reproduce some fragments of it. It is extremely curious, by turn lyrical
+and playful, full of effusions, ideas, plans of work, impressions of
+nature, and confidences about her love affairs. Taken altogether it
+reflects, as nearly as possible, the state of the young woman's mind at
+this time.
+
+The first letter is dated April, 1831. George Sand had left Paris for
+Nohant, and is anxiously wondering how her poor Jules has passed this
+wretched day, and how he will go back to the room from which she had
+torn herself with such difficulty that morning. In her letter she gives
+utterance to the gratitude she owes to the young man who has reconciled
+her once more to life. "My soul," she says, "eager itself for
+affection, needed to inspire this in a heart capable of understanding
+me thoroughly, with all my faults and qualities. A fervent soul was
+necessary for loving me in the way that I could love, and for consoling
+me after all the ingratitude which had made my earlier life so desolate.
+And although I am now old, I have found a heart as young as my own, a
+lifelong affection which nothing can discourage and which grows stronger
+every day. Jules has taught me to care once more for this existence,
+of which I was so weary, and which I only endured for the sake of my
+children. I was disgusted beforehand with the future, but it now seems
+more beautiful to me, full as it appears to me of him, of his work, his
+success, and of his upright, modest conduct. . . . Oh, if you only knew
+how I love him! . . . ."(14)
+
+     (14) This quotation and those that follow are borrowed from
+     the unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault.
+
+"When I first knew him I was disillusioned about everything, and I no
+longer believed in those things which make us happy. He has warmed my
+frozen heart and restored the life that was dying within me." She then
+recalls their first meeting. It was in the country, at Coudray,
+near Nohant. She fell in love with her dear Sandeau, thanks to his
+youthfulness, his timidity and his awkwardness. He was just twenty, in
+1831. On approaching the bench where she was awaiting him, "he concealed
+himself in a neighbouring avenue--and I could see his hat and stick
+on the bench," she writes. "Everything, even to the little red ribbon
+threaded in the lining of his grey hat, thrilled me with joy. . . ."
+
+It is difficult to say why, but everything connected with this young
+Jules seems absurd. Later on we get the following statement: "Until the
+day when I told him that I loved him, I had never acknowledged as much
+to myself. I felt that I did, but I would not own it even to my own
+heart. Jules therefore learnt it at the same time as I did myself."
+
+People at La Chatre took the young man for her lover. The idea of
+finding him again in Paris was probably one of her reasons for wishing
+to establish herself there. Then came her life, as she describes it
+herself, "in the little room looking on to the quay. I can see Jules
+now in a shabby, dirty-looking artist's frock-coat, with his cravat
+underneath him and his shirt open at the throat, stretched out over
+three chairs, stamping with his feet or breaking the tongs in the heat
+of the discussion. The Gaulois used to sit in a corner weaving great
+plots, and you would be seated on a table."
+
+All this must certainly have been charming. The room was too small,
+though, and George Sand commissioned Emile Regnault to find her a flat,
+the essential condition of which should be some way of egress for Jules
+at any hour.
+
+A little flat was discovered on the Quay St. Michel. There were three
+rooms, one of which could be reserved. "This shall be the dark room,"
+wrote George Sand, "the mysterious room, the ghost's retreat, the
+monster's den, the cage of the performing animal, the hiding-place for
+the treasure, the vampire's cave, or whatever you like to call
+it. . . ."
+
+In plainer language, it was Jules' room; and then follows some touching
+eloquence about the dear boy she worshipped who loved her so dearly.
+
+This is the beginning of things, but later on the tone of the
+correspondence changes. The letters become less frequent, and are also
+not so gay. George Sand speaks much less of Jules in them and much more
+of little Solange, whom she intended to bring back to Paris with her.
+She is beginning to weary of Jules and to esteem him at his true value.
+He is lazy, and has fits of depression and all the capriciousness of
+a spoilt child. She has had enough of him, and then, too, it is very
+evident from the letters that there has been some division among
+the lively friends who had sworn to be comrades for life. There are
+explanations and justifications. George Sand discovers that there are
+certain inconveniences connected with intimacies in which there is
+such disproportion of age and of social position. Finally there are the
+following desperate letters, written in fits of irritation: "My dear
+friend, go to Jules and look after him. He is broken-hearted, and you
+can do nothing for him in that respect. It is no use trying. I do not
+ask you to come to me yet, as I do not need anything. I would rather be
+alone to-day. Then, too, there is nothing left for me in life. It will
+be horrible for him for a long time, but he is so young. The day will
+come, perhaps, when he will not be sorry to have lived. . . .
+Do not attempt to put matters right, as this time there is no remedy.
+We do not blame each other at all, and for some time we have been
+struggling against this horrible necessity. We have had trouble enough.
+There seemed to be nothing left but to put an end to our lives, and if
+it had not been for my children, we should have done this."
+
+The question is, Was George Sand blameless in the matter? It appears
+that she had discovered that her dear Jules was faithless to her, and
+that, during her absence, he had deceived her. She would not forgive
+him, but sent him off to Italy, and refused to see him again. The last
+of these letters is dated June 15, 1833.
+
+"I shall make a parcel of a few of Jules' things that he left in
+the wardrobe," she says, "and I will send them to you. I do not want
+anything to do with him when he comes back, and, according to the last
+words of the letter you showed me, his return may be soon. For a long
+time I have been very much hurt by the discoveries I made with regard
+to his conduct, and I could not feel anything else for him now but
+affectionate compassion. His pride, I hope, would refuse this. Make him
+clearly understand, if necessary, that there can never be anything more
+between us. If this hard task should not be necessary, that is, if Jules
+should himself understand that it could not be otherwise, spare him the
+sorrow of hearing that he has lost everything, even my respect. He
+must undoubtedly have lost his own self-esteem, so that he is punished
+enough."
+
+Thus ended this great passion. This was the first of George Sand's
+errors, and it certainly was an immense one. She had imagined that
+happiness reigns in students' rooms. She had counted on the passing
+fancy of a young man of good family, who had come to Paris to sow his
+wild oats, for giving her fresh zest and for carving out for herself a
+fresh future. It was a most commonplace adventure, utterly destitute of
+psychology, and by its very bitterness it contrasted strangely with
+her elevated sentimental romance with Aurelien de Seze. That was the
+quintessence of refinement. All that is interesting about this second
+adventure is the proof that it gives us of George Sand's wonderful
+illusions, of the intensity of the mirage of which she was a dupe, and
+of which we have so many instances in her life.
+
+Baronne Dudevant had tried conjugal life, and she had now tried free
+love. She had been unsuccessful in both instances. It is to these
+adventures though, to these trials, errors and disappointments that
+we owe the writer we are about to study. George Sand was now born to
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+A FEMINIST OF 1832
+
+THE FIRST NOVELS AND THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE
+
+
+When Baronne Dudevant arrived in Paris, in 1831, her intention was to
+earn her living with her pen. She never really counted seriously on the
+income she might make by her talent for painting flowers on snuff-boxes
+and ornamenting cigar-cases with water-colours. She arrived from her
+province with the intention of becoming a writer. Like most authors who
+commence, she first tried journalism. On the 4th of March, she wrote as
+follows to the faithful Boucoiran: "In the meantime I must live, and
+for the sake of that, I have taken up the worst of trades: I am writing
+articles for the _Figaro_. If only you knew what that means! They are
+paid for, though, at the rate of seven francs a column."
+
+She evidently found it worth while to write for the _Figaro_, which at
+that time was quite a small newspaper, managed by Henri de Latouche, who
+also came from Berry. He was a very second-rate writer himself, and
+a poet with very little talent but, at any rate, he appreciated
+and discovered talent in others. He published Andre Chenier's first
+writings, and he introduced George Sand to the public. His new
+apprentice was placed at one of the little tables at which the various
+parts of the paper were manufactured. Unfortunately she had not the
+vocation for this work. The first principle with regard to newspaper
+articles is to make them short. When Aurore had come to the end of her
+paper, she had not yet commenced her subject. It was no use attempting
+to continue, so she gave up "the worst of trades," lucrative though it
+might be.
+
+She could not help knowing, though, that she had the gift of writing.
+She had inherited it from her ancestors, and this is the blest part of
+her atavism. No matter how far back we go, and in every branch of her
+genealogical tree, there is artistic heredity to be found. Maurice de
+Saxe wrote his _Reveries_. This was a fine book for a soldier to write,
+and for that alone he would deserve praise, even if he had not beaten
+the English so gloriously. Mademoiselle Verrieres was an actress and
+Dupin de Francueil a dilettante. Aurore's grandmother, Marie-Aurore, was
+very musical, she sang operatic songs, and collected extracts from the
+philosophers. Maurice Dupin was devoted to music and to the theatre.
+Even Sophie-Victoire had an innate appreciation of beauty. She not only
+wept, like Margot, at melodrama, but she noticed the pink of a cloud,
+the mauve of a flower, and, what was more important, she called her
+little daughter's attention to such things. This illiterate mother had
+therefore had some influence on Aurore and on her taste for literature.
+
+It is not enough to say that George Sand was a born writer. She was a
+born novelist, and she belonged to a certain category of novelists.
+She had been created by a special decree of Providence to write her
+own romances, and not others. It is this which makes the history of
+the far-back origins of her literary vocation so interesting. It is
+extremely curious to see, from her earliest childhood, the promises of
+those faculties which were to become the very essence of her talent.
+When she was only three years old, her mother used to put her between
+four chairs in order to keep her still. By way of enlivening her
+captivity, she tells us what she did.
+
+"I used to make up endless stories, which my mother styled my novels.
+. . . I told these stories aloud, and my mother declared that they were
+most tiresome on account of their length and of the development I gave
+to my digressions. . . . There were very few bad people in them,
+and never any serious troubles. Everything was always arranged
+satisfactorily, thanks to my lively, optimistic ideas. . . ."
+
+She had already commenced, then, at the age of three, and these early
+stories are the precursors of the novels of her maturity. They are
+optimistic, drawn out, and with long digressions. Something similar is
+told about Walter Scott. There is evidently a primordial instinct in
+those who are born story-tellers, and this urges them on to invent fine
+stories for amusing themselves.
+
+A little later on we have another phenomenon, almost as curious, with
+regard to Aurore. We are apt to wonder how certain descriptive writers
+proceed in order to give us pictures, the various features of which
+stand out in such intense relief that they appear absolutely real to us.
+George Sand tells us that when Berquin's stories were being read to
+her at Nohant, she used to sit in front of the fire, from which she was
+protected by an old green silk screen. She used gradually to lose the
+sense of the phrases, but pictures began to form themselves in front of
+her on the green screen.
+
+"I saw woods, meadows, rivers, towns of strange and gigantic
+architecture. . . . One day these apparitions were so real that I was
+startled by them, and I asked my mother whether she could see them."
+
+
+With hallucinations like these a writer can be picturesque. He has
+in front of him, although it may be between four walls, a complete
+landscape. He has only to follow the lines of it and to reproduce the
+colours, so that in painting imaginary landscapes he can paint them from
+nature, from this model that appears to him, as though by enchantment.
+He can, if he likes, count the leaves of the trees and listen to the
+sound of the growing grass.
+
+Still later on, vague religious or philosophical conceptions began
+to mingle with the fiction that Aurore always had in her mind. To her
+poetical life, was added a moral life. She always had a romance going
+on, to which she was constantly adding another chapter, like so many
+links in a never-ending chain. She now gave a hero to her romance, a
+hero whose name was Corambe. He was her ideal, a man whom she had made
+her god. Whilst blood was flowing freely on the altars of barbarous
+gods, on Corambe's altar life and liberty were given to a whole crowd
+of captive creatures, to a swallow, to a robin-redbreast, and even to a
+sparrow. We see already in all this her tendency to put moral intentions
+into her romantic stories, to arrange her adventures in such a way that
+they should serve as examples for making mankind better. These were the
+novels, with a purpose, of her twelfth year.
+
+Let us now study a striking contrast, by way of observing the first
+signs of vocation in two totally different novelists. In the beginning
+of _Facino Cane_, Balzac tells us an incident of the time when, as an
+aspiring writer, he lived in his attic in the Rue Lesdiguieres. One
+evening, on coming out of the theatre, he amused himself with following
+a working-man and his wife from the Boulevard du Pontaux-Choux to the
+Boulevard Beaumarchais. He listened to them as they talked of the piece
+they had just seen. They then discussed their business matters, and
+afterwards house and family affairs. "While listening to this couple,"
+says Balzac, "I entered into their life. I could feel their clothes on
+my back and, I was walking in their shabby boots."
+
+This is the novelist of the objective school, the one who comes out of
+himself, who ceases to be himself and becomes another person.
+
+Instead of this exterior world, to which Balzac adapts himself, Aurore
+talks to us of an inner world, emanating from her own fancy, the
+reflection of her own imagination, the echo of her own heart, which is
+really herself. This explains the difference between Balzac's impersonal
+novel and George Sand's personal novel. It is just the difference
+between realistic art, which gives way to the object, and idealistic
+art, which transforms this according to its own will and pleasure.
+
+Up to this time George Sand's ideas had not been put on to paper. Both
+_Corambe_ and the stories composed between four chairs were merely
+fancies of a child's mind. Aurore soon began to write, though. She had
+composed two novels while in the convent, one of which was religious and
+the other a pastoral story. She was wise enough to tear them both up. On
+leaving the convent she wrote another novel for Rene' de Villeneuve, and
+this shared the same fate. In 1827, she wrote her _Voyage en Auvergne_,
+and in 1829, another novel. In her _Histoire de ma vie_ she says of
+this: "After reading it, I was convinced that it was of no value, but at
+the same time I was sure I could write a better one. . . . I saw that
+I could write quickly and easily, and without feeling any fatigue.
+The ideas that were lying dormant in my mind were quickened and became
+connected, by my deductions, as I wrote. With my meditative life, I had
+observed a great deal, and had understood the various characters which
+Fate had put in my way, so that I really knew enough of human nature
+to be able to depict it." She now had that facility, that abundance of
+matter and that nonchalance which were such characteristic features of
+her writing.
+
+When George Sand began to publish, she had already written a great deal.
+Her literary formation was complete. We notice this same thing whenever
+we study the early work of a writer. Genius is revealed to us, perhaps,
+with a sudden flash, but it has been making its way for a long time
+underground, so that what we take for a spontaneous burst of genius is
+nothing but the final effort of a sap which has been slowly accumulating
+and which from henceforth is all-powerful.
+
+George Sand had to go through the inevitable period of feeling her way.
+We are glad to think that the first book she published was not written
+by herself alone, so that the responsibility of that execrable novel
+does not lie solely with her.
+
+On the 9th of March, 1831, George Sand wrote to Boucoiran as follows:
+"Monstrosities are in vogue, so we must invent monstrosities. I am
+bringing forth a very pleasant one just at present. . . ." This was the
+novel written in collaboration with Sandeau which appeared under the
+signature of Jules Sand towards the end of 1831. It was entitled, _Rose
+et Blanche, ou la Comedienne et la Religieuse_.
+
+It begins by a scene in a coach, rather like certain novels by Balzac,
+but accompanied by insignificant details in the worst taste imaginable.
+Two girls are travelling in the same coach. Rose is a young comedian,
+and Sister Blanche is about to become a nun. They separate at Tarbes,
+and the scene of the story is laid in the region of the Pyrenees, in
+Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and finishes with the return to Paris.
+Rose, after an entertainment which is a veritable orgy, is handed over
+by her mother to a licentious young man. He is ashamed of himself,
+and, instead of leading Rose astray, he takes her to the Convent of the
+Augustines, where she finds Sister Blanche once more. Sister Blanche has
+not yet pronounced her vows, and the proof of this is that she marries
+Horace. But what a wedding! As a matter of fact, Sister Blanche was
+formerly named Denise. She was the daughter of a seafaring man of
+Bordeaux, and was both pretty and foolish. She had been dishonoured by
+the young libertine whom she is now to marry. The memory of the past
+comes back to Blanche, and makes her live over again her life as Denise.
+In the mean time Rose had become a great singer. She now arrives, just
+in time to be present at her friend's deathbed. She enters the convent
+herself, and takes the place left vacant by Sister Blanche. The whole of
+this is absurd and frequently very disagreeable.
+
+It is quite easy to distinguish the parts due to the two collaborators,
+and to see that George Sand wrote nearly all the book. There are
+the landscapes, Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and a number of
+recollections of the famous journey to the Pyrenees and of her stay
+at Guillery with the Dudevant family. The Convent of the Augustines
+in Paris, with its English nuns and its boarders belonging to the best
+families, is the one in which Aurore spent three years. The cloister can
+be recognized, the garden planted with chestnut trees, and the cell
+from which there was a view over the city. All her dreams seemed so near
+Heaven there, for the rich, cloudy sky was so near--"that most beautiful
+and ever-changing sky, perhaps the most beautiful in the world," of
+which we read in _Rose et Blanche_. But together with this romance of
+religious life is a libertine novel with stories of orgies, of a certain
+private house, and of very risky and unpleasant episodes. This is the
+collaborator's share in the work. The risky parts are Sandeau's.
+
+Such, then, is this hybrid composition. It was, in reality, the
+monstrosity announced by George Sand.
+
+It had a certain success, but the person who was most severe in her
+judgment of it was Sophie-Victoire, George Sand's mother, who had very
+prudish tastes in literature. This woman is perfectly delightful,
+and every time we come across her it is a fresh joy. Her daughter was
+obliged to make some excuse for herself, and this she did by stating
+that the work was not entirely her own.
+
+"I do not approve of a great deal of the nonsense," she writes, "and
+I only let certain things pass to please my publisher, who wanted
+something rather lively. . . . I do not like the risky parts
+myself. . . ." Later on in the same letter, she adds: "There is nothing
+of the kind in the book I am writing now, and I am using nothing of my
+collaborator's in this, except his name."(15)
+
+     (15) _Correspondance_:  To her mother, February 22, 1832.
+
+This was true. Jules Sand had had his day, and the book of which she now
+speaks was _Indiana_. She signed this "George Sand."
+
+The unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault, some fragments of
+which we have just read, contains a most interesting letter concerning
+the composition of _Indiana_. It is dated February 28, 1832. George Sand
+first insists on the severity of the subject and on its resemblance to
+life. "It is as simple, as natural and as positive as you could wish,"
+she says. "It is neither romantic, mosaic, nor frantic. It is just
+ordinary life of the most _bourgeois_ kind, but unfortunately this is
+much more difficult than exaggerated literature. . . . There is not the
+least word put in for nothing, not a single description, not a
+vestige of poetry. There are no unexpected, extraordinary, or amazing
+situations, but merely four volumes on four characters. With only just
+these characters, that is, with hidden feelings, everyday thoughts,
+with friendship, love, selfishness, devotion, self-respect, persistency,
+melancholy, sorrow, ingratitude, disappointment, hope, and all the
+mixed-up medley of the human mind, is it possible to write four volumes
+which will not bore people? I am afraid of boring people, of boring them
+as life itself does. And yet what is more interesting than the history
+of the heart, when it is a true history? The main thing is to write true
+history, and it is just that which is so difficult. . . ."
+
+This declaration is rather surprising to any one who reads it to-day.
+We might ask whether what was natural in 1832 would be natural in 1910?
+That is not the question which concerns us, though. The important fact
+to note is that George Sand was no longer attempting to manufacture
+monstrosities. She was endeavouring to be true, and she wanted above
+everything else to present a character of woman who would be the typical
+modern woman.
+
+"Noemi (this name was afterwards left to Sandeau, who had used it in
+_Marianna_. George Sand changed it to that of _Indiana_) is a typical
+woman, strong and weak, tired even by the weight of the air, but capable
+of holding up the sky; timid in everyday life, but daring in days of
+battle; shrewd and clever in seizing the loose threads of ordinary life,
+but silly and stupid in distinguishing her own interests when it is a
+question of her happiness; caring little for the world at large, but
+allowing herself to be duped by one man; not troubling much about
+her own dignity, but watching over that of the object of her choice;
+despising the vanities of the times as far as she is concerned, but
+allowing herself to be fascinated by the man who is full of these
+vanities. This, I believe," she says, "is the usual woman, an
+extraordinary mixture of weakness and energy, of grandeur and of
+littleness, a being ever composed of two opposite natures, at times
+sublime and at times despicable, clever in deceiving and easily deceived
+herself."
+
+This novel, intended to present to us the modern woman, ought to be
+styled a "feminist novel." It was also, as regards other points of view.
+_Indiana_ appeared in May, 1832, _Valentine_ in 1833, and _Jacques_ in
+1834. In these three books I should like to show our present feminism,
+already armed, and introduced to us according to George Sand's early
+ideas.
+
+
+_Indiana_ is the story of a woman who had made an unfortunate marriage.
+At the age of nineteen she had married Colonel Delmare. Colonels were
+very much in vogue in those days, and the fact that he had attained that
+rank proves that he was much older than she was. Colonel Delmare was an
+honest, straightforward man in the Pharisaical sense of the word. This
+simply means that he had never robbed or killed any one. He had no
+delicacy and no charm, and, fond as he was of his own authority, he
+was a domestic tyrant. Indiana was very unhappy between this execrable
+husband and a cousin of hers, Ralph, a man who is twice over English,
+in the first place because his name is Brown, and then because he is
+phlegmatic. Ralph is delightful and most excellent, and it is on his
+account that she is insensible to the charms of Raymon de Ramieres an
+elegant and distinguished young man who is a veritable lady-killer.
+
+Space forbids us to go into all the episodes of this story, but the
+crisis is that Colonel Delmare is ruined, and his business affairs call
+him to the Isle of Bourbon. He intends to take Indiana with him, but she
+refuses to accompany him. She knows quite well that Raymon will do all
+he can to prevent her going. She hurries away to him, offers herself to
+him, and volunteers to remain with him always. It is unnecessary to give
+Raymon's reply to this charming proposal. Poor Indiana receives a very
+wet blanket on a cold winter's night.
+
+
+She therefore starts for the Isle of Bourbon, and, some time after her
+arrival there, she gets a letter from Raymon which makes her think that
+he is very unhappy. She accordingly hastens back to him, but is received
+by the young wife whom Raymon has just married. It is a very
+brilliant marriage, and Raymon could not have hoped for anything more
+satisfactory. Poor Indiana! The Seine, however, is quite near, and she
+throws herself into it. This was quite safe, as Ralph was there to
+fish her out again. Ralph was always at hand to fish his cousin out of
+everything. He is her appointed rescuer, her Newfoundland dog. In the
+country or in the town, on _terra firma_ or on the boat which takes
+Indiana to the Isle of Bourbon, we always see Ralph turn up, phlegmatic
+as usual. Unnecessary to say that Ralph is in love with Indiana. His
+apparent calmness is put on purposely. It is the snowy covering under
+which a volcano is burning. His awkward and unprepossessing appearance
+conceals an exquisite soul. Ralph brings Indiana good news. Colonel
+Delmare is dead, so that she is free. What will she do now with her
+liberty? After due deliberation, Ralph and Indiana decide to commit
+suicide, but they have to agree about the kind of death they will die.
+Ralph considers that this is a matter of certain importance. He does not
+care to kill himself in Paris; there are too many people about, so that
+there is no tranquillity. The Isle of Bourbon seems to him a pleasant
+place for a suicide. There was a magnificent horizon there; then, too,
+there was a precipice and a waterfall. . . .
+
+Ralph's happy ideas are somewhat sinister, but the couple set out
+nevertheless for the Isle of Bourbon in search of a propitious
+waterfall. A sea-voyage, under such circumstances, would be an excellent
+preparation. When once there, they carry out their plans, and Ralph
+gives his beloved wise advice at the last moment. She must not jump from
+the side, as that would be bad. "Throw yourself into the white line that
+the waterfall makes," he says. "You will then reach the lake with that,
+and the torrent will plunge you in." This sounds enticing.
+
+Such a suicide was considered infinitely poetical at that epoch, and
+every one pitied Indiana in her troubles. It is curious to read such
+books calmly a long time afterwards, books which reflect so exactly the
+sentiments of a certain epoch. It is curious to note how the point of
+view has changed, and how people and things appear to us exactly the
+reverse of what they appeared to the author and to contemporaries.
+
+As a matter of fact, the only interesting person in all this is Colonel
+Delmare, or, at any rate, he is the only one of whom Indiana could
+not complain. He loved her, and he loved no one else but her. The like
+cannot be said for Indiana. Few husbands would imitate his patience and
+forbearance, and he certainly allowed his wife the most extraordinary
+freedom. At one time we find, a young man in Indiana's bedroom, and at
+another time Indiana in a young man's bedroom. Colonel Delmare receives
+Raymon at his house in a friendly way, and he tolerates the presence of
+the sempiternal Ralph in his home. What more can be asked of a husband
+than to allow his wife to have a man friend and a cousin? Indiana
+declares that Colonel Delmare has struck her, and that the mark is left
+on her face. She exaggerated, though, as we know quite well what took
+place. In reality all this was at Plessis-Picard. Delmare-Dudevant
+struck Indiana-Aurore. This was certainly too much, but there was no
+blood shed. As to the other personages, Raymon is a wretched little
+rascal, who was first the lover of Indiana's maid. He next made love
+to poor Noun's mistress, and then deserted her to make a rich marriage.
+Ralph plunges Indiana down a precipice. That was certainly bad treatment
+for the woman he loved. As regards Indiana, George Sand honestly
+believed that she had given her all the charms imaginable. As a matter
+of fact, she did charm the readers of that time. It is from this model
+that we have one of the favourite types of woman in literature for the
+next twenty years--the misunderstood woman.
+
+The misunderstood woman is pale, fragile, and subject to fainting. Up to
+page 99 of the book, Indiana has fainted three times. I did not continue
+counting. This fainting was not the result of bad health. It was the
+fashion to faint. The days of nerves and languid airs had come back. The
+women whose grandmothers had walked so firmly to the scaffold, and
+whose mothers had listened bravely to the firing of the cannon under the
+Empire, were now depressed and tearful, like so many plaintive elegies.
+It was just a matter of fashion. The misunderstood woman was supposed
+to be unhappy with her husband, but she would not have been any happier
+with another man. Indiana does not find fault with Colonel Delmare for
+being the husband that he is, but simply for being the husband!
+
+"She did not love her husband, for the mere reason, perhaps, that she
+was told it was her duty to love him and that it had become her second
+nature, a principle and a law of her conscience to resist inwardly
+all moral constraint." She affected a most irritating gentleness, an
+exasperating submissiveness. When she put on her superior, resigned
+airs, it was enough to unhinge an angel. Besides, what was there to
+complain about, and why should she not accommodate herself to conditions
+of existence with which so many others fall in? She must not be compared
+to others, though. She is eminently a distinguished woman, and she asks
+without shrinking: "Do you know what it means to love a woman such as I
+am?"
+
+In her long silences and her persistent melancholy, she is no doubt
+thinking of the love appropriate to a woman such as she is. She was a
+princess in exile and times were then hard for princesses. That is why
+the one in question took refuge in her homesick sorrow. All this is what
+people will not understand. Instead of rising to such sublimities, or of
+being lost in fogs, they judge from mere facts. And on coming across
+a young wife who is inclined to prefer a handsome, dark young man to a
+husband who is turning grey, they are apt to conclude: "Well, this is
+not the first time we have met with a similar case. It is hardly worth
+while making such a fuss about a young plague of a woman who wants to
+go to the bad." It would be very unjust, though, not to recognize that
+_Indiana_ is a most remarkable novel. There is a certain relief in the
+various characters, Colonel Delmare, Raymon, Ralph and Inaiana. We ought
+to question the husbands who married wives belonging to the race of
+misunderstood women brought into vogue by _Indiana_.
+
+
+_Valentine_, too, is the story of a woman unhappily married.
+
+This time the chief _role_ is given to the lover, and not to the woman.
+Instead of the misunderstood woman, though, we have the typical frenzied
+lover, created by the romantic school. Louise-Valentine de Raimbault
+is about to marry Norbert-Evariste de Lansac, when suddenly this young
+person, who is accustomed to going about in the country round and to the
+village fetes, falls in love with the nephew of one of her farmers.
+The young man's name is Benedict, and he is a peasant who has had some
+education. His mentality is probably that of a present-day elementary
+school-teacher. Valentine cannot resist him, although we are told that
+Benedict is not very handsome. It is his soul which Valentine loves in
+him. Benedict knows very well that he cannot marry Valentine, but he can
+cause her a great deal of annoyance by way of proving his love. On the
+night of the wedding he is in the nuptial chamber, from which the
+author has taken care to banish the husband for the time being. Benedict
+watches over the slumber of the woman he loves, and leaves her an
+epistle in which he declares that, after hesitating whether he should
+kill her husband, her, or himself, or whether he should kill all three,
+or only select two of the three, and after adopting in turn each of
+these combinations, he has decided to only kill himself. He is found
+in a ditch in a terrible plight, but we are by no means rid of him.
+Benedict is not dead, and he has a great deal of harm to do yet. We
+shall meet with him again several times, always hidden behind curtains,
+listening to all that is said and watching all that takes place. At the
+right moment he comes out with his pistol in his hand. The husband is
+away during all this time. No one troubles about him, though. He is a
+bad husband, or rather he is--a husband, and Benedict has nothing to
+fear as far as he is concerned. But one day a peasant, who does not like
+the looks of Benedict, attacks him with his pitchfork and puts an end to
+this valuable life.
+
+The question arises, by what right Benedict disturbs Valentine's
+tranquillity. The answer is by the right of his passion for her. He has
+an income of about twenty pounds a year. It would be impossible for him
+to marry on that. What has he to offer to the woman whose peace of mind
+he disturbs and whose position he ruins? He offers himself. Surely that
+should be enough. Then, too, it is impossible to reason with individuals
+of his temperament. We have only to look at him, with his sickly pallor
+and the restless light in his eyes. We have only to listen to the sound
+of his voice and his excited speeches. At times he goes in for wild
+declamation, and immediately afterwards for cold irony and sarcasm. He
+is always talking of death. When he attempts to shoot himself he always
+misses, but when Adele d'Hervey resists him, at the time he has taken
+the name of Antony, he kills her. He is therefore a dangerous madman.
+
+We now have two fresh personages for novels, the misunderstood woman and
+the frenzied lover. It is a pity they do not marry each other, and so
+rid us of them.
+
+We must not lose sight, though, of the fact that, contestable as
+_Valentine_ certainly is as a novel of passion, there is a pastoral
+novel of the highest order contained in this book. The setting of the
+story is delightful. George Sand has placed the scene in that Black
+Valley which she knew so well and loved so dearly. It is the first of
+her novels in which she celebrates her birthplace. There are walks along
+the country pathways, long meditations at night, village weddings
+and fetes. All the poetry and all the picturesqueness of the country
+transform and embellish the story.
+
+
+In _Jacques_ we have the history of a man unhappily married, and this,
+through the reciprocity which is inevitable under the circumstances, is
+another story of a woman unhappily married.
+
+At the age of thirty-five, after a stormy existence, in which years
+count double, Jacques marries Fernande, a woman much younger than he
+is. After a few unhappy months he sees the first clouds appearing in his
+horizon. He sends for his sister Sylvia to come and live with himself
+and his wife. Sylvia, like Jacques, is an exceptional individual. She
+is proud, haughty and reserved. It can readily be imagined that, the
+presence of this pythoness does not tend to restore the confidence which
+has become somewhat shaken between the husband and wife. A young man
+named Octave, who was at first attracted by Sylvia, soon begins to
+prefer Fernande, who is not a romantic, ironical and sarcastic woman
+like her sister-in-law. He fancies that he should be very happy with the
+gentle Fernande. Jacques discovers that Octave and his wife are in love
+with each other. There are various alternatives for him. He can dismiss
+his rival, kill him, or merely pardon him. Each alternative is a very
+ordinary way out of the difficulty, and Jacques cannot resign himself to
+anything ordinary. He therefore asks his wife's lover whether he really
+cares for his wife, whether he is in earnest, and also whether this
+attachment will be durable. Quite satisfied with the result of this
+examination, he leaves Fernande to Octave. He then disappears and kills
+himself, but he takes all necessary precautions to avert the suspicion
+of suicide, in order not to sadden Octave and Fernande in their
+happiness. He had not been able to keep his wife's love, but he does not
+wish to be the jailer of the woman who no longer loves him. Fernande
+has a right to happiness and, as he has not been able to ensure that
+happiness, he must give place to another man. It is a case of suicide
+as a duty. There are instances when a husband should know that it is his
+duty to disappear. . . . Jacques is "a stoic." George Sand has a great
+admiration for such characters. She gives us her first sketch of one in
+Ralph, but Jacques is presented to us as a sublime being.
+
+Personally, I look upon him as a mere greenhorn, or, as would be said in
+Wagner's dramas, a "pure simpleton."
+
+He did everything to ruin his home life. His young wife had confidence
+in him; she was gay and naive. He went about, folding his arms in a
+tragic way. He was absent-minded and gloomy, and she began to be awed by
+him. One day, when, in her sorrow for having displeased him, she flung
+herself on her knees, sobbing, instead of lifting her up tenderly, he
+broke away from her caresses, telling her furiously to get up and never
+to behave in such a way again in his presence. After this he puts his
+sister, the "bronze woman," between them, and he invites Octave to live
+with them. When he has thus destroyed his wife's affection for him, in
+spite of the fact that at one time she wished for nothing better than
+to love him, he goes away and gives up the whole thing. All that is too
+easy. One of Meilhac's heroines says to a man, who declares that he is
+going to drown himself for her sake, "Oh yes, that is all very fine. You
+would be tranquil at the bottom of the water! But what about me? . . ."
+
+In this instance Jacques is tranquil at the bottom of his precipice, but
+Fernande is alive and not at all tranquil. Jacques never rises to the
+very simple conception of his duty, which was that, having made a woman
+the companion of his life's journey, he had no right to desert her on
+the way.
+
+Rather than blame himself, though, Jacques prefers incriminating the
+institution of marriage. The criticism of this institution is very
+plain in the novel we are considering. In her former novels George, Sand
+treated all this in a more or less vague way. She now states her theory
+clearly. Jacques considers that marriage is a barbarous institution.
+"I have not changed my opinion," he says, "and I am not reconciled to
+society. I consider marriage one of the most barbarous institutions
+ever invented. I have no doubt that it will be abolished when the human
+species makes progress in the direction of justice and reason. Some
+bond that will be more human and just as sacred will take the place of
+marriage and provide for the children born of a woman and a man, without
+fettering their liberty for ever. Men are too coarse at present, and
+women too cowardly, to ask for a nobler law than the iron one which
+governs them. For individuals without conscience and without virtue,
+heavy chains are necessary."
+
+We also hear Sylvia's ideas and the plans she proposes to her brother
+for the time when marriage is abolished.
+
+"We will adopt an orphan, imagine that it is our child, and bring it up
+in our principles. We could educate a child of each sex, and then marry
+them when the time came, before God, with no other temple than the
+desert and no priest but love. We should have formed their souls to
+respect truth and justice, so that, thanks to us, there would be one
+pure and happy couple on the face of the earth."
+
+The suppression of marriage, then, was the idea, and, in a future more
+or less distant, free love!
+
+It is interesting to discover by what series of deductions George Sand
+proceeds and on what principles she bases everything. When once her
+principles are admitted, the conclusion she draws from them is quite
+logical.
+
+What is her essential objection to marriage? The fact that marriage
+fetters the liberty of two beings. "Society dictates to you the formula
+of an oath. You must swear that you will be faithful and obedient to me,
+that you will never love any one but me, and that you will obey me in
+everything. One of those oaths is absurd and the other vile. You cannot
+be answerable for your heart, even if I were the greatest and most
+perfect of men." Now comes the question of love for another man. Until
+then it was considered that such love was a weakness, and that it might
+become a fault. But, after all, is not passion a fatal and irresistible
+thing?
+
+"No human creature can command love, and no one is to be blamed for
+feeling it or for ceasing to feel it. What lowers a woman is untruth." A
+little farther on we are told: "They are not guilty, for they love each
+other. There is no crime where there is sincere love." According to
+this theory, the union of man and woman depends on love alone. When love
+disappears, the union cannot continue. Marriage is a human institution,
+but passion is of Divine essence. In case of any dissension, it is
+always the institution of marriage which is to be blamed.
+
+The sole end in view of marriage is charm, either that of sentiment or
+that of the senses, and its sole object is the exchange of two fancies.
+As the oath of fidelity is either a stupidity or a degradation, can
+anything more opposed to common sense, and a more absolute ignorance
+of all that is noble and great, be imagined than the effort mankind
+is making, against all the chances of destruction by which he is
+surrounded, to affirm, in face of all that changes, his will and
+intention to continue? We all remember the heart-rending lamentation of
+Diderot: "The first promises made between two creatures of flesh," he
+says, "were made at the foot of a rock crumbling to dust. They called on
+Heaven to be a witness of their constancy, but the skies in the Heaven
+above them were never the same for an instant. Everything was changing,
+both within them and around them, and they believed that their heart
+would know no change. Oh, what children, what children always!" Ah,
+not children, but what men rather! We know these fluctuations in our
+affections. And it is because we are afraid of our own fragility that
+we call to our aid the protection of laws, to which submission is no
+slavery, as it is voluntary submission. Nature does not know these laws,
+but it is by them that we distinguish ourselves from Nature and that
+we rise above it. The rock on which we tread crumbles to dust, the sky
+above our heads is never the same an instant, but, in the depth of our
+hearts, there is the moral law--and that never changes!
+
+In order to reply to these paradoxes, where shall we go in search of our
+arguments? We can go to George Sand herself. A few years later, during
+her intercourse with Lamennals, she wrote her famous _Lettres a Marcie_
+for _Le Monde_. She addresses herself to an imaginary correspondent,
+to a woman supposed to be suffering from that agitation and impatience
+which she had experienced herself.
+
+"You are sad," says George Sand to her, "you are suffering, and you are
+bored to death." We will now take note of some of the advice she gives
+to this woman. She no longer believes that it belongs to human dignity
+to have the liberty of changing. "The one thing to which man aspires,
+the thing which makes him great, is permanence in the moral state. All
+which tends to give stability to our desires, to strengthen the human
+will and affections, tends to bring about the _reign of God_ on earth,
+which means love and the practice of truth." She then speaks of vain
+dreams. "Should we even have time to think about the impossible if we
+did all that is necessary? Should we despair ourselves if we were to
+restore hope in those people who have nothing left them but hope?" With
+regard to feminist claims, she says: "Women are crying out that they are
+slaves: let them wait until men are free! . . . In the mean time we must
+not compromise the future by our impatience with the present. . . . It
+is to be feared that vain attempts of this kind and unjustifiable claims
+may do harm to what is styled at present the cause of women. There is
+no doubt that women have certain rights and that they are suffering
+injustice. They ought to lay claim to a better future, to a wise
+independence, to a greater participation in knowledge, and to more
+respect, interest and esteem from men. This future, though, is in their
+own hands."
+
+This is wisdom itself. It would be impossible to put it more clearly,
+and to warn women in a better way, that the greatest danger for
+their cause would be the triumph of what is called by an ironical
+term--feminism.
+
+These retractions, though, have very little effect. There is a certain
+piquancy in showing up an author who is in contradiction with himself,
+in showing how he refutes his own paradoxes. But these are striking
+paradoxes which are not readily forgotten. What I want to show is that
+in these first novels by George Sand we have about the whole of
+the feminist programme of to-day. Everything is there, the right to
+happiness, the necessity of reforming marriage, the institution, in
+a more or less near future, of free unions. Our feminists of to-day,
+French, English, or Norwegian authoresses, and theoricians like Ellen
+Key, with her book on _Love and Marriage_, all these rebels have
+invented nothing. They have done nothing but take up once more the
+theories of the great feminist of 1832, and expose them with less
+lyricism but with more cynicism.
+
+George Sand protested against the accusation of having aimed at
+attacking institutions in her feminist novels. She was wrong in
+protesting, as it is just this which gives her novels their value
+and significance. It is this which dates them and which explains the
+enormous force of expansion that they have had. They came just after
+the July Revolution, and we must certainly consider them as one of
+the results of that. A throne had just been overturned, and, by way of
+pastime, churches were being pillaged and an archbishop's palace had
+been sackaged. Literature was also attempting an insurrection, by way of
+diversion. For a long time it had been feeding the revolutionary ferment
+which it had received from romanticism. Romanticism had demanded the
+freedom of the individual, and the writers at the head of this movement
+were Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo and Dumas. They claimed this freedom
+for Rene, for Hermann and for Antony, who were men. An example had been
+given, and women meant to take advantage of it. Women now began their
+revolution.
+
+Under all these influences, and in the particular atmosphere now
+created, the matrimonial mishap of Baronne Dudevant appeared to her
+of considerable importance. She exaggerated and magnified it until it
+became of social value. Taking this private mishap as her basis, she
+puts into each of her heroines something of herself. This explains the
+passionate tone of the whole story. And this passion could not fail to
+be contagious for the women who read her stories, and who recognized in
+the novelist's cause their own cause and the cause of all women.
+
+This, then, is the novelty in George Sand's way of presenting feminist
+grievances. She had not invented these grievances. They were already
+contained in Madame de Stael's books, and I have not forgotten her.
+Delphine and Corinne, though, were women of genius, and presented to
+us as such. In order to be pitied by Madame de Stael, it was absolutely
+necessary to be a woman of genius. For a woman to be defended by George
+Sand, it was only necessary that she should not love her husband, and
+this was a much more general thing.
+
+
+George Sand had brought feminism within the reach of all women. This
+is the characteristic of these novels, the eloquence of which cannot be
+denied. They are novels for the vulgarization of the feminist theory.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE ROMANTIC ESCAPADE
+
+THE VENICE ADVENTURE
+
+
+George Sand did not have to wait long for success. She won fame with her
+first book. With her second one she became rich, or what she considered
+rich. She tells us that she sold it for a hundred and sixty pounds! That
+seemed to her the wealth of the world, and she did not hesitate to leave
+her attic on the Quay St. Michel for a more comfortable flat on Quay
+Malaquais, which de Latouche gave up to her.
+
+There was, at that time, a personage in Paris who had begun to exercise
+a sort of royal tyranny over authors. Francois Buloz had taken advantage
+of the intellectual effervescence of 1831 to found the _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_. He was venturesome, energetic, original, very shrewd, though
+apparently rough, obliging, in spite of his surly manners. He is still
+considered the typical and traditional review manager. He certainly
+possessed the first quality necessary for this function. He discovered
+talented writers, and he also knew how to draw from them and squeeze out
+of them all the literature they contained. Tremendously headstrong,
+he has been known to keep a contributor under lock and key until his
+article was finished. Authors abused him, quarrelled with him, and
+then came back to him again. A review which had, for its first numbers,
+George Sand, Vigny, Musset, Merimee, among many others, as contributors,
+may be said to have started well. George Sand tells us that after a
+battle with the _Revue de Paris_ and the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, both
+of which papers wanted her work, she bound herself to the _Revue des
+Deux Mondes_, which was to pay her a hundred and sixty pounds a year for
+thirty-two pages of writing every six weeks. In 1833 the _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_ published Lelia, and on January 1, 1876, it finished publishing
+the _Tour de Percemont_. This means an uninterrupted collaboration,
+extending over a period of forty-three years.
+
+The literary critic of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ at that time was
+a man who was very much respected and very little liked, or, in other
+words, he was universally detested. This critic was Gustave Planche.
+He took his own _role_ too seriously, and endeavoured to put authors
+on their guard about their faults. Authors did not appreciate this.
+He endeavoured, too, to put the public on guard against its own
+infatuations. The public did not care for this. He sowed strife and
+reaped revenge. This did not stop him, though, for he went calmly on
+continuing his executions. His impassibility was only feigned, and this
+is the curious side of the story. He suffered keenly from the storms of
+hostility which he provoked. He had a kindly disposition at bottom
+and tender places in his heart. He was rather given to melancholy and
+intensely pessimistic. To relieve his sadness, he gave himself up to
+hard work, and he was thoroughly devoted to art. In order to comprehend
+this portrait and to see its resemblance, we, who knew our great
+Brunetiere, have only to think of him. He, too, was noble, fervent
+and combative, and he sought in his exclusive devotion to literature a
+diversion from his gloomy pessimism, underneath which was concealed such
+kindliness. It seemed with him, too, as though he took a pride in making
+a whole crowd of enemies, whilst in reality the discovery of every fresh
+adversary caused him great suffering.
+
+When _Lelia_ appeared, the novel was very badly treated in _L'Europe
+litteraire_. Planche challenged the writer of the article, a certain
+Capo de Feuillide, to a duel. So much for the impassibility of
+severe critics. The duel took place, and afterwards there was a
+misunderstanding between George Sand and Planche. From that time forth
+critics have given up fighting duels for the sake of authors.
+
+About the same time, George Sand made use of Sainte-Beuve as her
+confessor. He seemed specially indicated for this function. In the first
+place, he looked rather ecclesiastical, and then he had a taste for
+secrets, and more particularly for whispered confessions. George Sand
+had absolute confidence in him. She considered that he had an almost
+angelic nature. In reality, just about that time, the angelic man was
+endeavouring to get into the good graces of the wife of his best friend,
+and was writing his _Livre d'Amour_, and divulging to the world a
+weakness of which he had taken advantage. This certainly was the most
+villainous thing a man could do. But then he, too, was in love and was
+struggling and praying. George Sand declares her veneration for him, and
+she constituted herself his penitent.
+
+She begins her confession by an avowal that must have been difficult for
+her. She tells of her intimacy with Merimee, an intimacy which was
+of short duration and very unsatisfactory. She had been fascinated by
+Merimee's art.
+
+"For about a week," she says, "I thought he had the secret of
+happiness." At the end of the week she was "weeping with disgust,
+suffering and discouragement." She had hoped to find in him the devotion
+of a consoler, but she found "nothing but cold and bitter jesting."(16)
+This experiment had also proved a failure.
+
+     (16) Compare _Lettres a Sainte-Beuve_.
+
+Such were the conditions in which George Sand found herself at this
+epoch. Her position was satisfactory; she might have been calm and
+independent. Her inner life was once more desolate, and she was
+thoroughly discouraged. She felt that she had lived centuries, that she
+had undergone torture, that her heart had aged twenty years, and that
+nothing was any pleasure to her now. Added to all this, public life
+saddened her, for the horizon had clouded over. The boundless hopes and
+the enthusiasm of 1831 were things of the past. "The Republic, as it was
+dreamed of in July," she writes, "has ended in the massacres of Warsaw
+and in the holocaust of the Saint-Merry cloister. The cholera has just
+been raging. Saint Simonism has fallen through before it had settled the
+great question of love."(17)
+
+     (17) _Histoire de ma vie_.
+
+Depression had come after over-excitement. This is a phenomenon
+frequently seen immediately after political convulsions. It might be
+called the perpetual failure of revolutionary promises.
+
+It was under all these influences that George Sand wrote _Lelia_. She
+finished it in July, and it appeared in August, 1833.
+
+It is absolutely impossible to give an analysis of _Lelia_. There really
+is no subject. The personages are not beings of flesh and blood. They
+are allegories strolling about in the garden of abstractions. Lelia is
+a woman who has had her trials in life. She has loved and been
+disappointed, so that she can no longer love at all. She reduces the
+gentle poet Stenio to despair. He is much younger than she is, and he
+has faith in life and in love. His ingenuous soul begins to wither
+and to lose its freshness, thanks to the scepticism of the beautiful,
+disdainful, ironical and world-weary Lelia. This strange person has a
+sister Pulcherie, a celebrated courtesan, whose insolent sensuality is
+a set-off to the other one's mournful complaints. We have here the
+opposition of Intelligence and of the Flesh, of Mind and Matter. Then
+comes Magnus, the priest, who has lost his faith, and for whom Lelia
+is a temptation, and after him we have Trenmor, Lelia's great friend,
+Trenmor, the sublime convict. As a young man he had been handsome. He
+had loved and been young. He had known what it was to be only twenty
+years of age. "The only thing was, he had known this at the age
+of sixteen" (!!) He had then become a gambler, and here follows an
+extraordinary panegyric on the fatal passion for gambling. Trenmor
+ruins himself, borrows without paying back, and finally swindles "an old
+millionaire who was himself a defrauder and a dissipated man" out of
+a hundred francs. Apparently the bad conduct of the man Trenmor robs,
+excuses the swindling. He is condemned to five years of hard labour. He
+undergoes his punishment, and is thereby regenerated. "What if I were to
+tell you," writes George Sand, "that such as he now is, crushed, with a
+tarnished reputation, ruined, I consider him superior to all of us, as
+regards the moral life. As he had deserved punishment, he was willing to
+bear it. He bore it, living for five years bravely and patiently among
+his abject companions. He has come back to us out of that abominable
+sewer holding his head up, calm, purified, pale as you see him, but
+handsome still, like a creature sent by God."
+
+We all know how dear convicts are to the hearts of romantic people.
+There is no need for me to remind you how they have come to us recently,
+encircled with halos of suffering and of purity. We all remember
+Dostoiewsky's _Crime and Punishment_ and Tolstoi's _Resurrection_. When
+the virtue of expiation and the religion of human suffering came to
+us from Russia, we should have greeted them as old acquaintances, if
+certain essential works in our own literature, of which these books are
+the issue, had not been unknown to us.
+
+The last part of the novel is devoted to Stenio. Hurt by Lelia's
+disdain, which has thrown him into the arms of her sister Pulcherie,
+he gives himself up to debauch. We find him at a veritable orgy in
+Pulcherie's house. Later on he is in a monastery at Camaldules, talking
+to Trenmor and Magnus. In such books we must never be astonished. . . .
+There is a long speech by Stenio, addressed to Don Juan, whom he
+regrets to have taken as his model. The poor young man of course commits
+suicide. He chooses drowning as the author evidently prefers that mode
+of suicide. Lelia arrives in time to kneel down by the corpse of the
+young man who has been her victim. Magnus then appears on the scene,
+exactly at the right moment, to strangle Lelia. Pious hands prepare
+Lelia and Stenio for their burial. They are united and yet separated up
+to their very death.
+
+The summing up we have given is the original version of _Lelia_.
+In 1836, George Sand touched up this work, altering much of it and
+spoiling, what she altered. It is a pity that her new version, which
+is longer, heavier and more obscure, should have taken the place of the
+former one. In its first form _Lelia_ is a work of rare beauty, but with
+the beauty of a poem or an oratorio. It is made of the stuff of which
+dreams are composed. It is a series of reveries, adapted to the soul
+of 1830. At every different epoch there is a certain frame of mind, and
+certain ideas are diffused in the air which we find alike in the works
+of the writers of that time, although they did not borrow them from each
+other. _Lelia_ is a sort of summing up of the themes then in vogue in
+the personal novel and in lyrical poetry. The theme of that suffering
+which is beneficent and inspiring is contained in the following words:
+"Come back to me, Sorrow! Why have you left me? It is by grief alone
+that man is great." This is worthy of Chateaubriand. The theme of
+melancholy is as follows: "The moon appeared. . . . What is the moon,
+and what is its nocturnal magic to me? One hour more or less is nothing
+to me." This might very well be Lamartine. We then have the malediction
+pronounced in face of impassible Nature: "Yes, I detested that radiant
+and magnificent Nature, for it was there before me in all its stupid
+beauty, silent and proud, for us to gaze on, believing that it was
+enough to merely show itself." This reminds us of Vigny in his _Maison
+du berger_. Then we have the religion of love: "Doubt God, doubt men,
+doubt me if you like, but do not doubt love." This is Musset.
+
+But the theme which predominates, and, as we have compared all this to
+music, we might say the _leit-motiv_ of all, is that of desolation, of
+universal despair, of the woe of life. It is the same lamentation which,
+ever since Werther, was to be heard throughout all literature. It is the
+identical suffering which Rene, Obermann and Lara had been repeating to
+all the echoes. The elements of it were the same: pride which prevents
+us from adapting ourselves to the conditions of universal life, an abuse
+of self-analysis which opens up our wounds again and makes them bleed,
+the wild imagination which presents to our eyes the deceptive mirage of
+Promised Lands from which we are ever exiles. Lelia personifies, in her
+turn, the "_mal du siecle_." Stenio reproaches her with only singing
+grief and doubt. "How many, times," he says, "have you appeared to me
+as typical of the indescribable suffering in which mankind is plunged
+by the spirit of inquiry! With your beauty and your sadness, your
+world-weariness and your scepticism, do you not personify the excess of
+grief produced by the abuse of thought?" He then adds: "There is a great
+deal of pride in this grief, Lelia!" It was undoubtedly a malady, for
+Lelia had no reason to complain of life any more than her brothers in
+despair. It is simply that the general conditions of life which all
+people have to accept seem painful to them. When we are well the play of
+our muscles is a joy to us, but when we are ill we feel the very weight
+of the atmosphere, and our eyes are hurt by the pleasant daylight.
+
+When _Lelia_ appeared George Sand's old friends were stupefied. "What,
+in Heaven's name, is this?" wrote Jules Neraud, the _Malgache._ "Where
+have you been in search of this? Why have you written such a book?
+Where has it sprung from, and what is it for? . . . This woman is a
+fantastical creature. She is not at all like you. You are lively and can
+dance a jig; you can appreciate butterflies and you do not despise puns.
+You sew and can make jam very well."(18)
+
+     (18) _Histoire de ma vie_.
+
+It certainly was not her portrait. She was healthy and believed in life,
+in the goodness of things and in the future of humanity, just as Victor
+Hugo and Dumas _pere_, those other forces of Nature, did, at about the
+same time. A soul foreign to her own had entered into her, and it was
+the romantic soul. With the magnificent power of receptivity which she
+possessed, George Sand welcomed all the winds which came to her from
+the four quarters of romanticism. She sent them back with unheard-of
+fulness, sonorous depth and wealth of orchestration. From that time
+forth a woman's voice could be heard, added to all the masculine voices
+which railed against life, and the woman's voice dominated them all!
+
+In George Sand's psychological evolution, _Lelia_ is just this: the
+beginning of the invasion of her soul by romanticism. It was a borrowed
+individuality, undoubtedly, but it was not something to be put on and
+off at will like a mask. It adhered to the skin. It was all very fine
+for George Sand to say to Sainte-Beuve: "Do not confuse the man himself
+with the suffering. . . . And do not believe in all my satanical airs.
+. . . This is simply a style that I have taken on, I assure you. . . ."
+
+Sainte-Beuve had every reason to be alarmed, and the confessor was quite
+right in his surmises. The crisis of romanticism had commenced. It
+was to take an acute form and to reach its paroxysm during the Venice
+escapade. It is from this point of view that we will study the famous
+episode, which has already been studied by so many other writers.
+
+
+No subject, perhaps, has excited the curiosity of readers like this one,
+and always without satisfying that curiosity. A library could be formed
+of the books devoted to this subject, written within the last ten years.
+Monsieur Rocheblave, Monsieur Maurice Clouard, Dr. Cabanes, Monsieur
+Marieton, the enthusiastic collector, Spoelberch de Lovenjoul and
+Monsieur Decori have all given us their contributions to the debate.(19)
+Thanks to them, we have the complete correspondence of George Sand and
+Musset, the diary of George Sand and Pagello's diary.
+
+     (19) Consult:  Rocheblave, _La fin dune Legende;_ Maurice
+     Clouard, _Documents inedits sur A. de Musset;_ Dr. Cabanes,
+     _Musset et le Dr. Pagello_; Paul Marieton, _Une histoire
+     d'amour;_ Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, _La vrai histoire
+     d'Elle et Lui;_ Decori, _Lettres de George Sand et Musset._
+
+With the aid of all these documents Monsieur Charles Maurras has written
+a book entitled _Les Amants de Venise_. It is the work of a psychologist
+and of an artist. The only fault I have to find with it is that the
+author of it seems to see calculation and artifice everywhere, and not
+to believe sufficiently in sincerity. We must not forget, either, that
+as early as the year 1893, all that is essential had been told us by
+that shrewd writer and admirable woman, Arvede Barine. The chapter which
+she devotes to the Venice episode, in her biography of Alfred de Musset,
+is more clear and simple, and at the same time deeper than anything that
+had yet been written.
+
+It is a subject that has been given up to the curiosity of people and
+to their disputes. The strange part is the zeal which at once animates
+every one who takes part in this controversy. The very atmosphere seems
+to be impregnated with strife, and those interested become, at once,
+the partisans of George Sand or the partisans of Musset. The two parties
+only agree on one point, and that is, to throw all the blame on the
+client favoured by their adversary. I must confess that I cannot take
+a passionate interest in a discussion, the subject of which we cannot
+properly judge. According to _Mussetistes_, it was thanks to George
+Sand that the young poet was reduced to the despair which drove him to
+debauchery. On the other hand, if we are to believe the _Sandistes_,
+George Sand's one idea in interesting herself in Musset was to rescue
+him from debauchery and convert him to a better life. I listen to all
+such pious interpretations, but I prefer others for myself. I prefer
+seeing the physiognomy of each of the two lovers standing out, as it
+does, in powerful relief.
+
+It is the custom, too, to pity these two unfortunates, who suffered so
+much. At the risk of being taken for a very heartless man, I must own
+that I do not pity them much. The two lovers wished for this suffering,
+they wanted to experience the incomparable sensations of it, and they
+got enjoyment and profit from this. They knew that they were working for
+posterity. "Posterity will repeat our names like those of the immortal
+lovers whose two names are only one at present, like Romeo and Juliette,
+like Heloise and Abelard. People will never speak of one of us without
+speaking of the other."
+
+Juliette died at the age of fifteen and Heloise entered a convent. The
+Venice lovers did not have to pay for their celebrity as dearly as
+that. They wanted to give an example, to light a torch on the road of
+humanity. "People shall know my story," writes George Sand. "I will
+write it. . . . Those who follow along the path I trod will see where it
+leads." _Et nunc erudimini_. Let us see for ourselves, and learn.
+
+Their _liaison_ dates from August, 1833.
+
+George Sand was twenty-nine years of age. It was the time of her
+greatest charm. We must try to imagine the enchantress as she then
+was. She was not tall and she was delightfully slender, with an
+extraordinary-looking face of dark, warm colouring. Her thick hair was
+very dark, and her eyes, her large eyes, haunted Musset for years after.
+
+     "_Ote-moi, memoire importune_,
+     _Ote-moi ces yeux que  je vois toujours!_"
+
+he writes.
+
+
+And this woman, who could have been loved passionately, merely for her
+charm as a woman, was a celebrity! She was a woman of genius! Alfred de
+Musset was twenty-three years old. He was elegant, witty, a flirt, and
+when he liked he could be irresistible. He had won his reputation by
+that explosion of gaiety and imagination, _Les Contes d'Espagne el
+d'Italle_. He had written some fine poetry, dreamy, disturbing and
+daring. He had also given _Les Caprices de Marianne_, in which he
+figures twice over himself, for he was both Octave the sceptic, the
+disillusioned man, and Coelio, the affectionate, candid Coelio. He
+imagined himself Rolla. It was he, and he alone, who should have been
+styled the sublime boy.
+
+And so here they both are. We might call them Lelia and Stenio, but
+_Lelia_ was written before the Venice adventure. She was not the
+reflection of it, but rather the presentiment. This is worthy of notice,
+but not at all surprising. Literature sometimes imitates reality, but
+how much more often reality is modelled on literature!
+
+It was as though George Sand had foreseen her destiny, for she had
+feared to meet Musset. On the 11th of March, she writes as follows to
+Sainte-Beuve: "On second thoughts, I do not want you to bring Alfred de
+Musset. He is a great dandy. We should not suit each other, and I was
+really more curious to see him than interested in him." A little later
+on, though, at a dinner at the _Freres provencaux_, to which Buloz
+invited his collaborators, George Sand found herself next Alfred de
+Musset. She invited him to call on her, and when _Lelia_ was published
+she sent him a copy, with the following dedication written in the first
+volume: _A Monsieur mon gamin d'Allred_; and in the second volume: _A
+Monsieur le vicomte Allred de Musset, hommage respectueux de son devoue
+serviteur George Sand_. Musset replied by giving his opinion of the new
+book. Among the letters which followed, there is one that begins with
+these words: "My dear George, I have something silly and ridiculous to
+tell you. I am foolishly writing, instead of telling you, as I ought to
+have done, after our walk. I am heartbroken to-night that I did not tell
+you. You will laugh at me, and you will take me for a man who simply
+talks nonsense. You will show me the door, and fancy that I am not
+speaking the truth. . . . I am in love with you. . . ."
+
+She did not laugh at him, though, and she did not show him the door.
+Things did not drag on long, evidently, as she writes to her confessor,
+Sainte-Beuve, on the 25th of August: "I have fallen in love, and very
+seriously this time, with Alfred de Musset." How long was this to
+last? She had no idea, but for the time being she declared that she was
+absolutely happy.
+
+"I have found a candour, a loyalty and an affection which delight me. It
+is the love of a young man and the friendship of a comrade." There was
+a honeymoon in the little flat looking on the Quay Malaquals. Their
+friends shared the joy of the happy couple, as we see by Musset's
+frolicsome lines:
+
+     _George est dans sa chambrette,
+     Entre deux pots de fleurs,
+     Fumiant sa cigarette,
+     Les yeux baignes de pleurs._
+
+     _Buloz assis par terre
+     Lui fait de doux serments,
+     Solange par derriere
+     Gribouille ses romans._
+
+     _Plante commme une borne_,
+     _Boucoiran tout crott_,
+     _Contemple d'un oeil morne_
+     _Musset tout debraille, etc._
+
+It is evident that, as poetry, this does not equal the _Nuits._
+
+In the autumn they went for a honeymoon trip to Fontainebleau. It was
+there that the strange scene took place which is mentioned in _Elle
+et Lui_. One evening when they were in the forest, Musset had an
+extraordinary hallucination, which he has himself described:
+
+     _Dans tin bois, sur une bruyere,
+     Au pied d'un arbre vint s'asseoir
+     Un jeune homme vetu de noir
+     Qui me ressemblail comme un frere._
+
+     _Le lui demandais mon chemin,
+     Il tenait un luth d'ue main,
+     De l'autre un bouquet d'eglantine.
+     Il me fit tin salut d'ami
+     Et, se detournant a demu,
+     Me montra du doigt la colline._
+
+He really saw this "double," dressed in black, which was to visit him
+again later on. His _Nuit de decembre_ was written from it.
+
+They now wanted to see Italy together. Musset had already written on
+Venice; he now wanted to go there. Madame de Musset objected to this,
+but George Sand promised so sincerely that she would be a mother to the
+young man that finally his own mother gave her consent. On the evening
+of December 12, 1833, Paul de Musset accompanied the two travellers to
+the mail-coach. On the boat from Lyons to Avignon they met with a big,
+intelligent-looking man. This was Beyle-Stendhal, who was then Consul at
+Civita-Vecchia. He was on his way to his post. They enjoyed his lively
+conversation, although he made fun of their illusions about Italy and
+the Italian character. He made fun, though, of everything and of every
+one, and they felt that he was only being witty and trying to appear
+unkind. At dinner he drank too much, and finished by dancing round the
+table in his great fur-lined boots. Later on he gave them some specimens
+of his obscene conversation, so that they were glad to continue their
+journey without him.
+
+On the 28th the travellers reached Florence. The aspect of this city and
+his researches in the _Chroniques florentines_ supplied the poet with
+the subject for _Lorenzaccio_. It appears that George Sand and Musset
+each treated this subject, and that a _Lorenzaccio_ by George Sand
+exists. I have not read it, but I prefer Musset's version. They reached
+Venice on January 19, 1834, and put up at the Hotel Danieli. By this
+time they were at loggerheads.
+
+The cause of their quarrel and disagreement is not really known, and the
+activity of retrospective journalists has not succeeded in finding this
+out. George Sand's letters only give details about their final quarrel.
+On arriving, George Sand was ill, and this exasperated Musset. He was
+annoyed, and declared that a woman out of sorts was very trying. There
+are good reasons for believing that he had found her very trying for
+some time. He was very elegant and she a learned "white blackbird."
+He was capricious and she a placid, steady _bourgeois_ woman, very
+hard-working and very regular in the midst of her irregularity. He used
+to call her "personified boredom, the dreamer, the silly woman, the
+nun," when he did not use terms which we cannot transcribe. The climax
+was when he said to her: "I was mistaken, George, and I beg your pardon,
+for I do not love you."
+
+Wounded and offended, she replied: "We do not love each other any
+longer, and we never really loved each other."
+
+They therefore took back their independence. This is a point to note,
+as George Sand considered this fact of the greatest importance, and she
+constantly refers to it. She was from henceforth free, as regarded her
+companion.
+
+Illness kept them now at Venice. George Sand's illness first and then
+Musset's alarming malady. He had high fever, accompanied by chest
+affection and attacks of delirium which lasted six consecutive hours,
+during which it took four men to hold him.
+
+
+George Sand was an admirable nurse. This must certainly be acknowledged.
+She sat up with him at night and she nursed him by day, and, astonishing
+woman that she was, she was also able to work and to earn enough to pay
+their common expenses. This is well known, but I am able to give another
+proof of it, in the letters which George Sand wrote from Venice to
+Buloz. These letters have been communicated to me by Madame Pailleron,
+_nee_ Buloz, and by Madame Landouzy, _veuve_ Buloz, whom I thank for
+the public and for myself. The following are a few of the essential
+passages:
+
+
+"February 4. _Read this when you are alone._
+
+"MY DEAR BULOZ,--Your reproaches reach me at a miserable moment. If you
+have received my letter, you already know that I do not deserve them.
+A fortnight ago I was well again and working. Alfred was working too,
+although he was not very well and had fits of feverishness. About five
+days ago we were both taken ill, almost at the same time. I had an
+attack of dysentery, which caused me horrible suffering. I have not yet
+recovered from it, but I am strong enough, anyhow, to nurse him. He was
+seized with a nervous and inflammatory fever, which has made such rapid
+progress that the doctor tells me he does not know what to think about
+it. We must wait for the thirteenth or fourteenth day before knowing
+whether his life is in danger. And what will this thirteenth or
+fourteenth day be? Perhaps his last one? I am in despair, overwhelmed
+with fatigue, suffering horribly, and awaiting who knows what future?
+How can I give myself up to literature or to anything in the world at
+such a time? I only know that our entire fortune, at present, consists
+of sixty francs, that we shall have to spend an enormous amount at the
+chemist's, for the nurse and doctor, and that we are at a very expensive
+hotel. We were just about to leave it and go to a private house. Alfred
+cannot be moved now, and even if everything should go well, he probably
+cannot be moved for a month. We shall have to pay one term's rent for
+nothing, and we shall return to France, please God. If my ill-luck
+continues, and if Alfred should die, I can assure you that I do not care
+what happens after to me. If God allows Alfred to recover, I do not
+know how we shall pay the expenses of his illness and of his return to
+France. The thousand francs that you are to send me will not suffice,
+and I do not know what we shall do. At any rate, do not delay sending
+that, as, by the time it arrives, it will be more than necessary. I am
+sorry about the annoyance you are having with the delay for publishing,
+but you can now judge whether it is my fault. If only Alfred had a few
+quiet days, I could soon finish my work. But he is in a frightful state
+of delirium and restlessness. I cannot leave him an instant. I have been
+nine hours writing this letter. Adieu, my friend, and pity me.
+
+"GEORGE.
+
+"Above everything, do not tell any one, not any one in the world, that
+Alfred is ill. If his mother heard (and it only needs two persons for
+telling a secret to all Paris) she would go mad. If she has to be told,
+let who will undertake to tell her, but if in a fortnight Alfred is out
+of danger, it is useless for her to grieve now. Adieu."
+
+
+"February 13, 1834.
+
+"My friend, Alfred is saved. There has been no fresh attack, and we
+have nearly reached the fourteenth day without the improvement having
+altered. After the brain affection inflammation of the lungs declared
+itself, and this rather alarmed us for two days. . . . He is extremely
+weak at present, and he wanders occasionally. He has to be nursed night
+and day. Do not imagine, therefore, that I am only making pretexts for
+the delay in my work. I have not undressed for eight nights. I sleep on
+a sofa, and have to get up at any minute. In spite of this, ever since
+I have been relieved in my mind about the danger, I have been able to
+write a few pages in the mornings while he is resting. You may be sure
+that I should like to be able to take advantage of this time to rest
+myself. Be assured, my friend, that I am not short of courage, nor yet
+of the will to work. You are not more anxious than I am that I should
+carry out my engagements. You know that a debt makes me smart like a
+wound. But you are friend enough to make allowances for my situation and
+not to leave me in difficulties. I am spending very wretched days here
+at this bedside, for the slightest sound, the slightest movement causes
+me constant terror. In this disposition of mind I shall not write any
+light works. They will be heavy, on the contrary, like my fatigue and my
+sadness.
+
+"Do not leave me without money, I beseech you, or I do not know what
+will happen to me. I spend about twenty francs a day in medicine of all
+sorts. We do not know how to keep him alive. . . ."
+
+
+These letters give the lie to some of the gossip that has been spread
+abroad with regard to the episode of the Hotel Danieli. And I too,
+thanks to these letters, shall have put an end to a legend! In the
+second volume of Wladimir Karenine's work on George Sand, on page 61, we
+have the following words--
+
+"Monsieur Plauchut tells us that, according to Buloz, Musset had been
+enticed into a gambling hell during his stay in Venice, and had lost
+about four hundred pounds there. The imprudent young man could not pay
+this debt of honour, and he never would have been able to do so. He had
+to choose between suicide or dishonour. George Sand did not hesitate a
+moment. She wrote at once to the manager of the _Revue_, asking him to
+advance the money." And this debt was on her shoulders for a long time.
+
+The facts of the case are as follows, according to a letter from George
+Sand to Buloz: "I beseech you, as a favour, to pay Alfred's debt and to
+write to him that it is all settled. You cannot imagine the impatience
+and the disturbance that this little matter cause him. He speaks to me
+of it every minute, and begs me every day to write to you about it. He
+owes these three hundred and sixty francs (L14 8_s_.) to a young man
+he knows very little and who might talk of it to people. . . . You have
+already advanced much larger sums to him. He has always paid you back,
+and you are not afraid that this would make you bankrupt. If, through
+his illness, he should not be able to work for a long time, my work
+could be used for that, so be at ease. . . . Do this, I beseech you, and
+write him a short letter to ease his mind at once. I will then read it
+to him, and this will pacify one of the torments of his poor head. Oh,
+my friend, if you only knew what this delirium is like! What sublime and
+awful things he has said, and then what convulsions and shouts! I do not
+know how he has had strength enough to pull through and how it is that I
+have not gone mad myself. Adieu, adieu, my friend."
+
+There really was a gambling debt, then, but we do not know exactly where
+it was contracted. It amounted to three hundred and sixty francs,
+which is very different from the ten thousand francs and the threat of
+suicide.
+
+And now we come to the pure folly! Musset had been attended by a young
+doctor, Pietro Pagello. He was a straightforward sort of young man,
+of rather slow intelligence, without much conversation, not speaking
+French, but very handsome. George Sand fell in love with him. One night,
+after having scribbled a letter of three pages, she put it into an
+envelope without any address and gave it to Pagello. He asked her to
+whom he was to give the letter. George Sand took the envelope back and
+wrote on it: "To stupid Pagello." We have this declaration, and among
+other things in the letter are the following lines: "You will not
+deceive me, anyhow. You will not make any idle promises and false
+vows. . . . I shall not, perhaps, find in you what I have sought for in
+others, but, at any rate, I can always believe that you possess it.
+. . . I shall be able to interpret your meditations and make your silence
+speak eloquently. . . ." This shows us clearly the kind of charm George
+Sand found in Pagello. She loved him because he was stupid.
+
+The next questions are, when did they become lovers, and how did Musset
+discover their intimacy? It is quite certain that he suspected it,
+and that he made Pagello confess his love for George Sand.(20) A most
+extraordinary scene then took place between the three of them, according
+to George Sand's own account. "Adieu, then," she wrote to Musset, later
+on, "adieu to the fine poem of our sacred friendship and of that ideal
+bond formed between the three of us, when you dragged from him the
+confession of his love for me and when he vowed to you that he would
+make me happy. Oh, that night of enthusiasm, when, in spite of us, you
+joined our hands, saying: 'You love each other and yet you love me,
+for you have saved me, body and soul." Thus, then, Musset had solemnly
+abjured his love for George Sand, he had engaged his mistress of the
+night before to a new lover, and was from henceforth to be their best
+friend. Such was the ideal bond, such the sacred friendship! This may be
+considered the romantic escapade.
+
+     (20) On one of George Sand's unpublished letters to Buloz
+     the following lines are written in the handwriting of Buloz:
+
+     "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 tears when I think of him." Later on he writes: "When I
+saw Pagello, I recognized in him the better side of my own nature,
+but pure and free from the irreparable stains which have ruined mine."
+"Always treat me like that," writes Musset again. "It makes me feel
+proud. My dear friend, the woman who talks of her new lover in this way
+to the one she has given up, but who still loves her, gives him a proof
+of the greatest esteem that a man can receive from a woman. . . ." That
+romanticism which made a drama of the situation in _L'Ecole des Femmes_,
+and another one out of that in the _Precieuses ridicules_, excels in
+taking tragically situations that belong to comedy and in turning them
+into the sublime.
+
+Meanwhile George Sand had settled down in Venice with Pagello--and with
+all the family, all the Pagello tribe, with the brother, the sister, to
+say nothing of the various rivals who came and made scenes. It was the
+vulgar, ordinary platitude of an Italian intimacy of this kind. In spite
+of everything, she continued congratulating herself on her choice.
+
+"I have my love, my stay here with me. He never suffers, for he is never
+weak or suspicious. . . . He is calm and good. . . . He loves me and is
+at peace; he is happy without my having to suffer, without my having to
+make efforts for his happiness. . . . As for me, I must suffer for some
+one. It is just this suffering which nurtures my maternal solicitude,
+etc. . . ." She finally begins to weary of her dear Pagello's stupidity.
+It occurred to her to take him with her to Paris, and that was the
+climax. There are some things which cannot be transplanted from one
+country to another. When they had once set foot in Paris, the absurdity
+of their situation appeared to them.
+
+"From the moment that Pagello landed in France," says George Sand, "he
+could not understand anything." The one thing that he was compelled to
+understand was that he was no longer wanted. He was simply pushed out.
+George Sand had a remarkable gift for bringing out the characteristics
+of the persons with whom she had any intercourse. This Pagello, thanks
+to his adventure with her, has become in the eyes of the world a
+personage as comic as one of Moliere's characters.
+
+Musset and George Sand still cared for each other. He beseeched her
+to return to him. "I am good-for-nothing," he says, "for I am simply
+steeped in my love for you. I do not know whether I am alive, whether I
+eat, drink, or breathe, but I know I am in love." George Sand was afraid
+to return to him, and Sainte-Beuve forbade her. Love proved stronger
+than all other arguments, however, and she yielded.
+
+As soon as she was with him once more, their torture commenced again,
+with all the customary complaints, reproaches and recriminations. "I was
+quite sure that all these reproaches would begin again immediately after
+the happiness we had dreamed of and promised each other. Oh, God, to
+think that we have already arrived at this!" she writes.
+
+What tortured them was that the past, which they had believed to be "a
+beautiful poem," now seemed to them a hideous nightmare. All this, we
+read, was a game that they were playing. A cruel sort of game, of which
+Musset grew more and more weary, but which to George Sand gradually
+became a necessity. We see this, as from henceforth it was she who
+implored Musset. In her diary, dated December 24, 1834, we read: "And
+what if I rushed to him when my love is too strong for me. What if I
+went and broke the bell-pull with ringing, until he opened his door to
+me. Or if I lay down across the threshold until he came out!" She cut
+off her magnificent hair and sent it to him. Such was the way in which
+this proud woman humbled herself. She was a prey to love, which seemed
+to her a holy complaint. It was a case of Venus entirely devoted to her
+prey. The question is, was this really love? "I no longer love you," she
+writes, "but I still adore you. I do not want you any more, but I cannot
+do without you." They had the courage to give each other up finally in
+March, 1835.
+
+It now remains for us to explain the singularity of this adventure,
+which, as a matter of fact, was beyond all logic, even the logic of
+passion. It is, however, readily understood, if we treat it as a case
+of acute romanticism, the finest case of romanticism, that has been
+actually lived, which the history of letters offers us.
+
+The romanticism consists first in exposing one's life to the public, in
+publishing one's most secret joys and sorrows. From the very beginning
+George Sand and Musset took the whole circle of their friends into their
+confidence. These friends were literary people. George Sand specially
+informs Sainte-Beuve that she wishes her sentimental life from
+thenceforth to be known. They were quite aware that they were on show,
+as it were, subjects of an experiment that would be discussed by "the
+gallery."
+
+Romanticism consists next in the writer putting his life into his
+books, making literature out of his emotions. The idea of putting their
+adventure into a story occurred to the two lovers before the adventure
+had come to an end. It was at Venice that George Sand wrote her first
+_Lettres d'un voyageur_, addressed to the poet--and to the subscribers
+of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Musset, to improve on this idea, decides
+to write a novel from the episode which was still unfinished. "I will
+not die," he says, "until I have written my book on you and on myself,
+more particularly on you. No, my beautiful, holy fiancee, you shall not
+return to this cold earth before it knows the woman who has walked on
+it. No, I swear this by my youth and genius." Musset's contributions to
+this literature were _Confession d'un enfant du siecle_, _Histoire d'un
+merle blanc_, _Elle et Lui_, and all that followed.
+
+In an inverse order, romanticism consists in putting literature into our
+life, in taking the latest literary fashion for our rule of action. This
+is not only a proof of want of taste; it is a most dangerous mistake.
+The romanticists, who had so many wrong ideas, had none more erroneous
+than their idea of love, and in the correspondence between George Sand
+and Musset we see the paradox in all its beauty. It consists in saying
+that love leads to virtue and that it leads there through change.
+Whether the idea came originally from _her_ or from _him_, this was
+their common faith.
+
+"You have said it a hundred times over," writes George Sand, "and it
+is all in vain that you retract; nothing will now efface that sentence:
+'Love is the only thing in the world that counts.' It may be that it
+is a divine faculty which we lose and then find again, that we must
+cultivate, or that we have to buy with cruel suffering, with painful
+experience. The suffering you have endured through loving me was perhaps
+destined, in order that you might love another woman more easily.
+Perhaps the next woman may love you less than I do, and yet she may be
+more happy and more beloved. There are such mysteries in these things,
+and God urges us along new and untrodden paths. Give in; do not attempt
+to resist. He does not desert His privileged ones. He takes them by the
+hand and places them in the midst of the sandbanks, where they are to
+learn to live, in order that they may sit down at the banquet at which
+they are to rest. . . ." Later on she writes as follows: "Do you imagine
+that one love affair, or even two, can suffice for exhausting or taking
+the freshness from a strong soul? I believed this, too, for a long
+time, but I know now that it is quite the contrary. Love is a fire that
+endeavours to rise and to purify itself. Perhaps the more we have failed
+in our endeavours to find it, the more apt we become to discover it, and
+the more we have been obliged to change, the more conservative we
+shall become. Who knows? It is perhaps the terrible, magnificent and
+courageous work of a whole lifetime. It is a crown of thorns which will
+blossom and be covered with roses when our hair begins to turn white."
+
+This was pure frenzy, and yet there were two beings ready to drink in
+all this pathos, two living beings to live out this monstrous chimera.
+Such are the ravages that a certain conception of literature may make.
+By the example we have of these two illustrious victims, we may imagine
+that there were others, and very many others, obscure and unknown
+individuals, but human beings all the same, who were equally duped.
+There are unwholesome fashions in literature, which, translated into
+life, mean ruin. The Venice adventure shows up the truth of this in
+bright daylight. This is its interest and its lesson.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE FRIEND OF MICHEL (DE BOURGES)
+
+LISZT AND COMTESSE D'AGOULT. _MAUPRAT_
+
+
+We have given the essential features of the Venice adventure. The love
+affair, into which George Sand and Musset had put so much literature,
+was to serve literature. Writers of the romantic school are given to
+making little songs with their great sorrows. When the correspondence
+between George Sand and Musset appeared, every one was surprised to
+find passages that were already well known. Such passages had already
+appeared in the printed work of the poet or of the authoress. An idea,
+a word, or an illustration used by the one was now, perhaps, to be found
+in the work of the other one.
+
+"It is I who have lived," writes George Sand, "and not an unreal being
+created by my pride and my _ennui_." We all know the use to which Musset
+put this phrase. He wrote the famous couplet of Perdican with it: "All
+men are untruthful, inconstant, false, chatterers, hypocritical, proud,
+cowardly, contemptible and sensual; all women are perfidious, artful,
+vain, inquisitive and depraved. . . . There is, though, in this world
+one thing which is holy and sublime. It is the union of these two
+beings, imperfect and frightful as they are. We are often deceived in
+our love; we are often wounded and often unhappy, but still we love, and
+when we are on the brink of the tomb we shall turn round, look back,
+and say to ourselves: 'I have often suffered, I have sometimes been
+deceived, but I have loved. It is I who have lived, and not an unreal
+being created by my pride and _ennui_.'" Endless instances of this kind
+could be given. They are simply the sign of the reciprocal influence
+exercised over each other by George Sand and Musset, an influence to be
+traced through all their work.
+
+This influence was of a different kind and of unequal degree. It was
+George Sand who first made literature of their common recollections.
+Some of these recollections were very recent ones and were impregnated
+with tears. The two lovers had only just separated when George Sand made
+the excursion described in the first _Lettre d'un voyageur_. She goes
+along the Brenta. It is the month of May, and the meadows are in flower.
+In the horizon she sees the snowy peaks of the Tyrolese Alps standing
+out. The remembrance of the long hours spent at the invalid's bedside
+comes back to her, with all the anguish of the sacred passion in which
+she thinks she sees God's anger. She then pays a visit to the Oliero
+grottoes, and once more her wounded love makes her heart ache. She
+returns through Possagno, whose beautiful women served as models for
+Canova. She then goes back to Venice, and the doctor gives her a letter
+from the man she has given up, the man she has sent away. These poetical
+descriptions, alternating with lyrical effusions, this kind of dialogue
+with two voices, one of which is that of nature and the other that of
+the heart, remind us of one of Musset's _Nuits_.
+
+The second of these _Lettres d'un voyageur_ is entirely descriptive. It
+is spring-time in Venice. The old balconies are gay with flowers; the
+nightingales stop singing to listen to the serenades. There are songs
+to be heard at every street corner, music in the wake of every gondola.
+There are sweet perfumes and love-sighs in the air. The delights of the
+Venetian nights had never been described like this. The harmony of "the
+three elements, water, sky and marble," had never been better expressed,
+and the charm of Venice had never been suggested in so subtle and,
+penetrating a manner. The second letter treats too of the gondoliers,
+and of their habits and customs.
+
+The third letter, telling us about the nobility and the women of Venice,
+completes the impression. Just as the Pyrenees had moved George Sand, so
+Italy now moved her. This was a fresh acquisition for her palette. More
+than once from henceforth Venice was to serve her for the wonderful
+scenery of her stories. This is by no means a fresh note, though, in
+George Sand's work. There is no essential difference, then, in her
+inspiration. She had always been impressionable, but her taste was
+now getting purer. Musset, the most romantic of French poets, had an
+eminently classical taste. In the _Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet_, he
+defined romanticism as an abuse of adjectives. He was of Madame de
+Lafayette's opinion, that a word taken out was worth twenty pennies, and
+a phrase taken out twenty shillings. In a copy of _Indiana_ he crossed
+out all the useless epithets. This must have made a considerable
+difference to the length of the book. George Sand was too broad-minded
+to be hurt by such criticism, and she was intelligent enough to learn a
+lesson from it.
+
+Musset's transformation was singularly deeper. When he started for
+Venice, he was the youngest and most charming of poets, fanciful and
+full of fun. "Monsieur mon gamin d'Alfred," George Sand called him at
+that time. When he returned from there, he was the saddest of poets. For
+some time he was, as it were, stunned. His very soul seemed to be bowed
+down with his grief. He was astonished at the change he felt in himself,
+and he did not by any means court any fresh inspiration.
+
+     _J'ai vu, le temps ou ma jeunesse_
+     _Sur mes levres etait sans cesse_
+     _Prete a chanter comme un oiseau;_
+     _Mais j'ai souffert un dur martyre_
+     _Et le moins que j'en pourrais dire_,
+     _Si je lessayais sur a lyre_,
+     _La briserait comme un roseau_,
+
+he writes.
+
+In the _Nuit de Mai_, the earliest of these songs of despair, we have
+the poet's symbol of the pelican giving its entrails as food to its
+starving young. The only symbols that we get in this poetry are symbols
+of sadness, and these are at times given in magnificent fulness of
+detail. We have solitude in the _Nuit de decembre_, and the labourer
+whose house has been burnt in the _Lettre a Lamartine_. The _Nuit
+d'aout_ gives proof of a wild effort to give life another trial, but in
+the _Auit d'octobre_ anger gets the better of him once more.
+
+     _Honte a toi, qui la premiere
+     M'as appris la trahison . . . !_
+
+The question has often been asked whether the poet refers here to the
+woman he loved in Venice but it matters little whether he did or not.
+He only saw her through the personage who from henceforth symbolized
+"woman" to him and the suffering which she may cause a man. And yet, as
+this suffering became less intense, softened as it was by time, he began
+to discover the benefit of it. His soul had expanded, so that he was now
+in communion with all that is great in Nature and in Art. The harmony
+of the sky, the silence of night, the murmur of flowing water, Petrarch,
+Michel Angelo, Shakespeare, all appealed to him. The day came when he
+could write:
+
+     _Un souvenir heureux est peut-etre sur terre
+     Plus vrai que le bonheur_.
+
+This is the only philosophy for a conception of life which treats love
+as everything for man. He not only pardons now, but he is grateful:
+
+     _Je ne veux rien savoir, ni si les champs fleurissent,
+     Nice quil adviendra di., simulacre humain,
+     Ni si ces vastes cieux eclaireront demain
+     Ce qu' ils ensevelissent heure, en ce lieu,
+     Je me dis seulement:  a cette
+     Un jour, je fus aime, j'aimais, elle etait belle,
+     Jenfouis ce tresor dans mon ame immortelle
+     Et je l'em porte a Dieu._
+
+This love poem, running through all he wrote from the _Nuit de Mai_
+to the _Souvenir_, is undoubtedly the most beautiful and the most
+profoundly human of anything in the French language. The charming poet
+had become a great poet. That shock had occurred within him which is
+felt by the human being to the very depths of his soul, and makes of him
+a new creature. It is in this sense that the theory of the romanticists,
+with regard to the educative virtues of suffering, is true. But it is
+not only suffering in connection with our love affairs which has this
+special privilege. After some misfortune which uproots, as it were, our
+life, after some disappointment which destroys our moral edifice, the
+world appears changed to us. The whole network of accepted ideas and
+of conventional opinions is broken asunder. We find ourselves in direct
+contact with reality, and the shock makes our true nature come to the
+front. . . . Such was the crisis through which Musset had just passed.
+The man came out of it crushed and bruised, but the poet came through it
+triumphant.
+
+It has been insisted on too much that George Sand was only the
+reflection of the men who had approached her. In the case of Musset
+it was the contrary. Musset owed her more than she owed to him. She
+transformed him by the force of her strong individuality. She, on the
+contrary, only found in Musset a child, and what she was seeking was a
+dominator.
+
+She thought she had discovered him this very year 1835.
+
+The sixth _Lettre d'un voyageur_ was addressed to Everard. This Everard
+was considered by her to be a superior man. He was so much above the
+average height that George Sand advised him to sit down when he was with
+other men, as when standing he was too much above them. She compares him
+to Atlas carrying the world, and to Hercules in a lion's skin. But among
+all her comparisons, when she is seeking to give the measure of his
+superiority, without ever really succeeding in this, it is evident
+that the comparison she prefers is that of Marius at Minturnae. He
+personifies virtue a _l'antique:_ he is the Roman.
+
+Let us now consider to whom all this flattery was addressed, and who
+this man, worthy of Plutarch's pen, was. His name was Michel, and he was
+an advocate at Bourges. He was only thirty-seven years of age, but he
+looked sixty. After Sandeau and Musset, George Sand had had enough of
+"adolescents." She was very much struck with Michel, as he looked like
+an old man. The size of his cranium was remarkable, or, as she said of
+his craniums: "It seemed as though he had two craniums, one joined to
+the other." She wrote: "The signs of the superior faculties of his mind
+were as prominent at the prow of this strong vessel as those of his
+generous instincts at the stern."(21) In order to understand this
+definition of the "fine physique" by George Sand, we must remember that
+she was very much taken up with phrenology at this time. One of her
+_Lettres d'un voyageur_ was entitled Sur _Lavater et sur une Maison
+deserte_. In a letter to Madame d'Agoult, George Sand tells that her
+gardener gave notice to leave, and, on asking him his reason, the
+simple-minded man replied: "Madame has such an ugly head that my wife,
+who is expecting, might die of fright." The head in question was a
+skull, an anatomical one with compartments all marked and numbered,
+according to the system of Gall and Spurzheim. In 1837, phrenology was
+very much in favour. In 1910, it is hypnotism, so we have no right to
+judge the infatuation of another epoch.
+
+     (21) _Histoire de ma vie_.
+
+Michel's cranium was bald. He was short, slight, he stooped, was
+short-sighted and wore glasses. It is George Sand who gives these
+details for his portrait. He was born of peasant parents, and was of
+Jacobin simplicity. He wore a thick, shapeless inverness and sabots. He
+felt the cold very much, and used to ask permission to put on a muffler
+indoors. He would then take three or four out of his pockets and put
+them on his head, one over the other. In the _Lettre d'un voyageur_
+George Sand mentions this crown on Everard's head. Such are the
+illusions of love.
+
+The first time she met Michel was at Bourges. She went with her two
+friends, Papet and Fleury, to call on him at the hotel. From seven
+o'clock until midnight he never ceased talking. It was a magnificent
+night, and he proposed a walk in the town at midnight. When they came
+back to his door he insisted on taking them home, and so they continued
+walking backwards and forwards until four in the morning. He must have
+been an inveterate chatterer to have clung to this public of three
+persons at an hour when the great buildings, with the moon throwing its
+white light over them and everything around, must have suggested the
+majesty of silence. To people who were amazed at this irrepressible
+eloquence, Michel answered ingenuously: "Talking is thinking aloud.
+By thinking aloud in this way I advance more quickly than if I thought
+quietly by myself." This was Numa Roumestan's idea. "As for me," he
+said, "when I am not talking, I am not thinking." As a matter of fact,
+Michel, like Numa, was a native of Provence. In Paris there was a
+repetition of this nocturnal and roving scene. Michel and his friends
+had come to a standstill on the Saints-Peres bridge. They caught sight
+of the Tuileries lighted up for a ball. Michel became excited, and,
+striking the innocent bridge and its parapet with his stick, he
+exclaimed: "I tell you that if you are to freshen and renew your corrupt
+society, this beautiful river will first have to be red with blood, that
+accursed palace will have to be reduced to ashes, and the huge city you
+are now looking at will have to be a bare strand where the family of the
+poor man can use the plough and build a cottage home."
+
+This was a fine phrase for a public meeting, but perhaps too fine for a
+conversation between friends on the Saints-Peres bridge.
+
+This was in 1835, at the most brilliant moment of Michel's career. It
+was when he was taking part in the trial of the accused men of April.
+After the insurrections of the preceding year at Lyons and Paris, a
+great trial had commenced before the Chamber of Peers. We are told
+that: "The Republican party was determined to make use of the
+cross-questioning of the prisoners for accusing the Government and for
+preaching Republicanism and Socialism. The idea was to invite a hundred
+and fifty noted Republicans to Paris from all parts of France. In
+their quality of defenders, they would be the orators of this great
+manifestation." Barb'es, Blanqui, Flocon, Marie, Raspail, Trelat and
+Michel of Bourges were among these Republicans. "On the 11th of May, the
+revolutionary newspapers published a manifesto in which the committee
+for the defence congratulated and encouraged the accused men. One
+hundred and ten signatures were affixed to this document, which was a
+forgery. It had been drawn up by a few of the upholders of the scheme,
+and, in order to make it appear more important, they had affixed the
+names of their colleagues without their authorization. Those who had
+done this then took fright, and attempted to get out of the dangerous
+adventure by a public avowal. In order to save the situation, two of the
+guilty party, Trelat and Michel of Bourges, took the responsibility of
+the drawing up of the manifesto and the apposition of the signatures
+upon themselves. They were sentenced by the Court of Peers, Trelat
+to four years of prison and Michel to a month."(22) This was the most
+shocking inequality, and Michel could not forgive Trelat for getting
+such a fine sentence.
+
+     (22) Thureau Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet_,
+     II.  297.
+
+What good was one month of prison? Michel's career certainly had been a
+very ordinary one. He hesitated and tacked about. In a word, he was just
+a politician. George Sand tells us that he was obliged "to accept,
+in theory, what he called the necessities of pure politics, ruse,
+charlatanism and even untruth, concessions that were not sincere,
+alliances in which he did not believe, and vain promises." We should say
+that he was a radical opportunist. To be merely an opportunist, though,
+is not enough for ensuring success. There are different ways of being an
+opportunist. Michel had been elected a Deputy, but he had no _role_ to
+play. In 1848, he could not compete with the brilliancy of Raspail, nor
+had he the prestige of Flocon. He went into the shade completely after
+the _coup d'etat_. For a long time he had really preferred business
+to politics, and a choice must be made when one is not a member of the
+Government.
+
+It is easy to see what charmed George Sand in Michel. He was a
+sectarian, and she took him for an apostle. He was brutal, and she
+thought him energetic. He had been badly brought up, but she thought him
+simply austere. He was a tyrant, but she only saw in him a master. He
+had told her that he would have her guillotined at the first possible
+opportunity. This was an incontestable proof of superiority. She was
+sincere herself, and was consequently not on her guard against vain
+boasting. He had alarmed her, and she admired him for this, and at once
+incarnated in him that stoical ideal of which she had been dreaming for
+years and had not yet been able to attribute to any one else.
+
+This is how she explained to Michel her reasons for loving him. "I love
+you," she says, "because whenever I figure to myself grandeur, wisdom,
+strength and beauty, your image rises up before me. No other man has
+ever exercised any moral influence over me. My mind, which has always
+been wild and unfettered, has never accepted any guidance. . . . You
+came, and you have taught me." Then again she says: "It is you whom
+I love, whom I have loved ever since I was born, and through all
+the phantoms in whom I thought, for a moment, that I had found you."
+According to this, it was Michel she loved through Musset. Let us hope
+that she was mistaken.
+
+A whole correspondence exists between George Sand and Michel of Bourges.
+Part of it was published not long ago in the _Revue illustree_ under
+the title of _Lettres de lemmze_. None of George Sand's letters surpass
+these epistles to Michel for fervent passion, beauty of form, and a
+kind of superb _impudeur_. Let us take, for instance, this call to
+her beloved. George Sand, after a night of work, complains of fatigue,
+hunger and cold: "Oh, my lover," she cries, "appear, and, like the earth
+on the return of the May sunshine, I should be reanimated, and would
+fling off my shroud of ice and thrill with love. The wrinkles of
+suffering would disappear from my brow, and I should seem beautiful and
+young to you, for I should leap with joy into your iron strong arms.
+Come, come, and I shall have strength, health, youth, gaiety, hope.
+. . . I will go forth to meet you like the bride of the song, 'to her
+well-beloved.'" The Well-beloved to whom this Shulamite would hasten was
+a bald-headed provincial lawyer who wore spectacles and three mufflers.
+But it appears that his "beauty, veiled and unintelligible to the
+vulgar, revealed itself, like that of Jupiter hidden under human form,
+to the women whom he loved."
+
+We must not smile at these mythological comparisons. George Sand had,
+as it were, restored for herself that condition of soul to which the
+ancient myths are due. A great current of naturalist poetry circulates
+through these pages. In Theocritus and in Rousard there are certain
+descriptive passages. There is an analogy between them and that image of
+the horse which carries George Sand along on her impetuous course.
+
+"As soon as he catches sight of me, he begins to paw the ground and rear
+impatiently. I have trained him to clear a hundred fathoms a second.
+The sky and the ground disappear when he bears me along under those long
+vaults formed by the apple-trees in blossom. . . . The least sound of my
+voice makes him bound like a ball; the smallest bird makes him shudder
+and hurry along like a child with no experience. He is scarcely five
+years old, and he is timid and restive. His black crupper shines in the
+sunshine like a raven's wing." This description has all the relief of an
+antique figure. Another time, George Sand tells how she has seen Phoebus
+throw off her robe of clouds and rush along radiant into the pure sky.
+The following day she writes: "She was eaten by the evil spirits.
+The dark sprites from Erebus, riding on sombre-looking clouds, threw
+themselves on her, and it was in vain that she struggled." We might
+compare these passages with a letter of July 10, 1836, in which she
+tells how she throws herself, all dressed as she is, into the Indre,
+and then continues her course through the sunny meadows, and with
+what voluptuousness she revels in all the joys of primitive life, and
+imagines herself living in the beautiful times of ancient Greece. There
+are days and pages when George Sand, under the afflux of physical life,
+is pagan. Her genius then is that of the greenwood divinities, who, at
+certain times of the year, were intoxicated by the odour of the meadows
+and the sap of the woods. If some day we were to have her complete
+correspondence given to us, I should not be surprised if many people
+preferred it to her letters to Musset. In the first place, it is not
+spoiled by that preoccupation which the Venice lovers had, of writing
+literature. Mingled with the accents of sincere passion, we do not find
+extraordinary conceptions of paradoxical metaphysics. It is Nature which
+speaks in these letters, and for that very reason they are none the less
+sorrowful. They, too, tell us of a veritable martyrdom. We can easily
+imagine from them that Michel was coarse, despotic, faithless and
+jealous. We know, too, that more than once George Sand came very near
+losing all patience with him, so that we can sympathize with her when
+she wrote to Madame d'Agoult in July, 1836:
+
+"I have had, my fill of great men (excuse the expression). . . . I
+prefer to see them all in Plutarch, as they would not then cause me any
+suffering on the human side. May they all be carved in marble or cast in
+bronze, but may I hear no more about them!" _Amen_.
+
+What disgusted George Sand with her Michel was his vanity and his
+craving for adulation. In July, 1837, she had come to the end of her
+patience, as she wrote to Girerd. It was one of her peculiarities to
+always take a third person into her confidence. At the time of
+Sandeau, this third person was Emile Regnault; at the time of Musset,
+Sainte-Beuve, and now it was Girerd. "I am tired out with my own
+devotion, and I have fought against my pride with all the strength of my
+love. I have had nothing but ingratitude and hardness as my recompense.
+I have felt my love dying away and my soul being crushed, but I am cured
+at last. . . ." If only she had had all this suffering for the sake of a
+great man, but this time it was only in imaginary great man.
+
+The influence, though, that he had had over her thought was real, and in
+a certain way beneficial.
+
+At the beginning she was far from sharing Michel's ideas, and for some
+of them she felt an aversion which amounted to horror. The dogma of
+absolute equality seemed an absurdity to her. The Republic, or rather
+the various republics then in gestation, appeared to her a sort of
+Utopia, and as she saw each of her friends making "his own little
+Republic" for himself, she had not much faith in the virtue of that form
+of government for uniting all French people. One point shocked her above
+all others in Michel's theories. This politician did not like artists.
+Just as the Revolution did not find chemists necessary, he considered
+that the Republic did not need writers, painters and musicians. These
+were all useless individuals, and the Republic would give them a little
+surprise by putting a labourer's spade or a shoemaker's awl into their
+hands. George Sand considered this idea not only barbarous, but silly.
+
+Time works wonders, for we have an indisputable proof that certain of
+his opinions soon became hers. This proof is the Republican catechism
+contained in her letters to her son Maurice, who was then twelve years
+of age. He was at the Lycee Henri IV, in the same class as the princes
+of Orleans. It is interesting to read what his mother says to him
+concerning the father of his young school friends. In a letter, written
+in December, 1835, she says: "It is certainly true that Louis-Philippe
+is the enemy of humanity. . . ." Nothing less than that! A little later,
+the enemy of humanity invites the young friends of his son Montpensier
+to his _chateau_ for the carnival holiday. Maurice is allowed to
+accept the invitation, as he wishes to, but he is to avoid showing
+that gratitude which destroys independence. "The entertainments that
+Montpensier offers you are favours," writes this mother of the Gracchi
+quite gravely. If he is asked about his opinions, the child is to reply
+that he is rather too young to have opinions yet, but not too young to
+know what opinions he will have when he is free to have them. "You
+can reply," says his mother, "that you are Republican by race and
+by nature." She then adds a few aphorisms. "Princes are our natural
+enemies," she says; and then again: "However good-hearted the child of
+a king may be, he is destined to be a tyrant." All this is certainly a
+great commotion to make about her little son accepting a glass of fruit
+syrup and a few cakes at the house of a schoolfellow. But George Sand
+was then under the domination of "Robespierre in person."
+
+Michel had brought George Sand over to republicanism. Without wishing
+to exaggerate the service he had rendered her by this, it appears to
+me that it certainly was one, if we look at it in one way. Rightly or
+wrongly, George Sand had seen in Michel the man who devotes himself
+entirely to a cause of general interest. She had learnt something in
+his school, and perhaps all the more thoroughly because it was in his
+school. She had learnt that love is in any case a selfish passion. She
+had learnt that another object must be given to the forces of sympathy
+of a generous heart, and that such an object may be the service of
+humanity, devotion to an idea.
+
+This was a turn in the road, and led the writer on to leave the personal
+style for the impersonal style.
+
+There was another service, too, which Michel had rendered to George
+Sand. He had pleaded for her in her petition for separation from her
+husband, and she had won her case.
+
+Ever since George Sand had taken back her independence in 1831, her
+intercourse with Dudevant had not been disagreeable. She and her husband
+exchanged cordial letters. When he came to Paris, he made no attempt to
+stay with his wife, lest he should inconvenience her. "I shall put up
+at Hippolyte's," he says in his letter to her. "I do not want to
+inconvenience you in the least, nor to be inconvenienced myself, which
+is quite natural." He certainly was a most discreet husband. When
+she started for Italy, he begs her to take advantage of so good an
+opportunity for seeing such a beautiful country. He was also a husband
+ready to give good advice. Later on, he invited Pagello to spend a
+little time at Nohant. This was certainly the climax in this strange
+story.
+
+During the months, though, that the husband and wife were together,
+again at Nohant, the scenes began once more. Dudevant's irritability was
+increased by the fact that he was always short of money, and that he was
+aware of his own deplorable shortcomings as a financial administrator.
+He had made speculations which had been disastrous. He was very
+credulous, as so many suspicious people are, and he had been duped by
+a swindler in an affair of maritime armaments. He had had all the more
+faith in this enterprise because a picture of the boat had been shown
+him on paper. He had spent ninety thousand francs of the hundred
+thousand he had had, and was now living on his wife's income. Something
+had to be decided upon. George Sand paid his debts first, and the
+husband and wife then signed an agreement to the effect that their
+respective property should be separated. Dudevant regretted having
+signed this afterwards, and it was torn up after a violent scene which
+took place before witnesses in October, 1835. The pretext of this scene
+had been an order given to Maurice. In a series of letters, which have
+never hitherto been published, George Sand relates the various incidents
+of this affair. We give some of the more important passages. The
+following letter is to her half-brother Hippolyte, who used to be
+Casimir's drinking companion.
+
+
+_"To Hippolyte Chatiron._
+
+"My friend, I am about to tell you some news which will reach you
+indirectly, and that you had better hear first from me. Instead of
+carrying out our agreement pleasantly and loyally, Casimir is acting
+with the most insane animosity towards me. Without my giving him any
+reason for such a thing, either by my conduct or my manner of treating
+him, he endeavoured to strike me. He was prevented by five persons, one
+of whom was Dutheil, and he then fetched his gun to shoot me. As you can
+imagine, he was not allowed to do this.
+
+"On account of such treatment and of his hatred, which amounts to
+madness, there is no safety for me in a house to which he always has the
+right to come. I have no guarantee, except his own will and pleasure,
+that he will keep our agreement, and I cannot remain at the mercy of a
+man who behaves so unreasonably and indelicately to me. I have therefore
+decided to ask for a legal separation, and I shall no doubt obtain this.
+Casimir made this frightful scene the evening before leaving for
+Paris. On his return here, he found the house empty, and me staying at
+Dutheil's, by permission of the President of La Chatre. He also found a
+summons awaiting him on the mantelshelf. He had to make the best of it,
+for he knew it was no use attempting to fight against the result of his
+own folly, and that, by holding out, the scandal would all fall on him.
+He made the following stipulations, promising to adhere to them. Duthell
+was our intermediary. I am to allow him a pension of 3,800 francs,
+which, with the 1,200 francs income that he now has, will make 5,000
+francs a year for him. I think this is all straightforward, as I am
+paying for the education of the two children. My daughter will remain
+under my guidance, as I understand. My son will remain at the college
+where he now is until he has finished his education. During the holidays
+he will spend a month with his father and a month with me. In this
+way, there will be no contest. Dudevant will return to Paris very
+soon, without making any opposition, and the Court will pronounce the
+separation in default."(23)
+
+     (23) Communicated by M. S. Rocheblave.
+
+
+The following amusing letter on the same subject was written by George
+Sand to Adolphe Duplomb in the _patois_ peculiar to Berry:
+
+"DEAR HYDROGEN,
+
+"You have been misinformed about what took place at La Chatre. Duthell
+never quarrelled with the Baron of Nohant-Vic. This is the true story.
+The baron took it into his head to strike me. Dutheil objected. Fleury
+and Papet also objected. The baron went to search for his gun to kill
+every one. Every one did not want to be killed, and so the baron said:
+'Well, that's enough then,' and began to drink again. That was how it
+all happened. No one quarrelled with him. But I had had enough. As I do
+not care to earn my living and then leave _my substance_ in the hands of
+the _diable_ and be bowed out of the house every year, while the village
+hussies sleep in my beds and bring their fleas into my house, I just
+said: 'I ain't going to have any more of that,' and I went and found the
+big judge of La Chatre, and I says, says I: 'That's how it is.' And
+then he says, says he: 'All right.' And so he unmarried us. And I am not
+sorry. They say that the baron will make an appeal. I ain't knowin'.
+We shall see. If he does, he'll lose everything. And that's the whole
+story."(24)
+
+     (24) Communicated by M. Charles Duplomb.
+
+The case was pleaded in March, 1836, at La Chatre, and in July at
+Bourges. The Court granted the separation, and the care of the children
+was attributed to George Sand.
+
+This was not the end of the affair, though. In September, 1837, George
+Sand was warned that Dudevant intended to get Maurice away from her. She
+sent a friend on whom she could count to take her boy to Fontainebleau,
+and then went herself to watch over him. In the mean time, Dudevant, not
+finding his son at Nohant, took Solange away with him, in spite of the
+child's tears and the resistance of the governess. George Sand gave
+notice to the police, and, on discovering that her little daughter was
+sequestered at Guillery, near Nerac, she went herself in a post-chaise
+to the sub-prefect, a charming young man, who was no other than
+Baron Haussmann. On hearing the story, he went himself with her, and,
+accompanied by the lieutenant of the constabulary and the sheriff's
+officer on horseback, laid siege to the house at Guillery in which the
+young girl was imprisoned. Dudevant brought his daughter to the door
+and handed her over to her mother, threatening at the same time to take
+Maurice from her by legal authority. The husband and wife then separated
+. . . delighted with each other, according to George Sand. They very
+rarely met after this affair. Dudevant certainly did not impress people
+very favourably. After the separation, when matters were being
+finally settled, he put in a claim for fifteen pots of jam and an iron
+frying-pan. All this seems very petty.
+
+The first use George Sand made of the liberty granted to her by the law,
+in 1836, was to start off with Maurice and Solange for Switzerland to
+join her friends Franz Liszt and the Comtesse d'Agoult. George Sand had
+made Liszt's acquaintance through Musset. Liszt gave music-lessons to
+Alfred's sister, Herminie. He was born in 1811, so that he was seven
+years younger than George Sand. He was twenty-three at the time he first
+met her, and their friendship was always platonic. They had remarkable
+affinities of nature. Liszt had first thought of becoming a priest.
+His religious fervour was gradually transformed into an ardent love
+of humanity. His early education had been neglected, and he now read
+eagerly. He once asked Monsieur Cremieux, the advocate, to teach him
+"the whole of French literature." On relating this to some one, Cremieux
+remarked: "Great confusion seems to reign in this young man's mind." He
+had been wildly excited during the movement of 1830, greatly influenced
+by the Saint-Simon ideas, and was roused to enthusiasm by Lamennals,
+who had just published the _Paroles d'un Croyant_. After reading
+Leone Leoni, he became an admirer of George Sand. Leone Leoni is a
+transposition of Manon Lescaut into the romantic style. A young girl
+named Juliette has been seduced by a young seigneur, and then discovers
+that this man is an abominable swindler. If we try to imagine all the
+infamous things of which an _apache_ would be capable, who at the same
+time is devoted to the women of the pavement, we then have Leone Leoni.
+Juliette, who is naturally honest and straightforward, has a horror of
+all the atrocities and shameful things she sees. And yet, in spite of
+all, she comes back to Leone Leoni, and cannot love any one else. Her
+love is stronger than she is, and her passion sweeps away all scruples
+and triumphs over all scruples. The difference between the novel of the
+eighteenth century, which was so true to life, and this lyrical fantasy
+of the nineteenth century is very evident. Manon and Des Grieux always
+remained united to each other, for they were of equal value. Everything
+took place in the lower depths of society, and in the mire, as it were,
+of the heart. You have only to make a good man of Des Grieux, or a
+virtuous girl of Manon, and it is all over. The transposing of Leone
+Leoni is just this, and the romanticism of it delighted Liszt.
+
+He had just given a fine example of applying romanticism to life. Marie
+d'Agoult, _nee_ de Flavigny, had decided, one fine day, to leave her
+husband and daughter for the sake of the passion that was everything to
+her. She accordingly started for Geneva, and Liszt joined her there.
+
+Between these two women a friendship sprang up, which was due rather
+to a wish to like each other than to a real attraction or real
+fellow-feeling. The Comtesse d'Agoult, with her blue eyes, her
+slender figure, and somewhat ethereal style, was a veritable Diana, an
+aristocrat and a society woman. George Sand was her exact opposite. But
+the Comtesse d'Agoult had just "sacrificed all the vanities of the world
+for the sake of an artist," so that she deserved consideration. The
+stay at Geneva was gay and animated. The _Piffoels_ (George Sand and her
+children) and the _Fellows_ (Liszt and his pupil, Hermann Cohen) enjoyed
+scandalizing the whole hotel by their Bohemian ways. They went for an
+excursion to the frozen lake. At Lausanne Liszt played the organ. On
+returning to Paris the friends did not want to separate. In October,
+1836, George Sand took up her abode on the first floor of the Hotel de
+France, in the Rue Laffitte, and Liszt and the Corntesse d'Agoult took
+a room on the floor above. The trio shared, a drawing-room between
+them, but in reality it became more the Comtesse d'Agoult's _salon_ than
+George Sand's. Lamennais, Henri Heine, Mickiewicz, Michel of Bourges
+and Charles Didier were among their visitors, and we are told that this
+_salon_, improvised in a hotel was "a reunion of the _elite_, over which
+the Comtesse d'Agoult presided with exquisite grace." She was a true
+society woman, a veritable mistress of her home, one of those who could
+transform a room in a hotel, a travelling carriage, or even a prison
+into that exquisite thing, so dear to French polite society of yore--a
+_salon_.
+
+Among the _habitues_ of Madame d'Agoult's _salon_ was Chopin. This is
+a new chapter in George Sand's life, and a little later on we shall be
+able to consider, as a whole, the importance of this intercourse with
+great artists as regards her intellectual development.
+
+Before finishing our study of this epoch in her life, we must notice how
+much George Sand's talent had developed and blossomed out. _Mauprat_ was
+published in 1837, and is undoubtedly the first of her _chefs-d'oeuvre_.
+In her uninterrupted literary production, which continued regularly in
+spite of and through all the storms of her private life, there is much
+that is strange and second-rate and much that is excellent. _Jacques_
+is an extraordinary piece of work. It was written at Venice when she was
+with Pagello. George Sand declared that she had neither put herself nor
+Musset into this book. She was nevertheless inspired by their case,
+and she merely transposed their ideal of renunciation. _Andre_ may be
+classed among the second-rate work. It is the story of a young noble who
+seduces a girl of the working-class. It is a souvenir of Berry, written
+in a home-sick mood when George Sand was at Venice. _Simon_ also belongs
+to the second-rate category. The portrait of Michel of Bourges can
+easily be traced in it. George Sand had intended doing more for Michel
+than this. She composed a revolutionary novel in three volumes, in his
+honour, entitled: _Engelwald with the high forehead_. Buloz neither
+cared for _Engelwald_ nor for his high forehead, and this novel was
+never published.
+
+According to George Sand, when she wrote _Mauprat_ her idea was
+the rehabilitation of marriage. "I had just been petitioning for a
+separation," she says. "I had, until then, been fighting against the
+abuses of marriage, and, as I had never developed my ideas sufficiently,
+I had given every one the notion that I despised the essential
+principles of it. On the contrary, marriage really appeared to me in all
+the moral beauty of those principles, and in my book I make my hero, at
+the age of eighty, proclaim his faithfulness to the only woman he has
+ever loved."
+
+"She is the only woman I have ever loved," says Bernard de Mauprat. "No
+other woman has ever attracted my attention or been embraced by me. I am
+like that. When I love, I love for ever, in the past, in the present and
+in the future."
+
+_Mauprat_, then, according to George Sand, was a novel with a purpose,
+just as _Indiana_ was, although they each had an opposite purpose.
+Fortunately it is nothing of the kind. This is one of those explanations
+arranged afterwards, peculiar sometimes to authors. The reality about
+all this is quite different.
+
+In this book George Sand had just given the reins to her imagination,
+without allowing sociological preoccupations to spoil everything. During
+her excursions in Berry, she had stopped to gaze at the ruins of an old
+feudal castle. We all know the power of suggestion contained in those
+old stones, and how wonderfully they tell stories of the past they
+have witnessed to those persons who know how to question them. The
+remembrance of the _chateau_ of Roche Mauprat came to the mind of the
+novelist. She saw it just as it stood before the Revolution, a fortress,
+and at the same time a refuge for the wild lord and his eight sons,
+who used to sally forth and ravage the country. In French narrative
+literature there is nothing to surpass the first hundred pages in which
+George Sand introduces us to the burgraves of central France. She is
+just as happy when she takes us to Paris with Bernard de Mauprat, to
+Paris of the last days of the old _regime_. She introduces us to the
+society which she had learnt to know through the traditions of her
+grandmother. It is not only Nature, but history, which she uses as a
+setting for her story. How cleverly, too, she treats the analysis which
+is the true subject of the book, that of education through love. We see
+the untamed nature of Bernard de Mauprat gradually giving way under the
+influence of the noble and delicious Edmee.
+
+There are typical peasants, too, in _Mauprat_. We have Marcasse, the
+mole-catcher, and Patience, the good-natured Patience, the rustic
+philosopher, well up in Epictetus and in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who has
+gone into the woods to live his life according to the laws of Nature and
+to find the wisdom of the primitive days of the world. We are told that,
+during the Revolution, Patience was a sort of intermediary between the
+_chateau_ and the cottage, and that he helped in bringing about the
+reign of equity in his district. It is to be hoped this was so.
+
+In any case, it is very certain that we come across this Patience again
+in Russian novels with a name ending in _ow_ or _ew_. This is a proof
+that if the personage seems somewhat impossible, he was at any rate
+original, new and entertaining.
+
+We hear people say that George Sand is no longer read. It is to be hoped
+that _Mauprat_ is still read, otherwise our modern readers miss one of
+the finest stories in the history of novels. This, then, is the point
+at which we have arrived in the evolution of George Sand's genius. There
+may still be modifications in her style, and her talent may still be
+refreshed under various influences, but with _Mauprat_ she took her
+place in the first rank of great storytellers.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+A CASE OF MATERNAL AFFECTION IN LOVE
+
+CHOPIN
+
+
+We have passed over George Sand's intercourse with Liszt and Madame
+d'Agoult very rapidly. One of Balzac's novels gives us an opportunity of
+saying a few more words about it.
+
+Balzac had been introduced to George Sand by Jules Sandeau. At the time
+of her rupture with his friend, Balzac had sided entirely with him. In
+the _Lettres a l'Etrangere_, we see the author of the _Comedie humaine_
+pouring out his indignation with the blue stocking, who was so cruel in
+her love, in terms which were not extremely elegant. Gradually, and when
+he knew more about the adventure, his anger cooled down. In March, 1838,
+he gave Madame Zulma Carraud an account of a visit to Nohant. He found
+his comrade, George Sand, in her dressing-gown, smoking a cigar by her
+fireside after dinner.
+
+"She had some pretty yellow slippers on, ornamented with fringe,
+some fancy stockings and red trousers. So much for the moral side.
+Physically, she had doubled her chin like a canoness. She had not a
+single white hair, in spite of all her fearful misfortunes; her dusky
+complexion had not changed. Her beautiful eyes were just as bright, and
+she looked just as stupid as ever when she was thinking. . . ."
+
+This is George Sand in her thirty-fifth year, as she was at the time of
+the fresh adventure we are about to relate.
+
+Balzac continues by giving us a few details about the life of the
+authoress. It was very much like his own, except that Balzac went to bed
+at six o'clock and got up at midnight, and George Sand went to bed at
+six in the morning and got up at noon. He adds the following remark,
+which shows us the state of her feelings:
+
+"She is now in a very quiet retreat, and condemns both marriage and
+love, because she has had nothing but disappointment in both herself.
+Her man was a rare one, that was really all."
+
+
+In the course of their friendly conversation, George Sand gave him the
+subject for a novel which it would be rather awkward for her to
+write. The novel was to be _Galeriens_ or _Amours forces_. These
+"galley-slaves" of love were Liszt and the Comtesse d'Agoult, who had
+been with George Sand at Chamonix, Paris and Nohant. It was very evident
+that she could not write the novel herself.
+
+Balzac accordingly wrote it, and it figures in the _Comedie humaine as
+Beatrix_. Beatrix is the Comtesse d'Agoult, the inspirer, and Liszt is
+the composer Conti.
+
+"You have no idea yet of the awful rights that a love which no longer
+exists gives to a man over a woman. The convict is always under the
+domination of the companion chained to him. I am lost, and must return
+to the convict prison," writes Balzac in this book. Then, too, there is
+no mistaking his portrait of Beatrix. The fair hair that seems to give
+light, the forehead which looks transparent, the sweet, charming face,
+the long, wonderfully shaped neck, and, above and beyond all, that air
+of a princess, in all this we can easily recognize "the fair, blue-eyed
+Peri." Not content with bringing this illustrious couple into his novel,
+Balzac introduces other contemporaries. Claude Vignon (who, although
+his special work was criticism, made a certain place for himself in
+literature) and George Sand herself appear in this book. She is Felicite
+des Touches, and her pen name is Camille Maupin. "Camille is an artist,"
+we are told; "she has genius, and she leads an exceptional life such as
+could not be judged in the same way as an ordinary existence." Some one
+asks how she writes her books, and the answer is: "Just in the same way
+as you do your woman's work, your netting or your tapestry." She is said
+to have the intelligence of an angel and even more heart than talent.
+With her fixed, set gaze, her dark complexion and her masculine ways,
+she is the exact antithesis of the fair Beatrix. She is constantly being
+compared to the latter, and is evidently preferred to her. It is very
+evident from whom Balzac gets his information, and it is also evident
+that the friendship between the two women has cooled down.
+
+The cause of the coolness between them was George Sand's infatuation
+for Chopin, whom she had known through Liszt and Madame d'Agoult. George
+Sand wrote to Liszt from Nohant, in March, 1837: "Tell Chopin that I
+hope he will come with you. Marie cannot live without him, and I adore
+him." In April she wrote to Madame d'Agoult: "Tell Chopin that I idolize
+him." We do not know whether Madame d'Agoult gave the message, but
+she certainly replied: "Chopin coughs with infinite grace. He is an
+irresolute man. The only thing about him that is permanent is his
+cough." This is certainly very feminine in its ferociousness.
+
+At the time when he came into George Sand's life, Chopin, the composer
+and virtuoso, was the favourite of Parisian _salons_, the pianist in
+vogue. He was born in 1810, so that he was then twenty-seven years
+of age. His success was due, in the first place, to his merits as
+an artist, and nowhere is an artist's success so great as in Paris.
+Chopin's delicate style was admirably suited to the dimensions and to
+the atmosphere of a _salon_.(25)
+
+     (25) As regards Chopin, I have consulted a biography by
+     Liszt, a study by M. Camille Bellaigue and the volume by M.
+     Elie Poiree in the _Collection des musiciens celebres_,
+     published by H. Laurens.
+
+He confessed to Liszt that a crowd intimidated him, that he felt
+suffocated by all the quick breathing and paralyzed by the inquisitive
+eyes turned on him. "You were intended for all this," he adds, "as, if
+you do not win over your public, you can at least overwhelm it."
+
+Chopin was made much of then in society. He was fragile and delicate,
+and had always been watched over and cared for. He had grown up in a
+peaceful, united family, in one of those simple homes in which all
+the details of everyday life become less prosaic, thanks to an innate
+distinction of sentiment and to religious habits. Prince Radziwill had
+watched over Chopin's education. He had been received when quite young
+in the most aristocratic circles, and "the most celebrated beauties had
+smiled on him as a youth." Social life, then, and feminine influence had
+thus helped to make him ultra refined. It was very evident to every one
+who met him that he was a well-bred man, and this is quickly observed,
+even with pianists. On arriving he made a good impression, he was well
+dressed, his white gloves were immaculate. He was reserved and somewhat
+languid. Every one knew that he was delicate, and there was a rumour
+of an unhappy love affair. It was said that he had been in love with a
+girl, and that her family had refused to consent to her marriage with
+him. People said he was like his own music, the dreamy, melancholy
+themes seemed to accord so well with the pale young face of the
+composer. The fascination of the languor which seemed to emanate from
+the man and from his work worked its way, in a subtle manner, into the
+hearts of his hearers. Chopin did not care to know Lelia. He did not
+like women writers, and he was rather alarmed at this one. It was Liszt
+who introduced them. In his biography of Chopin, he tells us that the
+extremely sensitive artist, who was so easily alarmed, dreaded "this
+woman above all women, as, like a priestess of Delphi, she said so many
+things that the others could not have said. He avoided her and postponed
+the introduction. Madame Sand had no idea that she was feared as a
+sylph. . . ." She made the first advances. It is easy to see what
+charmed her in him. In the first place, he appealed to her as he did to
+all women, and then, too, there was the absolute contrast of their two
+opposite natures. She was all force, of an expansive, exuberant nature.
+He was very discreet, reserved and mysterious. It seems that the Polish
+characteristic is to lend oneself, but never to give oneself away, and
+one of Chopin's friends said of him that he was "more Polish than Poland
+itself." Such a contrast may prove a strong attraction, and then, too,
+George Sand was very sensitive to the charm of music. But what she saw
+above all in Chopin was the typical artist, just as she understood the
+artist, a dreamer, lost in the clouds, incapable of any activity that
+was practical, a "lover of the impossible." And then, too, he was ill.
+When Musset left Venice, after all the atrocious nights she had spent at
+his bedside, she wrote: "Whom shall I have now to look after and tend?"
+In Chopin she found some one to tend.
+
+About this time, she was anxious about the health of her son Maurice,
+and she thought she would take her family to Majorca. This was a
+lamentable excursion, but it seemed satisfactory at first. They
+travelled by way of Lyons, Avignon, Vaucluse and Nimes. At Perpignan,
+Chopin arrived, "as fresh as a rose." "Our journey," wrote George Sand,
+"seems to be under the most favourable conditions." They then went on
+to Barcelona and to Palma. In November, 1838, George Sand wrote a most
+enthusiastic letter: "It is poetry, solitude, all that is most
+artistic and _chique_ on earth. And what skies, what a country; we are
+delighted."(26) The disenchantment was soon to begin, though. The first
+difficulty was to find lodgings, and the second to get furniture. There
+was no wood to burn and there was no linen to be had. It took two months
+to have a pair of tongs made, and it cost twenty-eight pounds at the
+customs for a piano to enter the country. With great difficulty, the
+forlorn travellers found a country-house belonging to a man named Gomez,
+which they were able to rent. It was called the "Windy House." The wind
+did not inconvenience them like the rain, which now commenced. Chopin
+could not endure the heat and the odour of the fires. His disease
+increased, and this was the origin of the great tribulations that were
+to follow.
+
+     Buloz:
+
+     _Monday 13th._
+
+     MY DEAR CHRISTINE,
+
+     "I have only been at Palma four days.  My journey has been
+     very satisfactory, but rather long and difficult until we
+     were out of France.  I took up my pen (as people say) twenty
+     times over to write the last five or six pages for which
+     _Spiridion_ has been waiting for six months.  It is not the
+     easiest thing in the world, I can assure you, to give the
+     conclusion of one's own religious belief, and when
+     travelling it is impossible.  At twenty different places I
+     have resolved to think it solemnly over and to write down my
+     conclusion. But these stoppages were the most tiring part of
+     our journey. There were visits, dinners, walks, curiosities,
+     ruins, the Vaucluse fountain, Reboul and the Nimes arena,
+     the Barcelona cathedrals, dinners on board the war-ships,
+     the Italian theatres of Spain (and what theatres and what
+     Italians!), guitars and Heaven knows what beside.  There was
+     the moonlight on the sea and above all Valma and Mallorca,
+     the most delightful place in the world, and all this kept me
+     terribly far away from philosophy and theology. Fortunately
+     I have found some superb convents here all in ruins, with
+     palm-trees, aloes and the cactus in the midst of broken
+     mosaics and crumbling cloisters, and this takes me back to
+     _Spiridion_. For the last three days I have had a rage for
+     work, which I cannot satisfy yet, as we have neither fire
+     nor lodging.  There is not an inn in Palma, no house to let
+     and no furniture to be bought. On arriving here people first
+     have to buy some ground, then build, and afterwards send for
+     furniture.  After this, permission to live somewhere has to
+     be obtained from Government, and after five or six years one
+     can think about opening one's trunk and changing one's
+     chemise, whilst waiting for permission from the Customs to
+     have some shoes and handkerchiefs passed.  For the last four
+     days then we have spent our time going from door to door, as
+     we do not want to sleep in the open air.  We hope now to be
+     settled in about three days, as a miracle has taken place.
+     For the first time in the memory of man, there is a
+     furnished house to let in Mallorca, a charming country-house
+     in a delightful desert. . . ."
+
+At that time Spain was the very last country in which to travel with a
+consumptive patient. In a very fine lecture, the subject of which was
+_The Fight with Tuberculosis_,(27) Dr. Landouzy proves to us that ever
+since the sixteenth century, in the districts of the Mediterranean,
+in Spain, in the Balearic Isles and throughout the kingdom of Naples,
+tuberculosis was held to be contagious, whilst the rest of Europe was
+ignorant of this contagion. Extremely severe rules had been laid down
+with regard to the measures to be taken for avoiding the spread of
+this disease. A consumptive patient was considered as a kind of
+plague-stricken individual. Chateaubriand had experienced the
+inconveniences of this scare during his stay in Rome with Madame de
+Beaumont, who died there of consumption, at the beginning of the winter
+of 1803. George Sand, in her turn, was to have a similar experience.
+When Chopin was convicted of consumption, "which," as she writes, "was
+equivalent to the plague, according to the Spanish doctors, with their
+foregone conclusions about contagion," their landlord simply turned
+them out of his house. They took refuge in the Chartreuse monastery of
+Valdemosa, where they lived in a cell. The site was very beautiful. By a
+wooded slope a terrace could be reached, from which there was a view of
+the sea on two sides.
+
+     (27) L. Landouzy of the Academy of Medecine, _La Lutte
+     contre la tuberculose_, published by L. Maretheux.
+
+"We are planted between heaven and earth," wrote George Sand. "The
+clouds cross our garden at their own will and pleasure, and the eagles
+clamour over our heads."
+
+A cell in this monastery was composed of three rooms: the one in the
+middle was intended for reading, prayer and meditation, the other
+two were the bedroom and the workshop. All three rooms looked on to a
+garden. Reading, rest and manual labour made up the life of these men.
+They lived in a limited space certainly, but the view stretched out
+infinitely, and prayer went up direct to God. Among the ruined buildings
+of the enormous monastery there was a cloister still standing, through
+which the wind howled desperately. It was like the scenery in the nuns'
+act in _Robert le Diable_. All this made the old monastery the most
+romantic place in the world.(28)
+
+     (28) George Sand to Madame Buloz.  Postscript to the letter
+     already quoted:
+
+     "I am leaving for the country where I have a furnished house
+     with a garden, magnificently situated for 50 francs a month.
+     I have also taken a cell, that is three rooms and a garden
+     for 35 francs a year in the Chartreuse of Valdemosa, a
+     magnificent, immense monastery quite lonely in the midst of
+     mountains. Our garden is full of oranges and lemons.  The
+     trees break under them.  We have hedges of cactus twenty to
+     thirty feet high, the sea is about a mile and a half away.
+     We have a donkey to take us to the town, roads inaccessible
+     to visitors, immense cloisters and the most beautiful
+     architecture, a charming church, a cemetery with a palm-tree
+     and a stone cross like the one in the third act of _Robert
+     le Diable_.  Then, too, there are beds of shrubs cut in
+     form.  All this we have to ourselves with an old woman to
+     wait on us, and the sacristan who is warder, steward,
+     majordomo and Jack-of-all-trades. I hope we shall have
+     ghosts.  The door of my cell leads into an enormous
+     cloister, and when the wind slams the door it is like a
+     cannon going off through all the monastery. I am delighted
+     with everything, and fancy I shall be more often in the cell
+     than in the country-house, which is about six miles away.
+     You see that I have plenty of poetry and solitude, so that
+     if I do not work I shall be a stupid thing."
+
+The only drawback was that it was most difficult to live there. There
+was no way of getting warm. The stove was a kind of iron furnace which
+gave out a terrible odour, and did not prevent the rooms from being so
+damp that clothes mildewed while they were being worn. There was no way
+of getting proper food either. They had to eat the most indigestible
+things. There were five sorts of meat certainly, but these were pig,
+pork, bacon, ham and pickled pork. This was all cooked in dripping,
+pork-dripping, of course, or in rancid oil. Still more than this, the
+natives refused, not only to serve the unfortunate travellers, but
+to sell them the actual necessaries of life. The fact was, they had
+scandalized the Majorcan people. All Majorca was indignant because
+Solange, who at that time was nine years old, roamed about the mountains
+_disguised as a man_. Added to this, when the horn sounded which called
+people to their devotions in the churches, these strange inhabitants
+of the old Valdemosa monastery never took any more notice than pagans.
+People kept clear of them. Chopin suffered with the cold, the cooking
+made him sick, and he used to have fits of terror in the cloisters. They
+had to leave hastily. The only steamboat from the island was used to
+transport the pigs which are the pride and wealth of Majorca. People
+were only taken as an extra. It was, therefore, in the company of these
+squealing, ill-smelling creatures that the invalid crossed the water.
+When he arrived at Barcelona, he looked like a spectre and was spitting
+blood. George Sand was quite right in saying that this journey was an
+"awful fiasco."
+
+Art and literature did not gain much either by this expedition. George
+Sand finished her novel entitled _Spiridion_ at Valdemosa. She had
+commenced it before starting for Spain. In a volume on _Un hiver a
+Majorque_ she gave some fine descriptions, and also a harsh accusation
+of the monks, whom she held responsible for all the mishaps of the
+Sand caravan. She considered that the Majorcans had been brutalized and
+fanaticized, thanks to their influence. As to Chopin, he was scarcely in
+a state to derive any benefit from such a journey, and he certainly did
+not get any. He did not thoroughly appreciate the beauties of nature,
+particularly of Majorcan nature. In a letter to one of his friends he
+gives the following description of their habitation:--
+
+"Between rocks and sea, in a great deserted monastery, in a cell, the
+doors of which are bigger than the carriage entrances to the houses in
+Paris, you can imagine me, without white gloves, and no curl in my hair,
+as pale as usual. My cell is the shape of a large-sized bier. . . ."
+
+This certainly does not sound very enthusiastic. The question is whether
+he composed anything at all at Valdemosa. Liszt presents him to
+us improvising his Prelude in B flat minor under the most dramatic
+circumstances. We are told that one day, when George Sand and her
+children had started on an excursion, they were surprised by a
+thunderstorm. Chopin had stayed at home in the monastery, and, terrified
+at the danger he foresaw for them, he fainted. Before they reached home
+he had improvised his _Prelude_, in which he has put all his terror and
+the nervousness due to his disease. It appears, though, that all this is
+a legend, and that there is not a single echo of the stay at Valdemosa
+in Chopin's work.
+
+The deplorable journey to Majorca dates from November, 1838 to March,
+1839. The intimacy between George Sand and Chopin continued eight years
+more.
+
+In the summer Chopin stayed it Nohant. Eugene Delacroix, who was paying
+a visit there too, describes his presence as follows: "At times, through
+the window opening on to the garden, we get wafts of Chopin's music, as
+he too is at work. It is mingled with the songs of the nightingales and
+with the perfume of the rose trees."
+
+Chopin did not care much for Nohant. In the first place, he only liked
+the country for about a fortnight at a time, which is very much like
+not caring for it at all. Then what made him detest the country were the
+inhabitants. Hippolyte Chatiron was terrible after he had been drinking.
+He was extremely effusive and cordial.
+
+In the winter they first lived in the Rue Pigalle. George Sand used to
+receive Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Edgar Quinet, Etienne Arago, and
+many other men. Chopin, who was not very intellectual, felt ill at
+ease amongst all these literary men, these reformers, arguers and
+speechifiers. In 1842, they emigrated to the Square d'Orleans. There
+was a sort of little colony established there, consisting of Alexandre
+Dumas, Dantan the caricaturist, the Viardots, Zimmermann, and the wife
+of the Spanish consul, Madame Marliani, who had attracted them all
+there. They took their meals together. It was a regular phalinstery, and
+Chopin had very elegant tastes!
+
+We must give George Sand credit for looking after him with admirable
+devotion. She certainly went on nursing her "invalid," or her "dear
+skeleton," as she called him, but her infatuation had been over for a
+long time. The absolute contrast of two natures may be attractive at
+first, but the attraction does not last, and, when the first enthusiasm
+is over, the logical consequence is that they become disunited. This was
+what Liszt said in rather an odd but energetic way. He points out all
+that there was "intolerably incompatible, diametrically opposite and
+secretly antipathetic between two natures which seemed to have been
+mutually drawn to each other by a sudden and superficial attraction,
+for the sake of repulsing each other later on with all the force of
+inexpressible sorrow and boredom." Illness had embittered Chopin's
+character. George Sand used to say that "when he was angry he was
+terrifying." He was very intelligent, too, and delighted in quizzing
+people for whom he did not care. Solange and Maurice were now older, and
+this made the situation somewhat delicate. Chopin, too, had a mania
+for meddling with family matters. He quarrelled one day with Maurice.
+Another day George Sand was annoyed with her son-in-law Clesinger and
+with her daughter Solange, and Chopin took their side. This was the
+cause of their quarrel; it was the last drop that made the cup of
+bitterness overflow.
+
+The following is a fragment of a letter which George Sand sent to
+Grzymala, in 1847: "For seven years I have lived with him as a virgin.
+If any woman on earth could inspire him with absolute confidence, I am
+certainly that woman, but he has never understood. I know, too, that
+many people accuse me of having worn him out with my violent sensuality,
+and others accuse me of having driven him to despair by my freaks.
+I believe you know how much truth there is in all this. He himself
+complains to me that I am killing him by the privations I insist upon,
+and I feel certain that I should kill him by acting otherwise."(29)
+
+     (29) Communicated by M. Rocheblave.
+
+It has been said that when Chopin was at Nohant he had a village girl
+there as his mistress. We do not care to discuss the truth of this
+statement.
+
+It is interesting to endeavour to characterize the nature of this
+episode in George Sand's sentimental life. She helps us herself in this.
+As a romantic writer she neglected nothing which she could turn into
+literature. She therefore made an analysis of her own case, worked out
+with the utmost care, and published it in one of her books which is
+little read now. The year of the rupture was 1847, and before the
+rupture had really occurred, George Sand brought out a novel entitled
+_Lucrezia Floriani_. In this book she traces the portrait of Chopin
+as Prince Karol. She denied, of course, that it was a portrait, but
+contemporaries were not to be deceived, and Liszt gives several passages
+from _Lucrezia Floriani_ in his biography of the musician. The decisive
+proof was that Chopin recognized himself, and that he was greatly
+annoyed.
+
+As a matter of fact, there was nothing disagreeable about this portrait.
+The following fragments are taken from it: "Gentle, sensitive, exquisite
+in all things, at the age of fifteen he had all the charms of youth,
+together with the gravity of a riper age. He remained delicate in body
+ind mind. The lack of muscular development caused him to preserve his
+fascinating beauty. . . . He was something like one of those ideal
+creatures which mediaeval poetry used for the ornamentation of Christian
+temples. Nothing could have been purer and at the same time more
+enthusiastic than his ideas. . . . He was always lost in his dreams,
+and had no sense of reality. . . ." His exquisite politeness was then
+described, and the ultra acuteness and nervosity which resulted in that
+power of divination which he possessed. For a portrait to be living,
+it must have some faults as well as qualities. His delineator does
+not forget to mention the attitude of mystery in which the Prince took
+refuge whenever his feelings were hurt. She speaks also of his intense
+susceptibility. "His wit was very brilliant," she says; "it consisted of
+a kind of subtle mocking shrewdness, not really playful, but a sort of
+delicate, bantering gaiety." It may have been to the glory of Prince
+Karol to resemble Chopin, but it was also quite creditable to Chopin
+to have been the model from which this distinguished neurasthenic
+individual was taken.
+
+Prince Karol meets a certain Lucrezia Floriani, a rich actress and
+courtesan. She is six years older than he is, somewhat past her prime,
+and now leading a quiet life. She has done with love and love affairs,
+or, at least, she thinks so. "The fifteen years of passion and torture,
+which she had gone through, seemed to her now so cruel that she was
+hoping to have them counted double by the supreme Dispenser of our
+trials." It was, of course, natural that she should acknowledge God's
+share in the matter. We are told that "implacable destiny was not
+satisfied," so that when Karol makes his first declaration, Lucrezia
+yields to him, but at the same time she puts a suitable colouring on
+her fall. There are many ways of loving, and it is surely noble and
+disinterested in a woman to love a man as his mother. "I shall love
+him," she says, kissing the young Prince's pale face ardently, "but
+it will be as his mother loved him, just as fervently and just as
+faithfully. This maternal affection, etc. . . ." Lucrezia Floriani had
+a way of introducing the maternal instinct everywhere. She undertook to
+encircle her children and Prince Karol with the same affection, and her
+notions of therapeutics were certainly somewhat strange and venturesome,
+for she fetched her children to the Prince's bedside. "Karol breathed
+more freely," we are told, "when the children were there. Their pure
+breath mingling with their mother's made the air milder and more gentle
+for his feverish lungs." This we shall not attempt to dispute. It is
+the study of the situation, though, that forms the subject of _Lucrezia
+Floriani_. George Sand gives evidence of wonderful clear-sightedness and
+penetration in the art of knowing herself.
+
+She gives us warning that it is "a sad story and sorrowful truth"
+that she is telling us. She has herself the better _role_ of the two
+naturally. It could not have been on that, account that Chopin' was
+annoyed. He was a Pole, and therefore doubly chivalrous, so that such an
+objection would have been unworthy of a lover. What concerns us is that
+George Sand gives, with great nicety, the exact causes of the rupture.
+In the first place, Karol was jealous of Lucrezia's stormy past; then
+his refined nature shrank from certain of her comrades of a rougher
+kind. The invalid was irritated by her robust health, and by the
+presence and, we might almost say, the rivalry of the children. Prince
+Karol finds them nearly always in his way, and he finally takes a
+dislike to them. There comes a moment when Lucrezia sees herself obliged
+to choose between the two kinds of maternity, the natural kind and the
+maternity according to the convention of lovers.
+
+The special kind of sentiment, then, between George Sand and Chopin,
+Just as between Lucrezia and Prince Karol, was just this: love with
+maternal affection. This is extremely difficult to define, as indeed
+is everything which is extremely complex. George Sand declares that her
+reason for not refusing intimacy with Chopin was that she considered
+this in the light of a duty and as a safeguard. "One duty more," she
+writes, "in a life already so full, a life in which I was overwhelmed
+with fatigue, seemed to me one chance more of arriving at that austerity
+towards which I felt myself being drawn with a kind of religious
+enthusiasm."(30)
+
+     (30) _Histoire de via vie._
+
+We can only imagine that she was deceiving herself. To accept a lover
+for the sake of giving up lovers altogether seems a somewhat heroic
+means to an end, but also somewhat deceptive. It is certainly true that
+there was something more in this love than the attraction she felt for
+Musset and for Michel. In the various forms and degrees of our feelings,
+there is nothing gained by attempting to establish decided divisions
+and absolute demarcations for the sake of classifying them all. Among
+sentiments which are akin, but which our language distinguishes when
+defining them, there may be some mixture or some confusion with regard
+to their origin. Alfred de Vigny gives us in _Samson_, as the origin of
+love, even in man, the remembrance of his mother's caresses:
+
+_Il revera toujours a la chaleur du sein._
+
+It seems, therefore, that we cannot apply the same reasoning, with
+regard to love, when referring to the love of a man or of a woman. With
+the man there is more pride of possession, and with the woman there
+is more tenderness, more pity, more charity. All this leads us to
+the conclusion that maternal affection in love is not an unnatural
+sentiment, as has so often been said, or rather a perversion of
+sentiment. It is rather a sentiment in which too much instinct and
+heredity are mingled in a confused way. The object of the education of
+feeling is to arrive at discerning and eliminating the elements which
+interfere with the integrity of it. Rousseau called Madame de Warens
+his mother, but he was a man who was lacking in good taste. George Sand
+frequently puts into her novels this conception of love which we see her
+put into practice in life. It is impossible when analyzing it closely
+not to find something confused and disturbing in it which somewhat
+offends us.
+
+It now remains for us to study what influence George Sand's friendship
+with some of the greatest artists of her times had on her works. Beside
+Liszt and Chopin, she knew Delacroix, Madame Dorval, Pauline Viardot,
+Nourrit and Lablache. Through them she went into artistic circles.
+Some of her novels are stories of the life of artists. _Les Maitres
+Mosaistes_ treats of the rivalry between two studios. _La derniere
+Aldini_ is the story of a handsome gondolier who, as a tenor, turned the
+heads of patrician women. The first part of _Consuelo_ takes us back to
+the singing schools and theatres of Venice in the eighteenth century,
+and introduces us to individuals taken from life and cleverly drawn.
+We have Comte Zustiniani, the dilettante, a wealthy patron of the fine
+arts; Porpora, the old master, who looks upon his art as something
+sacred; Corilla, the prima donna, annoyed at seeing a new star appear;
+Anzoleto, the tenor, who is jealous because he gets less applause than
+his friend; and above and beyond all the others Consuelo, good kind
+Consuelo, the sympathetic singer.
+
+The theatres of Venice seem to be very much like those of Paris and
+of other places. We have the following sketch of the vanity of the
+comedian. "Can a man be jealous of a woman's advantages? Can a lover
+dislike his sweetheart to have success? A man can certainly be jealous
+of a woman's advantages when that man is a vain artist, and a lover
+may hate his sweetheart to have any success if they both belong to the
+theatre. A comedian is not a man, Consuelo, but a woman. He lives on his
+sickly vanity; he only thinks of satisfying that vanity, and he works
+for the sake of intoxicating himself with vanity. A woman's beauty is
+apt to take attention from him and a woman's talent may cause his talent
+to be thrown in the background. A woman is his rival, or rather he is
+the rival of a woman. He has all the little meannesses, the caprices,
+the exigences and the weak points of a coquette." Such is the note of
+this picture of things and people in the theatrical world. How can we
+doubt its veracity!
+
+At any rate, the general idea that George Sand had of the artist was
+exactly the idea adopted by romanticism. We all know what a being
+set apart and free from all social and moral laws, what a "monster"
+romanticism made of the artist. It is one of its dogmas that the
+necessities of art are incompatible with the conditions of a regular
+life. An artist, for instance, cannot be _bourgeois_, as he is the exact
+opposite. We have Kean's speech in Dumas' drama, entitled _Kean, or
+Disorder and Genius._
+
+"An actor," he says, "must know all the passions, so that he may express
+them as he should. I study them in myself." And then he adds: "That is
+what you call, orderly! And what is to become of genius while I am being
+orderly?"
+
+All this is absurd. The artist is not the man who has felt the most, but
+the man best gifted for imagining the various states of mind and feeling
+and for expressing them. We know, too, that an irregular life is neither
+the origin nor the stamp of extraordinary intellectual worth. All the
+cripples of Bohemian life prove to us that genius is not the outcome
+of that kind of life, but that, on the contrary, such life is apt to
+paralyze talent. It is very convenient, though, for the artist and for
+every other variety of "superior beings" to make themselves believe that
+ordinary morals are not for them. The best argument we can have against
+this theory is the case of George Sand. The artist, in her case, was
+eminently a very regular and hard-working _bourgeois_ woman.
+
+
+The art in which George Sand gave evidence of the surest taste was
+music. That is worthy of notice. In one of her _Lettres d'un voyageur_,
+she celebrates Liszt attacking the _Dies irae_ on the Fribourg organ.
+She devotes another letter to the praise of Meyer-beer. She has analyzed
+the different forms of musical emotion in several of her books. One of
+the ideas dear to romanticism was that of the union and fusion of all
+the arts. The writer can, and in a certain way he ought, to produce
+with words the same effects that the painter does with colours and the
+sculptor with lines. We all know how much literature romantic painters
+and sculptors have put into their art. The romantic writers were less
+inclined to accord the same welcome to music as to the plastic arts.
+Theophile Gautier is said to have exclaimed that music was "the most
+disagreeable and the dearest of all the arts." Neither Lamartine, Hugo,
+nor any other of the great writers of that period was influenced by
+music. Musset was the first one to be impassioned by it, and this may
+have been as much through his dandyism as from conviction.
+
+     _Fille de la douleur, Harmonie, Harmonie,
+     Langue que fiour l'amour invents le ginie,
+     Qui nous viens d'Italie, et qui lui vins des cieux,
+     Douce langue du coeur, la seule ou la pensee,
+     Cette vierge craintive et d'une ombre ofensie,
+     Passe en gardant son voile et sans craindre les eux,
+     Qui sait ce qu'un enfant peut entendre et peut dire
+     Dans tes soupirs divins nes de l'air qu'il respire,
+     Tristes comme son coeur et doux comme sa voix?_
+
+George Sand, who agreed with Musset, claimed for "the most beautiful
+of all the arts," the honour of being able to paint "all the shades
+of sentiment and all the phases of passion." "Music," she says, "can
+express everything. For describing scenes of nature it has ideal colours
+and lines, neither exact nor yet too minute, but which are all the more
+vaguely and delightfully poetical."(31)
+
+     (31) Eleventh _Lettre d'un voyageur_:  To Giacomo Meyerbeer.
+
+As examples of music in literature we have George Sand's phrase, more
+lyrical and musical than picturesque. We have, too, the gentle, soothing
+strophes of Sully Prudhomme and the vague melody of the Verlaine songs:
+"_De la musique avant toute chose_." It would be absurd to exaggerate
+the influence exercised by George Sand, and to attribute to her an
+importance which does not belong to her, over poetical evolution. It is
+only fair to say, though, that music, which was looked upon suspiciously
+for so long a time by classical writers of sane and sure taste, has
+completely invaded our present society, so that we are becoming more
+and more imbued with it. George Sand's predilection for modern art is
+another feature which makes her one of us, showing that her tendencies
+were very marked for things of the present day.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE HUMANITARIAN DREAM
+
+PIERRE LEROUX--SOCIALISTIC NOVELS
+
+
+Hitherto we have seen George Sand put into her work her sufferings,
+her protests as a woman, and her dreams as an artist. But the
+nineteenth-century writer did not confine his ambitions to this modest
+task. He belonged to a corporation which counted among its members
+Voltaire and Rousseau. The eighteenth-century philosophers had changed
+the object of literature. Instead of an instrument of analysis, they
+had made of it a weapon for combat, an incomparable weapon for attacking
+institutions and for overthrowing governments. The fact is, that from
+the time of the Restoration we shall scarcely meet with a single writer,
+from the philosopher to the vaudevillist, and from the professor to the
+song-maker, who did not wish to act as a torch on the path of humanity.
+Poets make revolutions, and show Plato how wrong he was in driving them
+away from his Republic. Sophocles was appointed a general at Athens for
+having written a good tragedy, and so novelists, dramatists, critics and
+makers of puns devoted themselves to making laws. George Sand was too
+much a woman of her times to keep aloof from such a movement. We shall
+now have to study her in her socialistic _role_.
+
+We can easily imagine on what side her sympathies were. She had always
+been battling with institutions, and it seemed to her that institutions
+were undoubtedly in the wrong. She had proved that there was a great
+deal of suffering in the world, and as human nature is good at bottom,
+she decided that society was all wrong. She was a novelist, and she
+therefore considered that the most satisfactory solutions are those in
+which imagination and feeling play a great part. She also considered
+that the best politics are those which are the most like a novel. We
+must now follow her, step by step, along the various roads leading to
+Utopia. The truth is, that in that great manufactory of systems and that
+storehouse of panaceas which the France of Louis-Philippe had become,
+the only difficulty was to choose between them all.
+
+The first, in date, of the new gospels was that of the Saint-Simonians.
+When George Sand arrived in Paris, Saint-Simonism was one of the
+curiosities offered to astonished provincials. It was a parody of
+religion, but it was organized in a church with a Father in two persons,
+Bazard and Enfantin. The service took place in a _bouis-bouis_. The
+costume worn consisted of white trousers, a red waistcoat and a blue
+tunic. On the days when the Father came down from the heights of
+Menilmontant with his children, there was great diversion for the people
+in the street. An important thing was lacking in the organization of the
+Saint-Simonians. In order to complete the "sacerdotal couple," a woman
+was needed to take her place next the Father. A Mother was asked for
+over and over again. It was said that she would soon appear, but she was
+never forthcoming. Saint-Simon had tried to tempt Madame de Stael.
+
+"I am an extraordinary man," he said to her, "and you are just as
+extraordinary as a woman. You and I together would have a still more
+extraordinary child." Madame de Stael evidently did not care to take
+part in the manufacture of this prodigy. When George Sand's first novels
+appeared, the Saint-Simonians were full of hope. This was the woman they
+had been waiting for, the free woman, who having meditated on the lot of
+her sisters would formulate the Declaration of the rights and duties
+of woman. Adolphe Gueroult was sent to her. He was the editor of the
+_Opinion nationale_. George Sand had a great fund of common sense,
+though, and once more the little society awaited the Mother in vain. It
+was finally decided that she should be sought for in the East. A mission
+was organized, and messengers were arrayed in white, as a sign of the
+vow of chastity, with a pilgrim's staff in their hand. They begged as
+they went along, and slept sometimes outdoors, but more often at the
+police-station. George Sand was not tempted by this kind of maternity,
+but she kept in touch with the Saint-Simonians. She was present at
+one of their meetings at Menilmontant. Her published _Correspondance_
+contains a letter addressed by her to the Saint-Simonian family in
+Paris. As a matter of fact, she had received from it, on the 1st of
+January, 1836, a large collection of presents. There were in all no less
+than fifty-nine articles, among which were the following: a dress-box, a
+pair of boots, a thermometer, a carbine-carrier, a pair of trousers and
+a corset.
+
+Saint-Simonism was universally jeered at, but it is quite a mistake to
+think that ridicule is detrimental in France. On the contrary, it is an
+excellent means of getting anything known and of spreading the knowledge
+of it abroad; it is in reality a force. Saint-Simonism is at the root
+of many of the humanitarian doctrines which were to spring up from its
+ashes. One of its essential doctrines was the diffusion of the soul
+throughout all humanity, and another that of being born anew. Enfantin
+said: "I can feel St. Paul within me. He lives within me." Still
+another of its doctrines was that of the rehabilitation of the flesh.
+Saint-Simonism proclaimed the equality of man and woman, that of
+industry and art and science, and the necessity of a fresh repartition
+of wealth and of a modification of the laws concerning property. It also
+advocated increasing the attributions of the State considerably. It was,
+in fact, the first of the doctrines offering to the lower classes,
+by way of helping them to bear their wretched misery, the ideal of
+happiness here below, lending a false semblance of religion to the
+desire for material well-being. George Sand had one vulnerable point,
+and that was her generosity. By making her believe that she was working
+for the outcasts of humanity, she could be led anywhere, and this was
+what happened.
+
+Among other great minds affected by the influence of Saint-Simonism, it
+is scarcely surprising to find Lamennais. When George Sand first knew
+him, he was fifty-three years of age. He had broken with Rome, and
+was the apocalyptic author of _Paroles d'un croyant_. He put into his
+revolutionary faith all the fervour of his loving soul, a soul that
+had been created for apostleship, and to which the qualification of "a
+disaffected cathedral" certainly applied.
+
+After the famous trial, Liszt took him to call on George Sand in her
+attic. This was in 1835. She gives us the following portrait of him:
+"Monsieur de Lamennais is short, thin, and looks ill. He seems to have
+only the feeblest breath of life in his body, but how his face beams.
+His nose is too prominent for his small figure and for his narrow
+face. If it were not for this nose out of all proportion, he would be
+handsome. He was very easily entertained. A mere nothing made him laugh,
+and how heartily he laughed."(32) It was the gaiety of the seminarist,
+for Monsieur Feli always remained the _Abbe_ de Lamennais. George Sand
+had a passionate admiration for him. She took his side against any one
+who attacked him in her third _Lettre d'un voyageur_, in her _Lettre a
+Lerminier_, and in her article on _Amshaspands et Darvands_. This is
+the title of a book by Lamennais. The extraordinary names refer to the
+spirits of good and evil in the mythology of Zoroaster. George Sand
+proposed to pronounce them _Chenapans et Pedants_. Although she had
+a horror of journalism, she agreed to write in Lamennais' paper, _Le
+Monde._
+
+     (32) _Histoire de ma vie._
+
+"He is so good and I like him so much," she writes, "that I would give
+him as much of my blood and of my ink as he wants."(33) She did not have
+to give him any of her blood, and he did not accept much of her ink. She
+commenced publishing her celebrated _Lettres a Marcie_ in _Le Monde_. We
+have already spoken of these letters, in order to show how George Sand
+gradually attenuated the harshness of her early feminism.
+
+     (33) _Correspondance_:  To Jules Janin, February 15, 1837.
+
+These letters alarmed Lamennais, nevertheless, and she was obliged to
+discontinue them. Feminism was the germ of their disagreement. Lamennais
+said: "She does not forgive St. Paul for having said: 'Wives, obey your
+husbands.'" She continued to acknowledge him as "one of our saints,"
+but "the father of our new Church" gradually broke away from her and
+her friends, and expressed his opinion about her with a severity and
+harshness which are worthy of note.
+
+Lamennais' letters to Baron de Vitrolles contain many allusions to
+George Sand, and they are most uncomplimentary.
+
+"I hear no more about Carlotta" (Madame Marliani), he writes, "nor about
+George Sand and Madame d'Agoult. I know there has been a great deal of
+quarrelling among them. They are as fond of each other as Lesage's two
+_diables_, one of whom said: 'That reconciled us, we kissed each other,
+and ever since then we have been mortal enemies.'" He also tells that
+there is a report that in her novel, entitled _Horace_, she has given
+as unflattering a portrait as possible of her dear, sweet, excellent
+friend, Madame d'Agoult, the _Arabella_ of the _Lettres d'un voyageur_.
+"The portraits continue," he writes, "all true to life, without being
+like each other." In the same book, _Horace_, there is a portrait
+of Mallefille, who was beloved "during one quarter of the moon," and
+abhorred afterwards. He concludes the letter with the following words:
+"Ah, how fortunate I am to be forgotten by those people! I am not afraid
+of their indifference, but I should be afraid of their attentions. . . .
+Say what you like, my dear friend, those people do not tempt me at all.
+Futility and spitefulness dissolved in a great deal of _ennui_, is a
+bad kind of medicine." He then goes on to make fun, in terms that it is
+difficult to quote, of the silly enthusiasm of a woman like Marliani,
+and even of George Sand, for the theories of Pierre Leroux, of which
+they did not understand the first letter, but which had taken their
+fancy. George Sand may have looked upon Lamennais as a master, but it is
+very evident that she was not his favoured disciple.
+
+It was due to his teaching that George Sand obtained her definite
+ideas about Catholicism, or rather against it. She was decidedly its
+adversary, because she held that the Church had stifled the spirit of
+liberty, that it had thrown a veil over the words of Christ, and that it
+was the obstacle in the way of holy equality. What she owed specially,
+though, to Lamennais was another lesson, of quite another character.
+Lamennais was the man of the nineteenth century who waged the finest
+battle against individualism, against "the scandal of the adoration of
+man by man."(34)
+
+     (34) Compare Brunetiere, _Evolution de la poesie lyrique_,
+     vol.  i.  p.  310.
+
+Under his influence, George Sand began to attach less importance to the
+personal point of view, she ceased applying everything to herself, and
+she discovered the importance of the life of others. If we study this
+attentively, we shall see that a new phase now commenced in the history
+of her ideas. Lamennais was the origin of this transformation, although
+it is personified in another man, and that other man, was named Pierre
+Leroux.
+
+What a strange mystery it is, among so many other mysteries, that of one
+mind taking possession of another mind. We have come into contact with
+great minds which have made no impression on us, whilst other minds, of
+secondary intelligence, perhaps, and it may be inferior to our own, have
+governed us.
+
+By the side of a Lamennais, this Pierre Leroux was a very puny
+personage. He had been a compositor in a printing works, before founding
+the _Globe_. This paper, in his hands, was to become an organ of
+Saint-Simonism. He belonged neither to the _bourgeois_ nor to the
+working-class. He was Clumsy, not well built, and had an enormous shock
+of hair, which was the joy of caricaturists. He was shy and awkward, in
+addition to all this. He nevertheless appeared in various _salons_,
+and was naturally more or less ridiculous. In January, 1840, Beranger
+writes: "You must know that our metaphysician has surrounded himself
+with women, at the head of whom are George Sand and Marliani, and that,
+in gilded drawing-rooms, under the light of chandeliers, he exposes his
+religious principles and his muddy boots." George Sand herself made fun
+of this occasionally. In a letter to Madame d'Agoult, she writes:
+
+"He is very amusing when he describes making his appearance in your
+drawing-room of the Rue Laffitte. He says: 'I was all muddy, and quite
+ashamed of myself. I was keeping out of sight as much as possible in a
+corner. _This lady_ came to me and talked in the kindest way possible.
+She is very beautiful.'"(35)
+
+     (35) _Correspondance_:  To Madame d'Agoult, October 16, 1837.
+
+There are two features about him, then, which seem to strike every one,
+his unkemptness and his shyness. He expressed his ideas, which were
+already obscure, in a form which seemed to make them even more obscure.
+It has been said wittily that when digging out his ideas, he buried
+himself in them.(36) Later on, when he spoke at public meetings, he was
+noted for the nonsense he talked in his interminable and unintelligible
+harangues.
+
+     (36) P. Thureau-Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet._
+
+And yet, in spite of all this, the smoke from this mind attracted George
+Sand, and became her pillar of light moving on before her. His hazy
+philosophy seemed to her as clear as daylight, it appealed to her heart
+and to her mind, solved her doubts, and gave her tranquillity, strength,
+faith, hope and a patient and persevering love of humanity. It seems as
+though, with that marvellous faculty that she had for idealizing always,
+she manufactured a Pierre Leroux of her own, who was finer than the real
+one. He was needy, but poverty becomes the man who has ideas. He was
+awkward, but the contemplative man, on coming down from the region of
+thought on to our earth once more, only gropes along. He was not clear,
+but Voltaire tells us that when a man does not understand his own words,
+he is talking metaphysics. Chopin had personified the artist for her;
+Pierre Leroux, with his words as entangled as his hair, figured now to
+her as the philosopher. She saw in him the chief and the master. _Tu
+duca e tu maestro_.
+
+In February, 1844, she wrote the following extraordinary lines: "I must
+tell you that George Sand is only a pale reflection of Pierre Leroux, a
+fanatical disciple of the same ideal, but a disciple mute and fascinated
+when listening to his words, and quite prepared to throw all her own
+works into the fire, in order to write, talk, think, pray and act under
+his inspiration. I am merely the popularizer, with a ready pen and
+an impressionable mind, and I try to translate, in my novels, the
+philosophy of the master."
+
+The most extraordinary part about these lines is that they were
+absolutely true. The whole secret of the productions of George Sand for
+the next ten years is contained in these words. With Pierre Leroux and
+Louis Viardot she now founded a review, _La Revue independante_, in
+which she could publish, not only novels (beginning with _Horace_, which
+Buloz had refused), but articles by which philosophical-socialistic
+ideas could have a free course. Better still than this, the novelist
+could take the watchword from the sociologist, just as Mascarilla
+put Roman history into madrigals, she was able to put Pierre Leroux's
+philosophy into novels.
+
+It would be interesting to know what she saw in Pierre Leroux, and which
+of his ideas she approved and preferred. One of the ideas dear to Pierre
+Leroux was that of immortality, but an immortality which had very little
+in common with Christianity. According to it, we should live again after
+death, but in humanity and in another world. The idea of metempsychosis
+was very much in vogue at this epoch. According to Jean Reynaud and
+Lamennais, souls travelled from star to star, but Pierre Leroux believed
+in metempsychosis on earth.
+
+"We are not only the children and the posterity of those who have
+already lived, but we are, at bottom, the anterior generations
+themselves. We have gone through former existences which we do not
+remember, but it may be that at times we have fragmentary reminiscences
+of them."
+
+George Sand must have been very deeply impressed by this idea. It
+inspired her with _Sept cordes de la lyre_, _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_
+and the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, the whole cycle of her philosophical
+novels.
+
+The _Sept cordes de la lyre_ is a dramatic poem after the manner of
+_Faust_. Maitre Albertus is the old doctor conversing with Mephistocles.
+He has a ward, named Helene, and a lyre. A spirit lives in this lyre.
+It is all in vain that the painter, the _maestro_, the poet, the critic
+endeavour to make the cords vibrate. The lyre remains dumb. Helene, even
+without putting her hands on it, can draw from it magnificent harmony;
+Helene is mad. All this may seem very incomprehensible to you, and I
+must confess that it is so to me. Albertus himself declares: "This has a
+poetical sense of a very high order perhaps, but it seems vague to me."
+Personally, I am of the same opinion as Albertus. With a little effort,
+I might, like any one else, be able to give you an interpretation of
+this logogriph, which might appear to have something in it. I prefer
+telling you frankly that I do not understand it. The author, perhaps,
+did not understand it much better so that it may have been metaphysics.
+
+I would call your attention, though, to that picture of Helene, with the
+magic lyre in her hand, risking her life, by climbing to the spire of
+the steeple and uttering her inspiring speech from there. Is not this
+something like Solness, the builder, from the top of his tower? Like
+Tolstoi, Ibsen had evidently read George Sand and had not forgotten her.
+
+_Spiridion_ introduces us into a strange convent, in which we see the
+portraits come out of their frames and roam about the cloisters. The
+founder of the convent, Hebronius, lives again in the person of Father
+Alexis, who is no other than Leroux.
+
+In _Consuelo_ we have the same imagination. We have already considered
+the first part of this novel, that which takes place at Venice, in the
+schools of music and in the theatres of song. Who would have thought
+that the charming diva, the pupil of Porpora, was to have such strange
+adventures? She arrives in Bohemia, at the Chateau of Rudolstadt. She
+has been warned that extraordinary things take place there. Comte Albert
+de Rudolstadt is subject to nervous fits and to great lethargy. He
+disappears from the chateau and then reappears, without any one seeing
+him go in or out. He believes that he has been Jean Ziska, and this
+is probably true. He has been present at events which took place three
+hundred years previously, and he describes them. Consuelo discovers
+Albert's retreat. It is a cavern hollowed out of a mountain in the
+vicinity, which communicates, by means of a well, with his rooms. The
+Chateau of Rudolstadt is built on the same architectural plan as Anne
+Radcliffe's chateau. After staying for some time in this bewildering
+place, Consuelo sets forth once more. She now meets Haydn, goes through
+the Bohmer Wald with him, arrives in Venice, is introduced to Maria
+Theresa, and is engaged at the Imperial Theatre. She is now recalled to
+the Chateau of Rudolstadt. Albert is on his deathbed, and he marries
+her _in extremis_, after telling her that he is going to leave her for a
+time, but that he shall return to her on earth by a new birth. He, too,
+had evidently read Pierre Leroux, and it was perhaps that which had
+caused his illness.
+
+_Consuelo_ is a novel of adventures after the style of _Gil Blas_, the
+_Vie de Marianne_, and _Wilkelm Meister_. It is a historical novel, for
+which we have Joseph Haydn, Maria Theresa, Baron Trenk, and the whole
+history of the Hussites. It is a fantastical story with digressions
+on music and on popular songs, but running through it all, with the
+persistency of a fixed idea, are divagations on the subject of
+earthly metempsychosis. Such, then, is this incongruous story, odd and
+exaggerated, but with gleams of light and of great beauty, the reading
+of which is apt to leave one weary and disturbed.
+
+We meet with Consuelo again in another book. In those days, it was not
+enough for a novel to consist of several volumes. People liked a sequel
+also. _Vingt ans apres_ was the sequel to _Trois Mousquetaires_, and the
+_Vicomte de Bragelonne_ was a sequel to that sequel. Our grandparents
+were capable of allowing themselves to be bored to a degree which makes
+us ashamed of our frivolity. The _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ was the sequel
+to _Consuelo_. As time went on, Pierre Leroux called George Sand's
+attention to the study of freemasonry. In 1843, she declared that she
+was plunged in it, and that it was a gulf of nonsense and uncertainties,
+in which "she was dabbling courageously."
+
+"I am up to my ears in freemasonry," she writes. "I cannot get away from
+the kaddosh, the Rose Croix and the Sublime Scotchman. The result of all
+this will be a mysterious novel." The mysterious novel was the _Comtesse
+de Rudolstadt_. Consuelo, who through her marriage with Albert is now
+Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour. She reaches Berlin,
+and we find her at the Court of Frederick II. We now have Voltaire,
+La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and the
+occult sciences. Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison. There appears
+to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she
+must first have been imprisoned. Some mysterious rescuers take a great
+interest in Consuelo, and transport her to a strange dwelling, where
+she has a whole series of surprises. It is, in fact, a sort of Palace
+of Illusions. She is first in a dark room, and she then finds herself
+suddenly in a room of dazzling light. "At the far end of this room,
+the whole aspect of which is very forbidding, she distinguishes seven
+personages, wrapped in red cloaks and wearing masks of such livid
+whiteness that they looked like corpses. They were all seated behind a
+table of black marble. Just in front of the table, and on a lower seat,
+was an eighth spectre. He was dressed in black, and he, too, wore a
+white mask. By the wall, on each side of the room, were about twenty men
+in black cloaks and masks. There was the most profound silence. Consuelo
+turned round and saw that there were also black phantoms behind her.
+At each door there were two of them standing up, each holding a huge,
+bright sword."(37)
+
+     (37) _Comtesse de Rudolstadt._
+
+She wondered whether she had reached the infernal regions, but she
+discovered that she was in the midst of a secret society, styled the
+Invisibles. Consuelo is to go through all the various stages of the
+initiation. She first puts on the bridal dress, and after this the
+widow's weeds. She undergoes all the various trials, and has to witness
+the different spectacles provided for her edification, including
+coffins, funeral palls, spectres and simulated tortures. The description
+of all the various ceremonies takes up about half of the book. George
+Sand's object was to show up this movement of secret societies, which
+was such a feature of the eighteenth century, and which was directed
+both against monarchical power and against the Church. It contributed to
+prepare the way for the Revolution, and gave to this that international
+character and that mystic allure which would otherwise have been
+incomprehensible.
+
+From _Spiridion_ to the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, then, we have this
+series of fantastical novels with ghosts, subterranean passages, secret
+hiding-places, hallucinations and apparitions. The unfortunate part is
+that at present we scarcely know to what category of readers they would
+appeal. As regards grown-up people, we all prefer something with a
+vestige of truth in it now-a-days. As to our children, they would prefer
+_Monte-Cristo_ to _Consuelo_, and _Tom Thumb_ to _Spiridion_. At the
+time that they were written, in spite of the fact that Buloz protested
+against all this philosophy, these novels were quite in accordance with
+the public taste. A mania for anything fantastic had taken possession
+of the most serious people. Ballanche wrote his _La Palingenesie_, and
+Edgar Quinet _Ahasverus_. Things took place through the ages, and the
+reader travelled through the immensity of the centuries, just as though
+Wells had already invented his machine for exploring time. In a country
+like France, where clear-mindedness and matter-of-fact intelligence are
+appreciated, all this seems surprising. It was no doubt the result of
+infiltrations which had come from abroad. There was something wrong with
+us just then, "something rotten in the kingdom of France." We see this
+by that fever of socialistic doctrines which burst forth among us about
+the year 1840. We have the _Phalanstere_ by Fourier, _La Phalange_
+by Considerant, the _Icarie_ by Cabet, and his famous _Voyage_, which
+appeared that very year. We were always to be devoured by the State,
+accompanied by whatever sauce we preferred. The State was always to find
+us shelter, to dress us, to govern us and to tyrannize over us. There
+was the State as employer, the State as general storekeeper, the State
+to feed us; all this was a dream of bliss. Buonarotti, formerly Babeuf's
+accomplice, preached Communism. Louis Blanc published his _Organisation
+du travail_, in which he calls to his aid a political revolution,
+foretaste of a social revolution. Proudhon published his _Memoire sur la
+propriete_, containing the celebrated phrase: "Property means theft."
+He declared himself an anarchist, and as a matter of fact anarchy was
+already everywhere. A fresh evil had suddenly made its appearance, and,
+by a cruel irony, it was the logical consequence of that industrial
+development of which the century was so proud. The result of all that
+wealth had been to create a new form of misery, an envious, jealous form
+of misery, much more cruel than the former one, for it filled the heart
+with a ferment of hatred, a passion for destruction.
+
+It was Pierre Leroux, also, who led George Sand on to Socialism. She had
+been on the way to it by herself. For a long time she had been raising
+an altar in her heart to that entity called the People, and she had been
+adorning it with all the virtues. The future belonged to the people, the
+whole of the future, and first of all that of literature.
+
+Poetry was getting a little worn out, but to restore its freshness there
+were the poets of the people. Charles Poncy, of Toulon, a bricklayer,
+published a volume of poetry, in 1842, entitled _Marines_. George Sand
+adopted him. He was the demonstration of her theory, the example which
+illustrated her dream. She congratulated him and encouraged him. "You
+are a great poet," she said to him, and she thereupon speaks of him to
+all her friends. "Have you read Baruch?" she asks them. "Have you read
+Poncy, a poet bricklayer of twenty years of age?" She tells every one
+about his book, dwells on its beauties, and asks people to speak of it.
+
+As a friend of George Sand, I have examined the poems by Poncy of which
+she specially speaks. The first one is entitled _Meditation sur les
+toits_. The poet has been obliged to stay on the roof to complete his
+work, and while there he meditates.
+
+_"Le travail me retient bien tard sur ces toitures_. . . ."
+
+He then begins to wonder what he would see if, like Asmodee in the
+_Diable boiteux_, he could have the roof taken off, so that the various
+rooms could be exposed to view. Alas! he would not always find the
+concord of the Golden Age.
+
+     _Que de fois contemolant cet amas de maisons
+     Quetreignent nos remparts couronnes de gazons,
+     Et ces faubourgs naissants que la ville trop pleine
+     Pour ses enfants nouveaux eleve dans la plaine.
+     Immobiles troufieaux ou notre clocher gris
+     Semble un patre au milieu de ses blanches brebis,
+     Jai pense que, malgre notre angoisse et nos peines,
+     Sous ces toits paternels il existait des haines,
+     Et que des murs plus forts que ces murs mitoyens
+     Separent ici-bas les coeurs des citoyens._
+
+This was an appeal to concord, and all brothers of humanity were invited
+to rally to the watchword.
+
+The intention was no doubt very good. Then, too, _murs mitoyens_ was
+an extremely rich and unexpected rhyme for _citoyens_. This was worthy
+indeed of a man of that party.
+
+Another of the poems greatly admired by George Sand was _Le Forcat_.
+
+     _Regarder le forcat sur la poutre equarrie
+     Poser son sein hale que le remords carie_. . .
+
+Certainly if Banville were to lay claim to having invented rhymes that
+are puns, we could only say that he was a plagiarist after reading
+Charles Poncy.
+
+In another poem addressed to the rich, entitled _L'hiver_, the poet
+notices with grief that the winter
+
+     . . .  _qui remplit les salons, les Watres,
+     Remplit aussi la Morgue et les amphitheatres._
+
+He is afraid that the people will, in the end, lose their patience, and
+so he gives to the happy mortals on this earth the following counsel:
+
+     _Riches, a vos plaisirs faites participer
+     L'homme que les malheurs s'acharnent a frapper
+     Oh, faites travailler le pere de famille,
+     Pour qu'il puisse arbiter la pudeur de sa fille,
+     Pourqu'aux petits enfants maigris par les douleurs
+     Il rapporte, le soir, le pain et non des pleurs,
+     Afin que son epouse, au desespoir en proie,
+     Se ranime a sa vue et l'embrasse avec joie,
+     Afin qua l'Eternel, a l'heure de sa mort.
+     Vous n'offriez pas un coeur carie de remords_.
+
+The expression certainly leaves much to be desired in these poems, but
+they are not lacking in eloquence. We had already had something of this
+kind, though, written by a poet who was not a bricklayer. He, too, had
+asked the rich the question following:
+
+     _Dans vos fetes d'hiver, riches, heureux du monde,
+     Quand le bal tournoyant de ses feux vous inonde. . .
+     Songez-vous qu'il est la, sous le givre et la neige,
+     Ce pere sans travail que la famine assiege?_
+
+He advises them to practise charity, the sister of prayer.
+
+     "_Donnez afin qu'un jour, a votre derniere heure,
+     Contre tous vos peches vous ayez la Priere
+     D'un mendiant puissant au ciel_."
+
+We cannot, certainly, expect Poncy to be a Victor Hugo. But as we had
+Victor Hugo's verses, of what use was it for them to be rewritten by
+Poncy? My reason for quoting a few of the fine lines from _Feuilles
+d'automne_ is that I felt an urgent need of clearing away all these
+platitudes. Poncy was not the only working-man poet. Other trades
+produced their poets too. The first poem in _Marines_ is addressed to
+Durand, a poet carpenter, who introduces himself as "_Enfant de la foret
+qui ceint Fontainebleau_."
+
+This man handled the plane and the lyre, just as Poncy did the trowel
+and the lyre.
+
+This poetry of the working-classes was to give its admirers plenty of
+disappointment. George Sand advised Poncy to treat the things connected
+with his trade, in his poetry. "Do not try to put on other men's
+clothes, but let us see you in literature with the plaster on your hands
+which is natural to you and which interests us," she said to him.
+
+Proud of his success with the ladies of Paris, Poncy wanted to wash
+his hands, put on a coat, and go into society. It was all in vain that
+George Sand beseeched Poncy to remain the poet of humanity. She exposed
+to him the dogma of impersonality in such fine terms, that more than one
+_bourgeois_ poet might profit by what she said.
+
+"An individual," she said, "who poses as a poet, as a pure artist, as
+a god like most of our great men do, whether they be _bourgeois_ or
+aristocrats, soon tires us with his personality. . . . Men are only
+interested in a man when that man is interested in humanity."
+
+This was all of no use, though, for Poncy was most anxious to treat
+other subjects rather more lively and--slightly libertine. His literary
+godmother admonished him.
+
+"You are dedicating to _Juana l'Espagnole_ and to various other
+fantastical beauties verses that I do not approve. Are you a _bourgeois_
+poet or a poet of the people? If the former, you can sing in honour of
+all the voluptuousness and all the sirens of the universe, without ever
+having known either. You can sup with the most delicious houris or
+with all the street-walkers, in your poems, without ever leaving
+your fireside or having seen any greater beauty than the nose of your
+hall-porter. These gentlemen write their poetry in this way, and their
+rhyming is none the worse for it. But if you are a child of the people
+and the poet of the people, you ought not to leave the chaste breast of
+Desiree, in order to run about after dancing-girls and sing about their
+voluptuous arms."(38)
+
+     (38) See the letters addressed to Charles Poncy in the
+     _Correspondance._
+
+It is to be hoped that Poncy returned to the chaste Desiree. But why
+should he not read to the young woman the works of Pierre Leroux?
+We need a little gaiety in our life. In George Sand's published
+_Correspondance_, we only have a few of her letters to Charles Poncy.
+They are all in excellent taste. There is an immense correspondence
+which M. Rocheblave will publish later on. This will be a treat for us,
+and it will no doubt prove that there was a depth of immense candour in
+the celebrated authoress.
+
+It does not seem to me that the writings of the working-men poets have
+greatly enriched French literature. Fortunately George Sand's sympathy
+with the people found its way into literature in another way, and this
+time in a singularly interesting way. She did not get the books written
+by the people themselves, but she put the people into books. This was
+the plan announced by George Sand in her preface to the _Compagnon du
+tour de France_. There is an entirely fresh literature to create, she
+writes, "with the habits and customs of the people, as these are so
+little known by the other classes." The _Compagnon du tour de France_
+was the first attempt at this new literature of the people. George Sand
+had obtained her documents for this book from a little work which
+had greatly struck her, entitled _Livre du compagnonnage_, written by
+Agricol Perdiguier, surnamed Avignonnais-la-Vertu, who was a _compagnon_
+carpenter. Agricol Perdiguier informs us that the _Compagnons_ were
+divided into three chief categories: the _Gavots_, the _Devorants_
+and the _Drilles_, or the _Enfants de Salomon_, the _Enlants de Maitre
+Jacques_ and the _Enfants du_ _Pere Soubise_. He then describes the
+rites of this order. When two _Compagnons_ met, their watchword was
+"_Tope_." After this they asked each other's trade, and then they went
+to drink a glass together. If a _Compagnon_ who was generally respected
+left the town, the others gave him what was termed a "conduite en
+regle." If it was thought that he did not deserve this, he had a
+"conduite de Grenoble." Each _Compagnon_ had a surname, and among such
+surnames we find _The Prudence of Draguignan_, _The Flower of Bagnolet_
+and _The Liberty of Chateauneuf_. The unfortunate part was that among
+the different societies, instead of the union that ought to have
+reigned, there were rivalries, quarrels, fights, and sometimes all this
+led to serious skirmishes; Agricol Perdiguier undertook to preach to
+the different societies peace and tolerance. He went about travelling
+through France with this object in view. His second expedition was-at
+George Sand's expense.
+
+A fresh edition of his book contained the letters of approval addressed
+to him by those who approved his campaign. Among these signatures
+are the following: Nantais-Pret-a-bien-faire, Bourgignonla-Felicite,
+Decide-le-Briard. All this is a curious history of the syndicates of the
+nineteenth century. Agricol Perdiguier may have seen the _Confederation
+du Travail_ dawning in the horizon.
+
+In the _Compagnon du Tour de France_, Pierre Huguenin, a
+carpenter, travels about among all these different societies of the
+_Compagnonnage_, and lets us see something of their competition,
+rivalries, battles, etc. He is then sent for to the Villepreux Chateau,
+to do some work. The noble Yseult falls in love with this fine-talking
+carpenter, and at once begs him to make her happy by marrying her.
+
+In the _Meunier d'Angibault_ it is a working locksmith, Henri Lemor, who
+falls in love with Marcelle de Blanchemont. Born to wealth, she regrets
+that she is not the daughter or the mother of workingmen. Finally,
+however, she loses her fortune, and rejoices in this event. The
+personage who stands out in relief in this novel is the miller, Grand
+Louis. He is always gay and contented, with a smile on his lips, singing
+lively songs and giving advice to every one.
+
+In the _Peche de M. Antoine_, the _role_ of Grand Louis falls to Jean
+the carpenter. In this story all the people are communists, with the
+exception of the owner of the factory, who, in consequence, is treated
+with contempt. His son Emile marries the daughter of Monsieur Antoine.
+Her name is Gilberte, and a silly old man, the Marquis de Boisguilbaut,
+leaves her all his money, on condition that the young couple found a
+colony of agriculturists in which there shall be absolute communism. All
+these stories, full of eloquence and dissertations on the misfortune
+of being rich and the corrupting influence of wealth, would be
+insufferable, if it were not for the fact that the Angibault mill were
+in the Black Valley, and the crumbling chateau, belonging to Monsieur
+Antoine, on the banks of the Creuse.
+
+They are very poor novels, and it would be a waste of time to attempt
+to defend them. They are not to be despised, though, as regards their
+influence on the rest of George Sand's work, and also as regards the
+history of the French novel. They rendered great service to George
+Sand, inasmuch as they helped her to come out of herself and to turn her
+attention to the miseries of other people, instead of dwelling all the
+time on her own. The miseries she now saw were more general ones, and
+consequently more worthy of interest. In the history of the novel they
+are of capital importance, as they are the first ones to bring into
+notice, by making them play a part, people of whom novelists had never
+spoken. Before Eugene Sue and before Victor Hugo, George Sand gives a
+_role_ to a mason, a carpenter and a joiner. We see the working-class
+come into literature in these novels, and this marks an era.
+
+As to their socialistic influence, it is supposed by many people that
+they had none. The kind of socialism that consists of making tinkers
+marry marchionesses, and duchesses marry zinc-workers, seems very
+childish and very feminine. It is just an attempt at bringing about the
+marriage of classes. This socialistic preaching, by means of literature,
+cannot be treated so lightly, though, as it is by no means harmless. It
+is, on the contrary, a powerful means of diffusing doctrines to which
+it lends the colouring of imagination, and for which it appeals to the
+feelings. George Sand propagated the humanitarian dream among a whole
+category of men and women who read her books. But for her, they would
+probably have turned a deaf ear to the inducements held out to them with
+regard to this Utopia. Lamartine with his _Girondins_ reconciled the
+_bourgeois_ classes to the idea of the Revolution. In both cases the
+effect was the same, and it is just this which literature does in
+affairs of this kind. Its _role_ consists here in creating a sort of
+snobbism, and this snobbism, created by literature in favour of all the
+elements of social destruction, continues to rage at present. We still
+see men smiling indulgently and stupidly at doctrines of revolt and
+anarchy, which they ought to repudiate, not because of their own
+interest, but because it is their duty to repudiate them with all
+the strength of their own common sense and rectitude. Instead of any
+arguments, we have facts to offer. All this was in 1846, and the time
+was now drawing near when George Sand was to see those novels of hers
+actually taking place in the street, so that she could throw down to the
+rioters the bulletins that she wrote in their honour.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+1848
+
+GEORGE SAND AND THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT--HER PASTORAL NOVELS
+
+
+IN 1846, George Sand published _Le Peche de M. Antoine_. It was a very
+dull story of a sin, for sins are not always amusing. The same year,
+though, she published _La Mare au Diable_. People are apt to say, when
+comparing the socialistic novels and the pastoral novels by George Sand,
+that the latter are superb, because they are the result of a conception
+of art that was quite disinterested, as the author had given up her
+preaching mania, and devoted herself to depicting people that she knew
+and things that she liked, without any other care than that of painting
+them well. Personally, I think that this was not so. George Sand's
+pastoral style is not essentially different from her socialistic style.
+The difference is only in the success of the execution, but the ideas
+and the intentions are the same. George Sand is continuing her mission
+in them, she is going on with her humanitarian dream, that dream which
+she dreamed when awake.
+
+We have a proof of this in the preface of the author to the reader with
+which the _Mare au Diable_ begins. This preface would be disconcerting
+to any one who does not remember the intellectual atmosphere in which it
+was written.
+
+People have wondered by what fit of imagination George Sand, when
+telling such a wholesome story of country life, should evoke the ghastly
+vision of Holbein's Dance of Death. It is the close of day, the horses
+are thin and exhausted, there is an old peasant, and, skipping about in
+the furrows near the team, is Death, the only lively, careless,
+nimble being in this scene of "sweat and weariness." She gives us the
+explanation of it herself. She wanted to show up the ideal of the new
+order of things, as opposed to the old ideal, as translated by the
+ghastly dance.
+
+"We have nothing more to do with death," she writes, "but with life. We
+no longer believe in the _neant_ of the tomb, nor in salvation bought by
+enforced renunciation. We want life to be good, because we want it to be
+fertile. . . . Every one must be happy, so that the happiness of a few
+may not be criminal and cursed by God." This note we recognize as the
+common feature of all the socialistic Utopias. It consists in taking the
+opposite basis to that on which the Christian idea is founded. Whilst
+Christianity puts off, until after death, the possession of happiness,
+transfiguring death by its eternal hopes, Socialism places its Paradise
+on earth. It thus runs the risk of leaving all those without any
+recourse who do not find this earth a paradise, and it has no answer to
+give to the lamentations of incurable human misery.
+
+George Sand goes on to expose to us the object of art, as she
+understands it. She believes that it is for pleading the cause of the
+people.
+
+She does not consider that her _confreres_ in novel-writing and in
+Socialism set about their work in the best way. They paint poverty that
+is ugly and vile, and sometimes even vicious and criminal. How is it to
+be expected that the bad, rich man will take pity on the sorrows of
+the poor man, if this poor man is always presented to him as an escaped
+convict or a night loafer? It is very evident that the people, as
+presented to us in the _Mysteres de Paris_, are not particularly
+congenial to us, and we should have no wish to make the acquaintance of
+the "Chourineur." In order to bring about conversions, George Sand has
+more faith in gentle, agreeable people, and, in conclusion, she tells
+us: "We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and
+of love, and that the novel of to-day ought to take the place of the
+parable and the apologue of more primitive times." The object of the
+artist, she tells us, "is to make people appreciate what he presents to
+them." With that end in view, he has a right to embellish his subjects
+a little. "Art," we are told, "is not a study of positive reality; it is
+the seeking for ideal truth." Such is the point of view of the author of
+_La Mare au Diable_, which we are invited to consider as a parable and
+an apologue.
+
+The parable is clear enough, and the apologue is eloquent. The novel
+commences with that fine picture of the ploughing of the fields, so rich
+in description and so broadly treated that there seems to be nothing in
+French literature to compare with it except the episode of the Labourers
+in _Jocelyn_. When _Jocelyn_ was published, George Sand was severe in
+her criticism of it, treating it as poor work, false in sentiment and
+careless in style. "In the midst of all this, though," she adds, "there
+are certain pages and chapters such as do not exist in any language,
+pages that I read seven times over, crying all the time like a donkey."
+I fancy that she must have cried over the episode of the _Labourers_.
+Whether she remembered it or not when writing her own book little
+matters. My only reason for mentioning it is to point out the affinity
+of genius between Lamartine and George Sand, both of them so admirable
+in imagining idylls and in throwing the colours of their idyllic
+imagination on to reality.
+
+I have ventured, to analyze the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ and even
+_Consuelo_, but I shall not be guilty of the bad taste of telling the
+story of _La Mare au Diable_, as all the people of that neighbourhood
+are well known to us, and have been our friends for a long time. We are
+all acquainted with Germain, the clever farm-labourer, with Marie, the
+shepherdess, and with little Pierre. We remember how they climbed the
+_Grise_, lost their way in the mist, and were obliged to spend the night
+under the great oak-trees. When we were only about fifteen years of age,
+with what delight we read this book, and how we loved that sweet Marie
+for her simple grace and her affection, which all seemed so maternal.
+How much better we liked her than the Widow Guerin, who was so snobbish
+with her three lovers. And how glad we were to be present at that
+wedding, celebrated according to the custom in Berry from time
+immemorial.
+
+It is easy to see the meaning of all these things. They show us how
+natural kindliness is to the heart of man. If we try to find out why
+Germain and Marie appear so delightful to us, we shall discover that it
+is because they are simple-hearted, and follow the dictates of Nature.
+Nature must not be deformed, therefore, by constraint nor transformed by
+convention, as it leads straight to virtue.
+
+We have heard the tune of this song before, and we have seen the
+blossoming of some very fine pastoral poems and a veritable invasion of
+sentimental literature. In those days tears were shed plentifully
+over poetry, novels and plays. We have had Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,
+Sedaine, Florian and Berquin. The Revolution, brutal and sanguinary as
+it was, did not interrupt the course of these romantic effusions. Never
+were so many tender epithets used as during the years of the Reign of
+Terror, and in official processions Robespierre was adorned with flowers
+like a village bride.
+
+This taste for pastoral things, at the time of the Revolution, was not a
+mere coincidence. The same principles led up to the idyll in literature
+and to the Revolution in history. Man was supposed to be naturally good,
+and the idea was to take away from him all the restraints which had
+been invented for curbing his nature. Political and religious authority,
+moral discipline and the prestige of tradition had all formed a kind of
+network of impediments, by which man had been imprisoned by legislators
+who were inclined to pessimism. By doing away with all these fetters,
+the Golden Age was to be restored and universal happiness was to be
+established. Such was the faith of the believers in the millennium
+of 1789, and of 1848. The same dream began over and over again, from
+Diderot to Lamartine and from Jean-Jacques to George Sand. The same
+state of mind which we see reflected in _La Mare au Diable_ was to make
+of George Sand the revolutionary writer of 1848. We can now understand
+the _role_ which the novelist played in the second Republic. It is
+one of the most surprising pages in the history of this extraordinary
+character.
+
+The joy with which George Sand welcomed the Republic can readily be
+imagined. She had been a Republican ever since the days of Michel of
+Bourges, and a democrat since the time when, as a little girl, she took
+the side of her plebeian mother against "the old Countesses." For a long
+time she had been wishing for and expecting a change of government.
+She would not have been satisfied with less than this. She was not much
+moved by the Thiers-Guizot duel, and it would have given her no pleasure
+to be killed for the sake of Odilon Barrot. She was a disciple of
+Romanticism, and she wanted a storm. When the storm broke, carrying all
+before it, a throne, a whole society with its institutions, she hurried
+away from her peaceful Nohant. She wanted to breathe the atmosphere of a
+revolution, and she was soon intoxicated by it.
+
+"Long live the Republic," she wrote in her letters. "What a dream and
+what enthusiasm, and then, too, what behaviour, what order in Paris. I
+have just arrived, and I saw the last of the barricades. The people are
+great, sublime, simple and generous, the most admirable people in the
+universe. I spent nights without any sleep and days without sitting
+down. Every one was wild and intoxicated with delight, for after going
+to sleep in the mire they have awakened in heaven."(39)
+
+     (39) _Correspondance:  _ To Ch.  Poncy, March 9, 1848.
+
+She goes on dreaming thus of the stars. Everything she hears, everything
+she sees enchants her. The most absurd measures delight her. She either
+thinks they are most noble, liberal steps to have taken, or else they
+are very good jokes.
+
+"Rothschild," she writes, "expresses very fine sentiments about liberty
+at present. The Provisional Government is keeping him in sight, as it
+does not wish him to make off with his money, and so will put some
+of the troops on his track. The most amusing things are happening." A
+little later on she writes: "The Government and the people expect to
+have bad deputies, but they have agreed to put them through the window.
+You must come, and we will go and see all this and have fun."(40)
+
+     (40) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, March 24, 1848.
+
+She was thoroughly entertained, and that is very significant. We must
+not forget the famous phrase that sounded the death-knell of the July
+monarchy, "La France s'ennuie." France had gone in for a revolution by
+way of being entertained.
+
+George Sand was entertained, then, by what was taking place. She went
+down into the street where there was plenty to see. In the mornings
+there were the various coloured posters to be read. These had been put
+up in the night, and they were in prose and in verse.
+
+Processions were also organized, and men, women and children, with
+banners unfurled, marched along to music to the Hotel de Ville, carrying
+baskets decorated with ribbons and flowers. Every corporation and
+every profession considered itself bound in honour to congratulate the
+Government and to encourage it in its well-doing. One day the procession
+would be of the women who made waistcoats or breeches, another day
+of the water-carriers, or of those who had been decorated in July
+or wounded in February; then there were the pavement-layers, the
+washerwomen, the delegates from the Paris night-soil men. There were
+delegates, too, from the Germans, Italians, Poles, and most of the
+inhabitants of Montmartre and of Batignolles. We must not forget the
+trees of Liberty, as George Sand speaks of meeting with three of these
+in one day. "Immense pines," she writes, "carried on the shoulders of
+fifty working-men. A drum went first, then the flag, followed by bands
+of these fine tillers of the ground, strong-looking, serious men with
+wreaths of leaves on their head, and a spade, pick-axe or hatchet over
+their shoulder. It was magnificent; finer than all the _Roberts_ in the
+world."(41) Such was the tone of her letters.
+
+     (41) _Correspondance._
+
+She had the Opera from her windows and an Olympic circus at every
+cross-road. Paris was certainly _en fete_. In the evenings it was just
+as lively. There were the Clubs, and there were no less than three
+hundred of these. Society women could go to them and hear orators
+in blouses proposing incendiary movements, which made them shudder
+deliciously. Then there were the theatres. Rachel, draped in antique
+style, looking like a Nemesis, declaimed the _Marseillaise_. And all
+night long the excitement continued. The young men organized torchlight
+processions, with fireworks, and insisted on peaceably-inclined citizens
+illuminating. It was like a National Fete day, or the Carnival,
+continuing all the week.
+
+All this was the common, everyday aspect of Paris, but there were the
+special days as well to break the monotony of all this. There were
+the manifestations, which had the great advantage of provoking
+counter-manifestations. On the 16th of March, there was the
+manifestation of the National Guard, who were tranquil members of
+society, but on the 17th there was a counter-manifestation of the Clubs
+and workingmen. On such days the meeting-place would be at the Bastille,
+and from morning to night groups, consisting of several hundred thousand
+men, would march about Paris, sometimes in favour of the Assembly
+against the Provisional Government, and sometimes in favour of the
+Provisional Government against the Assembly. On the 17th of April,
+George Sand was in the midst of the crowd, in front of the Hotel de
+Ville, in order to see better. On the 15th of May, as the populace was
+directing its efforts against the Palais Bourbon, she was in the Rue de
+Bourgogne, in her eagerness not to miss anything. As she was passing
+in front of a _cafe_, she saw a woman haranguing the crowd in a very
+animated way from one of the windows. She was told that this woman
+was George Sand. Women were extremely active in this Revolution. They
+organized a Legion for themselves, and were styled _"Les Vesuviennes_."
+They had their clubs, their banquets and their newspapers. George Sand
+was far from approving all this feminine agitation, but she did
+not condemn it altogether. She considered that "women and children,
+disinterested as they are in all political questions, are in more direct
+intercourse with the spirit that breathes from above over the agitations
+of this world."(42) It was for them, therefore, to be the inspirers of
+politics. George Sand was one of these inspirers. In order to judge what
+counsels this Egeria gave, we have only to read some of her letters.
+On the 4th of March, she wrote as follows to her friend Girerd: "Act
+vigorously, my dear brother. In our present situation, we must have even
+more than devotion and loyalty; we must have fanaticism if necessary."
+In conclusion, she says that he is not to hesitate "in sweeping away
+all that is of a _bourgeois_ nature." In April she wrote to Lamartine,
+reproaching him with his moderation and endeavouring to excite his
+revolutionary spirit. Later on, although she was not of a very warlike
+disposition, she regretted that they had not, like their ancestors of
+1793, cemented their Revolution at home by a war with the nations.
+
+     (42) _Correspondance:_ To the Citizen Thore, May 28, 1848.
+
+"If, instead of following Lamartine's stupid, insipid policy," she then
+wrote, "we had challenged all absolute monarchies, we should have had
+war outside, but union at home, and strength, in consequence of this,
+it home and abroad."(43) Like the great ancestors, she declared that the
+revolutionary idea is neither that of a sect nor of a party. "It is a
+religion," she says, "that we want to proclaim." All this zeal, this
+passion and this persistency in a woman is not surprising, but one does
+not feel much confidence in a certain kind of inspiration for politics
+after all this.
+
+     (43) _Correspondance:_ To Mazzini, October 10, 1849.
+
+My reason for dwelling on the subject is that George Sand did not
+content herself with merely looking on at the events that were taking
+place, or even with talking about them with her friends. She took part
+in the events, by means of her pen. She scattered abroad all kinds of
+revolutionary writings. On the 7th of March, she published her first
+_Letter to the People_, at the price of a penny, the profits of which
+were to be distributed among working-men without employment. After
+congratulating these great and good people on their noble victory, she
+tells them they are all going to seek together for the truth of things.
+That was exactly the state of the case. They did not yet know what they
+wanted, but, in the mean time, while they were considering, they had
+at any rate begun with a revolution. There was a second _Letter to the
+People_, and then these ceased. Publications in those days were very
+short-lived. They came to life again, though, sometimes from their
+ashes. In April a newspaper was started, entitled _The Cause of the
+People_. This was edited almost entirely by George Sand. She wrote the
+leading article: _Sovereignty is Equality_. She reproduced her first
+_Letter to the People_, gave an article on the aspect of the streets of
+Paris, and another on theatrical events. She left to her collaborator,
+Victor Borie, the task of explaining that the increase of taxes was an
+eminently republican measure, and an agreeable surprise for the person
+who had to pay them. The third number of this paper contained a one-act
+play by George Sand, entitled _Le Roi attend_. This had just been given
+at the Comedie-Francaise, or at the Theatre de la Republique, as it
+was then called. It had been a gratis performance, given on the 9th of
+April, 1848, as a first national representation. The actors at that time
+were Samson, Geffroy, Regnier, Anais, Augustine Brohan and Rachel. There
+were not many of them, but they had some fine things to interpret.
+
+In George Sand's piece, Moliere was at work with his servant, Laforet,
+who could not read, but without whom, it appears, he could not have
+written a line. He has not finished his play, the actors have not learnt
+their parts, and the king is impatient at being kept waiting. Moliere is
+perplexed, and, not knowing what to do, he decides to go to sleep. The
+Muse appears to him, styles him "the light of the people," and brings to
+him all the ghosts of the great poets before him. AEschylus, Sophocles,
+Euripides and Shakespeare all declare to him that, in their time, they
+had all worked towards preparing the Revolution of 1848. Moliere then
+wakes up, and goes on to the stage to pay his respects to the king. The
+king has been changed, though. "I see a king," says Moliere, "but his
+name is not Louis XIV. It is the people, the sovereign people. That is a
+word I did not know, a word as great as eternity."
+
+We recognize the democrat in all this. _Le Roi_ _attend_ may be
+considered as an authentic curiosity of revolutionary art. The newspaper
+announced to its readers that subscriptions could be paid in the Rue
+Richelieu. Subscribers were probably not forthcoming, as the paper died
+a natural death after the third number.
+
+George Sand did much more than this, though.(44) We must not forget that
+she was an official publicist in 1848. She had volunteered her
+services to Ledru-Rollin, and he had accepted them. "I am as busy as
+a statesman," she wrote at this time. "I have already written two
+Government circulars."(45)
+
+     (44) With regard to George Sand's _role_, see _La Revolution
+     de_ 1848, by Daniel Stern (Madame d'Agoult).
+
+     (45) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, March 24, 1848.
+
+With George Sand's collaboration, the _Bulletin de la Republique_ became
+unexpectedly interesting. This paper was published every other day,
+by order of Ledru-Rollin, and was intended to establish a constant
+interchange of ideas and sentiments between the Government and the
+people. "It was specially addressed to the people of rural districts,
+and was in the form of a poster that the mayor of the place could have
+put up on the walls, and also distribute to the postmen to be given
+away. The _Bulletins_ were anonymous, but several of them were certainly
+written by George Sand. The seventh is one of these, and also the
+twelfth. The latter was written with a view to drawing the attention
+of the public to the wretched lot of the women and girls of the lower
+classes, who were reduced to prostitution by the lowness of their wages.
+Their virginity is an object of traffic," we are told, "quoted on the
+exchange of infamy." The sixteenth _Bulletin_ was simply an appeal for
+revolt. George Sand was looking ahead to what ought to take place, in
+case the elections did not lead to the triumph of social truth. "The
+people," she hoped, "would know their duty. There would, in that case,
+be only one way of salvation for the people who had erected barricades,
+and that would be to manifest their will a second time, and so adjourn
+the decisions of a representation that was not national." This was
+nothing more nor less than the language of another Fructidor. And we
+know what was the result of words in those days. The _Bulletin_ was
+dated the 15th, and on the 17th the people were on the way to the Hotel
+de Ville. These popular movements cannot always be trusted, though, as
+they frequently take an unexpected turn, and even change their direction
+when on the way. It happened this time that the manifestation turned
+against those who were its instigators. Shouts were heard that day in
+Paris of _"Death to the Communists"_ and _"Down with Cabet_." George
+Sand could not understand things at all. This was not in the programme,
+and she began to have her doubts about the future of the Republic--the
+real one, that of her friends.
+
+It was much worse on the 15th of May, the day which was so fatal to
+Barbes, for he played the part of hero and of dupe on that eventful day.
+Barbes was George Sand's idol at that time.
+
+It was impossible for her to be without one, although, with her vivid
+imagination, she changed her idols frequently. With her idealism, she
+was always incarnating in some individual the perfections that she was
+constantly imagining. It seems as though she exteriorized the needs of
+her own mind and put them into an individual who seemed suitable to
+her for the particular requirements of that moment. At the time of the
+monarchy, Michel of Bourges and Pierre Leroux had been able to play the
+part, the former of a radical theorician and the latter of the mystical
+forerunner of the new times. At present Barbes had come on to the scene.
+
+He was a born conspirator, the very man for secret societies. He had
+made his career by means of prisons, or rather he had made prison his
+career, In 1835, he had commenced by helping thirty of the prisoners of
+April to escape from Sainte-Pelagie. At that time he was affiliated to
+the _Societe des Familles_. The police discovered a whole arsenal of
+powder and ammunition at the house in the Rue de Lourcine, and Barbes
+was condemned to prison for a year and sent to Carcassonne, where he had
+relatives. When he left prison, the _Societe des Saisons_ had taken the
+place of the _Societe des Familles_. With Blanqui's approval, Barbes
+organized the insurrection of May 12 and 13, 1830. This time blood was
+shed. In front of the Palais de Justice, the men, commanded by Barbes,
+had invited Lieutenant Droulneau to let them enter. The officer replied
+that he would die first. He was immediately shot, but Barbes was
+sentenced to death for this. Thanks to the intervention of Lamartine
+and Victor Hugo, his life was spared, but he was imprisoned at Mont
+Saint-Michel until 1843, and afterwards at Nimes. On the 28th of
+February, 1848, the Governor of Nimes prison informed him that he was
+free. He was more surprised and embarrassed than pleased by this news.
+
+"I was quite bewildered," he owned later on, "by this idea of leaving
+prison. I looked at my prison bed, to which I had grown so accustomed. I
+looked at my blanket and at my pillow and at all my belongings, hung
+so carefully at the foot of my bed." He asked permission to stay there
+another day. He had become accustomed to everything, and when once he
+was out again, and free, he was like a man who feels ill at ease.
+
+He took part in the affair of the 15th of May, and this is what gives
+a tragic, and at the same time comic, character to the episode. Under
+pretext of manifesting in favour of Poland, the National Assembly was
+to be invaded. Barbes did not approve of this manifestation, and
+had decided to keep out of it. Some people cannot be present at a
+revolutionary scene without taking part in it, and without soon wanting
+to play the chief part in it. The excitement goes to their head. Barbes
+seems to have been obeying in instinct over which he had no control,
+for, together with a workman named Albert, he headed the procession
+which was to march from the Chamber of Deputies to the Hotel de Ville
+and establish a fresh Provisional Government. He had already commenced
+composing the proclamations to be thrown through the windows to the
+people, after the manner of the times, when suddenly Lamartine appeared
+on the scene with Ledru-Rollin and a captain in the artillery. The
+following dialogue then took place:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"A member of the Provisional Government."
+
+"Of the Government of yesterday or of to-day?"
+
+"Of the one of to-day."
+
+"In that case I arrest you."
+
+Barbes was taken to Vincennes. He had been free rather less than
+three months, when he returned to prison as though it were his natural
+dwelling-place.
+
+George Sand admired him just as much after this as before. For her, the
+great man of the Revolution was neither Ledru-Rollin, Lamartine, nor
+even Louis-Blanc; it was Barbes. She compared him to Joan of Arc and to
+Robespierre. To her, he was much more than a mere statesman, this man of
+conspiracies and dungeons, ever mysterious and unfortunate, always
+ready for a drama or a romance. In her heart she kept an altar for this
+martyr, and never thought of wondering whether, after all, this idol and
+hero were not a mere puppet.
+
+The skirmish of May 15 undeceived George Sand very considerably. The
+June insurrection and the civil war, with blood flowing in the Paris
+streets, those streets which were formerly so lively and amusing, caused
+her terrible grief. From henceforth her letters were full of her sadness
+and discouragement. The most gloomy depression took the place of her
+former enthusiasm. It had only required a few weeks for this change to
+take place. In February she had been so proud of France, and now she
+felt that she was to be pitied for being a Frenchwoman. It was all
+so sad, and she was so ashamed. There was no one to count upon now.
+Lamartine was a chatterer; Ledru-Rollin was like a woman; the people
+were ignorant and ungrateful, so that the mission of literary people was
+over. She therefore took refuge in fiction, and buried herself in her
+dreams of art. We are not sorry to follow her there.
+
+_Francois le Champi_ appeared as a serial in the _Journal des Debats_.
+The _denouement_ was delayed by another _denouement_, which the public
+found still more interesting. This was nothing less than the catastrophe
+of the July Monarchy, in February, 1848.
+
+After the terrible June troubles, George Sand had been heartbroken, and
+had turned once more to literature for consolation. She wrote _La Petite
+Fadette_, so that the pastoral romances and the Revolution are closely
+connected with each other. Beside the novels of this kind which we have
+already mentioned, we must add _Jeanne_, which dates from 1844, and
+the _Maitres Sonneurs_, written in 1853. This, then, completes the
+incomparable series, which was the author's _chef-d'oeuvre_, and one of
+the finest gems of French literature. This was George Sand's real style,
+and the note in literature which was peculiarly her own. She was
+well fitted for such writing, both by her natural disposition and by
+circumstances. She had lived nearly all her life in the country, and it
+was there only that she lived to the full. She made great efforts, but
+Paris certainly made her homesick for her beloved Berry. She could
+not help sighing when she thought of the ploughed fields, of the
+walnut-trees, and of the oxen answering to the voice of the labourers.
+
+"It is no use," she wrote about the same time, "if you are born a
+country person, you cannot get used to the noise of cities. It always
+seems to me that our mud is beautiful mud, whilst that here makes me
+feel sick. I very much prefer my keeper's wit to that of certain of the
+visitors here. It seems to me that I am livelier when I have eaten some
+of Nannette's wheat-cake than I am after my coffee in Paris. In short,
+it appears to me that we are all perfect and charming, that no one could
+be more agreeable than we are, and that Parisians are all clowns."(46)
+
+     (46) _Correspondance:_ To.  Ch.  Duvernet, November 12, 1842.
+
+This was said in all sincerity. George Sand was quite indifferent about
+all the great events of Parisian life, about social tittle-tattle and
+Boulevard gossip. She knew the importance, though, of every episode of
+country life, of a sudden fog or of the overflowing of the river. She
+knew the place well, too, as she had visited every nook and corner in
+all weathers and in every season. She knew all the people; there was
+not a house she had not entered, either to visit the sick or to clear
+up some piece of business for the inmates. Not only did she like the
+country and the country people because she was accustomed to everything
+there, but she had something of the nature of these people within her.
+She had a certain turn of mind that was peasant-like, her slowness to
+take things in, her dislike of speech when thinking, her thoughts taking
+the form of "a series of reveries which gave her a sort of tranquil
+ecstasy, whether awake or asleep."(47) It does not seem as though there
+has ever been such an _ensemble_ of favourable conditions.
+
+     (47) See in _Jeanne_ a very fine page on the peasant soul.
+
+She did not succeed in her first attempt. In several of her novels, ever
+since _Valentine_, she had given us peasants among her characters. She
+had tried labourers, mole-catchers, fortune-tellers and beggars, but all
+these were episodic characters. _Jeanne_ is the first novel in which the
+heroine is a peasant. Everything connected with Jeanne herself in the
+novel is exquisite. We have all seen peasant women of this kind, women
+with serious faces and clearly-cut features, with a dreamy look in their
+eyes that makes us think of the maid of Lorraine. It is one of these
+exceptional creatures that George Sand has depicted. She has made an
+ecstatic being of her, who welcomes all that is supernatural, utterly
+regardless of dates or epochs. To her all wonderful beings appeal,
+the Virgin Mary and fairies, Druidesses, Joan of Arc and Napoleon. But
+Jeanne, the Virgin of Ep Nell, the Velleda of the Jomatres stones, the
+mystical sister of the Great Shepherdess, was very poorly supported.
+This remark does not refer to her cousin Claudie, although this
+individual's conduct was not blameless. Jeanne had gone into service at
+Boussac, and she was surrounded by a group of middle-class people, among
+whom was Sir Arthur----, a wealthy Englishman, who wanted to marry her.
+This mixture of peasants and _bourgeois_ is not a happy one. Neither is
+the mixture of _patois_ with a more Christian way of talking, or rather
+with a written style. The author was experimenting and feeling her way.
+
+When she wrote _La Mare au Diable_ she had found it, for in this work
+we have unity of tone, harmony of the characters with their setting,
+of sentiment with the various adventures, and, above all, absolute
+simplicity.
+
+In _Francois le Champi_ there is much that is graceful, and there is
+real feeling mingled with a touch of sentimentality. Madeleine Blanchet
+is rather old for Champi, whom she had brought up like her own child. In
+the country, though, where difference of age is soon less apparent, the
+disproportion does not seem as objectionable as it would in city life.
+The novel is not a study of maternal affection in love, as it is not
+Madeleine's feelings that are analyzed, but those of Francois. For a
+long time he had been in love without knowing it, and he is only aware
+of it when this love, instead of being a sort of agreeable dream and
+melancholy pleasure, is transformed into suffering.
+
+The subject of _La Petite Fadette_ is another analysis of a love which
+has been silent for a long time. It is difficult to say which is the
+best of these delightful stories, but perhaps, on the whole, this last
+one is generally preferred, on account of the curious and charming
+figure of little Fadette herself. We can see the thin, slender girl,
+suddenly appearing on the road, emerging from a thicket. She seems to be
+part of the scenery, and can scarcely be distinguished from the objects
+around her. The little wild country girl is like the spirit of the
+fields, woods, rivers and precipices. She is a being very near to
+Nature. Inquisitive and mischievous, she is bold in her speech, because
+she is treated as a reprobate. She jeers, because she knows that she is
+detested, and she scratches, because she suffers. The day comes when she
+feels some of that affection which makes the atmosphere breathable for
+human beings. She feels her heart beating faster in her bosom, thanks to
+this affection, and from that minute a transformation takes place within
+her. Landry, who has been observing her, is of opinion that she must
+be something of a witch. Landry is very simple-minded. There is no
+witchcraft here except that of love, and it was not difficult for that
+to work the metamorphosis. It has worked many others in this world.
+
+The _Maitres Soneurs_ initiates us into forest life, so full of
+mysterious visions. In opposition to the sedentary, stay-at-home life
+of the inhabitant of plains, with his indolent mind, we have the
+free-and-easy humour of the handsome and adventurous muleteer, Huriel,
+with his love of the road and of all that is unexpected. He is a
+_cheminau_ before the days of M. Richepin.
+
+I do not know any stories more finished than these. They certainly prove
+that George Sand had the artistic sense, a quality which has frequently
+been denied her. The characters in these stories are living and active,
+and at the same time their psychology is not insisted upon, and they
+do not stand out in such relief as to turn our attention from things,
+which, as we know, are more important than people in the country. We are
+surrounded on all sides by the country, and bathed, as it were, in
+its atmosphere. And yet, in spite of all this, the country is not once
+described. There is not one of those descriptions so dear to the heart
+of those who are considered masters in the art of word-painting. We do
+not describe those things with which we live. We are content to have
+them ever present in our mind and to be in constant communion with
+them. Style is, perhaps, the sovereign quality in these stories. Words
+peculiar to the district are introduced just sufficiently to give an
+accent. Somewhat old-fashioned expressions are employed, and these prove
+the survival of by-gone days, which, in the country, are respected more
+than elsewhere. Without any apparent effort, the narrative takes that
+epic form so natural to those who, as _aedes_ of primitive epochs, or
+story-tellers by country firesides, give their testimony about things of
+the past.
+
+I am aware that George Sand has been accused of tracing portraits of
+her peasants which were not like them. This is so absurd that I do not
+consider it worth while to spend time in discussing it. It would be so
+easy to show that in her types of peasants there is more variety, and
+also more reality, than in Balzac's more realistic ones. Without being
+untruthful portraits, it may be that they are somewhat flattered, and
+that we have more honest, delicate and religious peasants in these
+stories than in reality. This may be so, and George Sand warns us of
+this herself. It was her intention to depict them thus.
+
+It was not absolute reality and the everyday details of the peasants'
+habits and customs that she wanted to show us, but the poetry of the
+country, the reflection of the great sights of Nature in the soul of
+those who, thanks to their daily work, are the constant witnesses of
+them. The peasant certainly has no exact notion of the poetry of Nature,
+nor is he always conscious of it. He feels it, though, within his soul
+in a vague way. At certain moments he has glimpses of it, perhaps, when
+love causes him emotion, or perhaps when he is absent from the part of
+the world, where he has always lived. His homesickness then gives him a
+keener perception. This poetry is perhaps never clearly revealed to any
+individual, not to the labourer who traces out his furrows tranquilly in
+the early morning, nor to the shepherd who spends whole weeks alone in
+the mountains, face to face with the stars. It dwells, though, in the
+inner conscience of the race. The generations which come and go have it
+within them, and they do not fall to express it. It is this poetry
+which we find in certain customs and beliefs, in the various legends and
+songs. When Le Champi returns to his native place, he finds the whole
+country murmuring with the twitter of birds which he knew so well.
+
+"And all this reminded him of a very old song with which his mother
+Zabelli used to sing him to sleep. It was a song with words such as
+people used to employ in olden times."
+
+In George Sand's pastoral novels we have some of these old words.
+They come to us from afar, and are like a supreme blossoming of old
+traditions.
+
+It is all this which characterizes these books, and assigns to them
+their place in our literature. We must not compare them with the rugged
+studies of Balzac, nor with the insipid compositions of the bucolic
+writer, nor even with Bernadin de Saint-Pierre's masterpiece, as there
+are too many cocoanut trees in that. They prevent us seeing the French
+landscapes. Very few people know the country in France and the humble
+people who dwell there. Very few writers have loved the country well
+enough to be able to depict its hidden charms.
+
+La Fontaine has done it in his fables and Perrault in his tales. George
+Sand has her place, in this race of writers, among the French Homers.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE 'BONNE DAME' OF NOHANT THE THEATRE--ALEXANDRE DUMAS FILS--LIFE AT
+NOHANT
+
+
+Novelists are given to speaking of the theatre somewhat disdainfully.
+They say that there is too much convention, that an author is too much
+the slave of material conditions, and is obliged to consider the taste
+of the crowd, whilst a book appeals to the lover of literature, who can
+read it by his own fireside, and to the society woman, who loses herself
+in its pages. As soon, though, as one of their novels has had more
+success than its predecessors, they do not hesitate to cut it up into
+slices, according to the requirements of the publishing house, so that
+it may go beyond the little circle of lovers of literature and society
+women and reach the crowd--the largest crowd possible.
+
+George Sand never pretended to have this immense disdain for the theatre
+which is professed by ultra-refined writers. She had always loved the
+theatre, and she bore it no grudge, although her pieces had been hissed.
+In those days plays that did not find favour were hissed. At present
+they are not hissed, either because there are no more poor plays,
+or because the public has seen so many bad ones that it has become
+philosophical, and does not take the trouble to show its displeasure.
+George Sand's first piece, _Cosima_, was a noted failure. About the year
+1850, she turned to the theatre once more, hoping to find a new form of
+expression for her energy and talent. _Francois le Champi_ was a great
+success. In January, 1851, she wrote as follows, after the performance
+of _Claudie:_ "A tearful success and a financial one. The house is full
+every day; not a ticket given away, and not even a seat for Maurice. The
+piece is played admirably; Bocage is magnificent. The public weeps and
+blows its nose, as though it were in church. I am told that never in
+the memory of man has there been such a first night. I was not present
+myself."
+
+There may be a slight exaggeration in the words "never in the memory of
+man," but the success was really great. _Claudie_ is still given, and I
+remember seeing Paul Mounet interpret the part of Remy admirably at the
+Odeon Theatre. As to the _Mariage de Victorine_, it figures every year
+on the programme of the Conservatoire competitions. It is the typical
+piece for would-be _ingenues._
+
+_Francois le Champi, Claudie_ and the _Mariage de Victorine_ may be
+considered as the series representing George Sand's dramatic writings.
+These pieces were all her own, and, in her own opinion, that was their
+principal merit. The dramatic author is frequently obliged to accept the
+collaboration of persons who know nothing of literature.
+
+"Your characters say this," observes the manager; "it is all very well,
+but, believe me, it will be better for him to say just the opposite. The
+piece will run at least sixty nights longer." There was a manager at
+the Gymnase Theatre in those days named Montigny. He was a very clever
+manager, and knew exactly what the characters ought to say for making
+the piece run. George Sand complained of his mania for changing every
+play, and she added: "Every piece that I did not change, such, for
+instance, as _Champi_, _Claudie_, _Victorine, Le Demon du foyer_ and _Le
+Pressoir_, was a success, whilst all the others were either failures or
+they had a very short run."(48)
+
+     (48) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, February 24, 1855.
+
+It was in these pieces that George Sand carried out her own idea of what
+was required for the theatre. Her idea was very simple. She gives it in
+two or three words: "I like pieces that make me cry." She adds: "I like
+drama better than comedy, and, like a woman, I must be infatuated by one
+of the characters." This character is the congenial one. The public is
+with him always and trembles for him, and the trembling is all the more
+agreeable, because the public knows perfectly well that all will
+end well for this character. It can even go as far as weeping the
+traditional six tears, as Madame de Sevigne did for Andromaque. Tears at
+the theatre are all the sweeter, because they are all in vain. When, in
+a play, we have a congenial character who is there from the beginning to
+the end, the play is a success. Let us take _Cyraino de Bergerac_, for
+instance, which is one of the greatest successes in the history of the
+theatre.
+
+Francois le Champi is eminently a congenial character, for he is a man
+who always sets wrong things right. We are such believers in justice and
+in the interference of Providence. When good, straightforward people are
+persecuted by fate, we always expect to see a man appear upon the
+scene who will be the champion of innocence, who will put evil-doers to
+rights, and find the proper thing to do and say in every circumstance.
+
+Francois appears at the house of Madeleine Blanchet, who is a widow and
+very sad and ill. He takes her part and defends her from the results of
+La Severe's intrigues. He is hard on the latter, and he disdains another
+woman, Mariette, but both La Severe and Mariette love him, so true is
+it that women have a weakness for conquerors. Francois only cares for
+Madeleine, though. On the stage, we like a man to be adored by all
+women, as this seems to us a guarantee that he will only care for one of
+them.
+
+"Champi" is a word peculiar to a certain district, meaning "natural
+son." Dumas _fils_ wrote a play entitled _Le Fils naturel_. The hero
+is also a superior man, who plays the part of Providence to the family
+which has refused to recognize him.
+
+In _Claudie_, as in _Francois le Champi_, the rural setting is one
+of the great charms of the play. The first act is one of the most
+picturesque scenes on the stage. It takes place in a farmyard, the
+day when the reapers have finished their task, which is just as
+awe-inspiring as that of the sowers. A cart, drawn by oxen, enters the
+yard, bringing a sheaf all adorned with ribbons and flowers. The oldest
+of the labourers, Pere Remy, addresses a fine couplet to the sheaf of
+corn which has cost so much labour, but which is destined to keep life
+in them all. Claudie is one of those young peasant girls, whom we met
+with in the novel entitled _Jeanne_. She had been unfortunate, but
+Jeanne, although virtuous and pure herself, did not despise her, for in
+the country there is great latitude in certain matters. This is just the
+plain story, but on the stage everything becomes more dramatic and is
+treated in a more detailed and solemn fashion. Claudie's misfortune
+causes her to become a sort of personage apart, and it raises her very
+high in her own esteem.
+
+"I am not afraid of anything that can be said about me," observes
+Claudie, "for, on knowing the truth, kind-hearted, upright people will
+acknowledge that I do not deserve to be insulted." Her old grandfather,
+Remy, has completely absolved her.
+
+"You have repented and suffered enough, and you have worked and wept and
+expiated enough, too, my poor Claudie," he says. Through all this she
+has become worthy to make an excellent marriage. It is a case of
+that special moral code by which, after free love, the fault must be
+recompensed.
+
+Claudie is later on the Jeannine of the _Idees de Madame Aubray_,
+the Denise of Alexandre Dumas. She is the unmarried mother, whose
+misfortunes have not crushed her pride, who, after being outraged, has
+a right now to a double share of respect. The first good young man is
+called upon to accept her past life, for there is a law of solidarity in
+the world. The human species is divided into two categories, the one
+is always busy doing harm, and the other is naturally obliged to give
+itself up to making good the harm done.
+
+_The Mariage de Victorine_ belongs to a well-known kind of literary
+exercise, which was formerly very much in honour in the colleges. This
+consists in taking a celebrated work at the place where the author has
+left it and in imagining the "sequel." For instance, after the _Cid_,
+there would be the marriage of Rodrigue and Chimene for us. As a
+continuation of _L'Ecole des Femmes_, there is the result of the
+marriage of the young Horace with the tiresome little Agnes. Corneille
+gave a sequel to the _Menteur_ himself. Fabre d'Eglantine wrote the
+sequel to _Le Misanthrope_, and called it _Le Philinte de Moliere_.
+George Sand gives us here the sequel of Sedaine's _chef-d'oeuvre_ (that
+is, a _chef-d'oeuvre_ for Sedaine), _Le Philosophe sans le savor._
+
+In _Le Philosophe sans le savoir_ Monsieur Vanderke is a nobleman, who
+has become a merchant in order to be in accordance with the ideas of
+the times. He is a Frenchman, but he has taken a Dutch name out of
+snobbishness. He has a clerk or a confidential servant named Antoine.
+Victorine is Antoine's daughter. Vanderke's son is to fight a duel, and
+from Victorine's emotion, whilst awaiting the result of this duel, it is
+easy to see that she is in love with this young man. George Sand's
+play turns on the question of what is to be done when the day comes for
+Victorine to marry. An excellent husband is found for her, a certain
+Fulgence, one of Monsieur Vanderke's clerks. He belongs to her own
+class, and this is considered one of the indispensable conditions for
+happiness in marriage. He loves her, so that everything seems to favour
+Victorine. We are delighted, and she, too, seems to be in good spirits,
+but, all the time that she is receiving congratulations and presents, we
+begin to see that she has some great trouble.
+
+"Silk and pearls!" she exclaims; "oh, how heavy they are, but I am sure
+that they are very fine. Lace, too, and silver; oh, such a quantity of
+silver. How rich and fine and happy I shall be. And then Fulgence is so
+fond of me." (She gets sadder and sadder.) "And father is so pleased.
+How strange. I feel stifled." (She sits down in Antoine's chair.) "Is
+this joy? . . . I feel . . . Ah, it hurts to be as happy as this. . . ."
+She bursts into tears. This suppressed emotion to which she finally
+gives vent, and this forced smile which ends in sobs are very effective
+on the stage. The question is, how can Victorine's tears be dried? She
+wants to marry young Vanderke, the son of her father's employer, instead
+of the clerk. The only thing is, then, to arrange this marriage.
+
+"Is it a crime, then, for my brother to love Victorine?" asks Sophie,
+"and is it mad of me to think that you will give your consent?"
+
+"My dear Sophie," replies Monsieur Vanderke, "there are no unequal
+marriages in the sight of God. A servitor like Antoine is a friend, and
+I have always brought you up to consider Victorine as your companion and
+equal."
+
+This is the way the father of the family speaks. Personally, I consider
+him rather imprudent.
+
+As this play is already a sequel to another one, I do not wish to
+propose a sequel to _Le Mariage de Victorine_, but I cannot help
+wondering what will happen when Vanderke's son finds himself the
+son-in-law of an old servant-man, and also what will occur if he should
+take his wife to call on some of his sister's friends. It seems to me
+that he would then find out he had, made a mistake. Among the various
+personages, only one appears to me quite worthy of interest, and that is
+poor Fulgence, who was so straightforward and honest, and who is treated
+so badly.
+
+But how deep Victorine was! Even if we admit that she did not
+deliberately scheme and plot to get herself married by the son of the
+family, she did instinctively all that had to be done for that. She was
+very deep in an innocent way, and I have come to the conclusion that
+such deepness is the most to be feared.
+
+I see quite well all that is lacking in these pieces, and that they are
+not very great, but all the same they form a "theatre" apart. There is
+unity in this theatrical work of George Sand. Whether it makes a hero of
+the natural son, rehabilitates the seduced girl, or cries down the idea
+of _mesalliances_, it is always the same fight in which it is
+engaged; it is always fighting against the same enemies, prejudice and
+narrow-mindedness. On the stage, we call every opinion contrary to our
+own prejudice or narrow-mindedness. The theatre lives by fighting.
+It matters little what the author is attacking. He may wage war with
+principles, prejudices, giants, or windmills. Provided that there be a
+battle, there will be a theatre for it.
+
+The fact that George Sand's theatre was the forerunner of the theatre
+of Dumas _fils_ gives it additional value. We have already noticed the
+analogy of situations and the kinship of theories contained in George
+Sand's best plays and in the most noted ones by Dumas. I have no doubt
+that Dumas owed a great deal to George Sand. We shall see that he paid
+his debt as only he could have done. He knew the novelist when he was
+quite young, as Dumas _pere_ and George Sand were on very friendly
+terms. In her letter telling Sainte-Beuve not to take Musset to call
+on her, as she thought him impertinent, she tells him to bring Dumas
+_pere_, whom she evidently considered well bred. As she was a friend of
+his father's, she was like a mother for the son. The first letter to him
+in the _Correspondance_ is dated 1850. Dumas _fils_ was then twenty-six
+years of age, and she calls him "my son."
+
+He had not written _La Dame aux Camelias_ then. It was performed for
+the first time in February, 1852. He was merely the author of a few
+second-rate novels and of a volume of execrable poetry. He had not found
+out his capabilities at that time. There is no doubt that he was greatly
+struck by George Sand's plays, imbued as they were with the ideas we
+have just pointed out.
+
+All this is worthy of note, as it is essential for understanding the
+work of Alexandre Dumas _fils_. He, too, was a natural son, and his
+illegitimate birth had caused him much suffering. He was sent to
+the Pension Goubaux, and for several years he endured the torture
+he describes with such harshness at the beginning of _L'Affaire
+Clemenceau_. He was exposed to all kinds of insults and blows. His first
+contact with society taught him that this society was unjust, and that
+it made the innocent suffer. The first experience he had was that of the
+cruelty and cowardice of men. His mind was deeply impressed by this,
+and he never lost the impression. He did not forgive, but made it his
+mission to denounce the pharisaical attitude of society. His idea was to
+treat men according to their merits, and to pay them back for the blows
+he had received as a child.(49) It is easy, therefore, to understand how
+the private grievances of Dumas _fils_ had prepared his mind to welcome
+a theatre which took the part of the oppressed and waged war with social
+prejudices. I am fully aware of the difference in temperament of the two
+writers. Dumas _fils_, with his keen observation, was a pessimist. He
+despised woman, and he advises us to kill her, under the pretext that
+she has always remained "the strumpet of the land of No." although she
+may be dressed in a Worth costume and wear a Reboux hat.
+
+     (49) See our study of Dumas _fils_ in a volume entitled _Portraits
+     d'ecrivains._
+
+As a dramatic author, Alexandre Dumas _fils_ had just what George
+Sand lacked. He was vigorous, he had the art of brevity and brilliant
+dialogue. It is thanks to all this that we have one of the masterpieces
+of the French theatre, _Le Marquis de Villemer_, as a result of their
+collaboration.
+
+We know from George Sand's letters the share that Dumas _fils_ had in
+this work. He helped her to take the play from her novel, and to write
+the scenario. After this, when once the play was written, he touched
+up the dialogue, putting in more emphasis and brilliancy. It was Dumas,
+therefore, who constructed the play. We all know how careless George
+Sand was with her composition. She wrote with scarcely any plan in her
+mind beforehand, and let herself be carried away by events. Dumas'
+idea was that the _denouement_ is a mathematical total, and that before
+writing the first word of a piece the author must know the end and have
+decided the action. Theatrical managers complained of the sadness of
+George Sand's plays. It is to Dumas that we owe the gaiety of the Duc
+d'Aleria's _role_. It is one continual flow of amusing speeches, and it
+saves the piece from the danger of falling into tearful drama. George
+Sand had no wit, and Dumas _fils_ was full of it. It was he who put into
+the dialogue those little sayings which are so easily recognized as his.
+
+"What do the doctors say?" is asked, and the reply comes:
+
+"What do the doctors say? Well, they say just what they know: they say
+nothing."
+
+"My brother declares that the air of Paris is the only air he can
+breathe," says another character.
+
+"Congratulate him for me on his lungs," remarks his interlocutor.
+
+"Her husband was a baron . . ." remarks some one.
+
+"Who is not a baron at present?" answers another person.
+
+A certain elderly governess is being discussed.
+
+"Did you not know her?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Artemise? No, monsieur."
+
+"Have you ever seen an albatross?"
+
+"No, never."
+
+"Not even stuffed? Oh, you should go to the Zoo. It is a curious
+creature, with its great beak ending in a hook. . . . It eats all day
+long. . . . Well, Mademoiselle Artemise, etc. . . ."
+
+The _Marquis de Villemer_ is in its place in the series of George Sand's
+plays, and is quite in accordance with the general tone of her theatre.
+It is like the _Mariage de Victorine_ over again. This time Victorine is
+a reader, who gets herself married by a Marquis named Urbain. He is of a
+gloomy disposition, so that she will not enjoy his society much, but she
+will be a Marquise. Victorine and Caroline are both persons who know how
+to make their way in the world. When they have a son, I should be very
+much surprised if they allowed him to make a _mesalliance_.
+
+George Sand was one of the persons f or whom Dumas _fils_ had the
+greatest admiration. As a proof of this, a voluminous correspondence
+between them exists. It has not yet been published, but there is a
+possibility that it may be some day. I remember, when talking with Dumas
+_fils_, the terms in which he always spoke of "la mere Sand," as he
+called her in a familiar but filial way. He compared her to his father,
+and that was great praise indeed from him. He admired in her, too, as
+he admired in his father, that wealth of creative power and immense
+capacity for uninterrupted work. As a proof of this admiration, we have
+only to turn to the preface to _Le Fils naturel_, in which Dumas is so
+furious with the inhabitants of Palaiseau. George Sand had taken up her
+abode at Palaiseau, and Dumas had been trying in vain to discover her
+address in the district, when he came across one of the natives, who
+replied as follows: "George Sand? Wait a minute. Isn't it a lady with
+papers?" "So much for the glory," concludes Dumas, "of those of us with
+papers." According to him, no woman had ever had more talent or as much
+genius. "She thinks like Montaigne," he says, "she dreams like Ossian
+and she writes like Jean-Jacques. Leonardo sketches her phrases for her,
+and Mozart sings them. Madame de Sevigne kisses her hands, and Madame de
+Stael kneels down to her as she passes." We can scarcely imagine Madame
+de Stael in this humble posture, but one of the charms of Dumas was his
+generous nature, which spared no praise and was lavish in enthusiasm.
+
+
+At the epoch at which we have now arrived, George Sand had commenced
+that period of tranquillity and calm in which she was to spend the rest
+of her life. She had given up politics, for, as we have seen, she was
+quickly undeceived with regard to them, and cured of her illusions. When
+the _coup d'etat_ of December, 1851, took place, George Sand, who had
+been Ledru-Rollin's collaborator and a friend of Barbes, soon made up
+her mind what to do. As the daughter of Murat's _aide-de-camp_, she
+naturally had a certain sympathy with the Bonapartists. Napoleon III was
+a socialist, so that it was possible to come to an understanding. When
+the prince had been a prisoner at Ham, he had sent the novelist his
+study entitled _L'Extinction du pauperisme_. George Sand took advantage
+of her former intercourse with him to beg for his indulgrence in favour
+of some of her friends. This time she was in her proper _role_, the
+_role_ of a woman. The "tyrant" granted the favours she asked, and
+George Sand then came to the conclusion that he was a good sort of
+tyrant. She was accused of treason, but she nevertheless continued
+to speak of him with gratitude. She remained on good terms with the
+Imperial family, particularly with Prince Jerome, as she appreciated
+his intellect. She used to talk with him on literary and philosophical
+questions. She sent him two tapestry ottomans one year, which she had
+worked for him. Her son Maurice went for a cruise to America on Prince
+Jerome's yacht, and he was the godfather of George Sand's little
+grandchildren who were baptized as Protestants.
+
+George Sand deserves special mention for her science in the art of
+growing old. It is not a science easy to master, and personally this is
+one of my reasons for admiring her. She understood what a charm there is
+in that time of life when the voice of the passions is no longer heard,
+so that we can listen to the voice of things and examine the lesson
+of life, that time when our reason makes us more indulgent, when the
+sadness of earthly separations is softened by the thought that we shall
+soon go ourselves to join those who have left us. We then begin to have
+a foretaste of the calmness of that Great Sleep which is to console us
+at the end of all our sufferings and grief. George Sand was fully aware
+of the change that had taken place within her. She said, several
+times over, that the age of impersonality had arrived for her. She was
+delighted at having escaped from herself and at being free from egoism.
+From henceforth she could give herself up to the sentiments which, in
+pedantic and barbarous jargon, are called altruistic sentiments. By this
+we mean motherly and grandmotherly affection, devotion to her family,
+and enthusiasm for all that is beautiful and noble. She was delighted
+when she was told of a generous deed, and charmed by a book in which she
+discovered talent. It seemed to her as though she were in some way joint
+author of it.
+
+"My heart goes out to all that I see dawning or growing . . ." she
+wrote, at this time. "When we see or read anything beautiful, does it
+not seem as though it belongs to us in a way, that it is neither
+yours nor mine, but that it belongs to all who drink from it and are
+strengthened by it?"(50)
+
+     (50) _Correspondance:_ To Octave Feuillet, February 27, 1859.
+
+This is a noble sentiment, and less rare than is generally believed.
+The public little thinks that it is one of the great joys of the
+writer, when he has reached a certain age, to admire the works of his
+fellow-writers. George Sand encouraged her young _confreres_, Dumas
+_fils_, Feuillet and Flaubert, at the beginning of their career, and
+helped them with her advice.
+
+We have plenty of information about her at this epoch. Her intimate
+friends, inquisitive people and persons passing through Paris,
+have described their visits to her over and over again. We have the
+impressions noted down by the Goncourt brothers in their _Journal_. We
+all know how much to trust to this diary. Whenever the Goncourts give
+us an idea, an opinion, or a doctrine, it is as well to be wary in
+accepting it. They were not very intelligent. I do not wish, in saying
+this, to detract from them, but merely to define them. On the other
+hand, what they saw, they saw thoroughly, and they noted the general
+look, the attitude or gesture with great care.
+
+We give their impressions of George Sand. In March, 1862, they went to
+call on her. She was then living in Paris, in the Rue Racine. They give
+an account of this visit in their diary.
+
+"_March_ 30, 1862.
+
+"On the fourth floor, No. 2, Rue Racine. A little gentleman, very
+much like every one else, opened the door to us. He smiled, and said:
+'Messieurs de Goncourt!' and then, opening another door, showed us into
+a very large room, a kind of studio.
+
+"There was a window at the far end, and the light was getting dim, for
+it was about five o'clock. We could see a grey shadow against the pale
+light. It was a woman, who did not attempt to rise, but who remained
+impassive to our bow and our words. This seated shadow, looking so
+drowsy, was Madame Sand, and the man who opened the door was the
+engraver Manceau. Madame Sand is like an automatic machine. She talks in
+a monotonous, mechanical voice which she neither raises nor lowers,
+and which is never animated. In her whole attitude there is a sort of
+gravity and placidness, something of the half-asleep air of a person
+ruminating. She has very slow gestures, the gestures of a somnambulist.
+With a mechanical movement she strikes a wax match, which gives a
+flicker, and lights the cigar she is holding between her lips.
+
+"Madame Sand was extremely pleasant; she praised us a great deal, but
+with a childishness of ideas, a platitude of expression and a mournful
+good-naturedness that was as chilling as the bare wall of a room.
+Manceau endeavoured to enliven the dialogue. We talked of her theatre
+at Nohant, where they act for her and for her maid until four in the
+morning. . . . We then talked of her prodigious faculty for work. She
+told us that there was nothing meritorious in that, as she had always
+worked so easily. She writes every night from one o'clock until four in
+the morning, and she writes again for about two hours during the day.
+Manceau explains everything, rather like an exhibitor of phenomena. 'It
+is all the same to her,' he told us, 'if she is disturbed. Suppose you
+turn on a tap at your house, and some one comes in the room. You simply
+turn the tap off. It is like that with Madame Sand.'"
+
+
+The Goncourt brothers were extremely clever in detracting from the
+merits of the people about whom they spoke. They tell us that George
+Sand had "a childishness in her ideas and a platitude of expression."
+They were unkind without endeavouring to be so. They ran down people
+instinctively. They were eminently literary men. They were also artistic
+writers, and had even invented "artistic writing," but they had very
+little in common with George Sand's attitude of mind. To her the theory
+of art for the sake of art had always seemed a very hollow theory. She
+wrote as well as she could, but she never dreamed of the profession of
+writing having anything in common with an acrobatic display.
+
+In September, 1863, the Goncourt brothers again speak of George Sand,
+telling us about her life at Nohant, or rather putting the account they
+give into the mouth of Theophile Gautier. He had just returned from
+Nohant, and he was asked if it was amusing at George Sand's.
+
+"Just as amusing as a monastery of the Moravian brotherhood," he
+replies. "I arrived there in the evening, and the house is a long way
+from the station. My trunk was put into a thicket, and on arriving
+I entered by the farm in the midst of all the dogs, which gave me a
+fright. . . ."
+
+As a matter of fact, Gautier's arrival at Nohant had been quite a
+dramatic poem, half tragic and half comic. Absolute freedom was the rule
+of Nohant. Every one there read, wrote, or went to sleep according
+to his own will and pleasure. Gautier arrived in that frame of mind
+peculiar to the Parisian of former days. He considered that he had given
+a proof of heroism in venturing outside the walls of Paris. He therefore
+expected a hearty welcome. He was very much annoyed at his reception,
+and was about to start back again immediately, when George Sand was
+informed of his arrival. She was extremely vexed at what had happened,
+and exclaimed, "But had not any one told him how stupid I am!"
+
+The Goncourt brothers asked Gautier what life at Nohant was like.
+
+"Luncheon is at ten," he replied, "and when the finger was on the hour,
+we all took our seats. Madame Sand arrived, looking like a somnambulist,
+and remained half asleep all through the meal. After luncheon we went
+into the garden and played at _cochonnet_. This roused her, and she
+would then sit down and begin to talk."
+
+It would have been more exact to say that she listened, as she was not
+a great talker herself. She had a horror of a certain kind of
+conversation, of that futile, paradoxical and spasmodic kind which is
+the speciality of "brilliant talkers." Sparkling conversation of this
+sort disconcerted her and made her feel ill at ease. She did not
+like the topic to be the literary profession either. This exasperated
+Gautier, who would not admit of there being anything else in the world
+but literature.
+
+"At three o'clock," he continued, "Madame Sand went away to write until
+six. We then dined, but we had to dine quickly, so that Marie Caillot
+would have time to dine. Marie Caillot is the servant, a sort of little
+Fadette whom Madame Sand had discovered in the neighbourhood for playing
+her pieces. This Marie Caillot used to come into the drawing-room in the
+evening. After dinner Madame Sand would play patience, without uttering
+a word, until midnight. . . . At midnight she began to write again until
+four o'clock. . . . You know what happened once. Something monstrous.
+She finished a novel at one o'clock in the morning, and began another
+during the night. . . . To make copy is a function with Madame Sand."
+
+The marionette theatre was one of the Nohant amusements. One of the joys
+of the family, and also one of the delights of _dilettanti_,(51) was the
+painting of the scenery, the manufacturing of costumes, the working out
+of scenarios, dressing dolls and making them talk.
+
+     (51) "The individual named George Sand is very well.  He is
+     enjoying the wonderful winter which reigns in Berry; he
+     gathers flowers, points out any interesting botanical
+     anomalies, sews dresses and mantles for his daughter-in-law,
+     and costumes for the marionettes, cuts out stage scenery,
+     dresses dolls and reads music. . .."--_Correspondance:_ To
+     Flaubert, January 17, 1869.
+
+In one of her novels, published in 1857, George Sand introduces to us
+a certain Christian Waldo, who has a marionette show. He explains
+the attraction of this kind of theatre and the fascination of these
+_burattini_, which were living beings to him. Those among us who, some
+fifteen years ago, were infatuated by a similar show, are not surprised
+at Waldo's words. The marionettes to which we refer were to be seen in
+the Passage Vivienne. Sacred plays in verse were given, and the managers
+were Monsieur Richepin and Monsieur Bouchor. For such plays we preferred
+actors made of wood to actors of flesh and blood, as there is always a
+certain desecration otherwise in acting such pieces.
+
+George Sand rarely left Nohant now except for her little flat in Paris.
+In the spring of 1855, she went to Rome for a short time, but did not
+enjoy this visit much. She sums up her impressions in the following
+words: "Rome is a regular see-saw." The ruins did not interest her much.
+
+"After spending several days in visiting urns, tombs, crypts and
+columns, one feels the need of getting out of all this a little and of
+seeing Nature."
+
+Nature, however, did not compensate her sufficiently for her
+disappointment in the ruins.
+
+"The Roman Campagna, which has been so much vaunted, is certainly
+singularly immense, but it is so bare, flat and deserted, so monotonous
+and sad, miles and miles of meadow-land in every direction, that the
+little brain one has left, after seeing the city, is almost overpowered
+by it all."
+
+This journey inspired her with one of the weakest of her novels, _La
+Daniella_. It is the diary of a painter named Jean Valreg, who married
+a laundry-girl. In 1861, after an illness, she went to Tamaris, in the
+south of France. This name is the title of one of her novels. She does
+not care for this place either. She considers that there is too much
+wind, too much dust, and that there are too many olive-trees in the
+south of France.
+
+I am convinced that at an earlier time in her life she would, have been
+won over by the fascination of Rome. She had comprehended the charm of
+Venice so admirably. At an earlier date, too, she would not have
+been indifferent to the beauties of Provence, as she had delighted in
+meridional Nature when in Majorca.
+
+The years were over, though, for her to enjoy the variety of outside
+shows with all their phantasmagoria. A time comes in life, and it had
+already come for her, when we discover that Nature, which has seemed so
+varied, is the same everywhere, that we have quite near us all that we
+have been so far away to seek, a little of this earth, a little water
+and a little sky. We find, too, that we have neither the time nor the
+inclination to go away in search of all this when our hours are counted
+and we feel the end near. The essential thing then is to reserve for
+ourselves a little space for our meditations, between the agitations of
+life and that moment which alone decides everything for us.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE GENIUS OF THE WRITER
+
+CORRESPONDENCE WITH FLAUBERT--LAST NOVELS
+
+
+With that maternal instinct which was so strong within her, George Sand
+could not do without having a child to scold, direct and take to task.
+The one to whom she was to devote the last ten years of her life, who
+needed her beneficent affection more than any of those she had adopted,
+was a kind of giant with hair turned back from his forehead and a thick
+moustache like a Norman of the heroic ages. He was just such a man as
+we can imagine the pirates in Duc Rollo's boats. This descendant of the
+Vikings had been born in times of peace, and his sole occupation was to
+endeavour to form harmonious phrases by avoiding assonances.
+
+I do not think there have been two individuals more different from each
+other than George Sand and Gustave Flaubert. He was an artist, and she
+in many respects was _bourgeoise_. He saw all things at their worst;
+she saw them better than they were. Flaubert wrote to her in surprise
+as follows: "In spite of your large sphinx eyes, you have seen the world
+through gold colour."
+
+She loved the lower classes; he thought them detestable, and qualified
+universal suffrage as "a disgrace to the human mind." She preached
+concord, the union of classes, whilst he gave his opinion as follows:
+
+"I believe that the poor hate the rich, and that the rich are afraid of
+the poor. It will be like this eternally."
+
+It was always thus. On every subject the opinion of the one was sure to
+be the direct opposite of the opinion of the other. This was just what
+had attracted them.
+
+"I should not be interested in myself," George Sand said, "if I had the
+honour of meeting myself." She was interested in Flaubert, as she had
+divined that he was her antithesis.
+
+"The man who is Just passing," says Fantasio, "is charming. There are
+all sorts of ideas in his mind which would be quite new to me."
+
+George Sand wanted to know something of these ideas which were new to
+her. She admired Flaubert on account of all sorts of qualities which
+she did not possess herself. She liked him, too, as she felt that he was
+unhappy.
+
+She went to see him during the summer of 1866. They visited the historic
+streets and old parts of Rouen together. She was both charmed and
+surprised. She could not believe her eyes, as she had never imagined
+that all that existed, and so near Paris, too. She stayed in that house
+at Croisset in which Flaubert's whole life was spent. It was a house
+with wide windows and a view over the Seine. The hoarse, monotonous
+sound of the chain towing the heavy boats along could be heard
+distinctly within the rooms. Flaubert lived there with his mother and
+niece. To George Sand everything there seemed to breathe of tranquillity
+and comfort, but at the same time she brought away with her an
+impression of sadness. She attributed this to the vicinity of the Seine,
+coming and going as it does according to the bar.
+
+"The willows of the islets are always being covered and uncovered," she
+writes; "it all looks very cold and sad."(52)
+
+     (52) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, August 10, 1866.
+
+She was not really duped, though, by her own explanation. She knew
+perfectly well that what makes a house sad or gay, warm or icy-cold is
+not the outlook on to the surrounding country, but the soul of those who
+inhabit it and who have fashioned it in their own image. She had just
+been staying in the house of the misanthropist.
+
+When Moliere put the misanthropist on the stage with his
+wretched-looking face, he gave him some of the features which remind
+us so strongly of Flaubert. The most ordinary and everyday events were
+always enough to put Alceste into a rage. It was just the same with
+Flaubert. Everyday things which we are philosophical enough to accept
+took his breath away. He was angry, and he wanted to be angry. He was
+irritated with every one and with everything, and he cultivated this
+irritation. He kept himself in a continual state of exasperation,
+and this was his normal state. In his letters he described himself as
+"worried with life," "disgusted with everything," "always agitated and
+always indignant." He spells _hhhindignant_ with several h's. He signs
+his letters, "The Reverend Father Cruchard of the Barnabite Order,
+director of the Ladies of Disenchantment." Added to all this, although
+there may have been a certain amount of pose in his attitude, he was
+sincere. He "roared" in his own study, when he was quite alone and
+there was no one to be affected by his roaring. He was organized in a
+remarkable way for suffering. He was both romantic and realistic, a keen
+observer and an imaginative man. He borrowed some of the most pitiful
+traits from reality, and recomposed them into a regular nightmare. We
+agree with Flaubert that injustice and nonsense do exist in life. But he
+gives us Nonsense itself, the seven-headed and ten-horned beast of the
+Apocalypse. He sees this beast everywhere, it haunts him and blocks up
+every avenue for him, so that he cannot see the sublime beauties of the
+creation nor the splendour of human intelligence.
+
+In reply to all his wild harangues, George Sand gives wise answers,
+smiling as she gives them, and using her common sense with which to
+protect herself against the trickery of words. What has he to complain
+of, this grown-up child who is too naive and who expects too much? By
+what extraordinary misfortune has he such an exceptionally unhappy lot?
+He is fairly well off and he has great talent. How many people would
+envy him! He complains of life, such as it is for every one, and of the
+present conditions of life, which had never been better for any one at
+any epoch. What is the use of getting irritated with life, since we do
+not wish to die? Humanity seemed despicable to him, and he hated it.
+Was he not a part of this humanity himself? Instead of cursing our
+fellow-men for a whole crowd of imperfections inherent to their nature,
+would it not be more just to pity them for such imperfections? As to
+stupidity and nonsense, if he objected to them, it would be better to
+pay no attention to them, instead of watching out for them all the time.
+Beside all this, is there not more reason than we imagine for every one
+of us to be indulgent towards the stupidity of other people?
+
+"That poor stupidity of which we hear so much," exclaimed George Sand.
+"I do not dislike it, as I look on it with maternal eyes." The human
+race is absurd, undoubtedly, but we must own that we contribute
+ourselves to this absurdity.
+
+There is something morbid in Flaubert's case, and with equal clearness
+of vision George Sand points out to him the cause of it and the remedy.
+The morbidness is caused in the first place by his loneliness, and by
+the fact that he has severed all bonds which united him to the rest
+of the universe. Woe be to those who are alone! The remedy is the next
+consideration. Is there not, somewhere in the world, a woman whom he
+could love and who would make him suffer? Is there not a child somewhere
+whose father he could imagine himself to be, and to whom he could devote
+himself? Such is the law of life. Existence is intolerable to us as long
+as we only ask for our own personal satisfaction, but it becomes dear to
+us from the day when we make a present of it to another human being.
+
+There was the same antagonism in their literary opinions. Flaubert
+was an artist, the theorist of the doctrine of art for art, such
+as Theophile Gautier, the Goncourt brothers and the Parnassians
+comprehended it, at about the same epoch. It is singularly interesting
+to hear him formulate each article of this doctrine, and to hear George
+Sand's fervent protestations in reply. Flaubert considers that an author
+should not put himself into his work, that he should not write his books
+with his heart, and George Sand answers:
+
+"I do not understand at all, then. Oh no, it is all incomprehensible to
+me."
+
+With what was an author to write his books, if not with his own
+sentiments and emotions? Was he to write them with the hearts of other
+people? Flaubert maintained that an author should only write for about
+twenty persons, unless he simply wrote for himself, "like a _bourgeois_
+turning his serviette-rings round in his attic." George Sand was of
+opinion that an author should write "for all those who can profit by
+good reading." Flaubert confesses that if attention be paid to the
+old distinction between matter and form, he should give the greater
+importance to form, in which he had a religious belief. He considered
+that in the correctness of the putting together, in the rarity of the
+elements, the polish of the surface and the perfect harmony of the whole
+there was an intrinsic virtue, a kind of divine force. In conclusion, he
+adds:
+
+"I endeavour to think well always, _in order to_ write well, but I do
+not conceal the fact that my object is to write well."
+
+This, then, was the secret of that working up of the style, until it
+became a mania with him and developed into a torture. We all know of
+the days of anguish which Flaubert spent in searching for a word that
+escaped him, and the weeks that he devoted to rounding off one of his
+periods. He would never write these down until he had said them to
+himself, or, as he put it himself, until "they had gone through his
+jaw." He would not allow two complements in the same phrase, and we are
+told that he was ill after reading in one of his own books the following
+words: "Une couronne _de_ fleurs _d_'oranger."
+
+"You do not know what it is," he wrote, "to spend a whole day holding
+one's head and squeezing one's brains to find a word. Ideas flow with
+you freely and continually, like a stream. With me they come like
+trickling water, and it is only by a huge work of art that I can get
+a waterfall. Ah, I have had some experience of the terrible torture of
+style!" No, George Sand certainly had no experience of this kind, and
+she could not even conceive of such torture. It amazed her to hear of
+such painful labour, for, personally, she let the wind play on her "old
+harp" just as it listed.
+
+Briefly, she considered that her friend was the victim of a hopeless
+error. He took literature for the essential thing, but there was
+something before all literature, and that something was life. "The Holy
+of Holies, as you call literature, is only secondary to me in life. I
+have always loved some one better than it, and my family better than
+that some one."
+
+This, then, was the keynote of the argument. George Sand considered that
+life is not only a pretext for literature, but that literature should
+always refer to life and should be regulated by life, as by a model
+which takes the precedence of it and goes far beyond it. This, too, is
+our opinion.
+
+The state of mind which can be read between the lines in George Sand's
+letters to Flaubert is serenity, and this is also the characteristic of
+her work during the last period of her life. Her "last style" is that
+of _Jean de la Rocke_, published in 1860. A young nobleman, Jean de la
+Roche, loses his heart to the exquisite Love Butler. She returns his
+affection, but the jealousy of a young brother obliges them to separate.
+In order to be near the woman he loves, Jean de la Roche disguises
+himself as a guide, and accompanies the whole family in an excursion
+through the Auvergne mountains. A young nobleman as a guide is by
+no means an ordinary thing, but in love affairs such disguises are
+admitted. Lovers in the writings of Marivaux took the parts of servants,
+and in former days no one was surprised to meet with princes in disguise
+on the high-roads.
+
+George Sand's masterpiece of this kind is undoubtedly _Le Marquis
+de Villemer_, published in 1861. A provincial _chateau_, an old
+aristocratic woman, sceptical and indulgent, two brothers capable of
+being rivals without ceasing to be friends, a young girl of noble birth,
+but poor, calumny being spread abroad, but quickly repudiated, some
+wonderful pages of description, and some elegant, sinuous conversations.
+All this has a certain charm. The poor girl marries the Marquis in
+the end. This, too, is a return to former days, to the days when kings
+married shepherdesses. The pleasure that we have in reading such novels
+is very much like that which we used to feel on hearing fairy-stories.
+
+"If some one were to tell me the story of _Peau d'Ane_, I should be
+delighted," confessed La Fontaine, and surely it would be bad form to
+be more difficult and over-nice than he was. Big children as we are,
+we need stories which give food to our imagination, after being
+disappointed by the realities of life. This is perhaps the very object
+of the novel. Romance is not necessarily an exaggerated aspiration
+towards imaginary things. It is something else too. It is the revolt of
+the soul which is oppressed by the yoke of Nature. It is the expression
+of that tendency within us towards a freedom which is impossible, but
+of which we nevertheless dream. An iron law presides over our destiny.
+Around us and within us, the series of causes and effects continues
+to unwind its hard chain. Every single one of our deeds bears its
+consequence, and this goes on to eternity. Every fault of ours will
+bring its chastisement. Every weakness will have to be made good. There
+is not a moment of oblivion, not an instant when we may cease to be on
+our guard. Romantic illusion is, then, just an attempt to escape, at
+least in imagination, from the tyranny of universal order.
+
+It is impossible, in this volume, to consider all George Sand's works.
+Some of her others are charming, but the whole series would perhaps
+appear somewhat monotonous. There is, however, one novel of this epoch
+to which we must call attention, as it is like a burst of thunder during
+calm weather. It also reveals an aspect of George Sand's ideas which
+should not be passed over lightly. This book was perhaps the only
+one George Sand wrote under the influence of anger. We refer to
+_Mademoiselle La Quintinie_. Octave Feuillet had just published his
+_Histoire de Sibylle_, and this book made George Sand furiously angry.
+We are at a loss to comprehend her indignation. Feuillet's novel is very
+graceful and quite inoffensive. Sibylle is a fanciful young person, who
+from her earliest childhood dreams of impossible things. She wants her
+grandfather to get a star for her, and another time she wants to ride on
+the swan's back as it swims in the pool. When she is being prepared for
+her first communion, she has doubts about the truth of the Christian
+religion, but one night, during a storm, the priest of the place springs
+into a boat and goes to the rescue of some sailors in peril. All the
+difficulties of theological interpretations are at once dispelled for
+her. A young man falls in love with her, but on discovering that he is
+not a believer she endeavours to convert him, and goes moonlight walks
+with him. Moonlight is sometimes dangerous for young girls, and, after
+one of these sentimental and theological strolls, she has a mysterious
+ailment. . . .
+
+In order to understand George Sand's anger on reading this novel, which
+was both religious and social, and at the same time very harmless,
+we must know what her state of mind was on the essential question of
+religion.
+
+In the first place, George Sand was not hostile to religious ideas.
+She had a religion. There is a George Sand religion. There are not many
+dogmas, and the creed is simple. George Sand believed firmly in the
+existence of God. Without the notion of God, nothing can be explained
+and no problem solved. This God is not merely the "first cause." It is a
+personal and conscious God, whose essential, if not sole, function is to
+forgive--every one.
+
+"The dogma of hell," she writes, "is a monstrosity, an imposture, a
+barbarism. . . . It is impious to doubt God's infinite pity, and to
+think that He does not always pardon, even the most guilty of men." This
+is certainly the most complete application that has ever been made of
+the law of pardon. This God is not the God of Jacob, nor of Pascal,
+nor even of Voltaire. He is not an unknown God either. He is the God of
+Beranger and of all good people. George Sand believed also, very
+firmly, in the immortality of the soul. On losing any of her family, the
+certainty of going to them some day was her great consolation.
+
+"I see future and eternal life before me as a certainty," she said; "it
+is like a light, and, thanks to its brilliancy, other things cannot be
+seen; but the light is there, and that is all I need." Her belief
+was, then, in the existence of God, the goodness of Providence and the
+immortality of the soul. George Sand was an adept in natural religion.
+
+She did not accept the idea of any revealed religion, and there was one
+of these revealed religions that she execrated. This was the Catholic
+religion. Her correspondence on this subject during the period of the
+Second Empire is most significant. She was a personal enemy of the
+Church, and spoke of the Jesuits as a subscriber to the _Siecle_ might
+do to-day. She feared the dagger of the Jesuits for Napoleon III, but at
+the same time she hoped there might be a frustrated attempt at murder,
+so that his eyes might be opened. The great danger of modern times,
+according to her, was the development of the clerical spirit. She was
+not an advocate for liberty of education either. "The priestly spirit
+has been encouraged," she wrote.(53) "France is overrun with convents,
+and wretched friars have been allowed to take possession of education."
+She considered that wherever the Church was mistress, it left its marks,
+which were unmistakable: stupidity and brutishness. She gave Brittany as
+an example.
+
+     (53) _Correspondance:_ To Barbes, May 12, 1867.
+
+"There is nothing left," she writes, "when the priest and Catholic
+vandalism have passed by, destroying the monuments of the old world and
+leaving their lice for the future."(54)
+
+     (54) _Ibid.:_ To Flaubert, September 21, 1860.
+
+It is no use attempting to ignore the fact. This is anti-clericalism
+in all its violence. Is it not curious that this passion, when once it
+takes possession of even the most distinguished minds, causes them to
+lose all sentiment of measure, of propriety and of dignity.
+
+_Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ is the result of a fit of anti-clerical
+mania. George Sand gives, in this novel, the counterpart of _Sibylle_.
+Emile Lemontier, a free-thinker, is in love with the daughter of General
+La Quintinie. Emile is troubled in his mind because, as his _fiancee_
+is a Catholic, he knows she will have to have a confessor. The idea
+is intolerable to him, as, like Monsieur Homais, he considers that
+a husband could not endure the idea of his wife having private
+conversations with one of those individuals. Mademoiselle La Quintinie's
+confessor is a certain Moreali, a near relative of Eugene Sue's Rodin.
+The whole novel turns on the struggle between Emile and Moreali, which
+ends in the final discomfiture of Moreali. Mademoiselle La Quintinie is
+to marry Emile, who will teach her to be a free-thinker. Emile is
+proud of his work of drawing a soul away from Christian communion. He
+considers that the light of reason is always sufficient for illuminating
+the path in a woman's life. He thinks that her natural rectitude will
+prove sufficient for making a good woman of her. I do not wish to call
+this into question, but even if she should not err, is it not possible
+that she may suffer? This free-thinker imagines that it is possible to
+tear belief from a heart without rending it and causing an incurable
+wound. Oh, what a poor psychologist! He forgets that beliefs the
+summing up and the continuation of the belief of a whole series of
+generations. He does not hear the distant murmur of the prayers of
+by-gone years. It is in vain to endeavour to stifle those prayers; they
+will be heard for ever within the crushed and desolate soul.
+
+_Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ is a work of hatred. George Sand was not
+successful with it. She had no vocation for writing such books, and
+she was not accustomed to writing them. It is a novel full of tiresome
+dissertations, and it is extremely dull.
+
+From that date, though, George Sand experienced the joy of a certain
+popularity. At theatrical performances and at funerals the students
+manifested in her honour. It was the same for Sainte-Beuve, but this
+does not seem to have made either of them any greater.
+
+We will pass over all this, and turn to something that we can admire.
+The robust and triumphant old age of George Sand was admirable. Nearly
+every year she went to some fresh place in France to find a setting for
+her stories. She had to earn her living to the very last, and was doomed
+to write novels for ever. "I shall be turning my wheel when I die," she
+used to say, and, after all, this is the proper ending for a literary
+worker.
+
+In 1870 and 1871, she suffered all the anguish of the "Terrible Year."
+When once the nightmare was over, she set to work once more like a true
+daughter of courageous France, unwilling to give in. She was as hardy
+as iron as she grew old. "I walk to the river," she wrote in 1872, "and
+bathe in the cold water, warm as I am. . . . I am of the same nature as
+the grass in the field. Sunshine and water are all I need."
+
+For a woman of sixty-eight to be able to bathe every day in the cold
+water of the Indre is a great deal. In May, 1876, she was not well, and
+had to stay in bed. She was ill for ten days, and died without suffering
+much. She is buried at Nohant, according to her wishes, so that her last
+sleep is in her beloved Berry.
+
+
+In conclusion, we would say just a few words about George Sand's genius,
+and the place that she takes in the history of the French novel.
+
+On comparing George Sand with the novelists of her time, what strikes
+us most is how different she was from them. She is neither like Balzac,
+Stendhal, nor Merimee, nor any story-teller of our thoughtful, clever
+and refined epoch. She reminds us more of the "old novelists," of those
+who told stories of chivalrous deeds and of old legends, or, to go still
+further back, she reminds us of the _aedes_ of old Greece. In the early
+days of a nation there were always men who went to the crowd and charmed
+them with the stories they told in a wordy way. They scarcely knew
+whether they invented these stories as they told them, or whether they
+had heard them somewhere. They could not tell either which was fiction
+and which reality, for all reality seemed wonderful to them. All the
+people about whom they told were great, all objects were good and
+everything beautiful. They mingled nursery-tales with myths that were
+quite sensible, and the history of nations with children's stories. They
+were called poets.
+
+George Sand did not employ a versified form for her stories, but she
+belonged to the family of these poets. She was a poet herself who had
+lost her way and come into our century of prose, and she continued her
+singing.
+
+Like these early poets, she was primitive. Like them, she obeyed a god
+within her. All her talent was instinctive, and she had all the ease
+of instinctive talent. When Flaubert complained to George Sand of the
+"tortures" that style cost him, she endeavoured to admire him.
+
+"When I see the difficulty that my old friend has in writing his novel,
+I am discouraged about my own case, and I say to myself that I am
+writing poor sort of literature."
+
+This was merely her charity, for she never understood that there could
+be any effort in writing. Consequently she could not understand that it
+should cause suffering. For her, writing was a pleasure, as it was the
+satisfaction of a need. As her works were no effort to her, they left no
+trace in her memory. She had not intended to write them, and, when once
+written, she forgot them.
+
+"_Consuelo and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, what are these books?" she
+asks. "Did I write them? I do not remember a single word of them."
+
+Her novels were like fruit, which, when ripe, fell away from her. George
+Sand always returned to the celebration of certain great themes which
+are the eternal subjects of all poetry, subjects such as love and
+nature, and sentiments like enthusiasm and pity. The very language
+completes the illusion. The choice of words was often far from perfect,
+as George Sand's vocabulary was often uncertain, and her expression
+lacked precision and relief. But she had the gift of imagery, and her
+images were always delightfully fresh. She never lost that rare faculty
+which she possessed of being surprised at things, so that she looked at
+everything with youthful eyes. There is a certain movement which carries
+the reader on, and a rhythm that is soothing. She develops the French
+phrase slowly perhaps, but without any confusion. Her language is like
+those rivers which flow along full and limpid, between flowery banks
+and oases of verdure, rivers by the side of which the traveller loves to
+linger and to lose himself in dreams.
+
+The share which belongs to George Sand in the history of the French
+novel is that of having impregnated the novel with the poetry in her
+own soul. She gave to the novel a breadth and a range which it had never
+hitherto had. She celebrated the hymn of Nature, of love and of goodness
+in it. She revealed to us the country and the peasants of France. She
+gave satisfaction to the romantic tendency which is in every one of us,
+to a more or less degree.
+
+All this is more even than is needed to ensure her fame. She denied ever
+having written for posterity, and she predicted that in fifty years she
+would be forgotten. It may be that there has been for her, as there is
+for every illustrious author who dies, a time of test and a period of
+neglect. The triumph of naturalism, by influencing taste for a time, may
+have stopped our reading George Sand. At present we are just as tired
+of documentary literature as we are disgusted with brutal literature. We
+are gradually coming back to a better comprehension of what there is of
+"truth" in George Sand's conception of the novel. This may be summed up
+in a few words--to charm, to touch and to console. Those of us who know
+something of life may perhaps wonder whether to console may not be the
+final aim of literature. George Sand's literary ideal may be read in the
+following words, which she wrote to Flaubert:
+
+"You make the people who read your books still sadder than they were
+before. I want to make them less unhappy." She tried to do this, and she
+often succeeded in her attempt. What greater praise can we give to her
+than that? And how can we help adding a little gratitude and affection
+to our admiration for the woman who was the good fairy of the
+contemporary novel?
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life
+and Writings, by Rene Doumic
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 138 ***