GEORGE SAND AND HER LOVERS 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE EARLY MOUNTAINEERS. 
 
 LAKE GENEVA AND ITS LITERARY 
 LANDMARKS. 
 
 MADAME DE STAfiL AND HER LOVERS. 
 
fit 
 
 \ 
 
 , 
 
GEORGE SANBMA 
 AND HER LOVERS 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS GRIBBLE 
 
 AUTHOR OF " MADAME DE STAEL AND HER LOVERS ' 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1907 
 
PREFACE 
 
 
 FRENCH literary lives as a rule are interesting ; 
 English literary lives as a rule are not. 
 
 The rule, no doubt, has its exceptions. The 
 life of Byron is more interesting than that of 
 Alexis de Tocqueville ; the life of Shelley is more 
 interesting than that of Taine. It might be 
 possible to compile a long list of exceptions by 
 citing such extreme instances as these. But 
 the rule would still remain, and one is tempted 
 to seek a reason for it. 
 
 Probably the explanation should be sought, 
 and would be found, in the difference between 
 the attitudes which representative men and 
 women of the two races respectively adopt 
 towards their own personalities. In England 
 the tone which prevails in these matters is 
 that set at the public schools and universities. 
 Its characteristics are reticence, self-control, 
 shame -facedness in the presence of strong 
 emotions, and a high regard for the conventional 
 ideals. The public schoolman seldom aspires to 
 be different from other public schoolmen. His 
 ambition, when he is ambitious, is to be like 
 them, but more brilliant to succeed on approved 
 
 839703 
 
Preface 
 
 lines, and conform to a recognised type. The 
 man who diverges, however brilliantly, from the 
 type, is not only mistrusted by his neighbours, 
 but is apt to mistrust himself. 
 
 To this rule too, of course, there are excep- 
 tions. One finds them chiefly among aristocrats 
 and among Jews. Byron and Disraeli are the 
 two most obvious examples ; and their cases are 
 hardly to be paralleled among members of the 
 English middle classes. These are almost 
 invariably governed by the public school ideal 
 of "form," whether they have actually been at 
 public schools or not. Women, in their sHghtly 
 different way, are no less under the influence of 
 that ideal than men. The result is that both 
 men and women are ashamed, except within 
 very narrow limits, to be eccentric. Their 
 eccentricity, when they are eccentric, seldom 
 gets beyond the buffoonery of an outlandish garb. 
 To that extent a man of marked individuality 
 may sometimes make his life a spectacular 
 display. But there is no real cult of the ego 
 among us no tendency to treat the private life 
 as if it were a public matter. 
 
 Hence the attitude of Englishmen and 
 Englishwomen especially of Englishwomen 
 towards their love affairs. It is not to be 
 supposed (though no statistics are available) that, 
 so far as actual conduct goes, we are much more 
 austere than our neighbours. Where we differ 
 from our neighbours is in our uncompromising 
 
 vi 
 
Preface 
 
 refusal to regard love seriously where the rela- 
 tions of the lovers are " irregular." That is to 
 say, what the Frenchman regards as a romance 
 is regarded by the Englishman as intrigue. It is 
 so regarded, not only by the lookers-on, who see 
 most of the game, but also by the principals. 
 And there results from this not only the 
 reticence which good manners exact, but also 
 a special kind of hypocrisy which the whole 
 Continent declares, rightly or wrongly, to be 
 peculiar to the British Isles. 
 
 The whole Continent, rightly or wrongly, sees 
 a crowning example of that hypocrisy in the 
 career of George Eliot. It is not the ethical 
 aspect of her relations with George Henry 
 Lewes, so often, and so acrimoniously, debated 
 on this side of the Channel, that perturbs the 
 foreign mind. Foreign critics are quite willing 
 to apply to her case the famous saying of the 
 tolerant monk of old : Boniface did it, and not we ; 
 Boniface and not we will suffer for it ; peace 
 be with Boniface! What is incomprehensible 
 to them is her yearning for the reputation of 
 " respectability," and her calm assurance that she 
 could achieve it by assuming the name to which 
 another woman was legally entitled. For she was 
 not Mrs. Lewes ; and everybody knew that she 
 was not Mrs. Lewes ; and yet all her friends and 
 acquaintances both those who knew her well and 
 those who knew her slightly agreed to pretend 
 that she was, and would assuredly have refused 
 
 vii 
 
Preface 
 
 to visit her if, while living with Lewes, she had 
 continued to call herself Mary Anne Evans. No 
 wonder the foreign critics are puzzled, and see 
 in the spectacle, not vice paying decent and 
 decorous homage to virtue, but an individuality 
 capable of better things grovelling at the feet of 
 bourgeois conventions. 
 
 By such deceptions which deceive nobody, a 
 Frenchman would say, romance is degraded to 
 the level of intrigue ; and he would add, to point 
 the contrast, that the aim of his own countrymen 
 and countrywomen is to raise intrigue to the 
 dignity of romance. Certainly he might cite 
 many instances in support of the latter proposi- 
 tion both among the romances which have ended 
 happily and among those through which hearts 
 have been broken. There is the case of 
 Victor Hugo's exaltation of Juliette Drouet not 
 only his mistress but his Muse ; there is the 
 case of Alfred de Vigny writing his Coleres de 
 Samson because his Delilah had behaved after 
 the fashion of her kind ; there is the case of 
 Chateaubriand celebrating his passion for Pauline 
 de Beaumont, with whom he lived while writing 
 Le Gtnie du Christianisme. But the case of 
 George Sand furnishes the best instance of all. 
 
 Living in an extravagant age, she gloried in 
 her own contributions to its extravagance. She 
 not only " lived her own life," but boldly asserted 
 her right to do so. Her feeling apparently was 
 that, when she loved, she was making history ; 
 
 viii 
 
Preface 
 
 and she took pains that the future historian 
 should not find the records incomplete. Not 
 only did she most carefully preserve such records 
 of her amours as her own and Alfred de Musset's 
 letters, and leave directions that they should be 
 published after her death : she also chronicled 
 them from day to day almost from hour to 
 hour in her letters to various friends : she told 
 the story of her intimacy with Sandeau in letters 
 to her son's tutor, Boucoiran ; she took Sainte- 
 Beuve into her confidence about her intimacies 
 with Musset and Merime'e ; she told her friend 
 Girerd all about her intimacy with Michel de 
 Bourges. 
 
 The material, therefore, for writing her life is 
 ample, and the biographer who uses it cannot be 
 accused of grubbing up old scandals. There is 
 no grubbing to be done. George Sand provided 
 the material, and meant it to be used. She did 
 not regard the incidents related in this volume 
 as scandalous either at the time or afterwards. 
 If she had done so, she would not have written 
 Elle et Lui when she was fifty-five. Her 
 view in later life evidently was that her love 
 affairs, no less than her early books, were a part 
 of the Romantic Movement. To the historian, 
 indeed, they are a very instructive part of it. One 
 really needs to have the life of George Sand 
 before one in order to understand how much more 
 the Romantic Movement was than a revolt against 
 the classical traditions of literature and the stage. 
 
 ix 
 
Preface 
 
 The strange thing is that, in spite of the abund- 
 ance of the material, no full and adequate life 
 of George Sand exists. There is plenty of 
 literature bearing on the Musset episode, 
 M. Paul Marieton's Une Histoire d Amour, and 
 M. Maurras' Les Amants de Venise, for instance, 
 but most of the biographers have confined 
 themselves to that one branch of the subject. 
 Madame Karenine began a very elaborate 
 biography, but the two volumes published 
 carry us no farther than the year 1838. The 
 little book contributed by Caro to Hachette's 
 Les grands Ecrivains franfais is more critical 
 than biographical. M. Le Roy's George Sand 
 et ses Amis gives rather more information, but 
 needs to be supplemented in some particulars, 
 especially when dealing with the events of George 
 Sand's later years. 
 
 In English there is only the monograph written 
 for the Eminent Women Series by Miss Bertha 
 Thomas a work which Madame Karenine 
 declares to be pervaded by "British prudery." 
 Miss Thomas evidently wrote for a very special 
 public not so large nowadays as it used to be 
 which esteems prudery a higher virtue than 
 candour, only interests itself in "nice" people, 
 and discovers some mysterious advantage in 
 ignoring conduct of which it disapproves. If 
 her pages were our sole authority, we should 
 have to suppose that Jules Sandeau was only 
 George Sand's collaborator, that Dr. Pagello was 
 
Preface 
 
 only her medical attendant, and that Michel de 
 Bourges was only her legal adviser. The picture 
 is of a woman who, in spite of her accidental 
 association with the Romanticists, was really a 
 British Matron at heart. One admires the in- 
 genuity of the conception, but still magis arnica 
 veritas. At all events, there seems to be no good 
 reason why the biographer who is not addressing 
 Miss Thomas' special public should be any less 
 candid than George Sand was herself, or should 
 refrain from making full use of the records which 
 George Sand deliberately and carefully provided 
 and preserved. 
 
 Her own letters, 1 and those of her friends and 
 lovers, are the principal sources of information on 
 which this book is based. More specific ac- 
 knowledgments of obligations will be found in 
 their proper places in the text. It may be 
 mentioned here that the present biographer is 
 able to quote some letters of Chopin to which 
 previous biographers, whether of Chopin or of 
 George Sand, had not access ; but that story too 
 is told in the course of the work. 
 
 FRANCIS GRIBBLE. 
 
 1 Only a portion and not the most interesting portion of 
 George Sand's letters is contained in the six volumes of the 
 Correspondence. The rest are scattered in the columns of various 
 newspapers and magazines. A bibliography of them is given in 
 Madame Karenine's Life. 
 
 XI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ancestors Frederick Augustus n. Maurice de Saxe Marie 
 Rinteau, afterwards de Verrieres Aurore de Saxe Her 
 marriage with M. Dupin de Francueil Her life at 
 Nohant Her son, Maurice Dupin His marriage with 
 Sophie Delaborde Birth of George Sand . . I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Madame Dupin's inquiries about the past of Sophie Dela- 
 borde Her reconciliation with her son Death of 
 Maurice Dupin Education of George Sand Her life 
 at the convent And at Nohant She consults her 
 confessor about her philosophic studies She smokes 
 and rides astride ..... o 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Death of Madame Dupin Marriage of George Sand 
 to Casimir Dudevant Her Platonic friendship with 
 Aurelien de Seze How and why that friendship came 
 to an end Strained relations with her husband His 
 potations and infidelities George Sand "takes a violent 19 
 decision" ....... 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 George Sand's acquaintance with Jules Sandeau She goes 
 to Paris and lives with him "in an unconventional 
 manner" Her literary beginnings Her delight in her 
 emancipation Her happiness . . . 30 
 
 xiii 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Literary success A retainer from Buloz Passionate rela- 
 tions with Jules Sandeau His infidelity detected 
 The lovers part George Sand's retrospective references 
 to the amour . . . . . 41 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Lost illusions Friendship with Marie Dorval Sainte-Beuve 
 introduces Prosper Merimee George Sand becomes 
 his mistress for a week Their parting and subsequent 
 meeting . . . . . . . 52 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Alfred de Musset His family and early associations His 
 relations with the "Cenacle" Sainte-Beuve introduces 
 him to George Sand The exchange of compliments 
 leads to love Bohemian life together in George Sand's 
 apartment A honeymoon in the Forest of Fontaine- 
 bleau The proposal to travel together to Venice 
 Musset's mother objects George Sand calls on her 
 and persuades her to consent The departure "amid 
 circumstances of evil omen " . . . .58 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Meeting with Stendhal at Lyons Arrival at Venice 
 George Sand works while Musset sits in cafes Dr. 
 Pagello sees George Sand on the balcony and admires 
 her She calls him in to prescribe for a headache 
 Shortly afterwards she summons him again to prescribe 
 for Musset His diagnosis . . . .72 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The nature of Musset's illness 1*he reasons for supposing it 
 to have been typhoid fever The behaviour of George 
 Sand and Pagello at his bedside George Sand's 
 declaration of love Pagello's doubts and hesitations 
 It is agreed between them that Musset shall return alone 84 
 xiv 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PAGE 
 
 How Alfred de Musset was told His own version of the 
 story The improbabilities in it Pagello's version 
 Musset's departure His farewell letters . . -95 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The three-cornered love duel George Sand's letters to 
 Musset describing her relations with Pagello Pagello's 
 letter to Musset Storms in the "faux menage" 
 Remonstrances of Pagello's cast-off mistresses And of 
 his father George Sand and Pagello attend public 
 worship and pray together George Sand decides that 
 Pagello shall take her to Paris . . . .106 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Pagello in Paris He begins to feel that he has acted fool- 
 ishly He consoles himself with the contemplation of 
 his mother's portrait and the recollection of her moral 
 precepts He walks the hospitals George Sand sees 
 Musset again She complains to him that Pagello is 
 jealous Pagello returns to Venice . . .120 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Further correspondence between George Sand and Musset 
 He is ill and asks her to visit him She wishes to renew 
 the old relations, but finds him unwilling Sainte-Beuve 
 intercedes for her in vain She cuts off her hair and 
 sends it to Musset She also sends him her private 
 diary The renewal of love . . . .132 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 George Sand and Musset find life together impossible They 
 agree to part, and George Sand retires to Nohant The 
 fate of their letters . . . . . . 143 
 
 xv 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 George Sand's influence on Alfred de Musset His moral 
 decline and fall George Sand's distress The secret 
 of her strength She appeals to Sainte-Beuve to pray 
 for her 152 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Michel de Bourges He acts as George Sand's advocate in 
 a demand for judicial separation from her husband 
 The hearing of the suit Speeches of counsel Disagree- 
 ment of the Tribunal The matter settled out of court 
 The rights and wrongs considered . . .163 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Michel indoctrinates George Sand His revolutionary 
 harangue on the Pont des Saints-Peres She becomes 
 a Republican under his influence, and preaches his 
 Gospel in her letters to her boy at school She becomes 
 his mistress Relations become strained and they part . 1 80 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Maurice Sand at the Tuileries George Sand's relations with 
 Lamennais The Saint-Simonians Their proposal that 
 George Sand should become their high-priestess Their 
 gifts to her Her reasons for rejecting their overtures . 196 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 George Sand and Liszt Liszt's elopement with Madame 
 d'Agoult Friendship of George Sand for Madame 
 d'Agoult She visits Madame d'Agoult and Liszt at 
 Geneva They visit her at Nohant Relations begin 
 to be strained Practical jokes at Nohant Eugene 
 Pelletan's experiences as tutor to George Sand's 
 children ....... 207 
 
 xvi 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Death of George Sand's mother Solange kidnapped by 
 M. Dudevant Pursuit and Recapture Letters to 
 Girerd on the waning of the love of Michel George 
 Sand consoles herself for the loss of Michel's love by 
 becoming the mistress of Felicien Mallefille She and 
 Madame d'Agoult quarrel about Mallefille Mallefille 
 supplanted by Pierre Leroux .... 220 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Balzac's visit to Nohant His estimate of George Sand's 
 character Pierre Leroux dismissed to the empyrean 
 The origin of the amour with Chopin . . .231 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Chopin's early struggles His sudden success His proposal 
 of marriage to Marie Wodzinska The meeting with 
 George Sand and the decision to travel together to 
 Majorca ....... 240 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Life in Majorca The travellers find an apartment in a 
 Carthusian convent in the mountains Discomfort and 
 demoralisation Departure Chopin invites himself to 
 Nohant George Sand hesitates, but decides that he 
 may come ....... 249 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 The destruction of George Sand's letters to Chopin The 
 recovery of Chopin's letters to his family " Vie 
 nzflg-/*" The life at Nohant The verdict of Mile de 
 Rozieres : " Love is no longer there " . . .261 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Reasons for not trusting George Sand's account of the liaison 
 with Chopin Liszt's summary of the situation Lucrezia 
 b xvii 
 
Contents 
 
 Floriani Was "Prince Karol" meant for Chopin? 
 Extracts from Chopin's and George Sand's letters to 
 Chopin's sister ...... 272 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Solange Sand at school Her religious instruction She jilts 
 Fernand de Preaulx and marries Cle'singer Quarrel 
 between Solange and her mother Quarrels between 
 Chopin and George Sand because he takes the part of 
 Solange Separation of Chopin and George Sand 
 Chopin's correspondence with Solange The references 
 to the rupture in his letters to his sister . . . 286 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Chopin's concert tour in England His return to Paris 
 His last illness George Sand refused admission to his 
 apartment His death ..... 300 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 The importance of George Sand's novels Her relation to 
 
 the Romantic Movement ..... 308 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 End of George Sand's sentimental life Manceau " the last 
 link in the chain " The affairs of Solange Her quarrels 
 with her husband Her separation from him Solange 
 in Paris Her correspondence with George Sand . 322 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 George Sand grows old with dignity Her heart a ceme- 
 tery The account which she gave of herself to Louis 
 d'Ulbach And to Flaubert A conversation at the 
 Magny dinner Elle et Lui Correspondence with 
 Buloz His advice to "tone down" that work Lui et 
 Elle George Sand's rejoinder She thinks of publishing 
 Musset's letters Sainte-Beuve's advice Decision that 
 they shall not be published until after her death . . 332 
 
 xviii 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 George Sand's friends and visitors The'ophile Gautier at 
 Nohant "Ragging" Flaubert Stories told by M. Henri 
 Amic Thiers' attempt to kiss George Sand Jane 
 Essler Sarah Bernhardt Why the society of actresses 
 should be avoided M. Emile Aucante on George Sand's 
 manner of life and methods of work . . . 346 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 Friendship with Flaubert The correspondence Criticism 
 of books and criticism of life George Sand's optimism 
 Her last illness and death ..... 360 
 
 XIX 
 
GEORGE SAND AND 
 HER LOVERS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Ancestors Frederick Augustus n. Maurice de Saxe Marie 
 Rinteau, afterwards de Verrieres Aurore de Saxe Her 
 marriage with M. Dupin de Francueil Her life at Nohant 
 Her son, Maurice Dupin His marriage with Sophie 
 Delaborde Birth of George Sand. 
 
 AMANDINE - AURORE - LUCIE DUPIN, known to 
 literature as " George Sand," was the descendant 
 of kings and daughters of the people. 
 
 The most distant ancestor to whom we need 
 trouble to trace her is Frederick Augustus 11., 
 Elector of Saxony, who was her great-great- 
 grandfather, and is described by his great-great- 
 granddaughter as " the most amazing debauchee" 
 of his epoch. His mistress or rather, one of his 
 mistresses was that successful and celebrated 
 courtesan, Aurora von Konigsmark. She bore 
 him a child, Maurice de Saxe, the marshal who 
 won the battle of Fontenoy. 
 
 It was not to be expected that Maurice de Saxe 
 would refrain from amours of the kind to which 
 
A George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 * * o 
 
 he owed his o\vn agreeable existence ; and he did 
 not. When he engaged in a campaign, the 
 followers of his camp always included a company 
 of comedians who served a double purpose, 
 diverting the soldiers by their performances, and 
 providing the commander-in-chief with congenial 
 feminine society. Sometimes, in a chivalrous 
 spirit worthy of the warriors who exclaimed, " Tirez 
 les premiers," he lent his actors and even his 
 actresses to the enemy, retaining only his own 
 especial favourite to share his tent. 
 
 Among the ladies engaged in one of the com- 
 panies were Mesdemoiselles Marie and Genevieve 
 Rinteau. D'Argenson bluntly applies to their 
 father a slang term the name of a fish which 
 indicates that he lived on the immoral earnings of 
 his daughters. It is at any rate true that he 
 expected them to push his fortunes as well as 
 their own ; and he presently achieved the purpose 
 for which he had sent them to the travelling 
 military theatre. Marie Rinteau found favour in 
 the eyes of Maurice de Saxe, and bore him a 
 daughter. Her father was rewarded with an 
 appointment as manager of a military store. He 
 was afterwards ejected from the post in conse- 
 quence of a scandal in the commissariat department ; 
 but that circumstance is only remotely relevant 
 to the present history. 
 
 The career of Marie Rinteau, however, merits 
 more careful contemplation ; she may be said 
 to have anticipated her famous great-grand- 
 
 1 
 
Marie de Verrieres 
 
 daughter alike in her talents, in her fascinations, 
 
 and in the licence which she allowed herself in 
 
 exercising them. Soon after the commencement 
 
 of her intimacy with Maurice de Saxe, being 
 
 brought to Paris, she changed her name to de 
 
 Verrieres, and sought and obtained permission to 
 
 join the troupe of players attached to the royal 
 
 theatre. One of her motives for doing so must 
 
 certainly be sought in the fact that, at that period, 
 
 the actresses enrolled in the royal service 
 
 were the only women privileged to pursue the 
 
 profession of gallantry unmolested by the police, 
 
 all the others being liable to arbitrary arrest at 
 
 any moment. But Marie de Verrieres to call 
 
 her by her professional name differed from the 
 
 rest in having genuine theatrical ambitions. 
 
 Merely to " walk on " might suffice for them, but 
 
 not for her. She aspired to leading roles ; and 
 
 Marmontel, the author of Contes Morales, obliged 
 
 Maurice de Saxe by giving her lessons in elocution. 
 
 The first result of these lessons was that the 
 
 pupil and the teacher fell in love ; the second was 
 
 that the protector cut off supplies. Marmontel 
 
 thereupon laid the whole of his fortune at the 
 
 lady's feet. She graciously accepted it ; but, as 
 
 it only consisted of forty louis 32 of our money 
 
 it did not satisfy her needs ; and it was shortly 
 
 afterwards intimated to the young author that he 
 
 must yield his place to the Due de Bouillon. 
 
 The son whom Marie de Verrieres bore to her 
 
 new protector was taken away from her to be 
 
 3 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 brought up in its father's house. The father's 
 affection for her cooled, and she was left free 
 to enter into other relations. 
 
 M. d'Epinay, the wealthy Farmer-General of 
 the Taxes, husband of the Madame d'Epinay who 
 was the mistress of Grimm, and the friend of 
 Rousseau, next came to her rescue, and, in fact, 
 supported the whole family a second establish- 
 ment including a second mother-in-law first in 
 the Chausse'e d'Antin, and afterwards in the 
 country, in the immediate neighbourhood of the 
 house in which Madame d'Epinay resided. He 
 even introduced his mistress and her mother to 
 the cure", who received them as persons of un- 
 impeachable respectability. Madame d'Epinay 
 naturally did not receive them at all ; but indirect 
 relations between the two establishments were 
 none the less instituted. M. Dupin de Francueil, 
 who had been the lover of Madame d'Epinay 
 until Grimm supplanted him, became the lover of 
 Genevieve de Verrieres. 
 
 This episode was ended by M. d'Epinay's 
 bankruptcy ; but the fortunes of his mistress were 
 not greatly affected by his failure. She and her 
 sister gave theatrical representations to a large 
 and fashionable attendance at their home, and 
 she continued to fascinate men of mark. She 
 was the mistress of the poet Colardeau ; she was 
 the mistress of La Harpe ; and she did not 
 survive her charms, but continued to fascinate 
 until the end. Her career of gallantry was too 
 
 4 
 
Aurore de Saxe 
 
 uniformly brilliant to point any useful moral, 
 though it is important here as a factor in the 
 heredity of George Sand. We will leave it, and 
 pass on to consider the fortunes of her daughter. 
 
 Aurore de Saxe was originally registered as the 
 daughter of a "petit bourgeois" who was pre- 
 sumably hired, according to the custom of the age, 
 to give her an "Mat civil'' Her father, however, 
 subsequently acknowledged her ; and she was taken 
 away from her mother and educated under the super- 
 intendence of the Dauphine of France. She was 
 placed at the famous Saint-Cyr school, founded 
 by Madame de Maintenon, and married, at the 
 age of fifteen, to the Comte de Horn, an illegitimate 
 son of Louis xv. Her husband was chosen for 
 her without any pretence of consulting her own 
 wishes ; and she was even warned by his valet, 
 on her wedding-day, that the marriage could only 
 be consummated at the peril of her health. The 
 Comte de Horn at first protested ; but a threat to 
 refer the question to his own medical attendant 
 induced him to acquiesce. Three weeks after- 
 wards he was killed in a duel, and the child-wife 
 was left a widow. 
 
 She returned to her mother, but remained un- 
 spotted by the contaminating world in which her 
 mother lived. Her interests were artistic and 
 intellectual ; and Marie de Verrieres at least 
 conducted her amours in the midst of intellectual 
 society. Presumably the poets and philosophers 
 
 5 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 who found in her their Aspasia respected her 
 daughter's innocence, even while writing madrigals 
 in her honour. At the age of thirty she was 
 married a second time to the M. Dupin de 
 Francueil already mentioned. There is no reason 
 to suppose that she was aware that he had once 
 been the lover of her aunt. 
 
 M. Dupin was a man of culture, and, apparently, 
 a man of wealth. He was acquainted with all 
 the intellectual leaders of the age, and had once 
 even employed Jean- Jacques Rousseau as his 
 secretary. If his wife was never passionately in 
 love with him, at least he did his best to make 
 her happy. Not until after his death did she 
 discover that he had squandered the greater part 
 of his fortune in doing so. On making the dis- 
 covery, she paid his debts, bought the Nohant 
 estate in the Department of Berry, and settled 
 down there in 1795, to devote her life to the 
 education of her son Maurice. 
 
 Maurice Dupin became a soldier. At first a 
 private in Massena's army, he received promotion 
 and became aide-de-camp to Murat ; but the only 
 one of his triumphs which immediately concerns 
 us was not won in the field of Mars. One of his 
 generals in the army of Italy was accompanied by 
 his mistress a grisette named Sophie Delaborde, 
 of whose past the less said the better, already the 
 mother of an illegitimate child called Caroline. 
 Maurice Dupin made -love to Sophie. First she 
 lent him the general's money. Then she 
 
 6 
 
Maurice Dupin 
 
 abandoned the general, and eloped with him. In 
 due course he brought her to Nohant, and 
 announced his intention of marrying her. 
 
 Naturally, Madame Dupin was shocked and 
 pained. She was no Puritan. She quite under- 
 stood that young men would be young men and 
 that young women would be young women. The 
 history of the family, for several generations, had 
 proved that, if it had proved nothing else. It did 
 not outrage her feelings to know that her son, 
 though unmarried, was a father ; she had, in fact, 
 already undertaken the education of his natural 
 son, Hippolyte Chitiron. It was little to her 
 that he had taken a new mistress who was ex- 
 pected to bear him a second child. On matters 
 of this sort she was entirely in her son's con- 
 fidence, and very much in sympathy with him. 
 But marriage that was another matter altogether. 
 Her own marriage had brought her social promo- 
 tion. She was a lady, though a poor lady ; her 
 son was a gentleman, though a poor gentle- 
 man. A gentleman could not marry a grisette. 
 The proper example for Maurice Dupin to 
 follow was that of his grandfather, Maurice de 
 Saxe. 
 
 So Madame Dupin set her face against 
 the marriage. Maurice, she said, must lioose 
 between his mistress and his mother ; and it is 
 possible that he would have preferred his mother 
 and made terms with his mistress if it had not 
 been for the indiscreet interference of his old tutor, 
 
 7 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Deschartres, a priest who had unfrocked himself 
 at the time of the Revolution. 
 
 This foolish fellow took it upon himself to call 
 upon Sophie at her inn and order her to leave the 
 neighbourhood. Her answer was to order him to 
 leave the room, and he did so ; but he presently 
 returned, accompanied by the Mayor and another 
 municipal officer, proposing to procure her expul- 
 sion on the ground that her papers were " not in 
 order." To his chagrin, however, the magistrates, 
 discovering no formidable termagant but only a 
 pretty woman in a flood of tears, took Sophie's 
 part, and told Deschartres that he had no right 
 to annoy her. The tutor withdrew in confusion ; 
 and presently Maurice arrived, and having heard 
 what had happened, was deaf to further argument. 
 He married Sophie Delaborde in June 1804. 
 
 A month later, husband and wife were present 
 at a party given in honour of the betrothal of 
 Sophie's sister, Lucie, to a French officer ; and 
 there was fiddling and dancing. Sophie felt 
 suddenly indisposed, and left the room. Lucie 
 followed her ; but Maurice continued to dance, 
 noticing and surmising nothing. Presently he heard 
 his sister-in-law's voice calling, "Come, Maurice! 
 You have a daughter. She has been born in the 
 midst of roses and music. She will be happy." 
 
 " She shall be called Aurore, after my mother, 
 who will give her her blessing some day," ex- 
 claimed her father ; but the world was to know 
 her, not as Aurore Dupin, but as George Sand. 
 
 8 
 

 CHAPTER II 
 
 Madame Dupin's inquiries about the past of Sophie Delaborde 
 Her reconciliation with her son Death of Maurice Dupin 
 Education of George Sand Her life at the convent And 
 at Nohant She consults her confessor about her philosophic 
 studies She smokes and rides astride. 
 
 MADAME DUPIN the elder was not informed of 
 her son's marriage. She had her suspicions, 
 however, and wrote to the Mayor of the Fifth 
 Arrondissement of Paris to inquire. He assured 
 her that the ceremony had indeed taken place, 
 and that all the necessary legal formalities had been 
 fulfilled. She wrote again to ask whether the 
 Mayor could tell her anything of Sophie's ante- 
 cedents. She already knew that Sophie had once 
 kept a milliner's shop ; and she now learnt that 
 her father sold birds on the Quai de la Megisserie. 
 
 That was interesting, if not exactly satisfactory. 
 But how about Sophie's manner of life ? Could 
 the Mayor give an anxious mother any informa- 
 tion on that branch of the subject? 
 
 He could. He was a very obliging Mayor, and 
 took large views of the obligations of his office. 
 So he instructed a subordinate to devise an excuse 
 for calling upon Madame Maurice Dupin, and to 
 report. The report was to the effect that the 
 
 9 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 young couple were living in extremely modest 
 circumstances, but that their appearance was 
 " decent, not to say distinguished," that they 
 seemed to be devoted to each other, and that 
 there was no indication the Mayor underlined 
 the words that the husband "had any reason to 
 repent of the union which he had contracted." 
 He ventured, therefore, to appeal to the " maternal 
 heart " to forgive, etc. etc. 
 
 And still Madame Dupin was not satisfied. 
 She had it in her mind that the marriage was 
 invalid and could be annulled. Abbe" d'Andrezel, 
 whom she sent to Paris, armed with full powers 
 to act on her behalf, reported, after careful 
 inquiry, that it could not. She disbelieved him, 
 and, going to Paris herself, took counsel's opinion 
 on the matter. There was a consultation at which 
 three eminent lawyers were present. Their joint 
 judgment was that Madame Dupin might go to 
 law if she liked since one could always go to law 
 about anything but that the probabilities were 
 ten to one that the Court would declare the 
 marriage valid, and that even if, by some accident, 
 it were upset, her son could, and infallibly would, 
 take immediate steps to regularise the situation. 
 
 At last, therefore, Madame Dupin had to admit 
 that she was beaten ; and being beaten, she 
 allowed herself to be reconciled to the accom- 
 plished fact. At first, though she caressed her 
 grandchild and wept in the arms of her son, she 
 declined to make the acquaintance of her daughter- 
 
 10 
 
A Journey to Spain 
 
 in-law ; but it was not long before she yielded 
 upon that point also. The civil marriage was 
 supplemented by a religious ceremony ; and a 
 family feast celebrated the formal recognition of 
 the bride by her husband's family. 
 
 About the events of the next few years there 
 is little to be said. Maurice Dupin was with the 
 army which, intended for the invasion of England, 
 was diverted from its purpose by the battle of 
 Trafalgar, and invaded Austria instead. His 
 letters show him looking at life more and more 
 from the point of view of the hardy, matter-of-fact 
 campaigner. Of Venice, for instance, he reported 
 to his wife merely that the water was ugly and 
 the wine was bad. Sophie meanwhile lived with 
 her children in the Rue Grange Bateliere, 
 taking them occasionally to visit their Aunt Lucie 
 and their Cousin Clotilde at Chaillot. Caroline 
 was presently sent to a boarding-school ; but 
 Aurore was kept at home. 
 
 After a while, however, Maurice's letters home 
 begin to strike a new note. He resents certain 
 " suspicions " cruel, of course, and unfounded, 
 and unjust. Sophie, it is evident, was not only 
 bored but jealous, though whether her husband 
 gave her any cause for jealousy it is impossible 
 to say. She decided to follow him to the war, 
 just as she had followed the general, his pre- 
 decessor. He was with Murat in Spain, so she 
 hired a carriage, and drove all the way to Madrid, 
 where she installed herself and her daughter in 
 
 ii 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 the palace allocated to the general staff. Aurore 
 was only three years old, but the officers took 
 notice of her. Murat laughingly called her his 
 little aide-de-camp, and presented her with a 
 uniform. She wore breeches already and had 
 spurs on her boots, and carried a toy sword. 
 
 Her sojourn in Madrid, however, was very 
 brief. The war was turning badly for the French. 
 Dupont had got into trouble at Baylen, and Murat 
 was called to the throne of Naples. Mother and 
 child had to get into their carriage again and drive 
 back to France, enduring much privation and 
 hardship by the way ; they had to eat soup made 
 of candle-ends, and they all contracted an un- 
 pleasant skin disease. At last we are in the 
 year 1808 they reached Nohant, where the 
 elder Madame Dupin welcomed them hospitably. 
 It was there that Aurore made the acquaintance 
 of her natural brother Hippolyte there also that 
 she suffered her first bereavement. Her father was 
 thrown from his horse, on a dark night, and killed. 
 
 Sophie and the little Aurore remained at 
 Nohant, and there ensued a long battle silent 
 at first, but presently open and avowed between 
 mother and grandmother, for the right to educate 
 and influence the child. 
 
 (^ No ideals, points of view, or educational theories 
 could have been more diametrically opposed than 
 theirs. The grandmother had lived as a great 
 lady, and the mother had kept a small milliner's 
 shop. Scandal could breathe no word to the 
 
 12 
 
Mother and Grandmother 
 
 grandmother's disadvantage ; while the mother's 
 past might invite, but decidedly would not bear, 
 investigation. The grandmother had been 
 brought up in eighteenth-century traditions, was 
 proud of her polite accomplishments, had mixed 
 with encyclopaedists, and esteemed them ; the 
 mother was vulgar, ignorant, and frivolous a 
 good cook and a capable needlewoman, but quite 
 unfit to move in civilised society. Truly a 
 strange household, bound in the nature of things 
 to be divided against itself ! \ 
 
 They soon began to giro at each other in the 
 child's presence. The grandmother talked con- 
 temptuously of the manners of " certain persons " ; 
 the mother spoke, not less scornfully, of the 
 affectations of " people who considered themselves 
 respectable." Naturally the child, though pre- 
 cocious, could not judge fairly between them. 
 To her it seemed that her grandmother was an 
 unapproachable dignitary to be revered rather 
 than loved. Her mother, who told her fairy tales, 
 and sometimes petted her and sometimes slapped 
 her, was easier to understand. Doubtless she 
 would have preferred her mother, if called upon 
 to make a choice ; but the grandmother had the 
 power of the purse, and therefore got her way. 
 It was arranged that the mother should live in 
 Paris, and that the daughter should stay at 
 Nohant, only visiting Paris with her grandmother 
 when the necessities of her education compelled. 
 That was in 1810. 
 
 13 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 The child at first resented the arrangement, and 
 cried. Indiscreet companions told her that she 
 ought to be happy because her grandmother was 
 richer than her mother, and that, if she were not 
 good, she would be sent to Paris to live in a 
 garret, and have nothing to eat but beans. The 
 result was to convince her that living on beans 
 in a garret was the most desirable of human lots. 
 That phase passed, however ; and the child con- 
 tentedly lived a curious double life. In her 
 grandmother's salon she met the aristocratic 
 survivors of the old regime, and learnt from them 
 to comport herself with distinction. In her 
 mother's apartment she heard the aristocrats 
 ridiculed as "good-for-nothing idlers." We shall 
 discover traces of both trainings in her career as 
 we proceed. 
 
 In 1814 cafme the entry of the Allies into Paris, 
 and then the grandmother took Aurore precipi- 
 tately to Nohant, and kept her there for three 
 years. Deschartres was her tutor, and he taught 
 her well enough in the old-fashioned way ; but 
 he was also a disciplinarian of the old school, and 
 when the girl grew old enough, she revolted. He 
 had caned her on the hand, and she had sub- 
 mitted ; but when he took to throwing books at 
 her head, she decided that, so far as he was con- 
 cerned, her education was completed. Her real 
 school at this period was indeed what the French 
 call " tcole buissoniere" She rambled in the woods 
 and fields, played with the village children, entered 
 
 14 
 
The Convent School 
 
 into and realised the life of the Berry peasantry. 
 Physically, mentally, and morally, it was 
 good for her. She stored up "impressions," 
 and at the same time built up that robust health 
 which was to enable her, in later life, to work so 
 hard with impunity. 
 
 In 1817 she was confirmed, and received her first 
 communion. Religion was fashionable in France 
 at that date, thanks to Chateaubriand ; and even 
 the sceptical conformed, obeying, as it were, some 
 unwritten rule of etiquette. That was the spirit 
 in which the elder Madame Dupin approached 
 the usage, which appears to have had little, if 
 any, spiritual significance either for her or for the 
 communicant. It was the less likely to have any 
 because the Catholic Church sets its face against 
 that terror of hell fire which the Evangelical saints 
 of the old school used to encourage ; and it was 
 not until she went to school in a convent that 
 Aurore Dupin learnt to take religion seriously. 
 
 She was at the Couvent des Augustines An- 
 glaises from 1817 till 1820; and her rambling 
 reminiscences relate the most trivial incidents of 
 her life there. First she was a naughty girl, and 
 then she was a good girl : probably she exag- 
 gerates both her goodness and her naughtiness. 
 She seems to have combined a passion for amateur 
 acting with a desire to take the veil and pass her 
 life in the exalted self-absorption of the mystic. 
 Perhaps the two aspirations were less contradictory 
 than they appeared : egoism may well be assumed 
 
 15 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 to have been the psychological link between them. 
 Perhaps, too, her confessor perceived as much 
 when he counselled her to be in no hurry to 
 renounce the world. At all events, it must be 
 agreed that he advised her wisely ; for imagina- 
 tion boggles at the picture of George Sand as a 
 nun. Assuredly she would have suffered and 
 not in silence ; assuredly she would have revolted 
 not greatly caring whom she scandalised. One 
 can picture her as the nun in John Davidson's 
 ballad :- 
 
 "Sometimes it was the wandering wind, 
 
 Sometimes the murmur of a pine, 
 Sometimes the thought how others sinned, 
 That turned her warm blood into wine." 
 
 She would have "wandered down," one doubts 
 not, in the same way, though to a more brilliant 
 destiny, to the great consternation of the Sister- 
 hood. But the confessor feared and forbade, 
 and the grandmother had other plans. She 
 tolerated religion on the tacit assumption that, 
 of course, no one really believed in it. Voltaire, 
 she felt, was right, though Chateaubriand was 
 the fashion. So having heard that her grand- 
 daughter wished to remain in the convent for 
 ever, she hastened to Paris, and took her away 
 from it at once. 
 
 It was then that her real education began. 
 Her mother interfered with it no more than 
 she had interfered with the convent curriculum, 
 
 16 
 
Early Life at Nohant 
 
 Separation from her daughter, indeed, caused 
 Sophie no pangs, and she bluntly declared that 
 she would on no account visit Nohant again until 
 Madame Dupin was dead. The girl, therefore, 
 now sixteen years of age, was entirely in her 
 grandmother's charge ; and her grandmother's 
 health was failing. Not only was the old lady 
 too ill to visit Paris : she presently had an 
 apoplectic stroke from which she partially re- 
 covered only to lapse into her second childhood. 
 From that time forward, Aurore Dupin was, for 
 all practical purposes, her own mistress. 
 
 There were a good many books in the house ; 
 so she read prodigiously, and widened her horizon. 
 Rousseau interested her, and so did Chateaubriand. 
 Le Gdnie du Christianisme presented in a new and 
 more worldly light the creed hitherto associated 
 with the stricter precepts of the Imitatio Christi. 
 She realised that it was possible to be good 
 without being immured ; and the desire to be 
 immured subsided, while the Arts began to make 
 their appeal. Aurore Dupin was a musician a 
 pianist and a harpist ; she delighted in poetry 
 and was interested in philosophy. Once, it is 
 true, she wrote to her confessor to inquire 
 whether her philosophic studies were compatible 
 with Christian humility. He doubted, he said 
 in reply, whether they were sufficiently profound 
 to warrant intellectual pride ; and she was re- 
 assured, and went on studying. She also acquired 
 the habit of smoking while she studied ; but it 
 B 17 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 does not appear that she consulted the confessor 
 about that. 
 
 Nor was the use of tobacco her only uncon- 
 ventional indulgence. Her natural brother 
 Hippolyte, now an officer in the army, came 
 home for a visit, and taught her to ride and 
 even to break horses. She rejoiced in the 
 exercise, dressed as a boy, and rode astride. 
 She was unchaperoned, and there were certain 
 flirtations. Her heart was not engaged, but 
 her behaviour set the neighbours talking. The 
 village curd took it upon himself to admonish 
 her in terms more peremptory than delicate ; and 
 she replied by refusing to attend his ministra- 
 tions. That was her manner of life until her 
 grandmother's death. Keen observers might 
 well have seen in her a young woman whom very 
 little would induce to fling her bonnet over the 
 windmill. 
 
 18 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Death of Madame Dupin Marriage of George Sand to Casimir 
 Dudevant Her Platonic friendship with Aurelien de Seze 
 How and why that friendship came to an end Strained 
 relations with her husband His potations and infidelities 
 George Sand " takes a violent decision." 
 
 MADAME DUPIN DE FRANCUEIL died on Christmas 
 Day, 1821, having first made her peace with the 
 Church in which she did not believe. She could 
 hardly do less, seeing that there was an arch- 
 bishop in the family, who was staying in the house 
 at the time. She would not do more, but freely 
 and sceptically criticised the text of the Liturgy 
 while receiving her last communion. 
 
 Her fortune amounted to ,20,000 ; and she 
 bequeathed the whole of it, subject to the pay- 
 ment of certain annuities, to her granddaughter. 
 As the girl was still a minor seventeen years 
 old, in fact she was to be under the guardianship 
 of Rene de Villeneuve, her nearest relative on her 
 father's side. This arrangement, however, did not 
 suit the views of her mother, who made a painful 
 scene in the presence of the party assembled, 
 after the funeral, to hear the reading of the will. 
 She was her daughter's natural guardian, she 
 said ; she would yield her rights to no one. 
 
 19 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Aurore was indignant. She was old enough 
 to understand she understood that she was 
 called upon to choose, not only between two 
 individuals, but between two social milieux. 
 Rene de Villeneuve belonged to the old pre- 
 Revolutionary aristocracy. Sophie Dupin was a 
 grisette whom marriage with a gentleman had 
 failed to educate or elevate, and who still remained 
 a grisette in manners, tastes, and interests. Her 
 friends were grisettes like herself, married, when 
 they had married well, to half-pay, out-at-elbows 
 Bonapartist officers. The two worlds did not 
 mix and would not. There would be no com- 
 promises or concessions no meeting of the world 
 of the grisettes half-way in the grandmother's 
 tolerant fashion ; no passing to and fro between 
 the one circle and the other. The father's and 
 the mother's families were and would remain 
 separate, like the sheep and the goats. Aurore 
 must give up either the one connection or the 
 other. 
 
 She would have liked to compromise ; but, 
 when she could not, she cast in her lot with her 
 mother. One is bound to respect the instinct on 
 which she acted : a child who acted otherwise 
 would have seemed prematurely hard, lacking in 
 natural affection. But there was no worldly 
 wisdom in it ; she got little thanks for it ; and 
 she and her mother being what they respectively 
 were the decision made disaster of some sort 
 almost inevitable. 
 
 20 
 
Casimir Dudevant 
 
 It was only in the strict legal sense that Sophie 
 could be her daughter's guardian. She could not 
 advise her, for she could not understand her /she 
 could not even converse with her on any subjects 
 except food and raiment. The child had to think 
 out for herself the problem of arranging her life ; 
 and it was a problem which could not be kept 
 waiting ; and she was only seventeen and a half. 
 She, the clever pupil of the fashionable Couvent 
 des Anglaises, sharing the home and living under 
 the tutelage of a woman with the manners of a 
 shop-girl and the brains of a bird, felt herself in 
 a situation which would have seemed absurd if it 
 had not been lamentable : a situation, at any rate, 
 from which she must seek the way out as soon as 
 possible.^ And the most natural way out seemed 
 to lie through marriage. 
 
 Her opportunities of marriage were, of course, 
 restricted by her manner of life. She knew hardly 
 any of the right sort of people such people as 
 she might have been introduced to by the de 
 Villeneuves ; and, among people of that kind, it 
 was at least a question whether the objection to 
 the mother-in-law did not outweigh the attraction 
 of the bride's fortune. Still, the fortune was sure 
 to bring her suitors of a kind suitors who would 
 at least pass ; and in due course it brought Casimir 
 Dudevant, whose acquaintance Aurore Dupin 
 made while on a visit to some old friends of 
 her father's, the Duplessis, of Plessis-Picard, near 
 Melun. 
 
 21 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Casimir was the natural son of a Baron 
 Dudevant. He had served two years in the 
 army, and had also been called to the Bar. We 
 who look back on the story can easily see that, 
 whatever his qualities, he was not fit or worthy to 
 be the husband of a woman of genius. He had 
 neither artistic nor intellectual tastes. One may 
 perhaps sum him up by saying that he was a bit 
 of a sportsman, a bit of a farmer, and a bit of a 
 fool ; and one knows that that sort of man, far 
 from improving as he grows older, is prone to 
 take to stronger drink and coarser pleasures, in 
 order to cheat the increasing tedium of life. But 
 of course Aurore could not, at seventeen and a 
 half, be expected to think of that. She could no 
 more foresee the Casimir of ten years later than 
 she could foresee her own great mental growth. 
 Her intellectual superiority was masked by the 
 fact that she was ten years his junior. Casimir 
 was good-looking, and made himself agreeable. 
 His family were well-disposed. The Baroness 
 came to call on the grisette. Aurore liked him, 
 and on September 10, 1822, she married him, 
 being then only a little more than eighteen years 
 of age. 
 
 Biographers usually pause at this stage to 
 remark that, if Aurore had remained single a 
 little longer, and had then married a better man 
 to whom she was more attached, she might have 
 lived happily ever afterwards. All that the facts 
 really warrant one in saying is that she would un- 
 
 i & 
 
 22 
 
Incompatibility of Temper 
 
 doubtedly have done her duty if it had coincided 
 with her inclination. The marriage which she did 
 conclude at any rate contained from the first the 
 germs of disintegration. The one mind was ex- 
 panding, while the other mind was stagnant ; to 
 the stagnant mind the expanding mind was bound 
 to become incomprehensible, and its inconipre- 
 hensibleness was certain to be resented. 
 
 Broadly speaking, that is what happened. The 
 wife developed first an artistic temperament, and 
 then artistic gifts. The husband remained a fool, 
 a farmer, and a sportsman, too much addicted to 
 the bottle, too much wrapped up in miserly 
 economies. Presumably he found his wife's 
 cleverness a nuisance. It was an implied 
 criticism of his own stupidity ; it made him 
 look and feel foolish. He did not set up for 
 being clever ; why should he be perpetually re- 
 minded of his limitations ? He had supposed 
 himself to be marrying a silly girl who was 
 going to remain silly. This post-conjugal mental 
 expansion was something uncommonly like a 
 breach of contract. At any rate, it made the 
 house exceedingly uncomfortable. And as for 
 the cleverness well, after all, cleverness was a 
 matter of opinion, and his opinion was as good as 
 another's. So he would seem to have argued. 
 He didn't think his wife's conversation clever 
 he thought it silly. He told her so, and told her 
 to stop it ; and presently he went a little further 
 and boxed her ears. " After that," she says, in 
 
 23 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 her Autobiography, " things proceeded from bad 
 to worse." 
 
 Husband and wife, in fact, though there was as 
 yet no avowed and open breach, began to go their 
 several ways. Casimir increased his potations, in 
 which Aurore's natural brother Hippolyte was his 
 boon companion, and, bored as well as puzzled by 
 a wife who was always "looking for midday at 
 fourteen o'clock," sought his "escape from life" 
 in the facile arms of his wife's chambermaid. 
 Aurore, on the other hand, being unable to ex- 
 change ideas with a husband who had none, tried 
 to make existence more tolerable by means of 
 Platonic friendships. 
 
 The Platonic friend the first and chief Platonic 
 friend was Aur&ien de Seze, Advocate- General 
 at Bordeaux, whom she met in the course of an 
 excursion to the Pyrenees in 1825. Casimir 
 frequently went to Bordeaux to do business with 
 a certain Desgranges, a shipbuilder who persuaded 
 him to take ^1000 worth of shares in a ship that 
 was never built ; Aurore, for her own reasons, 
 accompanied him when she could. She and her 
 friend conversed and afterwards corresponded 
 on art, and poetry, and philosophy, and all the 
 other subjects that her husband did not under- 
 stand. He may justly be said to have helped to 
 educate her. Life derived fresh interests and 
 fresh meanings from the intellectual intercourse. 
 
 It was delightful while it lasted, but it did not 
 last long. Two reasons have been assigned for 
 
 24 
 
A Platonic Friendship 
 
 the rupture, and it is likely enough that two 
 causes were operative. It is said that the pure 
 white flame of Platonism failed when Aurelien de 
 Seze found that the unhappy woman who had 
 wished to be united to him on the plane of pure 
 and mystic passion bore children to her coarse 
 fool of a husband, just like any other wife ; an 
 ideal seemed to have been defiled when, coming 
 to visit her at Nohant, he found that she was 
 enceinte. It is possible ; but it is also true that 
 their union had, from the first, contained the 
 germs of a spiritual divorce. 
 
 Aurelien de Seze was a magistrate an excep- 
 tionally cultivated magistrate, but a magistrate 
 none the less. He loved literature, and dabbled 
 in philosophy ; but formulae bounded his intel- 
 lectual horizon. He led his pupil up to them, 
 and then was shocked to see her pass beyond 
 them. Aurelien, in the Revolutionary days to 
 come, was to be a deputy of the Extreme Right ; 
 Aurore was to collaborate with the Socialists. 
 Evidently, therefore, the cessation of their 
 harmonious communion of ideas was only a 
 question of time. Passion might have stood the 
 strain, but Platonism could not. " I felt," George 
 Sand wrote, in later years, "that I was becoming 
 a terrible tie for him or else a mere distraction." 
 
 So the tie, without being formally broken, was 
 allowed to break. It would not appear that 
 there was any dramatic scene of quarrel or 
 explanation. Neither of the friends had acquired 
 
 25 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 any rights over the other, and neither could 
 complain of any wrongs. " One is no more 
 justified," George Sand wrote, "in claiming the 
 ownership of a soul than in claiming the owner- 
 ship of a slave." It was a piece of philosophy 
 which she was to put into more than one novel 
 in the years to come ; and she was content to act 
 upon it now. She and her friend must acquiesce 
 in the inevitable and anticipate it, passing quietly 
 out of each other's lives. So she concludes : 
 
 " One must allow man his liberty, and the soul 
 its natural impulses, and leave to God the flame 
 that emanates from God. When this tranquil but 
 irrevocable divorce was accomplished, I tried to 
 continue the existence which had not been modi- 
 fied or disturbed by any external event." 
 
 "But that," she proceeds, "was impossible;" 
 and one can easily see why. Not only were 
 things, as she had said, "proceeding from bad to 
 worse ; " she had no longer anything to distract 
 her mind, and prevent her from perceiving that 
 they were doing so. 
 
 She was grown up at last. The child-wife had 
 become the brilliant woman unconventional, 
 original, unhappy, and capable of action. She 
 had really been or seemed a child-wife to begin 
 with : hardly distinguishable from the submissive 
 type of woman who, wrapped in small household 
 cares, will accept inebriety, if not too frequent, 
 
 26 
 
Domestic Broils 
 
 and infidelity, if not too open, as peccadilloes to 
 be forgiven and forgotten. She had been a 
 devoted mother to her two children Maurice 
 and Solange ; and she had taken herself quite 
 seriously as a chatelaine, interested in her humbler 
 neighbours to the point of doctoring their 
 ailments ; but her mental and emotional expansion 
 had none the less been continuous. She had read, 
 and was thinking for herself. She had little 
 enough in common with the bibulous squireen, 
 even when he was on his best behaviour ; and 
 now his behaviour was deteriorating, as the 
 behaviour of such men nearly always does. 
 
 He grew avaricious, and though he was 
 practically living on his wife, grudged her 
 her personal allowance. He sat late with boon 
 companions, his wife's natural brother Hippolyte, 
 and Stephane Ajasson de Grandsagne, who had 
 sighed for her when she was a child, and he 
 was not only tiresome in his cups, but coarse, 
 abusive, and indecorous. And he deceived his 
 wife or rather, he did t not deceive her. He had 
 had an "affair" at Bordeaux with the mistress of 
 his swindling partner, Desgranges ; at Nohant 
 his amours with the maid-servants were the 
 common talk of the village. One of the maids 
 made a scandal in order to secure provision for 
 her illegitimate child ; his wife, on the very 
 morning after the birth of her daughter, over- 
 heard him making love to another of them. The 
 strain became intolerable when she had no longer 
 
 27 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 the exaltation of her mystical Platonic friendship 
 to sustain her. " At last," she says, " it began to 
 get upon my nerves." 
 
 The Autobiography does not tell us how the 
 climax was reached, but the Correspondence 
 does. 
 
 There was a certain Jules Boucoiran, for whom 
 destiny held in store the editorship of a provincial 
 journal. At the moment he was private tutor in 
 the family of General Bertrand ; but he had been 
 for a little while the tutor of Madame Dudevant's 
 boy Maurice. We gather from the letters that 
 he was a good fellow on the whole, though rather 
 an unlicked cub, and that Madame Dudevant had 
 been kind to him, and had admonished him, after 
 the manner of an elder sister. He had had a 
 bad habit of spending his evenings gossiping 
 with the servants in the kitchen, and she had 
 cured him of it. He had learnt to sit in the 
 drawing-room and talk to her instead ; and she 
 had come to confide in him, and to address him, 
 when she wrote, no longer as " Monsieur," but as 
 "Mon cher Jules," or " Mon cher enfant." To 
 him, in preference to her mother or any other 
 of her correspondents, she confided that she had 
 " taken a violent decision." 
 
 One day, she wrote, she had occasion to look 
 for something in her husband's desk. She found, 
 not what she sought, but a packet addressed to 
 herself, and marked " Not to be opened until after 
 my death." Her relation proceeds : 
 
 28 
 
Separation 
 
 " I had not the patience to await my widow- 
 hood. No one with such health as mine can rely 
 upon surviving anybody. I assumed my husband's 
 death, and I was very glad to learn what he thought 
 of me during his life. The packet being addressed 
 to me I could open it without indiscretion, and, 
 my husband being in good health, I could read 
 his last will and testament in cold blood. 
 
 " My God ! What a will ! His maledictions 
 on me, and nothing more. There were all his 
 bad tempers and angry passions, all his reflections 
 on my perversity, all his expressions of contempt 
 for my character. And that was what he left me 
 as a pledge of his affection ! I thought I must 
 be dreaming I who, up till then, had kept my 
 eyes shut and refused to see that I was despised. 
 The perusal woke me at last from my slumber. 
 I told myself that to live with a man who neither 
 respected nor trusted his wife would be like 
 trying to raise the dead to life. My mind was 
 made up and I venture to say irrevocably. You 
 know that I do not use that word lightly. 
 
 " Without waiting another day, weak and ill 
 though I still was, I stated my wishes, and gave 
 my reasons for them, with a readiness and a 
 sangfroid which petrified him. He had not ex- 
 pected that such a creature as I could stand up 
 to him. He grumbled ; he argued ; he entreated. 
 I remained unmoved. / must have an allowance, I 
 said. / shall go to Paris, and my children will 
 remain at Nohant" 
 
 29 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 George Sand's acquaintance with Jules Sandeau She goes to 
 Paris and lives with him "in an unconventional manner "- 
 Her literary beginnings Her delight in her emancipation 
 Her happiness. 
 
 PERHAPS Madame Dudevant's decision to go to 
 Paris was not taken quite so suddenly as she 
 gave Jules Boucoiran to understand. Because 
 she confided in him it does not follow that she 
 told him everything ; and there must have been 
 a good deal that it was superfluous to tell him 
 because he knew it. 
 
 She already had friends at Paris : friends of 
 her grandmother, old schoolfellows and others. 
 The clever young men of her own neighbourhood 
 went to Paris to seek their fortunes when they 
 grew up. They sought it, for the more part, 
 in the Latin Quarter, and were caught, to some 
 extent, in the vortex of the Romantic Movement. 
 Pretending to laugh at it, they nevertheless eddied 
 round. They called themselves Hugolaters ; and 
 they woke worthy tradesmen from their sleep 
 by bawling satirical refrains about " grocers"; 
 " grocer" being, at that period, the French for 
 a Philistine an enemy of light. 
 
 When they came home for their holidays, 
 
 30 
 
Nohant Society 
 
 Madame Dudevant cultivated their society. No 
 doubt it was the most amusing society available 
 for her ; and the young men, we cannot question, 
 found her more companionable than the usual 
 and conventional provincial chatelaine. Life was 
 not so dull at Nohant but that there occasionally 
 were dances, dinners, and musical evenings, and 
 certain quieter parties at which, according to the 
 fashion of the age, the young people took it in 
 turns to read poetry aloud. It was a faint re- 
 flection of the greater literary life of the capital, 
 and stimulated a desire for it. When the young 
 men were absent, Madame Dudevant corre- 
 sponded with them in a spirit of gay camaraderie ; 
 and thus the memory was kept alive, and the 
 desire was further stimulated. 
 
 Of course the neighbours talked. They had 
 nothing to do but talk and very little else to 
 talk about. No doubt the gossips, after the 
 manner of provincial gossips, made a little 
 scandal go a long way ; but it is also fairly 
 certain that some material for gossip was fur- 
 nished. Madame Dudevant was half a Bohemian 
 by birth and upbringing ; and if, in her mother's 
 case, she had found Bohemianism allied with 
 intellectual darkness, here she found it associated 
 with "the movement," and with new ideas. So 
 it appears that a good deal was based upon certain 
 surreptitious meetings in the woods ; and she 
 owns, in one of her letters, to being credited 
 ridiculously and unjustly with "four lovers": 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 "not too many, they say," she comments, "for 
 anyone with such lively passions as mine." 
 
 Three of the lovers, at all events, may, with- 
 out hesitation, be struck off the list. Fleury, 
 Duvernet, and Boucoiran were never more than 
 friends. Jules Sandeau was certainly to become 
 more than a friend a little later ; but there is no 
 real reason for doubting her own statement that, 
 at this stage, she hardly knew whether she was 
 in love with him or not. She knew his hat by 
 sight, for he used to adorn it with a red cord ; 
 and when she visited houses at which she might 
 meet him, she used to look for that hat in the 
 hall. It was a symptom, no doubt, but she did 
 not recognise the significance of it until afterwards. 
 All that she realised, for the time being, was that 
 a circle of friends of whom Jules Sandeau was 
 the most interesting awaited her in Paris when- 
 ever she chose to go there friends who were 
 in touch with art and letters, and with whom 
 she could live on terms of Bohemian camaraderie. 
 And then the crash came and the crash was the 
 excuse for her departure. 
 
 It was open to her, of course, on leaving her 
 husband, to live a subdued and decorous life, 
 keeping up appearances on three thousand francs 
 a year, pitied and patronised by perfectly respect- 
 able people. The censorious may censure her 
 for not doing so if they choose ; but they must 
 also admit that, if she had done so, she would 
 not have been George Sand. Her desire was 
 
 32 
 
From the Faubourg to the Quarter 
 
 to escape not only from her husband but from 
 the conventions to be free, to earn money, to 
 "live," as the modern phrase goes, "her own 
 life." She knew quite well that this involved 
 a sacrifice ; that, Must as, once before, she had 
 had to choose between her father's and her 
 mother's friends, so now she must choose between 
 the Faubourg and the Quarter. But she made 
 her choice ; she abode by it, and she did not 
 regret it. "\ 
 
 It was no case of drifting. The act was de- 
 liberate, and all those who might consider that it 
 concerned them were formally notified. Madame 
 Dudevant left, as it were, her P.P.C. cards on 
 the Faubourg before taking her departure for 
 the Quarter, making farewell calls upon the 
 sisters at her convent school, and some old school- 
 fellows who had married and become ladies 
 of fashion. They asked her to come and see 
 them again, and she promised ; but she did not 
 mean to come, and they did not expect or desire 
 to see her. For she intended and perhaps had 
 already begun to make light of the proprieties. 
 "The proprieties," she wrote to Jules Boucoiran, 
 who was living at La Chatre as her son's tutor, 
 "are the guiding principle of people without soul 
 and virtue. The good opinion of the world is 
 a prostitute, who gives herself to the highest 
 bidder." Among "people who considered them- 
 selves respectable," as her mother would have 
 put it, there was no place for anyone who thus 
 C 33 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 openly outraged the conventions. There was 
 hardly any place for such a one even in the 
 salon of Madame Rdcamier. Madame Dudevant 
 was invited there, " but had the good sense," she 
 says, "to refuse to go." 
 
 The introductions which she valued were those 
 to men of letters who could help her to begin a 
 literary career. One of the introductions was to 
 M. de K^ratry, the author of Le Dernier des 
 Beaumanoir. He was amiable, but they did 
 not suit each other. " I have had enough of 
 him," she wrote. "One must not see celebrities 
 at too close quarters." The other introduction 
 was to Latouche of the Figaro. He was 
 neither amiable nor encouraging, but he was 
 helpful. Madame Dudevant had brought manu- 
 scripts with her to Paris, and she took them to 
 him. He read them, and his verdict was some- 
 thing less than flattering. The work, he said, 
 "lacked common sense." It needed not merely 
 to be revised, but to be re-written. But he did 
 not, like Kdratry, advise her to "make babies 
 instead of books." On the contrary, he laughed 
 when she told him what K^ratry had said ; and 
 he laughed still more at her reply, " Make them 
 yourself, if you can ; " and he took her on the staff 
 of his paper. 
 
 It was not much of a post as newspaper posts 
 go : " the lowest of trades " is her own description 
 of the calling, and she speaks of herself as a 
 newspaper mechanic. She sat all day long in 
 
 34 
 
Bohemian Amusements 
 
 the office, and wrote whatever she was told to 
 write short stories, leaders, humorous para- 
 graphs. It was made clear to her that, however 
 clever she might be, she had much to learn. 
 Latouche tore up some of her copy, and defaced 
 the rest with his blue pencil. " Ah ! if you knew 
 the man ! " she exclaims in humorous irritation. 
 And her pay for the copy that survived the blue 
 pencil was only at the scale rate of seven francs 
 a column. 
 
 Yet she was happy, and even in high spirits. 
 Her resentment against her husband dis- 
 appeared in her delight at her emancipation. 
 She did indeed warn Boucoiran to beware of 
 the incalculable vagaries of his temper ; but 
 she also corresponded with him amicably about 
 the purchase of a new pair of knickerbockers for 
 the little Maurice, and other matters which 
 concerned them jointly. Since it was a part of 
 their arrangement that she should visit Nohant 
 from time to time to see the children, it was no 
 doubt the better, as well as the more cordial 
 way. Presently she was to fetch Solange ; and, 
 in the meantime, she enjoyed herself like a 
 schoolboy out for a holiday, going to see the 
 great actors and to hear the great preachers, 
 exploring the streets, sitting in the cafe's, dressing 
 herself like a man, and smoking long cigars. 
 
 One does not gather from her letters that she 
 had, as yet, any passionate desire for literary 
 fame. She writes, at all events, that her pre- 
 35 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 dominant desire is not for glory but for money ; 
 and she professes admiration for the modest and 
 retiring habits of "the great B^ranger." Even 
 when she realises that fortune does not favour 
 the anonymous, she is not moved to push her 
 own name forward the less so because one of 
 the editors to whom she wishes to offer her 
 work is "a woman-hater." So she collaborates, 
 and borrows the name of her collaborator 
 Jules Sandeau. " A compatriot who has agreed 
 to lend me his name," was her description of 
 him to Latouche. 
 
 The name was to become notable thereafter, 
 but it meant little or nothing then. Jules 
 Sandeau was merely a clever young man from 
 the country, intended for the profession of the 
 law, but fully determined in his own mind to 
 follow the profession of letters. He was little 
 more than a boy ; to be precise, he was twenty 
 years of age just seven years younger than 
 Madame Dudevant. But he was in Paris before 
 her, well acquainted with the Quarter, proud to 
 serve as her guide in the land where chaperons 
 are not. He went, F&ix Pyat tells us, to meet 
 the diligence on the day of her arrival. 
 
 Of course he was in love with her. She was 
 as Bohemian in her affability as a grisette yet 
 a lady, and a woman of rare intelligence ; and 
 she had beautiful eyes, and had shown him 
 certain preferences. Romance could hardly set 
 such a snare for a romantic youth in vain ; and 
 
 36 
 
Jules Sandeau 
 
 the rest followed as a conclusion from its premises. 
 In the country, it may be, he would have been 
 content to love in vain to sigh humbly and 
 hopelessly at a distance, remembering that he 
 was a mere boy, and that she was a chatelaine 
 and a mother. But now they were together in 
 Bohemia the land of the faux mdnage\ and 
 the followers of Saint-Simon compassed them 
 about, preaching the gospel of free love. Youth 
 is inevitably emboldened in such a case ; and it 
 was not long before Jules Sandeau took his 
 courage in his two hands. " I resisted him for 
 six months," says Madame Dudevant ; but then 
 she yielded. For a season, broken by intervals 
 in which Madame Dudevant revisited her home, 
 the collaborators lived together. " I lived in 
 my apartment in an unconventional style," is the 
 euphemistic reference to the incident in the 
 Autobiography. 
 
 It is an arrangement on which, no doubt, one 
 could pass a moral judgment ; but it is hardly 
 worth while to do anything so obvious. What 
 is intqresting is not the morality of the partner- 
 ship, (but the motive for it ; and on this the 
 Letters throw some light. Madame Dudevant 
 seems to have felt that some such act of open 
 revolt was necessary to her self-respect. She 
 could not endure the humiliating position of the 
 injured wife, pitied by her friends because her 
 husband neglected her and made love to her 
 maids, in her house if not in her presence. It 
 
 37 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 seemed to her that there was more dignity in a 
 compact whereby he went his way and she went 
 hers. Enjoying her liberty, and letting it be 
 known that she enjoyed it, she could not only 
 hold up her head but forget her rancour ; and 
 as for the morality of the proceeding, no doubt 
 she looked at it from the Bohemian point of 
 view. She wanted a home-life of a sort, as 
 Bohemians often do, and her own home had 
 been made impossible to her. j The step which 
 she was taking might make all the difference to 
 her own happiness, and could not well impair 
 the happiness of anybody else. 
 
 So she made the experiment, and it seemed to 
 answer. She and Jules helped each other with 
 their work, and made each other happy. They 
 wrote a novel together, and they wrote novels 
 separately. This was the period of Rose et 
 Blanche (^yy Jules Sand), of Indiana, of Valentine, 
 etc., in which Madame Dudevant definitely 
 assumes her new identity as George Sand ; and 
 perhaps this is the place in which to quote the 
 eulogy of the charms of his mistress which Jules 
 Sandeau penned in later years. It will be found 
 in Marianna, written in 1839. The lovers had 
 long since separated in circumstances to be 
 related presently when that romance appeared ; 
 but Jules Sandeau had not forgotten. 
 
 "She had been brought up in the country," 
 he writes, "and had now for the first time left it ; 
 
 38 
 
A Character Sketch 
 
 and her /manners showed a strange combination 
 of boldness and timidity.) Sometimes, indeed, 
 she affected a kind of petulant brusquerie, the 
 result of a secret uneasiness, and an ardour that 
 ran to waste. She had almost a man's familiarity 
 of address, so that it was easy to be intimate 
 with her ; but her haughty chastity and her 
 instinctively aristocratic air mingled with her 
 ' abandon ' certain suggestions, as it were, of a 
 virgin and of a duchess, contrasting strangely with 
 her disdain for the proprieties and her ignorance 
 of the world. All the evidence revealed in her 
 a richly endowed nature, stirring impatiently 
 beneath the weight of a wealth not yet called into 
 activity. Life palpitating life seemed to move 
 among the curls of her beautiful black hair ; and 
 there burnt as it were a hidden fire beneath her 
 delicate and transparent skin. The purity of her 
 brow indicated that the storms of passion had 
 not yet broken upon that noble head ; but the ex- 
 pression of her eyes, burning, yet weak and tired, 
 spoke of terrible interior struggles, ceaseless but 
 unavowed." 
 
 That was the retrospect the bitter, yet linger- 
 ing and longing recollection of charms that were 
 no more for him. One easily infers from it the 
 intoxicating happiness of the days before dispute 
 and disillusion ; and of George Sand's happiness 
 her letters give irrefragable testimony. She 
 writes to Duvernet : 
 
 39 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 " How I wish I could impart to you this sense 
 of the intensity and joyousness of life that I have 
 in my veins and in my breast. To live! How 
 sweet it is, and how good, in spite of annoyances, 
 husbands, boredom, debts, relations, scandal- 
 mongers, sufferings, and irritations ! To live ! It 
 is intoxicating! To love, and to be loved! It is 
 happiness ! It is heaven ! " 
 
 40 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Literary success A retainer from Buloz Passionate relations 
 with Jules Sandeau His infidelity detected The lovers 
 p ar t George Sand's retrospective references to the 
 amour. 
 
 WE have seen that George Sand we need no 
 longer speak of her as Madame Dudevant was 
 happy. She was also, though not yet famous or 
 rich, beginning to be successful. 
 
 Her note was new to fiction. She wrote 
 enthusiastically of illicit love, picturing it under the 
 benevolent protection and patronage of the Divine 
 Providence which overrules all things for good. 
 Though she held somewhat aloof from the Saint- 
 Simonians on the ground that the priestess of the 
 sect was chiefly anxious to "show off her sky-blue 
 frock and her swan's-down boa," she nevertheless 
 preached free love in the name of true religion. 
 "In George Sand," a cynical critic has written, 
 " when a lady wants to change her lover, God is 
 always there to facilitate the transfer." But 
 though cynics might mock at that sort of thing, 
 there was a public for it. The authoress was 
 soon able to tell her friends that the leading 
 reviews were "fighting for" her serials; and 
 she presently accepted from the great Buloz, 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 of the Revue des deux Mondes, a retaining fee 
 of 1 60 a year. 
 
 She continued to divide her time between Paris 
 and Nohant between her lover's apartment and 
 her husband's country house. Her son remained 
 in the country with his tutor ; but she had Solange 
 with her in Paris when she could. Those who 
 disapprove most strongly of her conduct cannot 
 deny that she was as devoted a mother as the 
 circumstances of the case allowed. Her letters to 
 the elder child are full not only of affection but of 
 admirable precepts ; she was never more happy 
 than when taking the younger one to see the wild 
 beasts at the Jardin des Plantes. Her life might 
 be at the beginning of a tangle not easily to be 
 unravelled ; but there were certain old-fashioned 
 virtues to which she clung, and would always con- 
 tinue to cling. Her instincts, in these regards, 
 were invariably sound ; and, as we shall have 
 frequent occasion to see as we proceed, she 
 always loved to' preserve and even to create 
 the atmosphere of the home in the midst of her 
 most Bohemian escapades. ] 
 
 Of the nature of her relations with her husband 
 at this stage something has already been said. 
 We find, as it were, a locus classicus concerning 
 them in one of her letters to her mother. "It is 
 only fair," she writes, "that the great liberty 
 which my husband enjoys should be reciprocal. 
 Otherwise he would seem odious and contemptible 
 to me and that he does not desire." And 
 
 42 
 
Correspondence 
 
 Casimir Dudevant endorses this view of the situa- 
 tion in a letter in which he tells his wife that he 
 is about to visit Paris. " I shall stay," he says, 
 " with Hippolyte, because I do not wish to inter- 
 fere in any way with your liberty, or to have any 
 restrictions imposed upon my own which seems 
 a fair arrangement." 
 
 So they agreed to differ, and corresponded 
 amicably, about Maurice's knickerbockers and 
 similar matters, and met from time to time with- 
 out violating the truce or seeking to upset the 
 modus vivendi that they had agreed upon. George 
 Sand wrote to her husband about the plays she 
 saw and the editors she interviewed, and expressed 
 concern for his health when he was summoned to 
 sit on a jury in a town in which cholera was raging. 
 For the rest, she regarded him as a man like 
 another, to be observed and put into a book. He 
 evidently sat unconsciously as the model for the 
 disagreeable husband in Indiana. Her heart 
 which it had been agreed should be her own was 
 in the Latin Quarter, with her student-lover, Jules 
 Sandeau. For the first time in her life she believed 
 that she knew what love really was. In one 
 of her letters we find her distinguishing between 
 love and passion : " Love seeks to give, whereas 
 passion only seeks to take." She had given herself 
 to Jules Sandeau as she believed, for ever. 
 
 In this as in all her love affairs, she had a con- 
 fidant ; and the confidant, as always, was a man. 
 She told the whole story of her love at the time, 
 
 43 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 in a series of letters to Emile Regnault, printed in 
 the Figaro by M. Amic in 1896. It was to 
 Regnault that she confided her habit of looking 
 on hat-stands for Jules Sandeau's red-corded hat, 
 the cords on the hats of her other friends and 
 acquaintances being blue ; and she also told him 
 in what circumstances Jules Sandeau declared his 
 love, and so made her aware of hers. 
 
 " I don't know exactly how it happened. A 
 quarter of an hour previously I had been alone, 
 sitting on the steps of the stone staircase, with a 
 book in my hands which only my eyes were 
 reading. My mind was absorbed by a single 
 thought, intensely delightful, but mysterious and 
 vague. I seemed to see Jules, and to hear his 
 voice ; I was thinking over everything that I had 
 heard said about him, and everything that I had 
 guessed about him ; and my heart was consumed 
 with love for him, while to my mind there came 
 no thought whether of yielding or of resistance. 
 The future? The morrow? I knew nothing 
 about that. He had arrived on the previous 
 evening, and my whole life was concentrated upon 
 that day. All of a sudden a voice sounds in my 
 ear, and makes me tremble from head to foot. I 
 turned round, and there he was. I was not in 
 the least expecting him. But what is all this that I 
 am telling you ? Jules, I doubt not, has described 
 the scene to you a hundred times in its smallest 
 details. Lovers are so tiresome, aren't they ? " 
 
 44 
 
Confessions 
 
 It was a strange confidence truly for a woman 
 to make to a man ; but there were stranger con- 
 fidences to follow. The veil of the alcove is 
 lifted ; and we read of George Sand's motherly 
 anxieties for the well-being of a too ardent lover. 
 
 " You must understand, my dear Emile, that 
 my life is very closely bound up with that of Jules, 
 and that when he suffers, however little, I, in 
 sympathy, suffer much. You still have some 
 influence over him, whereas I have none. I tire 
 him, and I cannot bring myself to tell him that I 
 am ill, in order to persuade him to take care of 
 himself. That remedy would be worse than the 
 disease. Look at his letter to me, and look at my 
 reply. I am very guilty towards him ; I have 
 been very cruel. I reproached him for his idle- 
 ness when he was well ; I reproach him for 
 his illness now that he is ill. I tire him, I irritate 
 him, and I annoy him. I feel it, and I am very 
 unhappy about it. He will not admit it, but he 
 finds me an oppressive burden." 
 
 An oppressive burden in what sense ? In a 
 very literal sense, as the next letter explains. 
 
 " One feels horribly uneasy, my friend, one 
 feels a frightful remorse, when one sees the being 
 to whom one would gladly give one's life dying in 
 one's arms ; when one sees him growing thin and 
 exhausted pining away from day to day and 
 
 45 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 feels that one is killing him, that one's caresses 
 are a poison, and one's love is a consuming fire : 
 a fire that devours and destroys, leaving nothing 
 but ashes behind. It is an appalling thought ; 
 and Jules will not understand it. He laughs at 
 it. He despises it as a child's nightmare ; and 
 when, in the midst of his transports of delight, 
 the idea comes to me and freezes my blood, he 
 tells me that that is the death that he would like 
 to die. At such moments he promises whatever 
 I bid him promise. He makes the promise as he 
 falls asleep, exhausted with fatigue, and when he 
 wakes up in the morning he has forgotten all 
 about it. A hundred times during the past three 
 months, I have held him almost fainting in my 
 arms, and have resisted him. Then I yielded to 
 my fears in the hope of curing him. I made the 
 sacrifice of my will my will which, after all, is a 
 thing of some account and to-day I lament 
 having done him more harm by devotion than by 
 my resistance. I am killing him. The pleasures 
 which I give him he buys at the cost of his life. 
 I am his Peau de Chagrin." 
 
 The next letter shows that George Sand was 
 giving Jules Sandeau not only herself but her 
 money. Her rule is proved by the exception to 
 it which she notes. She is at Nohant, this time, 
 and he is in Paris. She fears that he has not 
 enough to eat. He has a delicate stomach ; and 
 it may be that he is " breakfasting off Roquefort 
 
 46 
 
Disillusion and Rupture 
 
 cheese." And then : "I haven't been able to 
 send him any money this month, as I have had 
 to devote my month's allowance to the payment 
 of a debt." 
 
 Such was the romance ; and George Sand 
 indulged the dream that it would last for ever. 
 But such passionate romances seldom last ; and the 
 end of this one came with dramatic suddenness. 
 
 George Sand set out one day from Nohant to 
 Paris without announcing her arrival, meaning to 
 give her lover the pleasure of a surprise. She sur- 
 prised him indeed but not alone. With him 
 and not only with him but actually in his arms 
 was a young woman whom the chroniclers 
 describe as " une blanchisseuse quelconque" 
 
 No doubt it was an infidelity of the senses 
 rather than the heart : no deliberate betrayal, but 
 rather the temporary aberration of a young man 
 to whose passionate temperament she had just 
 borne such eloquent witness. If only she had not 
 left him for so long ! If only he had dared to 
 hope that she would come again so soon ! Those 
 are the excuses which one pictures him preferring. 
 But, if he did prefer them, it was in vain. The 
 offence was not of the kind that could be pardoned ; 
 and Emile Regnault was presently informed of the 
 rupture. 
 
 " DEAR FRIEND, I have just written to 
 M, Desgranges to give notice to terminate the 
 
 47 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 tenancy of Jules' apartment, and to ask him for a 
 receipt for the rent due, which I will pay. . . . 
 
 " I am taking the rest of my furniture to my 
 own rooms. I will make a parcel of the few 
 things which Jules has left behind him in the 
 drawers, and have them sent to you ; for I desire 
 to have no interview, and no communication, 
 with him on his return, which, as I gather from 
 the last words of his letter to you, which you 
 showed to me, is likely to, or at any rate may, 
 take place at an early date. I have been too 
 deeply wounded by the discoveries which I have 
 made about his conduct to preserve for him any 
 other sentiment than an affectionate compassion. 
 Do all that is necessary to make him understand 
 that nothing can reunite us in the future. If that 
 is unnecessary if Jules, that is to say, already 
 understands the situation spare him the pain of 
 being told that he has lost even my esteem. I 
 doubt not that he has lost his own, and that is 
 sufficient punishment for him." 
 
 So the passionate lovers parted, and pursued 
 thenceforward separate roads to fame. Jules 
 Sandeau became an Academician the first 
 novelist to whom the Academy opened its doors. 
 It is said that, in that capacity, he voted against a 
 proposal to award George Sand a literary prize. 1 
 
 1 M. de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, in La veritable Histoire de " Elle 
 et Lut" corrects this story, and shows that Sandeau was absent, 
 through indisposition, from the session at which the vote was taken. 
 
 48 
 
An Apologue 
 
 It is also said that, until the end of his days, the 
 mention of her name always brought tears to 
 his eyes. But he had other mistresses George 
 Sand's friend Marie Dorval, the actress, among 
 the number so that it is difficult to be sure. 
 And, at any rate, he uttered one witticism at her 
 expense that has lived. " My heart is a cemetery," 
 George Sand said pathetically, in her later years ; 
 and the saying was repeated to Jules Sandeau. 
 " It is a necropolis," was his comment. 
 
 George Sand, on her part, as we shall see, 
 could forget, if she could not forgive ; but she 
 would not have been George Sand if she had not 
 first published her emotions to the world. Her 
 regrets, such as they were, may be read in the 
 Lettres dun Voyageur. 
 
 " Growing old matters little to me ; but it 
 matters much to me that I should not grow old in 
 solitude. Only I have not met the human being 
 in whose company I could live and die ; or, if I 
 have met him, I have not been able to keep him. 
 Listen to a story and cry over it. Once upon a 
 time there was a worthy artist called Watelet, the 
 best etcher of his time. He loved Marguerite 
 Lecomte, and taught her to etch as well as he did. 
 She left her husband, her wealth, and her country, 
 to live with Watelet. . . . The world cursed them, 
 and then, as they were poor and modest, the 
 world forgot them. Forty years later there was 
 discovered, in a little house in the suburbs of 
 D 49 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Paris, called Moulin- Joli, an old man who etched 
 on copperplate, together with an old woman, 
 whom he called his ' meuniere? who sat at the 
 same table with him, and worked at the same task. 
 The first idle loafer who discovered this marvel 
 told the others about it, and the world of fashion 
 crowded to Moulin-Joli, crowded to see the 
 phenomenon : a love that had lasted for forty 
 years ; a labour that had always been assiduous 
 and had always given delight ; two twin talents, 
 Philemon and Baucis, contemporaries of Mesdames 
 de Pompadour and Du Barry. That seemed an 
 epoch-making spectacle ; and the marvellous 
 couple were surrounded by friends, flatterers, and 
 admirers. Fortunately they died of old age a few 
 days afterwards ; otherwise the incursion of the 
 world would have spoilt the picture. The last 
 picture which they engraved was of Marguerite's 
 house, and had the motto 
 
 ' Cur valle permutem Sabina 
 Divitias operosiores ? ' 
 
 " I have that picture in my room. It hangs 
 above a portrait of some person whom none of us 
 here know. For a whole year he who bequeathed 
 me that portrait used to sit with me every even- 
 ing at a little table, engaged at the same work as 
 myself. In the mornings we used to consult to- 
 gether about our tasks, and in the evenings we 
 sat at the same little table and supped together, 
 talking the while of our art, our sentiments, and 
 
 50 
 
An Anti-climax 
 
 our future. The future did not keep its promises 
 to us. Pray for me, O Marguerite Lecomte ! " l 
 
 This, it is clear, is sentimentalism rather than 
 sorrow. If George Sand's heart was- a cemetery, 
 she was already beginning to find satisfaction in 
 her meditations among the tombs. If the memory 
 remained, it lay at the bottom of a heap of 
 memories ; and there is a picture belonging to a 
 somewhat later date in which we see recollection 
 still more dim, if not altogether extinct. It is 
 M. Jules Claretie who tells the story : 
 
 "One evening, in the editorial office of the 
 Revue des deux Mondes, a bald little man, of 
 military bearing and pensive manner, collided in 
 the doorway with a fat lady with the dark com- 
 plexion of a gipsy, and apologised to her politely. 
 
 " * I beg your pardon, madame.' 
 
 " * I beg yours.' 
 
 " And then, when Sandeau had taken his seat 
 
 " ' Who is that lady ? ' he asked. 
 
 "'What?' was the answer. ' It is you who 
 ask that question ! Why, that is George Sand ! ' ' 
 
 And thus, just as in one of Maupassant's short 
 stories, the curtain falls upon an anti-climax. 
 
 1 Dr. George Brandes has maintained that the reference is to 
 George Sand's relations, not with Sandeau, but with Musset. The 
 view presented here is that taken in the Grand Dictionnaire 
 Larousse. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Lost illusions Friendship with Marie Dorval Sainte-Beuve 
 introduces Prosper Merimee George Sand becomes his 
 mistress for a week Their parting and subsequent meeting. 
 
 ILLUSIONS were now vanishing. The first illu- 
 sion had gone when AureUien de Seze ceased to be 
 satisfied with a love that was merely mystical and 
 chaste ; the second when Jules Sandeau preferred 
 albeit only for a moment the embraces of his 
 " blanchisseuse quelconque" 
 
 It is our English convention not to take 
 seriously the sufferings of lovers whose union has 
 not been blessed by the Church or at least 
 sanctioned by the Registrar : we prefer to de- 
 nounce or to deride. It is the French convention 
 to regard these tragedies as the most poignant of 
 all. But the truth is that love is love, and is to 
 be taken seriously as by the lovers it always is 
 taken seriously in proportion not to its sanction 
 but to its sincerity. George Sand, when Jules 
 Sandeau deceived her, felt herself, for the moment, 
 emotionally bankrupt. " And I had for my most 
 intimate friend," she adds, in explanation of her 
 further conduct, "a woman who put no bridle on 
 her passions." 
 
 The friend was Marie Dorval, the actress 
 
 52 
 
Marie Dorval 
 
 already mentioned. George Sand had written 
 her a letter of homage, soliciting her acquaintance ; 
 she had responded with enthusiasm ; the two 
 women had formed an attachment. And Marie 
 Dorval was no exception to the rule that the 
 theatre is a bad school of morals. She was the 
 more dangerous as a friend the more likely to be 
 imitated as a model because she was no 
 mercenary mistress, but the child of impulse and 
 caprice. In the years to come, she was not only 
 to be the mistress of Jules Sandeau, but to break 
 the nobler heart of Alfred de Vigny. " On the 
 bosom of what a Magdalen fall the tears of this 
 Christ ! " was to be the cynic's comment upon that 
 singular passion. A strange counsellor truly for a 
 distinguished woman of letters ; and one can 
 imagine what her counsel would have been : to 
 make haste to love again recklessly, and without 
 discrimination. 
 
 We cannot doubt that the advice was given ; 
 and we know that it was taken. To friends in the 
 country George Sand wrote that, in the daytime, 
 she was besieged by visitors, and that in the even- 
 ings she shut herself up " with my pens and my 
 ink, Solange, my piano, and my fire." It was 
 a part of the truth for she was writing ( Ldlia 
 but not the whole of it. The friends who besieged 
 her, and who, she said, did not amuse her, included 
 men who were anxious to make love, and men 
 who thought to do an act of kindness in intro- 
 ducing lovers. She knew, of course, all the 
 
 53 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 members of the Revue des deux Mondes group. 
 Among them was Sainte-Beuve, the critic, who 
 introduced Prosper Merimee, the novelist. " She 
 gave herself to Merimde," says her biographer, 
 Madame Kar6nine, " without knowing exactly 
 why." 
 
 It was a brief episode concerning which some 
 strange and not specially seemly anecdotes have 
 been related. Merimee himself spoke of the 
 affair as a young man's " adventure." The story 
 also went the rounds that Sainte-Beuve, distressed 
 to see George Sand lonely and forsaken, and 
 aspiring to fill the place in her life which God, 
 according to the cynic, fills in her novels, "gave" 
 Merime'e to her, and that she wrote to him on the 
 following morning requesting him to take back 
 his gift. She herself, in a letter to Sainte-Beuve, 
 declared that the intimacy lasted a whole week ; 
 and she, if anyone, was in a position to know. 
 But the point is not worth arguing. The three 
 versions have their common denominator in the 
 fact that George Sand and Prosper Merime'e 
 quickly discovered that they did not suit each 
 other. "All that is certain," says M. Augustin 
 Filon, in his Life of Merime'e, "is that he refused 
 to be led along the road that Musset followed, 
 and that he was wise." 
 
 He was a little older than George Sand in 
 point of years a great deal older in knowledge 
 of the world ; and he was the type of man who 
 has a special fascination for a certain type of 
 
 54 
 
Prosper Merimee 
 
 woman. His distinction was his reserve worn 
 like a mask which he seemed always on the point 
 of removing. It was permissible to credit him 
 with many adorable qualities which he did not 
 actually display. Apparently he was an iceberg ; 
 but it was possible to believe that the iceberg was 
 a volcano in disguise. So George Sand, who had 
 resisted Sandeau before yielding to him, yielded 
 to Merime'e without resistance ; and, after it was 
 all over, she wrote to Sainte-Beuve to tell him 
 how it had happened, and why. 
 
 She felt herself growing old, she said, and yet, 
 in some ways, she was still young. She suffered, 
 she despaired, and she was bored. She was 
 ready even to drown herself, believing that life 
 had no longer any happiness or even any 
 pleasures to offer her. And then 
 
 " On one of my days of ennui and desperation, 
 I met a man who was free from all doubts and 
 questionings a calm and a strong man who 
 understood nothing of my nature, and only 
 laughed at my troubles. The force of his 
 character completely fascinated me, and for a 
 week I believed that I had acquired the secret of 
 happiness that he would teach it to me, and 
 that his scornful disdain would heal me of my 
 childish susceptibilities. I believed that he had 
 suffered as I had suffered, and made himself 
 master of his sensibilities. . . . 
 
 " This man, who would only be my lover on 
 
 55 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 one condition, and who was able to make me 
 desire his love, persuaded me that there might 
 still exist for me a kind of love endurable to the 
 senses and intoxicating to the soul. I had 
 thought so myself once . . . and I was suffering 
 from that romantic restlessness and weariness 
 which make one giddy, and cause one to question 
 all one's negations, and fall into fresh errors far 
 graver than those one has foresworn. So, after 
 having thought that years of intimacy could not 
 link my existence to another's, I concluded that 
 a fascination which had only lasted a few days 
 might determine the course of my life. And, in 
 the end, I did, at the age of thirty, what a girl of 
 fifteen would have known better than to do. 
 Courage ! The rest of the story is odious to 
 relate ; but why should 1 fear to be ridiculous, if 
 I have not been guilty ? 
 
 " The experiment failed completely. I shed 
 tears of pain, disgust, and discouragement. 
 Instead of an affection that could pity me and 
 relieve me of my distress, I found only a bitter 
 and mocking frivolity. That is all." 
 
 That is the end of the confession ; and the 
 story has hardly any sequel. The lives of these 
 lovers of a week were to run on very different 
 lines. While George Sand remained a Bohemian, 
 Merime'e was to become a public official and a 
 courtier Inspector of Historical Monuments, 
 and Napoleon's Master of the Revels at Com- 
 
 56 
 
Gustave Planche 
 
 piegne. He was to have other love affairs, of 
 which one at least is famous too proud to marry 
 poor Jenny Dacquin, the provincial notary's 
 daughter, but not too proud to dally with her 
 interminably, always seeming about to depart from 
 his reserve, and never quite departing from it. 
 But he and George Sand were only to meet once 
 more at a dinner party given in Paris by Lord 
 Hough ton in 1848 when, Merime'e says, they 
 stared at each other a good deal, but did not 
 speak. For the rest, he voted, with the minority, 
 that she should have the Academy Prize of 
 20,000 francs, and even canvassed Jules Sandeau 
 on her behalf. 
 
 But now another illusion was gone ; and the 
 rejected heart was once more ready to be caught 
 on the rebound. In Sainte-Beuve's Memoirs 
 there is a statement that Gustave Planche the 
 dramatic critic of the Revue des deux Mondes, whom 
 Victor Hugo described as " a fungus not afraid of 
 being bitten because it knows that it is poisonous," 
 was, for a time, her lover ; but, in one of her 
 own letters to the critic, the allegation is denied. 
 "He is not my lover," she writes, "and he never 
 will be ; " and she was ordinarily so frank in her 
 confessions that we need make no difficulty about 
 believing her. 
 
 Moreover, a greater than Gustave Planche was 
 about to enter into her life. She was on the 
 point of meeting Alfred de Musset. 
 
 57 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Alfred de Musset His family and early associations His rela- 
 tions with the "Cenacle" Sainte-Beuve introduces him to 
 George Sand The exchange of compliments leads to love 
 Bohemian life together in George Sand's apartment A 
 honeymoon in the Forest of Fontainebleau The proposal to 
 travel together to Venice Musset's mother objects George 
 Sand calls on her and persuades her to consent The de- 
 parture " amid circumstances of evil omen." 
 
 ALFRED DE MUSSET was not, like George Sand, 
 of miscellaneous lineage. His family was noble 
 ancien regime to the finger-tips ; and many 
 members of it had dallied in a dignified way with 
 literature. His father, M. de Musset- Pathay, 
 had written several books, including what was 
 then the standard Life of Rousseau, whose 
 character he defended against the assaults of 
 Grimm. His great-uncle, the Marquis de Musset, 
 was the author of a novel, announced in the 
 preface as " dictated by the love of virtue." A 
 maternal grandfather, M. Guyot-Desherbiers, had 
 published a humanitarian poem on cats. 
 
 He was a clever boy, nervous and delicate ; 
 according to some accounts he was epileptic, but 
 that statement has been disputed. At all events, 
 he was impatient and precocious already a poet 
 to be taken seriously at the age of seventeen, 
 
 58 
 
"Maladie du Siecle" 
 
 afflicted by the maladie du siecle. One may 
 smile, remembering what Shakespeare says about 
 the young men who are "sad as night only for 
 wantonness " ; but the disease was real enough. 
 It was, so to say, the mental epidemic of the 
 period. The sanest critics have traced its causes 
 and chronicled its symptoms. France had been 
 bled almost to death by the slaughter of the 
 Napoleonic wars, and the starved nerves of a 
 whole nation had been overstrained. There 
 followed reaction, breakdown, hysteria ; and 
 the hysteria was aggravated by the French 
 system of education. The Lyce*e was a forcing- 
 house ; and there were no outdoor games to 
 help youth to preserve its emotional and mental 
 balance. The result was pessimism, and the 
 attempt to make pessimism tolerable by dissipa- 
 tion. Since Musset's testimony might be pre- 
 judiced, let Maxime Du Camp be our witness. 
 
 "The literary and artistic generation," he 
 writes, "which preceded me the generation to 
 which I belonged passed a youth of lamentable 
 melancholy : a melancholy which had no cause 
 and no immediate motive, but was inherent in 
 the individual and the age." Young men, he 
 adds, were haunted by the idea of suicide. "It 
 was not merely, as might be supposed, a fashion. 
 It was a kind of general feeling of feebleness 
 which saddened the heart, darkened the mind, 
 and caused men to look upon death as a deliver- 
 ance." And when men did not seek the escape 
 
 59 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 from life in death, they turned to anodynes to 
 literature, and also to drunkenness and free love. 
 To Alfred de Musset each of the three anodynes 
 was to make its appeal in turn. 
 
 Those were the days of the " Cenacle " : those 
 gatherings of young poets hardly out of their 
 teens, who had Victor Hugo for their prophet 
 and Sainte-Beuve for their trumpeter. Alfred 
 de Musset, the youngest of them all, was 
 introduced to the group by Hugo's brother-in- 
 law, Paul Foucher, who had been at school with 
 him. " I also am a poet," he confided to the 
 companion with whom he walked home after he 
 had, for the first time, heard his elders recite 
 their compositions ; and presently he too recited, 
 and was acclaimed the " sublime child " of the 
 Romantic company. Lamartine remarked on his 
 eyes, "dreamy rather than dazzling," and on his 
 "modest silence in the confused tumult of jabber- 
 ing women and poets." Victor Hugo speaks of 
 "his firm clear glance, his dilated nostrils, his 
 vermilion lips half open." 
 
 It would seem that he was rather in the group 
 than of it. The others were the professionals ; 
 he was the amateur. They were the Bohemians ; 
 he was the fine gentleman the " dandy " some of 
 them said who descended into Bohemia at his 
 hours. He never became the typical Romantic 
 writer, having his own traditions, his own point 
 of view. But the new associations at least made 
 a bourgeois profession impossible for him. For a 
 
 60 
 
Alfred de Musset 
 
 little while he studied law, and then, for a little 
 while, he pretended to study medicine ; but 
 medicine disgusted and law bored him. He 
 " cut " his lectures, and spent his time on the 
 boulevards ; but, instead of making literature his 
 excuse, he justified himself with a cynicism. Man 
 was such a poor insignificant creature, he told 
 his puzzled family, that it was absurd to take 
 pains to fashion himself into "a particular kind of 
 
 man." 
 
 That was his position and his age was only 
 twenty-two when he made the acquaintance of 
 George Sand, to whom he was introduced by her 
 "confessor," Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 Perhaps Sainte-Beuve was anxious to make 
 amends for his mistake in introducing Merime'e. 
 At all events, we find him pressing the introduction, 
 and George Sand only accepting it with reluctance. 
 She had had enough, she said and perhaps 
 believed of love. It no more became her than 
 roses became a brow of sixty winters. " For the 
 last three months it has not tempted me in the 
 least." Moreover, if Sainte-Beuve insisted upon 
 introducing somebody, there were other men 
 whom she was more anxious to meet. 
 
 " After due reflection, I would rather that you 
 didn't bring Alfred de Musset to see me. He is 
 too much of a dandy ; we shouldn't suit each 
 other : I was rather curious about him than 
 interested. It is imprudent to gratify all one's 
 
 61 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 curiosities, and better to follow the guidance of 
 one's sympathies. Instead of him, I should like 
 you to bring Dumas, in whose art I find soul as 
 well as talent. He has said that he would like 
 to meet me you have only to give him my 
 message." 
 
 One is amused at the preference thus expressed, 
 and tries to picture the liaison that might have 
 resulted. Alexandre Dumas was a man who 
 liked to fill his house with mistresses, but refused 
 to take any of them seriously, first treating them 
 like spoiled children and then like naughty 
 children. In his intellectual life they had no part 
 or lot. He tolerated them until he quarrelled 
 with them, submitting in patience to be plundered ; 
 but, in the end, he always flew into a volcanic 
 passion, and bade them, at a few minutes' notice, 
 begone and take their bedroom furniture with 
 them. There would indeed have been a strange 
 conflict between two strong natures if he and 
 George Sand had ever loved. 
 
 The speculation is idle, however, since it was 
 not Dumas but Musset who was introduced. The 
 exact date of the first meeting cannot be fixed ; 1 
 but Musset and George Sand sat next each other 
 at a dinner given to the contributors to the 
 
 1 The story is told Dr. Brandes repeats it that Buloz deliber- 
 ately brought them together in the confident expectation that they 
 would fall in love and would quarrel, and that their disputes would 
 " make copy " for the Revue. Whether the story be true or not, it 
 does not seem to rest upon very solid evidence. 
 
 62 
 
Progress towards Intimacy 
 
 Revue des deux Mondes in the late spring or 
 early summer of 1833. " She asked him to call," 
 says Paul de Musset in his Life of his brother. 
 "He called two or three times, at intervals of a 
 week, and, after that, he was always with her." 
 
 They began, of course, with literary compli- 
 ments. Musset wrote some verses in praise of 
 Indiana, and sent them to the author. In 
 the covering letter, he proposed to escort her to 
 the towers of Notre Dame, which she had ex- 
 pressed the desire to climb. That excursion 
 does not seem to have taken place ; but Musset 
 was given an early copy or perhaps the proofs 
 of Le'lia, and though his letter of acknow- 
 ledgment is not a love letter, it indicates that 
 progress towards intimacy is being made. " A 
 sea rolls between us," says the young man. He 
 must not ask for love, and friendship is "too 
 moral " for him. But may he not be "a kind 
 of comrade without importance and without rights 
 consequently without jealousies and without 
 quarrels, capable of smoking your tobacco, and 
 catching cold with you while philosophising under 
 the shadows of all the chestnut trees of modern 
 Europe ?" 
 
 So far, it is only the tone of badinage ; and we 
 find the same tone in the dedication which George 
 Sand wrote in the presentation copy of Ltlia 
 which she sent to him. In the first volume she 
 wrote : " To my naughty boy, Alfred ! GEORGE." 
 In the second the inscription was : " To M. le 
 
 63 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Vicomte Alfred de Musset, with the respectful 
 homage of his devoted servant, George Sand." 
 And, after that, the situation developed rapidly. 
 Alfred de Musset made a declaration of love 
 in a letter, and George Sand hesitated. He 
 made a second, and more passionate declara- 
 tion : " Pity me, but do not despise me. If my 
 name is written in a corner of your heart, do not 
 efface the impression, however faint and feeble 
 it may be. ... There are days when I could 
 kill myself. I weep instead, or laugh but 
 I do not laugh to-day. Good-bye, George. I 
 love you with the love of a little child." To 
 this appeal George Sand yielded, and the poet 
 burst into song : 
 
 " Te voila revenu dans mes nuits e'toile'es, 
 Bel ange aux yeux d'azur, aux paupieres voices, 
 Amour, mon bien supreme et que j'avais perdu ! 
 J'ai cru pendant trois ans te vaincre et te maudire, 
 Et toi, les yeux en pleurs, avec ton doux sourire, 
 Au chevet de mon lit te voila revenu. 
 
 Eh bien ! deux mots de toi m'ont fait le roi du monde. 
 Mets la main sur mon cceur, la blessure est profonde ; 
 Elargis-la, bel ange, et qu'il en soit brise' ! 
 Jamais amant aime, mourant pour sa maitresse, 
 N'a, dans les yeux plus noirs, bu la celeste ivresse, 
 Nul, sur un plus beau front ne t'a jamais baise." 
 
 A period of happiness, and of Bohemian merri- 
 ment, succeeded. Nominally Alfred de Musset 
 was still living at home with his mother, his 
 brother Paul, and his sister Herminie, afterwards 
 Madame Lardin de Musset ; but he spent most 
 
 64 
 
A Bohemian Salon 
 
 of his time as George Sand's guest, and only 
 came home occasionally. There was no secret 
 as to the nature of their relations. They enter- 
 tained their Bohemian friends. Buloz, Gustave 
 Planche, 1 Jules Boucoiran, and Papet were often 
 there. Paul de Musset was in the habit of look- 
 ing in to see how the lovers were getting on. 
 One hears of supper parties, and practical jokes. 
 A comedian and conjurer was introduced as a 
 distinguished European diplomatist, and imposed 
 upon all who were not in the secret until, at 
 dessert, he began to spin plates to illustrate the 
 complications of European politics. The poet 
 himself assumed the disguise of a maid-servant, 
 and spilt soup on the heads of the guests. He 
 also being an artist as well as a poet cari- 
 catured the company, drawing a cartoon of 
 himself in particular as " Don Juan trying to 
 borrow half a franc " ; and he celebrated the 
 receptions in some doggerel verses, discovered 
 among his papers after his death, and recently 
 published by M. Maurice Clouard. As they are 
 only doggerel, and not poetry, one may venture 
 upon an English version of a few of the 
 stanzas : 
 
 " Amid pots of mignonette, 
 
 In her salon near the sky, 
 George smokes a cigarette, 
 With a tear-drop in her eye. 
 
 1 For many years the dramatic critic of the Revue des deux 
 Mondes. 
 
 E 65 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Buloz sits on the ground, 
 
 His best respects to pay ; 
 Solange behind is found, 
 
 Writing a book in play. 
 
 As solemn as a stone, 
 Boucoiran, splashed with dirt, 
 
 Remarks with mournful tone 
 Musset's unbuttoned shirt. 
 
 Menard, with muddy shoes, 
 
 Of speech is far more free ; 
 Paul listens to his views, 
 
 While pouring out the tea. 
 
 Planche, who was drunk last night, 
 
 Hides in a corner now, 
 A sorry, sorry sight ..." 
 
 But the rest of the verse about Gustave 
 Planche is too offensive to be quoted ; and thereby 
 hangs a tale. 
 
 Gustave Planche had never been George 
 Sand's lover, but he had hoped to be, and he 
 had an old-standing quarrel with Alfred de 
 Musset. They had met at a ball, and there had 
 been jealousy, and an attempt at a mean revenge. 
 The critic had accused the poet of kissing his 
 partner the most shocking of all offences in the 
 eyes of those French people who are not Bo- 
 hemians. Challenged to substantiate the charge, 
 he had had to admit that it was a calumny. 
 The anger of an angry father had been diverted 
 from the poet's head to his ; the angry father had 
 laid a stick about his shoulders; and the only 
 redress open to him had been to review the 
 
 66 
 
"I have fallen in love" 
 
 poet unfavourably. And now the poet crossed 
 his path again. He glared, but he had to go. 
 It was in vain that he tried to establish himself 
 in George Sand's favour by challenging the 
 critics who spoke unkindly of her fiction. She 
 hardly thanked him, and other people laughed 
 at him ; and so he passes out of our story. 
 
 He was clever enough, but a plebeian. Alfred 
 de Musset was cleverer, and an aristocrat 
 refined, though a debauchee dissolute only 
 through hysteria too young for his dissipations 
 to have set any ugly mark on him. Gustave 
 Planche, no doubt, was not the only man who 
 seemed vulgar beside him. He was a " sublime 
 child " not less handsome than distinguished ; 
 and George Sand, in loving him, felt that she 
 had once more plunged into happiness. Her 
 letters to Sainte-Beuve leave us in no doubt 
 about that. 
 
 "I have fallen in love very seriously this 
 time --with Alfred de Musset. It is not a 
 caprice, but a genuine attachment. ... I have 
 loved before once for six years, and once for 
 three years and what I am capable of now I 
 do not know. Many fancies have traversed my 
 brain. But my heart was not so worn out as 
 I had feared. I say that because I feel it. 
 
 " I felt it also when I loved P[rosper] M [crime* e]. 
 He repelled me, and I had to make haste and 
 recover. But now, instead of being pained and 
 
 67 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 misunderstood, I find a candour, a loyalty, 
 and a tenderness which cause me intoxicating 
 delight. It is a young man's love and a 
 comrade's friendship -- something that I had 
 never dreamt of and never expected to encounter 
 least of all from him. I denied this affection, 
 at first, and repelled it, and refused it ; but then 
 I yielded, and I am happy through having 
 done so. 
 
 " Yes, I am happy. Thank God for me. 
 True, I have my hours of suffering and vague 
 melancholy. That is in me, and a part of me. 
 But I am in the path of recovery and consolation. 
 Do not dissuade me from this belief." 
 
 And then, a month later : 
 
 " My friend, I am happy, very happy. Every 
 day finds me more attached to him ; every day, 
 the trifles that used to make me suffer vanish 
 from my life ; every day, the beautiful things of 
 life that I used to admire shine for me more 
 brilliantly. And then, besides all his other 
 qualities, he is such a 'good fellow.' His in- 
 timacy is as delightful to me as his love for me 
 was precious. After all, you see, there is nothing 
 really good in the world but that." 
 
 An idyll truly ! And what more natural than 
 that the lovers should feel that their love required 
 the consecration of a honeymoon ? 
 
 Biographers have said that they fled from Paris 
 68 
 
At Fontainebleau 
 
 in order to escape from Paul that guardian angel 
 of an elder brother who was so fond of looking in 
 to see how they were getting on. It may be so ; 
 but it is hard to believe that Paul was the only 
 caller whose visits seemed an intrusion on their 
 happiness. All the old friends must have been 
 more or less in the way ; and too many of them 
 remained even when Gustave Planche had been 
 got rid of. They were living in a rowdy atmo- 
 sphere, and rowdiness jars upon romance. They 
 had not become lovers merely in order to receive 
 and entertain Bohemians. That was altogether 
 the wrong frame for the picture a frame which 
 tended to make the picture commonplace. For 
 an idyll such as theirs, the surroundings must be 
 more idyllic. They must roam through the secret 
 places of forests, and float on the still waters of 
 lagoons. For fear lest love should languish, 
 they must travel. 
 
 The first brief honeymoon was at Franchard, 
 on the verge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. It 
 has no history, which means that it was happy. 
 It was either during the journey or immediately 
 afterwards that Sainte-Beuve received the second 
 of the letters which we have quoted. Another 
 letter of about the same date gives directions for 
 the removal of Alfred's belongings from George 
 Sand's apartment in order that her husband may 
 not discover them there and wonder. But the 
 lovers were by no means satisfied to ''settle 
 down " when they returned to Paris. Apparently 
 
 69 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 they found that they were too conspicuous, and 
 that their business was everybody's business. It 
 could hardly be otherwise. They lived, and 
 loved, too much in public for their peace. And, 
 of course, there was no real need for either of 
 them to stay in Paris. Maurice was at the Lycee, 
 and Solange could be sent to Nohant, and novels 
 could be written anywhere. The South was 
 calling. Why not obey the call ? 
 
 There was one difficulty. Madame de Musset 
 objected, and Alfred was a good and devoted son. 
 His mother was not acquainted with his mistress ; 
 but she had read her books, and drawn her infer- 
 ences. George Sand's heroes seemed to her " bad 
 form." " Has the woman never in her life met 
 a gentleman ? " she asked scornfully ; and though, 
 after the manner of French mothers, she accepted 
 the liaison as something with which she had better 
 not try to interfere, the proposal of the voyage to 
 Italy was too severe a strain on her affection. By 
 what means her objection was overcome she re- 
 lated, years afterwards, in a letter from her to her 
 son Paul, published in M. Clouard's collection of 
 Documents intdits sur Alfred de Musset. 
 
 " I have told you a hundred times how your 
 brother, before his departure, asked my consent 
 to this sad journey, and how I obstinately refused 
 it. At last, seeing how desperate I was, he threw 
 himself on his knees, exclaiming, ' Do not weep, 
 mother. If one of us must weep, it shall not be 
 
 70 
 
 
Departure for Venice 
 
 you.' Those were his very words. It was not 
 likely that I should forget them. Having thus 
 reassured me, he went to the lady and told her 
 that he could not go that he could not cause his 
 mother this distress. The good son that he was ! 
 And what did the woman do ? At nine o'clock 
 in the evening, she took a cab and drove to my 
 door. I was told that someone was below, and 
 wished to see me. I went downstairs, followed 
 by a servant, suspecting nothing. Seeing a 
 woman alone in the carriage, I got into it. It 
 was she. Then she employed all the resources of 
 the eloquence of which she was a past mistress to 
 induce me to entrust my son to her, assuring me 
 that she would love him like a mother, and would 
 take better care of him than I should myself. 
 And so what can I say ? The siren snatched a 
 consent from me. I yielded to her, with tears in 
 my eyes, and against the instincts of my heart ; 
 for he had a prudent mother, though she has dared 
 to say the contrary in Elle et Lui" 
 
 That is how they settled the matter ; and Paul 
 the devoted Paul saw the lovers off. " On a 
 misty, melancholy evening," he writes, " I saw 
 them enter the stage coach amid circumstances 
 of evil omen." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Meeting with Stendhal at Lyons Arrival at Venice George 
 Sand works while Musset sits in cafes Dr. Pagello sees 
 George Sand on the balcony and admires her She calls 
 him in to prescribe for a headache Shortly afterwards she 
 summons him again to prescribe for Musset His diagnosis. 
 
 THE circumstances of evil omen referred to in the 
 last chapter were as follows : The coach in which 
 the travellers took their seats was the thirteenth 
 to leave the yard ; one of its wheels came into 
 violent collision with a big stone while passing 
 through the gateway ; a water-carrier was knocked 
 over by the vehicle in the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain. One imagines, however, that it was 
 only in retrospect that the significance of the 
 auspices was realised. "Tous les commence- 
 ments sont heureux," said Madame de Stael ; and 
 this honeymoon belonged to the beginning, though 
 it heralded the end. The lovers were in a holiday 
 mood, ready to be amused and to laugh. 
 
 They laughed at Stendhal novelist and French 
 Consul at Civita Vecchia whom they met at 
 Lyons. He had supper with them ; and after 
 supper, George Sand tells us, "he was very 
 merry, got rather drunk, and danced round the 
 table in his big top boots." They laughed again 
 
 72 
 
Letters Home 
 
 at Alfred de Musset's sea-sickness on the boat 
 that took them from Marseilles to Genoa ; and 
 the humours of the latter incident inspired a 
 caricature. The poet depicts himself paying his 
 tribute to the sea while his companion stands 
 beside him gaily smoking a cigarette. There are 
 other caricatures of the same date, all of them 
 bearing unmistakable testimony to the lovers 1 
 lightness of heart. 
 
 From Marseilles George Sand wrote to her 
 son Maurice, whom she had left at school. She 
 would not be away long, she said, but a warm 
 climate was necessary for her health. She wished 
 both her children were with her, but they were 
 too young. Maurice must be a good boy and 
 write regularly. He must also be diligent at his 
 lessons, and not forget to wash his face and hands. 
 One smiles ; but perhaps there is not really any- 
 thing to smile at. A woman may still desire to 
 be a good mother, even when she has left her 
 husband to live her own life in her own way, and 
 so develop, as it were, the double personality 
 which the irregular situation needs. The situation 
 imports its own ironies, but there is nothing to 
 be gained by insisting on them. Let us return 
 to the itinerary. 
 
 The details are fixed by the dates on Alfred de 
 Musset's passport. From Genoa the lovers took 
 the boat to Leghorn, and by December 28 they 
 were at Florence. They tossed a coin, it appears, 
 to decide whether they would go to Venice or to 
 
 73 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Rome ; and, chance having thus determined that 
 the former city should be their goal, they reached 
 it, after passing through Ferrara and Bologna, on 
 January 19, 1834, and took an apartment in the 
 Hotel Danieli. And then followed their quarrel, 
 and Alfred de Musset's illness, and the calling in 
 of the doctor who was to be his favoured rival. 
 
 How, and when, and about what the lovers 
 quarrelled nobody knows for certain. The 
 partisans of the poet tell one story, the partisans 
 of his mistress another ; and, as the stories are 
 not mutually exclusive, both of them may perfectly 
 well be true. 
 
 Paul de Musset's story is that his brother 
 was shocked by George Sand's outrageous con- 
 versation. She spoke, he says, before casual 
 acquaintances, of her mother's adventures as a 
 camp follower of the Army of Italy her relations 
 with the aged general and her flight with the 
 captivating captain and of her own birth within 
 a month of her parents' wedding-day. Very 
 possibly she did. It is the sort of thing that she 
 was likely to do, and the sort of thing to which 
 he was certain to object. George Sand, with 
 all her talents, had, at that date, many of the in- 
 stincts of the grisette ; and grisettes are more 
 loquacious than women of the world. Alfred de 
 Musset, with all his faults, had the instincts of a 
 gentleman. It is credible enough that George 
 Sand sneered at the "filles bien dleve'es, dociles 
 et hypocrites de votre caste," and that he re- 
 
 74 
 
The Quarrels of the Lovers 
 
 preached her for sacrificing her mother's reputa- 
 tion to her democratic theories. And assuredly, 
 however quickly reconciliation followed, the germs 
 of estrangement would have been contained in the 
 animated dialogue ! 
 
 On the other hand, the Sandists say that George 
 was ill and that Alfred neglected her. It is probable 
 enough ; and he would have been the more, rather 
 than the less, likely to do so, after such passages 
 at arms as those which Paul de Musset reports. 
 But her illness was not serious. It did not prevent 
 her from going to see the sights, and it did not 
 prevent her from working. She was paying the 
 expenses of her honeymoon with her pen ; and she 
 was as diligent with her pen as more domesticated 
 women with their needles. She is herself our wit- 
 ness for the statement that she worked eight hours 
 a day on an average, and sometimes worked thirteen 
 hours at a stretch. " Cette terrible vache a ecrire," 
 was an enemy's description of her ; she yielded 
 " copy " as regularly as a cow yields milk. It was a 
 great deal to expect that Alfred de Musset would 
 stay at home and admire her beautiful black eyes, 
 or mend her quills and pin her sheets together, 
 while she performed her tremendous daily task. 
 
 Perhaps she would have liked him to sit opposite 
 to her, busy with his own work, like Jules 
 Sandeau ; l but poetry is not thus composed 
 
 1 Miss Thomas reproaches him for this, and wonders how he 
 could have been idle with such a commendable example of 
 diligence before his eyes. 
 
 75 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 currente calamo. Inspiration is a gift, and the 
 poet must wait till it is given ; and the poet does 
 not wait most happily or hopefully while con- 
 demned to listen to a fellow-worker's pen un- 
 ceasingly scratching the paper. That way lie 
 boredom and impatience ; and Alfred de Musset 
 fled impatiently from boredom, and went to 
 wait elsewhere. We have no proof that George 
 Sand tried to detain him. It is to be pre- 
 sumed that she worked better and faster when 
 he was out of the way. Only he was the 
 sort of young man who, left to his own de- 
 vices in a strange city, was certain to get into 
 mischief. 
 
 There is a story, not so well attested as it might 
 be, that he was inveigled into a gambling hell 
 and lost ten thousand francs, and that George 
 Sand borrowed money from Buloz to enable him 
 to pay this debt of honour. Whether that story 
 be true or not, it is certain that his manner of life 
 was dissipated. He sat late in cafe's and not 
 alone. The French Consul, proud no doubt to 
 render a service to a distinguished French man 
 of letters, acted as his guide and conducted him 
 to all the most disreputable places in Venice. 
 While his mistress was writing romances "h jet 
 continu " for the Revue des deux Mondes, he was 
 keeping late hours and consorting with singers, 
 dancers, and loose women generally. But not, 
 as some biographers seem to suggest, for any 
 length of time ; for he had been less than a 
 
 76 
 
Dr. Pagello 
 
 fortnight in Venice when he fell ill, and Dr. 
 Pagello was fetched. 
 
 Why Pagello rather than another? It used 
 to be assumed that the choice fell upon him by 
 accident ; that he was the nearest physician, or 
 the most eminent, or the one recommended by 
 the hotel-keeper. As a matter of fact Pagello 
 was too young to be eminent, and the hotel- 
 keeper had recommended someone else ; but he 
 was handsome, and George Sand already knew 
 him. 
 
 How she had made his acquaintance we know 
 from his own pen. He was very discreet as long 
 as discretion mattered. At the time when George 
 Sand's amours were the talk of Paris, he con- 
 sistently held his tongue chiefly, no doubt, 
 because he was a gentleman, but partly also, it 
 may be, because it was better for his practice that 
 the story should be allowed to be forgotten. But 
 he kept a diary ; and, at last, when he was a 
 very old man, he allowed a journalist to copy 
 extracts from it. He had long been the sole 
 survivor of the three-cornered love-duel ; and no 
 doubt the journalist persuaded him that such 
 amours as his belonged to history, and that the 
 public had a right to know the truth. So he 
 confessed as follows : 
 
 " I was living at Venice, where, having finished 
 my medical studies, I was beginning to work up 
 a practice, and, one day, I took a walk on the 
 
 77 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Quai des Esclavons with a Genoese friend, a 
 traveller and a man of letters. As we passed 
 beneath the windows of the Hotel Danieli, I 
 saw, on the first floor balcony, a young woman 
 of somewhat melancholy countenance, with very 
 black hair and eyes that betokened a strong will 
 and a virile character. Her attire was singular. 
 A scarlet scarf was fastened like a turban round 
 her head. 
 
 " Round her neck she wore a cravat, prettily 
 fastened to a collar white as snow ; and she was 
 smoking a long cigar with the assurance of a 
 soldier while she chatted with the fair-haired 
 young man who sat beside her. I stopped to 
 look at her, and my companion quietly nudged 
 me. 
 
 " ' Ah ! ' he said. ' You seem to be fascinated 
 by that charming smoker. Do you happen to 
 know her ? ' 
 
 " ' No/ I replied, ' but I would give a good deal 
 to do so. She must be very different from the 
 common run of women. Tell me, you who have 
 travelled so much, what do you think of her ? ' 
 
 '"Precisely because I have seen so many women 
 of all races and all colours/ he rejoined, ' I can 
 form no reasonable theory. Perhaps she is a 
 romantic Englishwoman, or else an exiled Pole. 
 She looks like a person of high station, and she 
 strikes me as strange and haughty/ 
 
 " Gossiping thus, we reached the Square of 
 Saint Mark, where we separated. 
 
 78 
 
" A certain beauty ' 
 
 " On the following day I went to call on my 
 Genoese friend it was Rebizzo ; I do not think 
 there is any indiscretion in naming him. He was 
 at dinner with his family. He noticed my pre- 
 occupied air, and said, turning to his wife 
 
 " ' Look, Bianchina. Our friend Pagello is 
 thinking of a certain beauty whom he saw 
 smoking . . .' 
 
 "'And whom Lazzaro [Rebizzo] believes/ I 
 rejoined, 'to be a Pole or an Englishwoman, 
 but whom I can assure you to be of pure French 
 blood. I was with her an hour ago, and I shall 
 return to see her again. She is a patient, and 
 she has asked for my address.' 
 
 " ' Indeed ! ' exclaimed Lazzaro, opening his 
 eyes wide. 
 
 " * Certainly, certainly. Danieli, the hotel- 
 keeper, fetched me this morning, and I was 
 shown into the smoking-lady's room. She was 
 sitting on a low chair, leaning her head on her 
 hand, and she asked me to give her something to 
 cure a bad headache. I felt her pulse, and pro- 
 posed to bleed her. She agreed. I performed 
 the operation there and then, and she felt better. 
 In saying good-bye to me, she asked me to come 
 and see her again, unless I heard to the contrary. 
 The fair-haired youth, her inseparable companion, 
 escorted me most politely to the foot of the stair- 
 case. That is all that happened this morning. 
 But a presentiment whether pleasant or bitter I 
 cannot say whispers to me, ' You will see that 
 
 79 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 woman again, and she will make a conquest of 
 you.' 
 
 " There followed a long pause, interrupted by a 
 burst of laughter from my hosts, who declared that 
 I was in love. 'No, no,' I replied; 'not yet.' 
 4 But who is this foreigner ? ' asked Bianchina. I 
 answered that I did not know. ' But why didn't 
 you ask the hotel-keeper who she was and where 
 she came from ? ' ' Why ? Because I was afraid 
 to know.' ' Ah, ah ! " they said ; ' he is in love.' ' 
 
 A few days passed " twenty days," according 
 to Pagello's narrative, but it cannot really have 
 been so long and then he called again on Rebizzo 
 and showed him the following letter : 
 
 "MY DEAR MR. PAGELLO, Please come and 
 see us as soon as you possibly can, and bring a 
 good physician with you for a consultation on the 
 case of the French invalid at the hotel. 
 
 " Let me tell you before you come that I am 
 more anxious about his reason than about his life. 
 Since he has been ill, his head has been ex- 
 ceedingly weak, and he often argues like a baby. 
 Nevertheless, he is a man of energetic character 
 and powerful imagination a poet much admired 
 in France. But the excitement of brain-work, 
 wine, dissipation, women, and the gaming table 
 have much fatigued him, and have wrought upon 
 his nerves. He gets agitated over the smallest 
 trifles as if they were matters of importance, 
 
 80 
 
Musset's Illness 
 
 " Once, three months ago, he was like a raving 
 maniac all night long in consequence of some 
 trouble that he had on his mind. He thought he 
 saw phantoms round his bed, and he shrieked with 
 fear and horror. At present he is still uneasy, 
 and this morning he knows neither what he says 
 nor what he does. He weeps ; he complains of a 
 distress to which he can assign neither name nor 
 cause ; he calls for his country, and vows that he 
 is going to die or go mad. 
 
 " I do not know whether this is the result of 
 the fever, or of nervous excitement, or is a 
 beginning of insanity. I think bleeding would 
 afford him relief. 
 
 " I beg you to repeat all this to the doctor, and 
 not to be deterred by the difficulties presented by 
 the patient's intractable disposition. He is the 
 person whom I love best in the world, and I am 
 terribly distressed to see him in this state. 
 
 " I hope you will show us all the friendship that 
 two foreigners can hope for. 
 
 " Excuse the miserable Italian that I write. 
 
 "GEORGE SAND." 
 
 This letter is important, and proves a good 
 deal beyond the fact that George Sand found a 
 difficulty in expressing herself in the Italian 
 language. It proves, when read in conjunction 
 with Pagello's confession, that she had noticed his 
 manoeuvres underneath her balcony, and had gone 
 out of her way to seek his acquaintance. It 
 F 81 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 suggests unmistakably that the alleged headache 
 was rather a pretext than a reason for inviting 
 him to call. One may almost infer from it that 
 their relations had been so little professional that 
 she did not even know that he was a fully qualified 
 medical man, and one may certainly infer that she 
 had no confidence whatever in his professional 
 skill. Since a Dr. Saintini was already in 
 attendance, this can be the only meaning of the 
 appeal to Pagello not to come alone, but to bring 
 some competent colleague with him. 
 
 He was cleverer than she thought, however ; 
 and no doubt he had a good bedside manner, to 
 be assumed at the proper time and dropped again 
 when occasion ceased to call for it. At all 
 events, he inspired sufficient confidence to be 
 retained in charge of the case ; and this portion 
 of his narrative continues : 
 
 " To read the letter to the end it was necessary 
 to turn over the leaf. What astonished my friends 
 was the signature which, when they had read it, 
 caused them to exclaim with a single voice, 'George 
 Sand!' 
 
 " They then asked me whether I had visited my 
 French patient, what was the matter with him, 
 and how he was getting on. I answered, * My 
 young patient is in bed with a very grave illness 
 which I and my colleague have diagnosed as a 
 very dangerous typhoid fever. His name is 
 Alfred de Musset.' 
 
 82 
 
<c 
 
 The Singer of the Moon " 
 
 " ' Per Bacco ! ' exclaimed Rebizzo, * that is the 
 romantic singer of the moon. Do you know his 
 poems ? ' 
 
 " 'Yes,' I replied. 'I have read two or three 
 of them. He has a wonderful imagination a 
 little extravagant, but very delicate, all the same.' ' 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The nature of Musset's illness The reasons for supposing it to 
 have been typhoid fever The behaviour of George Sand and 
 Pagello at his bedside George Sand's declaration of love 
 Pagello's doubts and hesitations It is agreed between them 
 that Musset shall return alone. 
 
 MADAME KARENINE states that Alfred de Musset's 
 illness was not typhoid fever but delirium tremens. 
 She gives no reasons for the statement, relying 
 apparently upon tradition and report ; but the 
 conclusion is one which, even without the help of 
 rumour, a physician would be inclined to deduce 
 from the records of the symptoms and the treat- 
 ment. 
 
 The reasons why Pagello cannot have "diag- 
 nosed" either "typhoid fever," as he says he did 
 in one version of the story, or "a nervous typhoid 
 fever," of which he speaks in another, are, at any 
 rate, obvious and irrefutable. " Nervous typhoid 
 fever " is a complication unknown to medicine ; 
 and typhoid fever itself was unknown to medicine 
 in the year 1834. Typhoid and typhus were, at 
 that date, confused and called "continuous fever" 
 a term used to distinguish them from the inter- 
 mittent malarial fevers. The alleged " diagnosis " 
 is, therefore, quite evidently an afterthought, or a 
 euphemism. 
 
 84 
 
Pagello's Prescription 
 
 It certainly was not, however, an afterthought 
 due to increased pathological knowledge. What 
 we know of the patient's symptoms not only fails 
 to suggest typhoid fever, but is absolutely incom- 
 patible with the hypothesis. Of several character- 
 istic typhoid symptoms there is no mention. The 
 convalescence was too rapid. The fever was not, 
 as George Sand's letter, quoted at the end of 
 the last chapter shows, continuous. Nor can the 
 alternative theory of intermittent, or malarial, 
 fever be entertained. An Italian physician could 
 not conceivably have failed to recognise that 
 disorder ; and no delicate consideration for the 
 feelings of the Musset family need have hindered 
 him from naming it. 
 
 We have Pagello's prescription, which Alfred 
 de Musset kept. M. Clouard publishes it in his 
 Documents inedits, and it is as follows: 
 
 Aq. ceras. nigr, ij 
 
 Laud, liquid. Sydn. gutt. xx 
 
 Aq. coob. laur. ceras. gutt. xv 
 
 This, by itself, proves little. The medicine is 
 only the common sedative of the period, and 
 might have been administered merely because 
 the doctor did not know exactly what was the 
 matter ; but when we find the delirious patient 
 to whom it is given, seeing " phantoms" around his 
 bed, needing to be held down by two strong men, 
 warned by his doctor, during his convalescence, 
 to avoid strong drink, suspected of obtaining 
 
 85 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 it surreptitiously, and relapsing, we know pretty 
 well what to think. All these conditions 
 were present in the case ; and we have a very 
 graphic picture of the delirium in a letter which 
 George Sand addressed to Boucoiran. 
 
 " Last night," she says, " was awful. Six hours 
 of such frenzy that, in spite of the efforts of two 
 strong men, he ran about his room in a state of 
 nudity. Shouts, songs, yells, convulsions ! Oh, 
 my God ! What a spectacle it was ! " 
 
 There seems no doubt that the sufferer was 
 skilfully treated and well nursed. He always 
 believed, and frequently declared, that he owed 
 his life to Pagello's ability and George Sand's 
 attentive care. But it is none the less true that 
 his mistress made love to his doctor while he was 
 lying ill. His brother goes so far as to say that 
 he saw them doing so at a time when they believed 
 him to be asleep. 
 
 The story is very circumstantial. Paul de 
 Musset first told it in Lui et Elle. It has since 
 been confirmed by a document said to have been 
 dictated to the author by Alfred de Musset him- 
 self. He saw George Sand, he says, sitting on 
 Pagello's knee and kissing him ; he saw them 
 have tea together and drink from the same cup. 
 And he concludes : 
 
 " When they had finished, Pagello got up to go. 
 G. S. went to the door with him. They passed 
 
 86 
 
Love-Making in the Sickroom 
 
 behind a screen, and I fancied that they kissed 
 each other. Then George Sand took a lamp to 
 light Pagello down the stairs. They were a long 
 time together on the staircase. During that time 
 I succeeded in lifting myself on to my trembling 
 hands, and drew myself up on all fours on the 
 bed. I strained my eyes to look at the table. 
 There was only one cup there. So I was not 
 mistaken. They were lovers. The matter did 
 not admit of the shadow of a doubt. It was 
 enough for me. And yet I contrived to make 
 myself doubt, so revolting was it to me to believe 
 so horrible a thing." 
 
 The charge is specific, and George Sand always 
 repudiated it with indignation. It is impossible to 
 check either her statement or that of her accuser. 
 The visions of a delirious man who admittedly 
 "saw phantoms" cannot be taken as evidence; 
 and we cannot even exclude the possibility that 
 he may have been under the influence of absinthe 
 when he told his brother the story. But, on the 
 other hand, it is impossible, in view of the known 
 facts, to say that the story is intrinsically im- 
 probable ; and indeed the known facts are of such 
 a nature as to deprive it of a good deal of its 
 importance. George Sand may or may not have 
 drunk her tea from the same cup as Pagello ; but 
 it is not to be denied that she made a declaration 
 of love to him in the sickroom. That much 
 could be proved from the Correspondence if there 
 
 37 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 were reason to disbelieve the bona fides of Pagello's 
 own narrative, which is as follows : 
 
 " As you may imagine, I was assiduous in my 
 attendance on my patient. George Sand often 
 sat up whole nights with me at his bedside. 
 We did not watch in silence ; and George Sand's 
 charm and lofty intelligence, and the gentle con- 
 fidence which she displayed in me, attached me 
 to her every day, every hour, every moment, by 
 a stronger chain. We used to talk of literature, 
 of the Italian poets and artists, of Venetian history, 
 monuments, and manners ; but at each fresh turn 
 that the conversation took, she interrupted me 
 and asked me what I was thinking about. Con- 
 fused when I found myself caught thus absorbed in 
 my own thoughts, I apologised profusely, blushed 
 as red as the glowing coals, while she would say, 
 with an almost imperceptible smile and a subtle 
 glance, 'Ah, doctor, my thousand and one questions 
 are boring you.' And I had nothing to say. 
 
 " One evening, when Alfred de Musset asked 
 us to quit his bedside because he felt fairly well 
 and wanted to go to sleep, we sat down at a table 
 near the chimney. 
 
 " ' Well, madame,' I said to her, ' are you intend- 
 ing to write a novel about our beautiful Venice ? ' 
 
 " ' Perhaps,' she replied ; and she took a sheet 
 of paper and began to write with the desperate 
 haste of one who improvises. I looked at her 
 in astonishment, watching her face, so firm, so 
 
 88 
 
" For the dense Pagello " 
 
 severe, so inspired. Then, anxious not to disturb 
 her, I opened a volume of Victor Hugo which was 
 lying on the table, and ran my eyes over a few 
 passages, though without being able to pay the 
 least attention to what I was reading. In this 
 way a long hour passed. At last George Sand 
 laid down her pen, and, without looking at me or 
 speaking to me, laid her head between her hands, 
 and remained in that attitude for more than a 
 quarter of an hour. Then, rising, she looked me 
 straight in the eyes, picked up the sheet of paper 
 on which she had been writing, and said, * It is 
 for you.' Finally, taking the lamp, she gently ap- 
 proached Alfred, who was asleep, and asked me 
 
 " ' Doctor, do you think the night is going to be 
 fine? 1 
 
 "'Yes,' I replied. 
 
 " ' Then you can go now, and we shall see each 
 other again to-morrow.' 
 
 ' 1 left her, and went straight home to my 
 apartments, where I made haste to open the 
 
 missive." 
 
 According to another version of the story, the 
 doctor affected not to know possibly even did 
 not know for whom the communication was 
 intended, and George Sand had to explain that 
 it was "for the dense Pagello"; but that detail 
 hardly matters. The communication, in any case, 
 was a love letter an avowal of love and a demand 
 for it. Sixty-two years afterwards, when George 
 
 89 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Sand and Musset had long been in their graves, 
 and he was nearly a nonagenarian, the old man 
 gave the document to Dr. Cabanes to be published. 
 It was a long and lyrical effusion "effusion" 
 really seems the appropriate word. Like most 
 improvisations, it repeats the same sentiment over 
 and over again. " I know nothing about you, 
 and yet I love you. We do not speak each other's 
 languages we do not understand each other 
 but no matter. The love may not last but never 
 mind about that. I love you now : I want you." 
 That is the burden of the song ; and, of course, 
 there is more than one appeal to God ; and the 
 last lines run thus : 
 
 " Perhaps you think that you do not know me 
 and that I do not know you. I am ignorant of 
 your past life, and of your character, and of what 
 the n\en who do know you think of you. Perhaps 
 you are the best of men ; perhaps the worst. I 
 love you without knowing whether I shall be able 
 to respect you. I love you because I feel drawn 
 to you, and it is quite possible that I shall soon 
 be compelled to hate you. 
 
 "If you were a countryman of my own, I would 
 question you, and you would understand. But 
 that might make my case still more miserable ; 
 for you might deceive me. 
 
 " But you will not deceive me. You will make 
 no empty promises, and swear no false oaths. 
 You will love me, according to your lights, as 
 
 90 
 
A Declaration of Love 
 
 best you can. I may not find in you what I 
 have vainly sought in others ; but I shall always 
 believe that you possess it. You will allow me 
 to interpret as I please the looks and caresses of 
 love, and will not delude me with deceitful words. 
 I shall be able to interpret your dreams, and shall 
 find an eloquent meaning in your silence. Your 
 actions will have for me whatever significance I 
 desire. When your looks are tender, I shall fancy 
 that your soul is speaking to mine. When you 
 lift your eyes to heaven, I shall imagine that your 
 intelligence is ascending to the eternal home from 
 which it emanates. 
 
 "Let things remain, then, like that. .Do not 
 learn my language, and I will not seek in yours 
 for the words which might tell you of my doubts 
 and fears. I am willing to be ignorant of your 
 life, and of the part that you play in the world of 
 men. I should like even to be ignorant of your 
 name ; but you must at least conceal your soul from 
 me, that I may always believe it to be beautiful." 
 
 A strange letter truly for the romantic writer of 
 European reputation to address to the struggling 
 young general practitioner. Evidently his be- 
 haviour, up to that point, cannot have been very 
 unprofessional, or a much simpler declaration 
 would have sufficed. And it was not by any 
 means a declaration that every general practitioner 
 would have found flattering ; for it spoke not of 
 a real union of hearts, but only of blind passion, 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 rejoicing in its blindness and afraid of opening 
 its eyes. George Sand, in short, was treating 
 Pagello very much as Prosper Merime'e had 
 treated her, declining in very much the same 
 way, though with a more open-hearted candour, 
 to take him seriously. 
 
 An older man a man with a stronger sense of 
 personal dignity would have perceived that, and 
 resented it ; or would have tried to play the game 
 as Merimee played it, with irony and indifference 
 in reserve. But George Sand was very famous, 
 and Pagello was very young. His point of view 
 was rather that of the medical student than of the 
 professional man. He felt immensely flattered, 
 dazzled by his good fortune, and yet, at the 
 same time, half afraid of it. We must turn once 
 more to his own chronicle of his emotions. 
 
 "Yes, yes, there is no denying that this woman's 
 genius astonished and overwhelmed me. If I 
 had been in love with her from the first, you can 
 imagine how much more deeply I was in love with 
 her after I had read this letter. I would have 
 given anything to see her at once, throw myself 
 at her feet, and swear undying love to her. The 
 hour was too late, however ; and there I sat, with 
 the sheet of paper in front of me, reading it through 
 again with the same enthusiasm. And yet, when 
 I had read it through for the third time, certain 
 phrases in the letter, and the general tone of it, 
 awakened a certain indefinable sensation of bitter- 
 
 92 
 
The Doctor's Hesitation 
 
 ness which seemed to rise into my brain from the 
 very depths of my heart. 
 
 " ' She clothes her Epicureanism with a delicate 
 aureole of glory,' I said to myself. ' She depicts 
 me as a demi-god and dallies with me after 
 throwing over me the shirt of Nessus. I feel 
 that I am letting myself become entangled in her 
 net to no good purpose, and, thus caught, I want 
 to know : Is she the best of women or the worst ? 
 And then I thought of my professional position. 
 Just qualified, I was beginning to work up a 
 practice, and, for that purpose, professional 
 knowledge does not suffice. Irreproachable 
 moral conduct is also requisite. And, finally, I 
 remembered Alfred de Musset. He was young, 
 seriously ill, a foreigner ; he had confided himself 
 to my care, and he relied upon my friendship. 
 These reflections troubled me, and, as I held my 
 head in my hands, I seemed to feel my brain 
 flying to and fro like the weaver's shuttle." 
 
 The doctor then looked for guidance to the 
 portrait of his dead mother. She had often 
 warned him that, if he were immoral, he would be 
 unhappy. He lay awake all night, thinking of 
 that ; and at ten o'clock he went, as usual, to visit 
 his patient. Alfred de Musset was better, and 
 was alone. Agitated by the conflicting impulses 
 of desire and duty, Pagello did not venture to 
 inquire where George Sand was. But then 
 
 " Suddenly the door at which I was looking 
 
 93 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 opened, and George Sand appeared. Gloves of 
 rare whiteness were on her little hands. Her 
 dress was of brown satin, and she wore a small 
 plush hat with a beautiful waving ostrich feather, 
 and a Cashmere shawl with a large arabesque 
 pattern in the best and most refined French taste. 
 I had never before seen her dressed so elegantly ; 
 and I had not recovered from my surprise when 
 she approached me with charming grace and ease, 
 and said, ' Signor Pagello, I have some shopping 
 to do, and should be glad of your company, if it 
 would not inconvenience you to come with me.' ' 
 
 Pagello, of course, could only say that he would 
 be delighted. They said good-bye to Musset, and 
 went out together. 
 
 " Outside I felt that I could breathe more freely, 
 and I spoke with greater ease and fluency. She 
 told me on what terms she had, for several 
 months, been living with Alfred, and how many 
 reasons she had to complain of him, and that she 
 had made up her mind not to return to France in 
 his company. Then I recognised my fate, and 
 felt neither glad nor sorry, but walked into the 
 abyss with my eyes shut. I spare you the account 
 of my long conversation with George Sand, as 
 we walked to and fro, for three hours, on the 
 Piazza San Marco. We talked as everybody 
 talks in such a case ; we conjugated all the moods 
 of the verb * to love.' But, after three weeks had 
 elapsed, more grave events occurred." 
 
 94 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 How Alfred de Musset was told His own version of the story 
 The improbabilities in it Pagello's version Musset's de- 
 parture His farewell letters. 
 
 THOUGH doubts afterwards recurred, Alfred de 
 Musset seems to have been successfully persuaded 
 at the time that the love scene which he believed 
 himself to have witnessed was the hallucination of 
 a disordered brain. But love scenes were never- 
 theless being enacted behind his back if not before 
 his eyes. It was only a question whether he 
 should be told, or should be left to discover for 
 himself, that there had been a fresh shuffling of 
 hearts while he lay delirious or unconscious. 
 
 In a letter from George Sand to Pagello, 
 published by M. Paul Marieton in Une Histoire 
 cf Amour, we see that question examined, at 
 great length, in all its bearings. It would have 
 been the wiser plan, George Sand thinks, to 
 engage a room in some other hotel and receive 
 her new lover's visits there. But that has not 
 been done ; and Alfred already suspects ; and his 
 suspicions will, in a day or two, become certainties : 
 " A glance exchanged will be enough to make 
 him mad with anger and jealousy." 
 
 95 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Pagello, it seems, has begged George Sand to 
 be generous to Alfred and forgive him. Evi- 
 dently he has been dragged into the adventure 
 against his better judgment, is rather ashamed of 
 the double part which he is playing, and would 
 be glad of an opportunity to withdraw from it, 
 as Merime'e withdrew before him. But he has 
 neither MerimeVs strength of character nor his 
 gift of supercilious irony. He cannot resist. 
 His mistress has caught him, and will keep him. 
 Why not tell Alfred the truth? she asks. He 
 will weep, of course ; but then he will calm down 
 and go away. As for her pardoning him that 
 is impossible. He has committed the unpardon- 
 able offence he has told her that he has ceased 
 to love her. She is willing to be a friend a 
 sister to him, but nothing more. That sort of 
 magnanimity is not in her character : her pride 
 forbids. 
 
 In truth, however, it was not her pride but her 
 passion that forbade. The barrier of her pride, 
 as we shall see later, could be passed when passion 
 ceased to guard it. But passion defended it now, 
 like an angel with a flaming sword. The rest of 
 the letter is a veritable hymn to Passion the cry 
 of Sappho for Phaon, though not an unavailing 
 cry. She is growing old, but her heart is not 
 worn out. On the contrary, it is passionate and 
 strong. She felt assured of its vigour when last 
 Pagello covered her with his caresses. And, as 
 usual, she calls God to witness. 
 
 96 
 
"I can still love" 
 
 "Yes, I can still love. Those who said that 
 I could not lied. None but God can say to me, 
 ' You shall never love again.' And I feel that 
 He has not said it that He has not withdrawn 
 the celestial fire from my heart ; and the greater 
 my aspirations in love, the greater my capacity 
 for loving him who satisfies them. And that is 
 you yes, you. Remain just as you are at 
 present ; do not alter. There is nothing in you 
 that does not please and satisfy me. This is the 
 first time that I have loved without suffering 
 agonies at the end of three days. . . . Oh, when 
 shall I be alone with you ? You shall lock me 
 up in your room, and take the key when you go 
 out, so that I may see and hear nothing no one 
 but you. 
 
 " To be happy for a year, and then to die ! 
 That is all I ask from God and from you. Good- 
 night, dearest Pietro ; my troubles cease to trouble 
 me when I am with you. And yet lying is always 
 a melancholy business. This dissimulation is 
 odious to me. This love of mine and Alfred's 
 so ill rewarded, so deplorable which is in the 
 agony of death, and can neither be renewed nor 
 ended, is a torture. I have it before my eyes as 
 an evil omen for the future, that seems to say 
 to me, 'Look! That is what love comes to.' 
 But no, no. I do not want to believe that. I 
 want to place all my hopes and all my trust in 
 you alone, and to love you in spite of everything, 
 and in spite of myself. It was not what I wished. 
 G 97 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 But you have compelled me to do it. God has 
 willed it. Let my destiny be accomplished ! " 
 
 So the question still remained : Should Alfred 
 be told, or left to find out for himself? It is not 
 known for certain how they settled it. There is 
 a conflict of evidence. Each of the three has 
 told a different story ; and the probability, once 
 again, is that the truth is divided between them. 
 
 Alfred de Musset declares that he found out. 
 The statement is contained in another document 
 dictated to his brother Paul, and recently com- 
 municated by his sister, Madame Lardin de 
 Musset, to M. Maridton. 
 
 He had had, he says, an " explanation " with 
 George Sand, who " denied with barefaced 
 effrontery the incidents which I had seen and 
 heard, and assured me that it was a hallucination 
 of my delirium." Later in the evening, seeing a 
 light in her bedroom, which communicated with 
 his own, he put on his dressing-gown and went in 
 to her. She was writing a letter on her knees ; 
 and, as he entered, he saw her hide it in the bed. 
 He accused her of writing to Pagello. 
 
 " She flew into a terrible passion, and said that, 
 if I went on like that, I should never leave 
 Venice. I asked her how she would prevent me. 
 ' By locking you up in a lunatic asylum,' was her 
 reply. I admit that I was frightened, and I re- 
 turned to my room without daring to answer her." 
 
 98 
 
Confession of Infidelity 
 
 The next thing that happened was that Musset 
 heard George Sand first open and then close the 
 window. Evidently, he thought, she had torn 
 the letter up and thrown the fragments into the 
 street. He went downstairs to see ; but George 
 Sand was there before him, in her petticoat and 
 shawl, searching for the lost scraps of paper. He 
 laid his hand on her shoulder and spoke to her. 
 Her conduct, he said, proved to him that it was, 
 indeed, to Pagello that she had written. And 
 then 
 
 " She replied that I should not sleep in my 
 bed that night that she would have me arrested 
 at once ; and she ran. I followed as fast as I 
 could. Reaching the Grand Canal, she jumped 
 into a gondola, calling to the gondolier to go to 
 the Lido ; but I had leapt into the gondola too, 
 by her side, and we set off together. She did not 
 open her mouth alL the time we were on the 
 water. Disembarking at the Lido, she again 
 began to run, leaping from tomb to tomb in the 
 Jewish Cemetery. I followed, leaping as she 
 did. At last, she sat down exhausted on a tomb- 
 stone, and began to cry in rage and annoyance. 
 ' If I were you,' I said, * I would abandon an 
 impossible undertaking. You will not succeed in 
 getting to Pagello without me, and causing me to 
 be locked up as a lunatic. Confess now that you 
 
 are a .' 'Well, yes, I am,' she answered. 
 
 'And a miserable ,' I added. And then she 
 
 99 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 acknowledged herself defeated, and I brought her 
 back to the house." 
 
 This story is no doubt true in the main ; but 
 the Mussetists infer too much from it. Its 
 significance can be measured by the text of the 
 letter, which was recovered, handed to Musset, 
 and found, after his death, among his papers. It 
 was to the effect that he had had a relapse, and 
 had again been behaving like a madman, and 
 that there was some reason to suspect that he had 
 been drinking. Naturally George Sand did not 
 wish him to see that letter, fearing that it would 
 provoke him to violence. Apparently, when he 
 became violent, she did lose her temper, and did 
 say something about a lunatic asylum. His 
 behaviour may very well have suggested the 
 exclamation. But no dark design to sequestrate 
 her lover can reasonably be deduced from an 
 angry woman's hasty words ; and it is not 
 specially probable that she seized that occasion 
 to confess her infidelity. In that particular one 
 may fairly suspect that Musset embroidered his 
 narrative ; and one finds more inherent prob- 
 ability in the theory that his suspicions were 
 revived, if not first aroused, by what he heard 
 from his friend Alfred Tattet. 
 
 Tattet was a rich man, the son of a stock- 
 broker, not a man of letters but a man of pleasure 
 an amiable and cultivated dandy who had 
 often been Musset's companion in his hours of 
 
 100 
 
Adventures among the Tombs 
 
 dissipation. Madame Ddjazet, the celebrated 
 actress, was his mistress. In the winter of 1833- 
 1834 he took her to Italy, and made a detour to 
 visit Musset an George Sand at: Venice. > His 
 first impression ; ams to have been that, save for 
 Alfred's illness, a,, was well with 'the nonage* : Je>, 
 took them to the theatre, and he wrote a re- 
 assuring letter about them to Sainte-Beuve, who, 
 as George Sand's "confessor," was feeling 
 anxious. There s no picture in that letter of a 
 nurse sitting on a doctor's knee, or of a poet in 
 a dressing-gown pursuing a half-dressed novelist 
 among the tombstones in the dark. On the 
 contrary : " Alfred is in the hands of a very devoted 
 and capable young man who looks after him like 
 a brother, having taken over the case from an old 
 ass who was going the right way to kill him." 
 
 It would seem, however, that Tattet presently 
 became aware of breaches in the continuity of 
 Pagello's professional manner, and warned his 
 friend. That is what Madame Tattet afterwards 
 told M. Clouard, adding that Musset first wanted, 
 in his blind rage, to murder George Sand, and 
 then proposed to challenge Pagello to a duel, but 
 that Tattet dissuaded him. A later letter from 
 George Sand to Tattet refers to the incident, 
 though without throwing much light upon it. 
 
 41 I thought it quite right and proper," she wrote 
 on August 24, 1838, "that you preferred your 
 friend to me ; and, after all, you rendered me a 
 
 101 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 greater service than that of keeping my secret, 
 seeing that you prevented him from fighting, and 
 I should not have liked to pay for your silence by 
 t)ie sip^ljest idtfop of his blood." 
 
 , : i-I/.Musset .was. persuaded not to fight, it seems 
 ;V reasonable 'to presume that he was also persuaded 
 that Tattet had been mistaken ; and it is possible 
 that the actual and definite revelation, super- 
 seding all suspicions, was made to him in the 
 circumstances described by Pagello himself, as 
 reported by the Illustrazione Italiana. Accord- 
 ing to that story, they stood by his bed, and 
 held this dialogue : 
 
 "Doctor," George Sand began coldly, "do 
 you think Alfred is strong enough to stand a 
 shock ? " 
 
 "I beg your pardon. What did you say?" 
 Pagello asked. 
 
 "Very well. I am going to speak frankly. 
 My dear Alfred, I am no longer your mistress. 
 I can only be your friend. I love Dr. Pagello." 
 
 That at the time when Madame de Musset, 
 having heard of Alfred's illness, which Paul 
 told her was probably " some kind of brain 
 fever," was running, in great concern, to the 
 office of the Revue des deux Mondes to try to 
 get news from Buloz, and was sending messages 
 of " deepest gratitude to Madame Sand for all the 
 care that she has taken of you ! " 
 
 1 02 
 
Musset leaves Venice 
 
 In a sense, no doubt, she deserved the 
 gratitude or some of it. She had taken care 
 of him, and she had nursed him, at an hour 
 when a nurse was of more importance to him 
 than' a mistress. It would almost seem that it 
 was a case of conscience with her to do so, and 
 that she desired to compensate for her infidelities 
 by devoted assiduity of service. But the truth 
 was out. There was nothing for Alfred to do 
 except to pack his boxes and depart. 
 
 He had been violent ; but, at the last, he 
 accepted the situation calmly. It was a situation 
 which he had provoked, and he knew it ; and he 
 was young and weak and ill. We may take 
 it that he was half hypnotised by George Sand's 
 talk, and that he felt too feeble to resent or 
 resist the inevitable. She and the doctor could 
 always throw in his teeth the fact that they had 
 saved his life, compelling him to temper jealousy 
 with gratitude. He could hardly even leave 
 them, shaking the dust from off his feet. But 
 go he must. His only relief was in escape. 
 
 He escaped towards the end of March, sending 
 George Sand this letter : 
 
 " Farewell ! However much you hate me 
 or however indifferent you feel to me still, if 
 the good-bye kiss that I gave you to-day is the 
 last that I am ever to give you, you must know 
 that, as soon as I had stepped outside your door, 
 with the thought that I had lost you for ever, I 
 
 103 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 felt that I had deserved to lose you, and that no 
 punishment is too hard for me. Even if you 
 care little to know whether your memory lingers 
 with me or not, it is very important to me, 
 now that your image effaces itself in ' the 
 distance, to tell you that there will remain no 
 impure thought in the furrow of my life through 
 which you have passed, and that he who could 
 not esteem you when he possessed you can still 
 see that fact clearly through his tears, and honour 
 you in his heart, where your recollection will 
 abide for ever. Farewell ! " 
 
 To which George Sand replied, in a note 
 scrawled hastily and handed to the gondolier 
 whom she kept waiting for the answer : 
 
 " No, do not go like that. You are not well 
 enough yet, and Buloz has not yet sent the 
 money which you need for Antonio's l travelling 
 expenses. I do not want you to go alone. My 
 God ! Why should we quarrel ? Am I not 
 always your brother George, your good friend of 
 former times ? " 
 
 That note seems to have persuaded him to 
 remain for another day. On the following 
 morning George Sand saw him off, and even 
 travelled a certain distance with him, and gave 
 him as a keepsake a pocket-book and diary, with 
 
 1 A servant engaged to accompany Musset on the journey 
 back to Paris. 
 
 I0 4 
 
A Farewell Letter 
 
 autograph dedications from both Pagello and 
 herself. 
 
 Having crossed the Simplon, he wrote to her 
 from Geneva a strange and pathetic letter 
 which shows him still in love, still taking all 
 the blame for the rupture, still acquiescing in 
 his punishment for his fault, and hypnotised, as 
 it were, into an abject humility. 
 
 " DEAREST GEORGE, I am at Geneva. I left 
 Milan without having had a letter from you. 
 Perhaps you had written ; but I had engaged 
 my seats in the diligence as soon as I arrived, 
 and chance had it that the mail from Venice, 
 which usually arrives two hours before the 
 Geneva diligence starts, was late. Please, if 
 you did write to me at Milan, tell the Postmaster 
 to forward your letter to Paris. I want it, if it 
 is but two lines. Write to me at Paris. When 
 you cross the Simplon, George, think of me. It 
 was the first time that I had seen the spectacle 
 of the everlasting hills rising before me in all 
 their power and calm. I was alone in the 
 carriage. I do not know how to describe my 
 sensations ; but it seemed to me that these 
 giants spoke to me of all the great things that 
 the hand of God has made. ' I am only a 
 little child,' I exclaimed to myself, 'but I have 
 two grown-up friends, and they are happy.' ' 
 
 105 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The three-cornered love-duel George Sand's letters to Musset 
 describing her relations with Pagello Pagello's letter to 
 Musset Storms in the "faux manage" Remonstrances of 
 Pagello's cast-off mistresses And of his father George Sand 
 and Pagello attend public worship and pray together George 
 Sand decides that Pagello shall take her to Paris. 
 
 IN spite of Mussel's departure, the three-cornered 
 love-duel continued, though, for a time, it could 
 only be carried on by correspondence. There 
 are a number of letters in which we may try to 
 read the minds of the three lovers, though the 
 psychology is hard to realise in these saner and 
 more level-headed days. The classical saying 
 that "love is a kind of madness" was never 
 more true than in the Romantic period. 
 
 A partial clue to George Sand's proceedings 
 may perhaps be found in a letter to Boucoiran. 
 Her son's tutor was the confidant whom she 
 generally selected when she felt moved to con- 
 fess that her embraces threatened to be fatal to 
 her lovers. She had already volunteered the 
 confession in the case of Jules Sandeau. " I 
 am killing him," she had written ; and she had 
 also, as we have seen, reported his answer 
 that that was the death he wished to die. 
 
 106 
 
George Sand's Admissions 
 
 And now, mutatis mutandis, the confession is 
 repeated. 
 
 " Alfred," she writes, " has left for Paris without 
 me, and I am going to remain here a few months 
 longer. You know the reasons of our separation. 
 Every day that passed made it more necessary, 
 and it would have been impossible for him to 
 travel with me without the risk of a relapse. His 
 chest, which is still very delicate, obliged him to 
 abstain completely from all excesses ; but the 
 excited condition of his nerves rendered the 
 privation intolerable to him. We have had to 
 make our arrangements with a view to removing 
 these risks and distresses, and to part as soon 
 as we could. He was still very delicate to 
 undertake so long a journey, and I am rather 
 uneasy in my mind as to how he will stand it. 
 But he was doing himself more harm by staying 
 than by going, and every day that he spent wait- 
 ing to get better retarded instead of accelerating 
 his recovery." 
 
 It is a grim admission, though no doubt it 
 tells a part of the truth. George Sand could 
 scarcely be expected to add that Pagello was 
 handsome and ardent, and that her own 
 necessities were imperious, though that is what 
 one easily reads between the lines. 
 
 Nothing is more evident than that George 
 Sand never loved Pagello quite as she had loved 
 
 107 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Musset. There was no reason why she should, 
 and there were many reasons why she should not. 
 The doctor was not exactly a fool, as Musset's 
 partisans pretend. He was a good doctor, and 
 capable of becoming a better one. But, though 
 able, he was commonplace. He had no gifts 
 except those for which the exercise of his pro- 
 fession called. In the city of palaces and 
 gondolas a certain illusion was possible ; but only 
 the illusion to which one resigns oneself, taking 
 a certain temperate delight in it, but at the same 
 time recognising it for what it is. Between his 
 soul and the soul of a woman of genius there 
 could be no transcendental link. 
 
 George Sand knew that, and practically said 
 as much in the declaration of love quoted in the 
 last chapter. " No doubt I am deceived, but 
 please do not undeceive me," is a fair summary 
 of the substance of that document, in which she 
 avowed that she largely depended for her decep- 
 tion upon the fact that she and Pagello spoke 
 different languages. Of a truth it was a strange 
 alliance that was thus contracted ; and the triumph 
 of her personality may be said to have reached 
 its zenith when she succeeded in persuading 
 Musset to give it his blessing. We have one 
 of her letters in which she reminds him that he 
 did so, recalling the solemn emotions experienced 
 
 ''when you extorted from him his confession 
 of his love for me, and he swore to you that he 
 
 108 
 
Ecstasies of Romanticism 
 
 would make me happy. Ah ! what a night of 
 enthusiasm it was when you made us clasp hands, 
 in spite of ourselves, saying, ' You love each 
 other, and you both love me ; you have saved 
 me, body and soul.' ' 
 
 All that is most fantastic in the ecstasies of 
 Romanticism is in that exclamation ; and the 
 succeeding incidents of the story follow like a 
 conclusion from its premises. The soul and the 
 senses are drawing George Sand in opposite 
 directions. Both her lovers are necessary to 
 her, though for different reasons ; and her heart 
 follows the lover whom she has turned away. 
 
 That fact appears in the correspondence from 
 the first. We have a glimpse of it in a letter to 
 the faithful Boucoiran. 
 
 " I suspect we shall become lovers again. 
 We exchanged no promises indeed ; but we 
 shall always love each other, and the sweetest 
 moments in our lives will be those which we 
 shall pass in each other's company." 
 
 We have more than a glimpse of it in the 
 letters to Musset himself. He left Venice, it 
 will be remembered, on March 29, and already, on 
 April 3, George Sand is writing : 
 
 " Do not be uneasy about me. I am as strong 
 as a horse. But do not expect me to be gay and 
 
 109 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 tranquil in my mind. That will not happen yet 
 awhile. Ah ! who will look after you, and whom 
 shall I have to look after ? Who will feel the need 
 of me, and to whom shall I be willing to give my 
 care in the future ? How shall I exist without 
 the happiness and the distress that you caused 
 me?" 
 
 And then, on April 1 5 : 
 
 " Do not believe, Alfred, do not believe that 
 I can be happy with the thought that I have lost 
 your heart. Whether I was your mistress or your 
 mother matters little. Whether it was love or 
 friendship that I inspired whether I was happy 
 or unhappy with you all those considerations 
 have no bearing on my present state of mind. 
 I know that I love you now, and that is all." 
 
 And then again : 
 
 "Why is it that I who would have given all 
 the blood in my veins to secure you one night 
 of tranquillity and repose have become for you 
 a torment, a scourge, a spectre ? When these 
 terrible recollections assail me and at what hour 
 do they leave me in peace ? I am nearly driven 
 mad, and drench my pillow with my tears. I 
 hear your voice calling me in the silence of the 
 night. Who is there to call me now ? For whom 
 shall I need to keep watch and vigil ? To what 
 
 1 10 
 
Anti-climax 
 
 purpose shall I employ the vigour which I had 
 stored up for you, and which is now turned 
 against myself? Oh, my child, my child! How 
 I need your tenderness and your forgiveness ! 
 Do not speak to me of my own forgiveness ! 
 Never tell me that you have wronged me ! 
 What do I know of that ? I remember nothing 
 about it except that we were very unhappy 
 and that we parted. But I know I feel that 
 we shall love each other until the end of our 
 lives." 
 
 It is the voice of passion, loud and unmistak- 
 able. The picture which we should draw, if such 
 utterances were our only evidence, would be that 
 of a deserted mistress, eating out her passionate 
 heart in solitude. But we know better ; the 
 letters themselves tell us better. The end of 
 the appeal comes as a shocking anti-climax ; 
 and Musset must have felt something akin to 
 a cold douche when he read on and found that 
 the evocation of tender memories only led up to 
 this : 
 
 " I am living very nearly alone. Pagello 
 comes home to dinner with me. I pass the 
 most agreeable moments of my day in talking 
 to him about you. He is a man of such delicate 
 sentiment, and so good. He understands my 
 melancholy so well. He respects it so re- 
 ligiously." 
 
 ui 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Musset, one imagines, hardly knew what to 
 make of it all. He had supposed that every- 
 thing was over between them ; and he had 
 plunged into his usual dissipations, trying vainly 
 to forget. He begged George Sand not to re- 
 mind him of the past, and yet he took a morbid 
 pleasure in dwelling on it. He wrote again to 
 thank her for her friendship, and to bless her 
 for her influence, which he declared, perhaps 
 untruly, had given him the courage to abandon 
 his dissolute life. But he also accepted the 
 situation, and did not try to alter it, writing in 
 praise of his rival : " When I saw that fine fellow 
 Pagello, I recognised in him all that was best in 
 myself, but pure and free from those irreparable 
 taints by which my own better nature was 
 poisoned. That is how I came to the conclusion 
 that it was best for me to go." And finally he 
 says : 
 
 " I am going to turn it all into a novel. I 
 should very much like to write the story of our 
 relations. It seems to me that that would cure 
 me, and give my heart back its courage. I should 
 like to build an altar to you, though it were with 
 my bones." 
 
 Reading these letters now, we can see that 
 what happened was only what was bound to 
 happen that the heart was awaiting the satiety 
 of the senses in impatience. George Sand seems 
 
 112 
 
Honeymoon with Pagello 
 
 to have suspected as much from the beginning ; 
 and no doubt Pagello came to suspect it also 
 towards the end. To contemporary spectators at 
 Venice, however, nothing of the kind can have 
 been visible. All that they saw was two young 
 people, apparently very well pleased with each 
 other, setting up a "faux manage" and con- 
 ducting it in such a manner as to make it a model 
 to all who would do likewise. 
 
 The lovers began, after the approved fashion, 
 with a honeymoon journey, wandering away up 
 into the Alps, roughing it in humble country 
 inns with the buoyant enthusiasm of their 
 youth, unwilling to return till all their money 
 was spent. George Sand had, she tells us, 
 only seven centimes in her pocket when she 
 and the doctor returned to Venice to set up 
 housekeeping. 
 
 They were braving public opinion, and they 
 were made to feel it. Pagello at any rate felt it, 
 even if George Sand did not. He was a con- 
 ventional, though not a moral, man, brought up 
 to regard appearances as a physician must, not 
 accustomed, in matters of gallantry, to let his 
 right hand know what his left hand did. As for 
 Romanticism, he hardly knew even the word 
 until George Sand taught him to lisp it ; and now 
 he found himself dragged into the Movement, 
 and exploited, prompted to ecstasies alien from 
 his nature, taught to mumble mystic formulae 
 about "our love for Alfred," and stimulated to 
 
 H 113 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 write bad verses about lagoons and gondolas, and 
 the moon and stars. 
 
 " No more of melancholy thoughts ! 
 
 To the open sea we'll hie. 
 The lagoons are beautiful to-night ; 
 The moon is in the sky. 
 
 She will be jealous ; draw your veil, 
 
 And hide your eyes so bright. 
 For you are fresh, and young, and fair ; 
 
 Laugh and make love to-night." 
 
 That was Dr. Pagello's barcarolle ; and the 
 theme which it celebrated was not a discreet 
 intrigue but an open scandal. His mistress had 
 promised, indeed, that he should lock her up in 
 his apartments so that no one but himself might 
 ever see her ; but that promise was not kept. 
 She walked abroad with him, hanging on his 
 arm, and there was trouble of various kinds. 
 Some of the doctor's friends laughed at him, and 
 others cut him, and there were ladies who offered 
 ironical congratulations ; but " George Sand, 
 with that keenness of perception which was 
 characteristic of her, saw and understood it all, 
 and when she observed clouds of annoyance 
 gathering on my brow, she dissipated them 
 instantly by her ready wit and enchanting 
 graces." 
 
 Moreover, the doctor had a past from which it 
 was difficult for him to cut himself immediately 
 adrift ; and one may perhaps infer something as 
 
 114 
 
Visit to Pagello's Father 
 
 to the nature of George Sand's attachment to him 
 from the fact that the discovery of his embarrass- 
 ments only amused her. She describes him in 
 a letter as "a sentimental Don Juan who finds 
 that he has four women on his hands at once " ; 
 and she relates how one of the four called to 
 protest against this new liaison, and to assert her 
 own prior claims upon the doctor. The visitor, 
 it appears, proceeded to violence, first "pulling his 
 hair off by handfuls, and tearing his beautiful 
 waistcoat," and then turning upon his mistress, 
 threatening to take vengeance with a 
 knife. But the strangest fact of all is that 
 Musset and no other was the recipient of these 
 confidences. 
 
 Finally there was trouble with the doctor's 
 family. His father, who lived at Castel- Franco, 
 wrote him a long letter of remonstrance, and 
 ordered his brother Robert, with whom he shared 
 rooms, to seek another lodging ; but this opposi- 
 tion was overcome. Pagello took George Sand 
 to see the old man, and the old man was 
 conquered. 
 
 " He received me stiffly," Pagello says, "but he 
 welcomed George Sand with the most courteous 
 hospitality ; and after having discussed French 
 literature with her, he was so subjugated by her 
 poetical eloquence that he evidently thought, 
 'This deserter of the paternal hearth is not so 
 wrong after all.' We spent an hour with him, 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 and then went by way of Bassano to the Grotto 
 of Parolini." 
 
 Thus one storm broke and passed, and the 
 other storm was averted ; and the life of the 
 "faux manage " became tranquil, and almost 
 humdrum. 
 
 The lack of pence vexed the lovers at first. 
 George Sand's remittances did not arrive 
 punctually ; and the letters in which she tried 
 to stimulate her paymasters to activity represent 
 her as sleeping on the floor because she cannot 
 afford to buy a bed. Probably, however, that is 
 exaggeration with a purpose. At all events, the 
 remittances did arrive after a delay ; and of course 
 Pagello had his fees. He may have lost some of his 
 patients, but he certainly did not lose them all, for 
 we know that he went his morning rounds regularly 
 as usual. The economies, therefore, were of the 
 tolerable order. If George Sand did the cooking, 
 that was only because she was proud of her pro- 
 ficiency in the art ; and it is, indeed, recorded 
 that the doctor, until the end of his days, retained 
 a grateful recollection of her sauces. 
 
 She was also very fond of hanging pictures and 
 mending furniture. Visitors sometimes found her 
 sitting on the floor, nailing chintz to the chairs. 
 And she worked hard seven or eight hours a 
 day, according to Pagello writing Lettres d'un 
 Voyageur and Jacques ; and she went for ex- 
 cursions among the Adriatic Islands ; and she 
 
 116 
 
Satiety at Last 
 
 smoked innumerable cigarettes and drank count- 
 less cups of black coffee on the Piazza San 
 Marco ; and even her religious duties were 
 not neglected. " Sometimes," writes Pagello's 
 daughter, Signora Antonini, " George Sand 
 attended church with my father. There, on 
 her knees before Him who welcomes all and 
 pardons everything, she used to bury her face in 
 her hands and weep." 
 
 Yet the hour of satiety was already drawing 
 near. Pagello did not understand or understood 
 but dimly. To him, we may take it, George 
 Sand appeared to be the type of woman described 
 by M. Paul Bourget, in his Physiologic de 
 I Amour Mo derm, as " pot-au-feu cantharide" 
 But though she was that, she was also more 
 than that. She could play that part for a 
 season ; but she was bound, in the end, to throw 
 it up, because it did not suit her. She was a 
 Romantic ; and her life with Pagello, though it 
 might be romance, was not Romanticism. So 
 presently we find her letters to Musset complaining 
 of Pagello's limitations. 
 
 Pagello is "an angel in his sweetness, his good- 
 ness of heart, and his devotion to me." But that 
 does not suffice. " I had accustomed myself to 
 enthusiasm, and sometimes I feel the want of 
 it." Nor is that all. " The worthy Pietro has 
 not read Ltlia, and I don't suppose he would 
 understand a word of it, if he did." Pagello is 
 not suspicious that is a great thing. But George 
 
 117 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Sand "wants to suffer for someone," and she is 
 forming this strange aspiration : " Oh ! why cannot 
 I live with both of you, and make you both happy, 
 without belonging exclusively to either?" More- 
 over, she inoculates Pagello with a similar mysticism, 
 and induces him to write : 
 
 " DEAR ALFRED, We have not written to each 
 other before perhaps because neither of us liked 
 to be the first to do so. But that omission in no 
 way militates against the mutual affection which 
 will always unite us by a sublime tie incompre- 
 hensible to the rest of the world." 
 
 The end was, indeed, obviously near when 
 letters of that sort were in the post ; and Pagello 
 tells us how it came. 
 
 " In the month of August she told me that it 
 was absolutely necessary for her to go and spend 
 some time in Paris. The school holidays were 
 approaching. Her two children were coming 
 home from school, and it was her custom to 
 take them to La Chitre and spend the autumn 
 with her husband. At the same time she ex- 
 pressed a great desire that I should accompany 
 her, and that we should return to Paris together. 
 I was upset, and I told her that I would take until 
 the following morning to think the matter over. 
 I perceived on the instant that I should go to 
 France, and that I should return without 
 her; but I loved her beyond everything, and 
 
 118 
 
Return to Paris 
 
 I would have faced a thousand annoyances 
 rather than allow her to take so long a journey 
 alone. 
 
 " I arranged my affairs as best I could, so as to 
 get a little money together. On the following 
 day I said that I would accompany her, but that 
 I insisted upon living alone in Paris, and did not 
 wish to be obliged to go to La Chatre, preferring 
 to profit from my stay in the great capital by 
 walking the hospitals and pursuing my pro- 
 fessional studies. I said it somewhat sorrowfully, 
 but decidedly, and she replied, ' My friend, you 
 shall do as you like best.' I had understood 
 her, and she had understood me. From that 
 time forwards our relations were only those of 
 friends at least upon her side. For my own 
 part, I was quite satisfied to be only her friend ; 
 but I felt that I was still in love with her." 
 
 So they packed and started. It is recorded 
 that Pagello had to sell his valuables in order to 
 pay his fare. 
 
 119 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Pagello in Paris He begins to feel that he has acted foolishly 
 He consoles himself with the contemplation of his mother's 
 portrait and the recollection of her moral precepts He walks 
 the hospitals George Sand sees Musset again She com- 
 plains to him that Pagello is jealous Pagello returns to Venice. 
 
 THE keen air of the boulevards began to dissipate 
 the Venetian haze. 
 
 Paris, it is true, and not Venice, was the centre 
 of the Romantic Movement ; but Paris, even at 
 the height of its most absurd enthusiasms, never 
 quite loses its power of raillery. And now Paris 
 was laughing, and, indeed, had something to 
 laugh at. Parisians had no motive for taking 
 the Venetian adventure seriously, and it struck 
 them as comic. In particular Pagello, brought 
 to Paris as a sort of living trophy of George 
 Sand's victories, struck them as a comic figure. 
 Some of them grinned broadly, and others smiled 
 ironically. The handsome romantic hero, flounder- 
 ing through the French language, felt "out of it" 
 in the company of the wits. At Venice he had 
 been esteemed a Don Juan ; but at Paris he was 
 regarded as a barber's block. He began at once 
 to feel uncomfortable, and George Sand began to 
 feel uncomfortable too. 
 
 120 
 
Pagello in Paris 
 
 Her sensations at this stage, we may take it, 
 were pretty much those of the man-about-town 
 who has got engaged to be married to a barmaid 
 when the hour strikes for introducing the barmaid 
 to the ladies of his family. Such a one then 
 realises that to take the barmaid away from the 
 bar is like tearing a picture roughly from its 
 frame that she depends for her attractions on 
 her alcoholic environment that in a strange 
 environment she soon ceases to be attractive. 
 His friends assisting, he seeks a way out of 
 the entanglement, even at the cost of drawing 
 a cheque for the cash equivalent of his affections. 
 And the barmaid, of course, and very naturally, 
 feels hurt. It is not her fault that she is what 
 she is, or that the man-about-town has been 
 deceived by the atmosphere in which he paid 
 his court to her. She divines her mistake before 
 she is willing to acknowledge it, and she weeps. 
 
 The parallel is almost exact. George Sand 
 was a very close feminine analogue to the man- 
 about-town. Pagello's position in the Romantic 
 circle bears a very close resemblance to that of 
 the barmaid cut adrift from familiar moorings 
 and launched in the strange waters of a lady's 
 drawing-room. She was ashamed of him, yet 
 anxious to " let him down gently." He was un- 
 easy, yet hesitated to act upon his impulses. He 
 saw the end coming before it came, and he wept. 
 
 It was at the end of July that the lovers left 
 Venice to cross the Simplon ; and from Milan 
 
 121 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Pagello wrote to his father. The old man 
 had reproached him for ruining his career, 
 and (incidentally) for violating the moral code 
 of Christianity. The son refused to excuse 
 himself, but he said : 
 
 " I have now reached the last stage of my 
 madness, and I must go through it, as I went 
 through the other stages, with my eyes shut. 
 To-morrow I start for Paris, where I shall 
 leave Madame Sand, and whence I shall return 
 to embrace you and be worthy of you. I am 
 young, and I shall be able to repair the damage 
 done to my career. Do not cease to love me, 
 but write to me at Paris." 
 
 So they crossed the pass from Domo d'Ossola to 
 Brieg, and drove down the valley of the Rhone, 
 and diverged at Martigny to visit the Chamonix 
 
 glaciers, and proceeded to Geneva. 
 % 
 
 "The farther we went," says the doctor, "the 
 more cold and circumspect our relations became. 
 My sufferings were great, but I tried my hardest 
 to hide them. George Sand was a shade 
 melancholy, but much more independent of my 
 society. To my sorrow, I perceived in her an 
 actress accustomed to play her part in comedies of 
 this kind, and I began to see clearly through the 
 veil that covered my eyes. We spent six or 
 seven days at Geneva, and then took our seats 
 in the diligence, and travelled by way of Cham- 
 
 122 
 
Pagello's Reflections 
 
 pagne and Dauphine to Paris. On our arrival, 
 George Sand was met by one of her friends, 
 M. Bouquereau [Boucoiran], who escorted her 
 to her apartment on the Quai Voltaire, and con- 
 ducted me to the Hotel d'Orldans, in the Rue 
 Petits-Augustins, where I engaged a small room 
 on the third floor for i franc 50 centimes a day." 
 
 The Parisian garret was indeed a change after 
 the lagoons and gondolas of Venice. The 
 doctor tells us how he sat down in his despair, 
 and buried his head in his hands, reflecting that 
 he, whose passion was by no means extinct, 
 was the victim of a caprice that had already 
 served its turn. He also tells us how he un- 
 packed his mother's portrait from his trunk, and 
 covered it with kisses, and sat long in front of 
 it, recalling the admirable moral precepts which 
 he had learnt at his mother's knee. "All 
 earthly joys that are incompatible with those 
 precepts will make you unhappy," she had told 
 him ; and he found that it was so. 
 
 The reverie was cut short by a knock at the 
 door. George Sand and Boucoiran had come 
 to take the doctor out to dinner. He says that 
 this material incursion upon his meditations 
 shocked and disgusted him ; but that is as it 
 may be. The dinner, at any rate, was a fare- 
 well dinner. Boucoiran was appointed to be 
 the doctor's friend and mentor. His mistress 
 was going to La Chatre to see her children. 
 
 123 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Perhaps she would meet him again in three 
 months' time and perhaps not. In the mean- 
 time she suggested that he should avail himself 
 of the opportunity of pursuing his medical studies. 
 " A mother," the doctor continues, " could not have 
 spoken to me with a more reasonable affection. 
 I was touched to the depths of my soul." And she 
 took her departure, and left him to Boucoiran. 
 
 Neither here nor in any later passage in 
 Pagello's statement is Alfred de Musset's name 
 mentioned ; but Musset was none the less 
 playing his part in the drama, and not playing 
 it only by correspondence. George Sand had 
 returned to Paris with the full intention of seeing 
 him again. The intention could reasonably be in- 
 ferred from some of the extracts from her letters 
 to him already given ; and there is another 
 letter in which she is absolutely explicit. 
 
 "At what date are you going to Aix? Ar- 
 range so as to let me know where you will be, 
 in order that, if I do not see you in Paris, I 
 may at least meet you somewhere en route." 
 
 And then again : 
 
 " Yes, we shall meet in August, shall we not, 
 whatever happens ? Perhaps you will be in love 
 with someone else by that time. I hope so, my 
 child, and yet I have my fears. Indeed I cannot 
 read my own heart when I foresee that. If only 
 I could shake the hand of the woman who loves 
 you, and tell her what care she must take of you ! 
 
 124 
 
Correspondence with Musset 
 
 But she would be jealous, and would say, 
 ' Never speak to me of Madame Sand. She is 
 a wicked woman/ ' 
 
 Musset, on his part, wished to see her, and, at 
 the same time, wished that he did not wish it. 
 He had seriously tried to forget her ; but he had 
 made the mistake of keeping her acquainted 
 with his attempts to do so. He told her, for 
 instance, how he had been to the Opera, and 
 how the favours of some dancing girl had been 
 pressed upon him, and how signally her attempts 
 to distract him had failed. He seems to have 
 written by every mail, and always to have received 
 an answer by return of post ; and the answers, 
 even when their tone seemed maternal, were like 
 oil poured upon the flames. So, when George 
 Sand reached Paris, the inevitable happened. 
 Musset vowed that he must see her though it 
 were only once, and only to say good-bye. As soon 
 as he had seen her he would go. There should 
 be a barrier of mountains and seas between them, 
 and he would never again return to France. But 
 she must accord him " one hour and one last kiss." 
 
 She meant to yield, but she hesitated, and he 
 had to appeal again. Was she afraid of hurting 
 Pagello's feelings ? Nonsense ! And then 
 
 " George, George, if you have a heart, consent 
 to meet me somewhere in your rooms, or in 
 mine, or at the Jardin des Plantes, or in the 
 cemetery, by my father's grave. It is there that 
 
 125 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 I should like to bid you good-bye. Open your 
 heart to me without arriere-pensee. Hear me 
 swear that I shall die with your love in my 
 heart. One last kiss, and then farewell ! What 
 is it that frightens you ? Remember that sad 
 evening at Venice when you told me that you 
 had a secret. You thought you were speaking 
 to a silly, jealous lover. No, George, you were 
 speaking to a friend." 
 
 Then she saw him, and did more than see 
 him ; kissed him, and did more than kiss him. 
 Pagello was not told, and it was understood 
 that it was to be for the last time. Only they 
 were still to write to each other there could be 
 no harm in that. So Musset started for Baden, 
 and began writing at once. A " salutary balm," 
 he said, had been poured upon his wound ; and 
 he swore, "by my youth and my genius," that 
 he would write a book which should link their 
 names in a joint immortality like those of Romeo 
 and Juliet, and Abelard and Hdloise. That 
 would be "a marriage more sacred than those 
 solemnised by the priest the chaste and im- 
 perishable marriage of the intelligence." Future 
 generations should recognise in it "the symbol 
 of the One God they worship." For the rest, 
 if she called him back, he would come, but, 
 otherwise, he would stay away for ever. 
 
 She did not call him back he did not give 
 her time to do so. Within a fortnight he had re- 
 
 126 
 
The Three-Cornered Duel 
 
 turned without waiting to be summoned. But, in 
 the meantime, George Sand had fled for refuge 
 to Nohant and her family, leaving Pagello to live as 
 he liked in his garret at i franc 50 centimes a day. 
 The three-cornered duel was now indeed 
 developing. There was no longer any pretence 
 at a triangular embrace. The three combatants 
 were at three-cornered variance. Pagello, finding 
 himself at once neglected and laughed at, had 
 become jealous. He who had once uttered 
 mystic sayings about " sublime links incom- 
 prehensible to the rest of the world " had not 
 only conceived suspicions but had tried to 
 confirm them by opening letters that were not 
 addressed to him. Musset who had appealed 
 so eloquently to Pagello to make George Sand 
 happy was now openly appealing to George 
 Sand not to consider Pagello's feelings. 
 
 " Perhaps my return to Paris will give you a 
 shock, and perhaps it will give him a shock too. 
 I confess that I am no longer in a state to 
 consider his or anybody's feelings. If he suffers, 
 very well, let him suffer this Venetian who 
 taught me to suffer. I am paying him back the 
 lesson which he gave me with a master hand." 
 
 That was now the attitude of the lovers 
 towards each other ; while George Sand's attitude 
 was almost equally unsatisfactory to both of them. 
 Sitting in the midst of her family at Nohant, she 
 summoned her provincial friends to pity her for 
 
 127 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 her emotional entanglements, but making no 
 decided attempt to cut the knot, she declared 
 that her life was " impossible," and talked of 
 suicide. " When I have informed you of the 
 state of my brain," she wrote to Boucoiran, " you 
 will agree with me that it is merely indolence 
 and cowardice on my part to try to live, and that 
 I ought to have finished with it long ago." But 
 she still held aloof from Musset, though she 
 confided to him that she was discontented with 
 Pagello. Pagello, she says, "lost his head as 
 soon as he set foot in Paris" ; he has become 
 "suspicious"; he "picks quarrels about nothing, 
 like a German." Whatever George Sand does 
 appears to "wound and irritate him"; she 
 herself is "hurt" by the new tone of his letters. 
 She feels that he "no longer has faith " in her 
 which perhaps is not surprising ; she infers that, 
 with his faith, his love has also disappeared ; and 
 she concludes : 
 
 " I shall see him again if he is still in Paris. I 
 am going back to Paris to console him ; but not to 
 justify myself, and not to try to detain him. And 
 yet I did love him very sincerely and seriously 
 this generous man, who was as romantic as I was, 
 and whom I believed to be stronger." 
 
 She had loved him once, but she certainly did 
 not love him now. She meant him to go, and 
 she proposed not merely to dismiss him, but to 
 pay his fare. So far, he had been living on the 
 
 128 
 
Pagello and Buloz 
 
 proceeds of the sale of his valuables ; he had 
 intended to supplement his resources by selling 
 some pictures which he had brought from Venice 
 for the purpose. They were not readily market- 
 able, but George Sand undertook to find a 
 purchaser. She failed to find one, but pretended 
 to have done so, and paid the alleged price 
 2500 francs in instalments out of her own pocket. 
 
 Pagello waited for the last instalment, but did 
 not waste his time. Boucoiran, who had been 
 appointed to look after him, did his duty 
 thoroughly. He took the doctor to the Revue 
 des deux Mondes office, and introduced him to 
 Buloz, who examined him carefully through his 
 monocle, and then gave him a press pass to 
 the theatres. He also took him to the prin- 
 cipal hospitals and introduced him to the principal 
 physicians, who received him with every courtesy, 
 and gave him every facility for study. He 
 devoted one of George Sand's instalments of 
 500 francs to the purchase of a case of surgical 
 instruments, and made himself an expert in 
 lithotrity. Even so, he says, he sometimes felt 
 sad and lonely in his garret ; but at such hours 
 " the portrait of my mother inspired me with 
 words of inexpressible consolation, and I found 
 courage to defy my poverty and the black gloom 
 of my future." 
 
 About the middle of October George Sand 
 arrived, and handed him the money for his 
 journey home. 
 
 I 129 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 " I packed my baggage, and, two days later, 
 I went to George Sand's rooms, where Boucoiran 
 was waiting for me. Our farewells were silent. 
 I pressed her hand without daring to look her in 
 the face. She seemed perplexed. I do not know 
 whether she suffered, but my presence embarrassed 
 her. She was bored by this Italian who, with 
 his simple sound sense, broke down the mysterious 
 sublimity with which she was accustomed to 
 envelop the fact that she was tired of her amours. 
 I had already given her to understand that I had 
 sounded the depths of her heart, and found it full 
 of excellent qualities, but marred by many faults. 
 This discovery of mine could not but cause her 
 annoyance, so I cut the visit as short as I could. I 
 kissed her children, and took the arm of Boucoiran." 
 
 It was over, and Pagello passes out of the story 
 a grotesque, but an honest, and not altogether 
 unsympathetic figure. His experiences had been, 
 in a way, an education to him. He had made a 
 fool of himself and he knew it. The atmosphere 
 of Romanticism was too rare for him ; but he had 
 had to breathe it in order to discover that it did 
 not suit him. Even in Italy even at Venice- 
 all is not romance ; there is a Philistia even of 
 the lagoons. The doctor's place was there, as 
 a general practitioner, and he returned to it but 
 not to boast. That resolution is recorded in a 
 farewell letter to Musset's friend, Alfred Tattet, 
 who had shown him some politeness. 
 
 130 
 
Departure of Pagello 
 
 " Before I go, my good friend, I send you a 
 greeting. I beg you never to breathe a word 
 about my amour with la George. I have no wish 
 to avenge myself. I depart with the certainty 
 that I have behaved as an honest man. That 
 will enable me to forget my suffering and my 
 poverty. Good-bye, my angel ! I will write to 
 you from Venice. Good-bye, good-bye ! " 
 
 So he departed, and eventually prospered, 
 achieving a great reputation for his skill in 
 lithotrity, and long maintaining the silence which 
 he had imposed on himself. He was calum- 
 niated, but he did not reply. The Sandists and 
 the Mussetists fell out, and pelted each other with 
 pamphlets, and the air was dark with controversy. 
 The wrangle was conducted without reference to 
 Pagello's feelings, By both sides alike he was 
 held up to contempt and ridicule. But he acted 
 on the old Scottish maxim : " They say ? What 
 say they? Let them say." Not until the pro- 
 tagonists were dead and the quarrel belonged 
 to history, did he permit himself to speak ; and 
 then he spoke well of both of them, and even told 
 a professional lie about the nature of his rival's 
 malady. 
 
 If he was a fool, he was also a gentleman. 
 One cannot but conclude with that tribute to his 
 memory. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Further correspondence between George Sand and Musset He 
 is ill and asks her to visit him She wishes to renew the old 
 relations but finds him unwilling Sainte-Beuve intercedes 
 for her in vain She cuts off her hair and sends it to Musset 
 She also sends him her private diary The renewal of love. 
 
 THE path was now clear for Alfred de Musset. 
 George Sand was once again his mistress and 
 yet neither of them was happy. They Had thought 
 to forgive and forget ; but jealousy was stronger 
 than love, and visions of Venice rose between 
 them, mocking them. At once we find George 
 Sand complaining bitterly of Musset's reproaches. 
 "I was quite sure," she says, "that those re- 
 proaches would be heard on the morrow of the 
 happiness which we had dreamed and promised 
 ourselves." But he has no right to try to make 
 her lift the veil from her past relations with 
 Pagello, and it is her duty to be silent. " Do 
 you think," she asks, "that I should have 
 answered him if he had questioned me about 
 the secrets of our pillow ? " This past had 
 "exalted" him "like a beautiful poem" during 
 their separation ; now that they were lovers again, 
 it was a nightmare. She had foreseen that it 
 would be so. Wherefore 
 
 132 
 
Musset's Illness 
 
 " We are going to be more unhappy than ever. 
 ... I did not want to love you again. I had 
 suffered too much for that. Ah ! if I were a mere 
 coquette, you would not feel so miserable. What 
 I ought to do is to lie to you, and say, * I did not 
 love Pietro ; I never was his mistress.' Who 
 would there be to prevent you from believing me ? 
 Your pain is only due to my straightforwardness." 
 
 Musset's answer is humble, yet passionate. 
 Never mind about the past ! He loves " as no one 
 has ever loved before." He begs her pardon on 
 his knees, though he knows he does not deserve to 
 be forgiven. He doubts if love has ever given 
 happiness. And he is ill in his mother's house. 
 Can she not come and see him when his mother 
 is out ? Some mutual friend Papet or Rollinat 
 might bring her. 
 
 She is moved, and thinks it might be arranged 
 provided she comes in disguise : " Your sister 
 does not know me by sight, and your mother 
 would pretend not to see me. I could pass for 
 a sick-nurse." Madame Lardin de Musset told 
 M. Maridton that she actually did come, dressed 
 as a servant, and sat up all night at his bedside ; 
 and when he recovered he returned to her, in 
 spite of the warnings of Tattet and other mutual 
 friends, and sent a challenge to Gustave Planche, 
 whose spiteful comments on their renewed rela- 
 tions had reached his ears. 
 
 Planche denied having gossiped as reported, 
 133 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 and the duel did not take place ; but fresh cause 
 for gossip was very quickly given. Their re- 
 union only lasted for a few days. A proposal 
 that they should go away and live together at 
 Fontainebleau fell through. They went away, 
 but separately Musset to Montbard in Burgundy, 
 George Sand to Nohant. This time they both 
 believed that all was really over for ever, and 
 they both wrote to their friends to that effect. 
 Musset confided in Tattet, and George Sand in 
 Boucoiran, to whom she wrote from the 
 country : 
 
 " I am getting on pretty well. I have my dis- 
 tractions, and shall not return to Paris until I am 
 cured and strong again. It is wrong of you to 
 speak to me as you do of Alfred's proceedings. 
 Say nothing about him, if you love me, and rest 
 assured that all is finally over between us." 
 
 " For ever" in this case meant "for a week." 
 At the end of the week George Sand was back 
 in Paris, more in love than ever, determined to 
 see Musset, who, on his part, was determined to 
 be firm and to refuse. Accustomed to triumph, 
 she now fell into despair, and became capable of 
 desperate acts. She cut off all her hair, made a 
 parcel of it, and forwarded it to her lover ; but 
 though he wept over the gift, he did not yield. 
 The persuasions of his friends overcame the 
 solicitations of his mistress. 
 
 134 
 
"Less resigned than ever 55 
 
 She then haunted the studio of Delacroix, who 
 was painting a portrait of Musset for the Revite 
 des deux Mondes, and Delacroix's Journal records 
 his impatience at her lamentations. She also 
 complained to Sainte-Beuve, and he too gave her 
 distress less attention than she thought that it 
 deserved. She accuses him of neglecting her 
 because he has let two days pass without calling 
 to receive her confidences ; but she proceeds to 
 confess on paper 
 
 " I am less resigned than ever. I go out, I 
 seek distractions, I shake myself out of my lethargy, 
 but when I return to my room in the evening I 
 become mad. 
 
 " Yesterday my legs carried me in spite of my- 
 self, and I went to call on him. Happily I did 
 not find him at home. I know that he is cold 
 and angry when he speaks of me. All that I fail 
 to understand is what it is that he accuses me of, 
 and in relation to whom. This injustice is devour- 
 ing my heart. It is frightful that we should 
 separate over such matters as these. 
 
 " And not a word nothing to show that he 
 remembers me. He grows impatient, and laughs 
 at me for not going away. Oh, my God ! Advise 
 me to kill myself. That is all that is left for me 
 to do." 
 
 A fresh mood succeeds. George Sand is now 
 too proud to write to Alfred ; but none the less, 
 
 135 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 for her own satisfaction, she must pretend to write 
 to him. So she begins a Journal Intime, and 
 confides her troubles to that. She writes that 
 she is still beautiful in spite of her shorn locks, 
 and that she is tempted to go to Alfred's door 
 and ring his bell till the cord breaks. She writes 
 that she has been to the Theatre des Italiens, 
 and has been paid many compliments, and has 
 been indifferent to them. She appeals to God, 
 and even proposes a bargain. If God will give 
 her back her lover, she will go to church regularly 
 for the future she will wear out the altar steps 
 with her knees. Then she relates that she has 
 called on all her literary and artistic friends, and 
 consulted with them about love. 
 
 " Liszt told me this evening that only God was 
 worthy to be loved. It may be so, but it is very 
 difficult to love God when one is in love with a 
 man. It is such a different sort of love. It is 
 true that Liszt added that, in all his life, he had 
 never felt any lively sympathy for anyone but 
 M. de Lamennais. He is a lucky man is that little 
 Christian! I saw Heine this morning. He told 
 me that one only loved with the head and the 
 senses, and that the heart had very little to do 
 with the matter. At two o'clock I saw Madame 
 Allart. She told me that one must be cunning 
 with men, and pretend to be angry in order to 
 win them back. Sainte-Beuve was the only one 
 who did not hurt my feelings, and did not say 
 
 136 
 
Indiscriminate Confidences 
 
 something silly. I asked him what love was, and 
 he replied, * Love resides in tears ; you weep, 
 and therefore you love.' Ah yes, my poor friend, I 
 love. It is in vain that I call anger to my aid. 
 I love, and I shall die of love, unless God performs 
 a miracle, and either gives me literary ambition 
 or makes me religious. I must go and see Sister 
 Martha." 
 
 It is characteristically and supremely French. 
 If we could imagine the greatest English authoress 
 of the day (whoever that may be), with a similar 
 past behind her, discussing the state of her heart 
 in the office of, say, the Fortnightly Review with 
 any of the contributors who happened to be 
 present, reporting progress daily to the editor, 
 and imploring him to intercede for her, and 
 then jumping into a cab and driving off to 
 ask advice from, say, Mr. Paderewski, Mr. 
 Swinburne, and the Countess of Warwick, we 
 should have an approximately exact English 
 parallel, inadequate only because insufficiently 
 absurd. But George Sand, of course, could no 
 more see that anything that she did was absurd 
 than she could admit that anything that she did 
 was wrong. 
 
 She proceeds to recall the memories of Venice. 
 Musset had left her, but at least he wrote to her ; 
 and she vows that she kissed his letters, and 
 watered them with her tears, and hid them in her 
 bosom "when the other was not looking." And 
 
 137 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 she has knelt, shivering, on the cold pavements 
 of Parisian churches, and prayed. She has heard 
 voices in answer to her prayers. " Confess and 
 die," said a voice in the Church of Saint Sulpice. 
 "Alas!" she comments, "I did go to con- 
 fession on the following morning, and yet I 
 could not die." She is condemned to live and 
 suffer. 
 
 "Cruel boy, why did you love me after having 
 hated me? What mysterious miracle is it that 
 is worked in you every week ? What is the 
 meaning of this crescendo of dislike, disgust, 
 aversion, fury, and cold contemptuous raillery ? 
 And then, of a sudden, those tears, that pain, 
 that ineffable love returning ! Torment of my 
 life ! Accursed love ! I would give all that I 
 have if it might but come back for a day. But 
 never! never I It is too terrible. I cannot believe 
 it. I am coming to you. I am coming. But no. 
 I may cry, and lament aloud, but come to you I 
 must not. Sainte-Beuve forbids." 
 
 Sainte - Beuve, one gathers from this, had 
 refused to intercede ; but presently he yielded to 
 pressure and entreaty, and conveyed the message, 
 supporting George Sand's suit with a few eloquent 
 words of his own. But all in vain. This was the 
 answer which he received : 
 
 " I am very much obliged to you, my friend, 
 for the interest which you have been good enough 
 
 138 
 
Fear of Public Opinion 
 
 to take, in the present melancholy circumstances, 
 in me and in the person of whom you spoke to 
 me to-day. It is no longer possible for me, under 
 any pretext whatsoever, to continue any sort of 
 relation with her, whether by writing or other- 
 wise. I hope that her friends will not see in this 
 decision any offensive intention, or any wish to 
 prefer any kind of accusation against her. If any- 
 one should be accused in the matter it is myself, 
 who, in unreasoning weakness, consented to visits 
 which, as you yourself say, were fraught with 
 great danger. Madame Sand knows perfectly 
 well what my present intentions are, and if it is 
 she who has asked you to tell me not to see her 
 again, I confess that I am at a loss to understand 
 her reasons for so doing, seeing that, no longer 
 ago than yesterday evening, she was emphatically 
 refused admission to the house." 
 
 So that attempt came to nothing. Musset 
 consented to see George Sand but nothing 
 more. She divined, however, what was his 
 weakness and what his strength. He pretended 
 to be jealous of Liszt, but she saw through the 
 pretence. " If you were capable of being jealous 
 of these people," she said, " I would send them 
 all packing at once." In reality, she is sure, it 
 is the fear of public opinion that holds him aloof 
 from her: " Poor Alfred! How readily you 
 would forgive me, if only no one knew about 
 it ! " And then she vows that she will do without 
 
 139 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 his love, if only he will accord her his respect. 
 She will earn that respect by seeking the 
 society of distinguished men Delacroix, Berlioz, 
 Meyerbeer. And then 
 
 "When I have lived this quiet and honourable 
 life long enough to prove that I can lead it, I 
 will come, my love, and ask you to let me take 
 your hand. I will not torment you with jealousies 
 and useless persecutions. I know well enough 
 that when love is finished, it is finished. But I 
 must have your friendship to support the love that 
 is in my heart, and to prevent it from killing me. 
 If only I had it to-day ! Alas ! in what a hurry I 
 am to have it ! How much good it would do me ! 
 If I only had a few lines in your handwriting 
 from time to time ! A word, and permission to 
 send you from time to time a little picture bought 
 for four sous on the quays, some cigarettes that I 
 had rolled, a bird, a toy. How it would relieve 
 me of my pain and my ennui if I could imagine 
 that you thought of me a little when you re- 
 ceived such silly trifles from me ! No, this is not 
 calculation, prudence, fear of what people will say. 
 Good God, no ! it is not that. I tell my story to 
 everyone. People know it, and discuss it, and 
 laugh at me, and it is little that I care about 
 that." 
 
 They saw each other after that ; they even 
 dined together. Musset boasted to her that he 
 
 140 
 
The Thought of Suicide 
 
 had now another mistress, and she abased herself, 
 and heard the news humbly. " May she teach 
 him to believe!" she exclaimed. " I have only 
 taught him to deny." And then she invokes the 
 " blue eyes " that will never again look into hers, 
 and the " warm lissome little body " that she will 
 never again hold in her arms, and goes, as usual, 
 to the Scriptures for an illustration : " Never 
 again will you touch my hand, as Jesus touched 
 the hand of the daughter of Jairus, saying, 
 1 Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise.' ' 
 
 The thought of suicide recurred to her ; she 
 says that it was only the thought of her children 
 that saved her from it. " Maurice ! " she exclaims, 
 " I want you to read this some day, and see how 
 much I loved." And then she speaks of a day 
 on which Musset made an appointment and did 
 not keep it. She has sat waiting for him from 
 eleven in the morning until midnight, " starting 
 every time I heard the bell ring." Though she 
 has lost his heart, she is sure that he still loves 
 her "with the senses." But he wants her to go. 
 Very well. She has always a place of refuge 
 among friends at Nohant. 
 
 She departed to Nohant, and spent a month 
 there. She wrote to Sainte-Beuve to say that 
 she was finding peace. Alfred had sent her an 
 affectionate letter "repenting of his violence," 
 and proving that "his heart is good." But he 
 does not love her, and she does not want to see 
 him "it hurts me too much." It will be very 
 
 141 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 hard to refuse him an interview, if he asks for 
 one ; but she thinks that she will have the 
 strength. 
 
 And so forth. The mood lasted for a month. 
 But at the end of the month she was once more 
 in Paris ; and the remainder of the story of this 
 chapter of it, at all events is best told in the 
 letter which she wrote to Alfred Tattet, who had 
 done more than anyone else to keep her and her 
 lover apart, on January 14, 1835. 
 
 " SIR, There are some very skilful surgical 
 operations which reflect great credit on the 
 surgeon, but do not prevent the recurrence of the 
 disease. In accordance with that possibility 
 Alfred has once more become my lover. As I 
 suppose that he will be very pleased to meet you 
 in my apartment, I invite you to dine with us on 
 the first day on which you are disengaged. 
 I hope our friendship will be restored by my 
 readiness to forget the wrong you did me. 
 Adieu, my dear Tattet. Always yours, 
 
 " GEORGE SAND." 
 
 142 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 George Sand and Musset find life together impossible They 
 agree to part, and George Sand retires to Nohant The fate 
 of their letters. 
 
 TRUE love was dead ; true love had been be- 
 trayed to its death at Venice. Passion remained ; 
 but passion did not suffice. It might mask 
 memories and silence recriminations for the 
 moment ; but the memories recurred, and with 
 them recurred jealousies and reproaches. Violence 
 had been done to love ; and the lovers had, as 
 it were, the shadow of a crime between them a 
 crime which they could not cancel, but must 
 expiate. And expiation is a solitary act. Quisque 
 suos patimur manes. We must each dree our own 
 weirds, not only for ourselves, but by ourselves. 
 
 That is the reason why George Sand's triumph 
 was brief. We do not know exactly how many 
 days it lasted ; but we do know that it lasted 
 less than a week. Six days after addressing her 
 bulletin of victory to Tattet we find her acknow- 
 ledging her defeat to Liszt. 
 
 " I am going away to try to put an end to a 
 passion which is very serious to me, and very 
 
 143 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 terrible. I doubt whether it will be of any use, 
 for every day of my passion as it passes makes 
 me more sceptical of my free will. I rely upon 
 you to do me this justice to admit that, even in 
 the days of my greatest suffering, I brought no 
 accusations against the author of my distress. As 
 I have told you, I alone am to blame, and am 
 paying the penalty of a very great fault. In 
 running away from a forgiveness that would be 
 too humiliating to me, I prove my weakness, not 
 my strength." 
 
 The actual end was not quite yet ; the fight for 
 happiness was to be continued for some ten weeks 
 longer. But the issue of it was no longer doubt- 
 ful, and was always before their eyes. We may 
 spare ourselves the details. The expressions 
 of passion, alternately exultant and despairing, 
 become monotonous even when the agony is that 
 of a man and a woman of genius. Each in turn 
 threatens to quit the other ; each in turn implores 
 the other not to go. Resolutions to depart are 
 formed, and broken, and formed again. At last 
 it is George Sand who takes the irrevocable step, 
 running away, with the connivance of Boucoiran, 
 for fear lest she should find herself deserted. 
 Three letters present the picture of the final crisis. 
 
 On March 5, 1835, George Sand wrote to 
 Boucoiran as follows ; 
 
 " MY FRIEND, You must help me to get 
 away to-day. Go to the coach office at midday, 
 
 144 
 
Flight to Nohant 
 
 and engage a place for me. Then come and see 
 me, and I will tell you what to do. 
 
 " And yet, in case I cannot tell you, for Alfred 
 is uneasy in his mind, and I shall have great 
 difficulty in deceiving him, I will explain the 
 matter to you in a few words. You must arrive 
 at my rooms at five o'clock, with the air of a man 
 who is very busy and in a great hurry, and tell 
 me that my mother has just arrived, is very tired 
 and somewhat ill and wants to see me at once, and 
 that I must go to her without delay. I shall put 
 on my hat and tell you that I shall return, and 
 you will see me into a carriage. Come and fetch 
 my bag in the course of the day. It will be easy 
 for you to take it away without being seen, and you 
 must carry it to the coach office. . . . Good-bye. 
 Come at once, if you can. But if you find Alfred 
 at the house, do not give him the impression that 
 you have anything particular to say to me. I will 
 come out into the kitchen to speak to you." 
 
 This arrangement was carried out ; and on 
 March 9 we find Musset, still in the dark, writing 
 thus to Boucoiran : 
 
 "SiR, I have just left Madame Sand's apart- 
 ment, and have been told that she is at Nohant. 
 Will you be so kind as to inform me whether this 
 is so ? As you saw Madame Sand this morning, 
 you must know what were her plans, and if it 
 was her intention not to start until to-morrow, 
 K 145 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 you may perhaps be able to tell me whether you 
 think that she has any reasons for preferring not to 
 see me before her departure. I need not add that, 
 if that were the case, I should respect her wishes. 
 
 " ALFRED DE MUSSET." 
 
 But George Sand, as it happened, was already 
 at Nohant, and writing to Boucoiran to report 
 her arrival. 
 
 " MY FRIEND, Here I am at Chateauroux, at 
 three o'clock in the afternoon, in good health, and 
 not in the least fatigued. I saw all our friends of 
 La Chatre yesterday. Rollinat travelled with me 
 from Chateauroux, and I dined with him at 
 Duteil's. I am going to get to work for Buloz. 
 I am very calm. I have done my duty. The 
 only thing that troubles me is the state of Alfred's 
 health. Give him news of me, and tell me, with- 
 out altering or extenuating anything, whether he 
 displayed indifference, indignation, or annoyance 
 on hearing the tidings of my departure. I am 
 very much concerned to know the truth, though 
 nothing can avail to alter my determination." 
 
 Boucoiran, replying to this, appears not to have 
 contented himself with a sober statement of facts, 
 but to have added comments unfavourable to 
 Musset's conduct and character. For this George 
 Sand reproved him, adding 
 
 " To regret is not the same thing as to despise. 
 146 
 
Rupture 
 
 Besides, I am not going to do either the one thing 
 or the other. I cannot regret the stormy and 
 unhappy life that I leave behind me, and I cannot 
 despise a man with whose conduct in all honour- 
 able relations I am so well acquainted. I have 
 reasons enough for making my escape from him 
 without inventing imaginary ones. I merely 
 asked you to inform me of his health and of the 
 effect which my departure had had upon him. 
 You told me that he was well, and that he did 
 not appear to be upset. That is all that I wished 
 to know, and it is the most satisfactory news that 
 I could receive. My only wish was to part from 
 him without causing him distress." 
 
 That was really the end ; and our only question 
 is whether George Sand, in her heart of hearts, 
 intended it to be so. Her biographers have, 
 almost without exception, assumed that she did ; 
 but there nevertheless is room for doubt. Almost 
 her last act before leaving Paris was to give that 
 Journal Intime from which we have made so 
 many quotations to Boucoiran, with instructions 
 to hand it to Musset after her departure. It is 
 conceivable, of course, that she merely desired his 
 opinion of it as a literary composition ; but the 
 hypothesis is not very persuasive. The more 
 credible inference is that she wished, if not exactly 
 to open the door to yet another reconciliation, at 
 least to leave it ajar. The upshot showed that 
 she had staked less than her lover in this love- 
 
 147 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 duel, and therefore she may well have been 
 willing to continue staking longer. If any 
 advance was intended, however, Musset ignored 
 it. He had paid heavily for his lesson, but at 
 last he had learnt it ; and his ultimate attitude 
 may be said to have been summed up in the titles 
 of two of his comedies : On ne badine pas avec 
 F amour, and // faut quune porte soit ouverte ou 
 fermde. 
 
 There was no quarrel in the vulgar sense of the 
 word. The quarrelling belonged to a later date, 
 and then it was not so much George Sand and 
 Alfred de Musset who quarrelled as their re- 
 spective friends and champions. The principals 
 themselves did not wish, and indeed could hardly 
 afford, to quarrel. They had loved too well ; they 
 had behaved too badly ; they had shared too many 
 secrets. Having proved beyond the possibility 
 of argument that it was out of their power to 
 make each other happy, they had only one course 
 open to them : to let the dead past bury its dead 
 if it could, and set their faces separately and 
 sternly towards the future, putting their trust in 
 Time, the great physician. 
 
 George Sand at least was soon persuaded that 
 time had done its healing work. In May 1836 
 she wrote to Liszt : 
 
 " I have not seen Musset, and I don't know 
 whether he ever thinks of me except when he 
 wants to earn a hundred crowns by writing poetry 
 
 148 
 
Confession cfun Enfant du Sibcle 
 
 for the Revue des deux Mondes. For my own 
 part, I have long ceased to think of him, and I 
 will even tell you that, in that sense, I do not think 
 of anyone. I am happier as I am than I have 
 ever been in the whole course of my life. Old 
 age is coming upon me. My need for great 
 emotions is more than satisfied." 
 
 She was mistaken even about herself. Other 
 great emotions were in store for her ; and when 
 she had passed through them, she was to re- 
 member Musset yet again. And about him she 
 was even more mistaken. He built her, as he had 
 promised, "an altar with his bones," his Con- 
 fession dun Enfant du Siecle, in which he told the 
 story of their love, and took all the blame for its 
 tragic issue upon himself. But that did not cure 
 him. As late as 1841 he was still lamenting over 
 his memories in verse. He had been to Fontaine- 
 bleau and been reminded of the past, and he 
 wrote the Souvenir which ends 
 
 "Je me dis settlement : A cette heure, en ce lieu, 
 Un jour je fus aime", j'aimais, elle tait belle. 
 J'enfouis ce tre'sor dans mon ame immortelle, 
 Et je 1'emporte a Dieu ! " 
 
 Literary Paris being much smaller than literary 
 London, it was inevitable that they should meet 
 from time to time. They met at the theatre, and 
 at a Saint-Simonian gathering. Once, in 1837, 
 they spent together "six hours of brotherly and 
 
 149 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 sisterly intimacy." They even corresponded 
 occasionally, and sent their friends to each other 
 with letters of introduction. But there was no 
 renewal of the old relations, and no proposal on 
 either side that they should be renewed. They 
 had learnt to know each other too well, and they 
 respected the incompatibilities which had proved 
 too strong for them. 
 
 The one practical question which remained to 
 be settled was : Should they return or should 
 they keep each other's letters ? It seems a simple 
 question ; and yet chiefly, one must suppose, 
 because both the lovers felt it to be a question 
 which would eventually have a literary interest 
 it dragged on for several years. 
 
 In 1848 all the correspondence was, by mutual 
 agreement, consigned to the care of Gustave 
 Papet, who placed the letters in sealed envelopes 
 and locked them away. Seven or eight years 
 later it was proposed that they should be restored 
 to their respective writers. But the envelopes 
 containing them were exactly alike, and Papet 
 no longer knew which envelopes contained George 
 Sand's letters and which Musset's. The proposal 
 that the envelopes should be opened and their 
 contents sorted by confidential representatives of 
 the writers fell through because one of the con- 
 fidential representatives failed to keep the appoint- 
 ment ; and when Musset died, in 1857, Papet 
 handed all the envelopes to George Sand. Paul 
 de Musset then asked that his brother's letters 
 
 150 
 
The Fate of the Letters 
 
 should be sent to him. George Sand refused to 
 part with them, but offered to burn them in his 
 presence. An appointment was made for the 
 purpose, but Paul de Musset did not come to 
 Nohant as he had promised, and George Sand 
 remained in possession of the letters. Later, 
 when she had stirred the embers of controversy 
 by writing Elle et Lui and Paul de Musset had 
 replied by writing his version of the story in Lui 
 et Elle, she proposed to publish them, but was 
 dissuaded by Sainte-Beuve ; and it was not until 
 after her death that extracts from them began to 
 appear in various French newspapers, reviews, 
 and magazines. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 George Sand's influence on Alfred de Musset His moral decline 
 and fall George Sand's distress The secret of her strength 
 She appeals to Sainte-Beuve to pray for her. 
 
 ALFRED DE MUSSET was very hard hit. His 
 case was like that of the wounded soldier who, 
 though his scars have healed, carries a bullet in 
 his body, and is reminded of its presence by sharp 
 pangs as often as the weather changes. 
 
 The literary influence of his passion is not to be 
 denied. Critics as well as biographers have to 
 distinguish between "the Musset before Italy" 
 and "the Musset after George Sand." His 
 sufferings narrowed his compass, but made his 
 note more intense. A new poet arose from the 
 ashes of_ the old : the singer par excellence of 
 the love that sears the heart the singer who 
 cries 
 
 "Dieu parle, il faut qu'on lui reponde. 
 Le seul bien qui me reste au monde 
 Est d'avoir quelquefois pleure." 
 
 He had been born with a passion for tears and 
 for the luxury of woe a tendency to seek and 
 the ability to find a voluptuous delight in suffer- 
 ing. He would assuredly have been " sad as night 
 
 152 
 
Musset Transfigured 
 
 only for wantonness" in the absence of any more 
 compelling reason. George Sand gave him the 
 reason he lacked, and so made his pain poignant 
 and his melancholy sincere. To that extent we 
 may say that she helped him, and served litera- 
 ture in doing so. It is not necessary to believe, 
 with the enthusiasts, that he continued to love her 
 until his dying day, or, with Madame Kardnine, 
 that he never ceased to recognise her as the 
 noblest of all the women whom he had known. 
 What he continued to love was the illusion of 
 which she had robbed him, and the ideal which 
 she had failed to realise. Just as a man's 
 power of hearing may be worn out by too much 
 noise, so Musset's heart was worn out by too 
 tempestuous futilities. 
 
 It was not merely the poet but the man himself 
 who was transfigured by the passionate experience. 
 To Sainte-Beuve, when he met him at the 
 " Cdnacle," the Musset before Italy had seemed 
 the very personification of the Spring. The 
 Musset after George Sand was self-contained, 
 unapproachable, blast, and a cynic. By the time 
 he was four-and-twenty his ideals had been 
 expelled by memories. He had many mistresses, 
 but he lost his heart to none of them, having no 
 longer any heart to lose. That is what we have 
 to remember when we come to consider whether 
 George Sand's influence on him was good or evil. 
 It is the more important to remember it because 
 so many biographers, from Miss Bertha Thomas 
 
 153 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 to Madame Kardnine, have insisted that George 
 Sand was not only a great writer, but also a good 
 woman, a prophetess, a moral force. 
 
 Of George Sand as prophetess and preacher it 
 will be opportune to say something presently. 
 Perhaps we shall have to class her with the 
 paradoxical personages who have influenced the 
 world for good but have influenced individuals for 
 evil. It is, at any rate, certain that, from any but 
 the purely literary point of view, it would have 
 been better for Alfred de Musset if he had never 
 known her. Not all his faults, of course, can be 
 laid at her door ; from some of them, indeed, she 
 even seemed, for a time, to have delivered him. 
 Some of his dissolute habits were temporarily 
 abandoned at her instance after his attack of 
 delirium tremens. So far, so good. But she 
 also gave him the spectacle of the best of women 
 (as he imagined) behaving like the worst, and so 
 destroyed his faith in women. 
 
 She behaved as lightly and as loosely as any 
 grisette, and so did more harm than it would have 
 been possible for a grisette to do. From women 
 of that class a man expects so little that he cannot 
 easily be disappointed. They are the foils of the 
 women of a better class ; the contrast is noted, 
 and is found instructive. They do not embellish 
 infidelity with fine phrases ; they deceive but few : 
 they leave little trace upon the lives through 
 which they pass. Love is not slain by their levity, 
 and the ideal remains untouched. In the case of 
 
 154 
 
(C 
 
 On ne badine pas avec f amour 
 
 George Sand it was the ideal itself that was 
 attacked. She had education, breeding 1 , talent 
 and she behaved, at Venice, as we have seen. It 
 was impossible for her lover to say, " No matter ! 
 What else could one expect from a grisette ? " 
 His deduction was bound to be that " every 
 woman is a grisette at heart. " 
 
 He did not want to draw that inference ; but 
 he was at last compelled to do so. His new credo 
 is placed in the mouth of one of his characters in 
 On ne badine pas avec I' amour. 
 
 " Farewell, Camille. Go back to your convent ; 
 and when they tell you these hideous stories which 
 have poisoned your mind, answer them in these 
 words : ' All men are liars, inconstant, false, 
 babblers, hypocrites, haughty, cowardly, con- 
 temptible and sensual ; all women are perfidious, 
 affected, vain, avid of new sensations, and 
 depraved. Yet there is one thing in the world 
 which is holy and sublime the union of two of 
 these imperfect and terrible beings. One is often 
 deceived in love, often hurt, and often made un- 
 happy but one loves ; and on the brink of the 
 grave one looks back, and says to oneself, / 
 suffered much; I was deceived sometimes; but 
 I loved. It was I who lived, and not some 
 factitioiis being, the creature of my pride and my 
 tedium?" 
 
 " All women are perfidious, affected, vain, avid 
 155 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 of new sensations, and depraved," that is the 
 significant generalisation. A man's generalisa- 
 tions about men tell us little; they may be 
 merely petulant, merely dyspeptic, merely literary. 
 A man's generalisations about women tell us what 
 sort of women he has known most intimately. 
 The man who has loved a good woman does not 
 blaspheme against womanhood, even if he has 
 loved in vain. The type of the blasphemer is 
 perhaps Alfred de Vigny, betrayed by Marie 
 Dorval the woman whom George Sand called 
 " sublime." Alfred de Musset blasphemed less 
 loudly, but for very similar reasons because he 
 had lost not only hope but faith. 
 
 The end was, as all the world knows, that he 
 became a habitual drunkard the common end of 
 the lonely man who has found out the vanity of 
 passion, and has learnt to believe in nothing else. 
 Many painful stories are told of his decline and 
 fall. Princesse Mathilde invited him one day to 
 her house, and he arrived, not " on the viewless 
 wings of poesy," but "charioted by Bacchus and 
 his pards." " He showed a want of tact," was the 
 Princess's comment, and she did not ask him 
 again. He played chess in the Cafe* de la R^gence, 
 and played very well ; but it was a recognised fact 
 that, after a certain hour in the evening, he no 
 longer remembered the moves. To persuade him 
 to leave the cafe* at closing-time an ingenious 
 device had to be adopted. A glass of absinthe 
 was prepared for him, and held just out of his 
 
 156 
 
Musset's Weaknesses 
 
 reach. He rose to lay hold of it, and it was with- 
 drawn still farther. He advanced again, and so, 
 following the green demon, staggered at last into 
 his carriage. 
 
 Evidently we must not hold George Sand 
 responsible for all that : such responsibilities are 
 not to be so lightly shifted. Men had proved 
 and other men were yet to prove that it was 
 possible to love her, to leave her, and yet to 
 remain sober, facing the world with courage and 
 composure. Even in that age of degenerates, 
 Alfred de Musset was exceptionally weak. Only 
 it is precisely to weak men that good women can 
 be most helpful, and it is to them too that the 
 women who betray the ideal can do most harm. 
 Though a woman be in favour of all the 
 minor virtues, her good influence will not sur- 
 vive the hour of passion unless she maintains 
 certain ideals untarnished. That is where George 
 Sand failed ; and that is what the enthusiasts 
 forget. 
 
 Nothing has been more often quoted than her 
 professions of " motherliness " towards her lovers. 
 Sometimes she aspired to be their mother ; some- 
 times their " sister of mercy." It is impossible to 
 read the story of the Venetian episode and not to 
 hold that, when she spoke thus, she was covering 
 her infidelities by the profane use of sacred words, 
 and so adding to her offence. The influence of 
 a woman who talked as she talked, while acting 
 as she acted, was not the influence that could give 
 
 157 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 a weak man strength to resist temptation. One 
 is not, indeed, justified in saying that she drove 
 Musset to besotted courses, for he entered upon 
 such courses far too easily. One is justified in 
 saying that, if she had been a better woman, she 
 might have saved him from them. 
 
 The separation from Musset, however, was a 
 crisis in her life no less than his. She had loved 
 him after her fashion ; and she had not come 
 unscathed out of the ordeal ; she had escaped, but 
 she had left "a goodly portion of herself" behind. 
 But she was stronger than Musset, and of a 
 better balanced temperament. Somewhere be- 
 neath her extravagances there was a substratum 
 of sanity a reserve force, as it were, that she 
 could draw upon in the hour of need. There is 
 a Scriptural saying which one can invert and apply 
 to her : She could not save others, but she could 
 save herself. 
 
 Probably the chief secret of her salvation lay in 
 her sound physical health. Her constitution 
 could resist her excesses in coffee and tobacco ; 
 she did not test it with absinthe and champagne. 
 Moreover, she had been bred in the country, 
 and was continually returning to the country. 
 Whereas Alfred de Musset, at moments of 
 supreme emotion, fled for refuge to the cafe*, she 
 fled for refuge to Nohant. Instead of masking 
 her symptoms with stimulants and excitements, 
 she repaired her powers and recovered her 
 energies in a healthy climate amid healthy 
 
 158 
 
George Sand as " Grisette " 
 
 surroundings. She felt well there, and that was 
 the first step towards mental convalescence. 
 Bruised and broken, she regained strength by 
 frequent contact with Mother Earth. 
 
 That was what had happened before ; that was 
 what was to happen now. On her arrival at 
 Nohant, she had to be treated for some disorder 
 of the liver ; and disorders of the liver, as is 
 well known, darken everyone's outlook upon life. 
 The malady yielded to treatment, and the outlook 
 upon life grew brighter. A comparative calm 
 succeeded the storm ; and George Sand could 
 sit down, with her family and her friends about 
 her, and try to rearrange her life. 
 
 So far, one must repeat, she had lived frankly 
 and fearlessly, after the style of a grisette. " Dans 
 un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans," is equally 
 recalled by her experiment with Sandeau and her 
 adventure with Pagello. Probably it is only 
 because of the accident that she was able to earn 
 money that one is not also reminded of " J'ai su 
 plus tard qui payait ses toilettes " ; for, as we have 
 seen, she certainly had not always scrupled to 
 entertain simultaneously an amant en titre and 
 an amant de cczur. 
 
 She had resembled the grisettes too in her 
 refusal to know respectable people for fear that 
 she should not get on with them. We have seen 
 her leaving P.P.C. cards upon her bourgeois 
 friends before plunging into the riotous life of the 
 Latin Quarter. It had been the same when the 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 acquaintance of new friends, not of Bohemia, was 
 proposed to her. We have the letter in which 
 she declined the introduction which Sainte-Beuve 
 pressed upon her to Jouffroy. 1 She says in so 
 many words that Jouffroy is "too respectable" 
 for her that he would not approve of her, and 
 that they would not understand each other. It 
 would be "like introducing a cannibal to a man 
 who refused to believe that anyone had ever 
 eaten human flesh." 
 
 Her ideal had been like that of the Libertines 
 of Geneva, who memorialised their Government 
 with a demand that they should be allowed to 
 " live as they chose without reference to the 
 preachers." For years she had lived as she chose, 
 obeying her instincts, and sanctifying them with 
 holy names. Her life and her writings had run 
 upon closely parallel lines. Writings and life 
 alike had justified the cynic's remark, already 
 quoted, that " in George Sand, when a woman 
 wants to change her lover, God is always there 
 to facilitate the transfer." There had been 
 ecstasies, but no continuity, and no abiding satis- 
 faction. She felt the need at last of a star by 
 which to steer of a moral pivot on which her 
 life might hinge. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve was once again called in as her 
 confidant, her confessor, the director of her con- 
 science. We find her appealing to him for 
 
 1 An Ultramontanist pressman, also known as an inventor. He 
 invented the central rail used on mountain lines. 
 
 160 
 
t&e 
 
Love no Remedy 
 
 a religion or, in default of a religion, for an 
 ideal or at least for some noble purpose 
 worthy of " these lightnings on my brow, these 
 flames of my genius, these passionate forces of my 
 soul." She is suffering, she tells him, the chastise- 
 ment of her sins ; she has been led astray by 
 "the sophisms of men and books." God has 
 discouraged her. Can her terrible malady be 
 cured ? 
 
 " That is what I do not know, and that is what 
 I am resolved to find out by employing all the 
 strength that is left to me in repairing the harm 
 that I have done. If I fail, I would rather blow 
 my brains out than recommence the life which I 
 have been living during the last two or three years." 
 
 Love, it appears, yet another love, has been 
 suggested as the remedy ; but it will not serve. 
 The case is far too desperate. 
 
 " The bare idea of such a love as you depict to 
 me appears to me as a thing not to be realised, 
 and I shall use all my energy in trying not to 
 realise it. No, no, neither that sort of love nor 
 the other neither the tender love that lasts, nor 
 the blind and violent love of passion. Do you 
 think that I am capable of inspiring the former, 
 or that I care to experience the latter? Both 
 kinds of love are beautiful and precious, but I am 
 too old for either." 
 
 L 161 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 What then ? She can only wait upon Provi- 
 dence, in the hope that Providence will presently 
 send her "some means of doing good," and that 
 she may learn "to renounce voluntarily the 
 satisfaction of personal desires." 
 
 " It is a hard and a rough task. I do not quite 
 see the object of it, but I suppose it has one ; and 
 if it does no good, at least it can do no harm. If 
 I succeed, I will tell you how the treatment has 
 affected me, and whether I feel better. I should 
 like my children to have a mother worthy of their 
 respect. . . . Ah ! if only I were sure that virtue 
 is what I once dreamed it to be, how quickly I 
 would return to it I who am conscious of so 
 much energy that I do not know how to use ! 
 But where am I to turn for this desire, this faith, 
 this hope ? Pray for me, if God will listen to 
 you ; pray for all the unfortunate." 
 
 It cannot be determined for certain whether 
 Sainte-Beuve prayed for George Sand or not. 
 What we do know for certain is that relief came 
 to her, not from him but from Michel de Bourges. 
 
 162 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Michel de Bourges He acts as George Sand's advocate in a 
 demand for judicial separation from her husband The hear- 
 ing of the suit Speeches of counsel Disagreement of the 
 Tribunal The matter settled out of court The rights and 
 wrongs considered. 
 
 LOUIS-CHRYSOSTOM MICHEL was an advocate in 
 practice at Bourges. Hence the style Michel de 
 Bourges his common appellation though not his 
 actual name. On the first occasion on which 
 George Sand met him, they sat talking in an inn 
 parlour till four o'clock in the morning, and then 
 went out to continue the conversation in the 
 moonlit streets of a provincial town. She wrote 
 to her half-brother Hippolyte that her new 
 friend was " of the solid stuff of which tribunes of 
 the people are made," and that, if there were a 
 revolution, he would be heard of. 
 
 The Revolution was thirteen years off; and 
 when it came, Michel de Bourges was only to 
 play an insignificant part in it. In 1835, however, 
 he was a man of tireless energy and fiery eloquence 
 an earlier Gambetta, who seemed destined to 
 pass, with the triumph of the Republic, from the 
 Bar to the Chamber, and from the Chamber to 
 the Cabinet ; and George Sand hung upon his 
 
 163 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 words, and suffered herself, though not quite 
 without resistance, to be indoctrinated. But her 
 relations with him were of a twofold character. 
 He was her teacher, and became her lover ; he 
 was also, and at the same time, her legal repre- 
 sentative in the action for a judicial separation 
 which she brought, in the course of 1835, against 
 her husband. The two stories, being distinct, 
 must be kept separate ; and the latter story may 
 be taken first. 
 
 Casimir Dudevant, as we have seen, had 
 accepted an equivocal situation. He was satisfied 
 to leave his wife free to live her own life in her 
 own way, provided that he, on his part, enjoyed 
 an equal liberty. She was welcome to seek 
 happiness in the society of poets on condition 
 that he was allowed to seek it in the arms of 
 chambermaids. These mutual concessions made, 
 they corresponded amicably, and almost affection- 
 ately. While George Sand was in Italy with 
 Musset, she received letters from her husband, 
 exhorting her not to forget to visit the battle- 
 fields on which her father had distinguished 
 himself; and M. Dudevant even carried com- 
 plaisance to the point of inviting Pagello to visit 
 his house. 
 
 There were other causes of discord, however, 
 which generally led to quarrels whenever George 
 Sand went to stay at Nohant. They quarrelled 
 about money ; for M. Dudevant squandered his 
 wife's substance in riotous living, or frittered it 
 
 164 
 
Quarrels with M. Dudevant 
 
 away in injudicious investments. They quarrelled 
 about the children ; for a certain chambermaid 
 with whom M. Dudevant was improperly intimate 
 presumed to birch Solange. They quarrelled 
 finally because M. Dudevant insisted upon being 
 master in his own house, and asserted his rights 
 with drunken truculence in the presence of the 
 servants and of guests. It became increasingly 
 clear that the partial separation already arranged 
 would not suffice to keep the peace. For that 
 purpose there must be a total separation ; and 
 the property must be strictly tied up, in order 
 that the inheritance of Maurice and Solange 
 might not be dissipated. 
 
 Hippolyte, and some other friends of the family, 
 tried to arrange the separation amicably. An 
 agreement was signed whereby M. Dudevant was 
 to leave Nohant, and receive an allowance from 
 his wife of ^152 a year in addition to his personal 
 income of ^48 a year ; but M. Dudevant re- 
 pudiated his signature, and remained at Nohant, 
 where, in the course of a few days, a vio- 
 lent scene brought matters to a head. As 
 M. Dudevant never contradicted the version of 
 it that was given in evidence in the Law Courts, 
 we may fairly credit the statements to which the 
 witnesses deposed. 
 
 There had been, it appears, a small dinner- 
 party. When the coffee was served, it was 
 discovered that the cream had been forgotten, 
 and M. Dudevant told Maurice to go and fetch 
 
 165 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 it. The boy, instead of obeying, crossed the 
 room and sat down by his mother, who asked 
 him if he had not heard what his father had 
 said. Thereupon M. Dudevant lost his temper, 
 and violently reproached his wife for not teaching 
 her children how to behave. George Sand, not 
 wishing the children to witness her disputes with 
 their father, told Maurice to leave the room. 
 At this M. Dudevant became furious, and, 
 shouting, "Get out of the room yourself!" 
 endeavoured to strike his wife. The guests had 
 to intervene for her protection. He ran to fetch 
 a gun from the adjoining room, and returned, 
 threatening to kill her, with the result that the 
 guests interposed again, and wrested the weapon 
 from his hands. 
 
 That was the last straw. Tempers were at 
 white heat on both sides. George Sand would 
 listen to no proposals of reconciliation, but 
 hastened to her lawyers, and commenced her suit 
 on October 30, 1835; while her husband started 
 for Paris, apparently intending to let judgment be 
 given against him by default. "He has cleared 
 off," George Sand wrote to her friend the 
 Comtesse d'Agoult, "leaving me mistress of the 
 field. ... I am receiving no one, but am living 
 the life of a nun while awaiting the issue of my 
 case, on which my livelihood in my old age 
 depends." 
 
 She had to wait a good deal longer than she 
 expected, however ; for M. Dudevant had taken 
 
 166 
 
"Pendente Lite" 
 
 counsel with his mother, and his mother had 
 advised him to enter an appearance and fight 
 the case. The Tribunal decided against him in 
 his absence in January 1836; but he appealed, 
 on technical grounds, against the ruling of the 
 Court in the course of the following April, and it 
 was ordered that the case should be heard again 
 at La Chatre on May 10. 
 
 Not the least of George Sand's trials was that, 
 pending the hearing, she had to live a quiet and 
 circumspect life, for fear lest any transgression of 
 the conventions should be noted and used against 
 her in evidence. At first she remained at Nohant, 
 where, she wrote to Madame d'Agoult, "four 
 thousand fools imagine that I am on my knees, 
 in sackcloth and ashes, weeping for my sins, like 
 the Magdalen. But," she added, "their awaken- 
 ing will be terrible. On the morrow of my victory 
 I shall throw away my crutches, and gallop round 
 the town on horseback." 
 
 The rule was, however, that women in George 
 Sand's circumstances must live in the house of 
 some discreet chaperon, appointed by the Pre- 
 sident of the Court ; and to this rule George 
 Sand had to conform. The chaperon appointed 
 was Madame Agasta Duteil, her intimate personal 
 friend, and the wife of a local lawyer. For months 
 she found herself condemned to this bourgeois 
 existence, with nothing to do except to write her 
 books and play with her friend's children, com- 
 pelled to decline the proposals of her Parisian 
 
 167 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 acquaintances to visit her. To M. GueVoult, 1 for 
 instance, she wrote as follows : 
 
 " I would willingly invite you to come and see 
 me at the Duteils' if it were not that I am obliged 
 to live a life devoid of all irregularity in the eyes of 
 the imbeciles in whose midst I dwell. Happily that 
 is comparatively easy to me nowadays. But if you 
 were to be seen coming to La Chatre from Paris, 
 the wife of one judge, and the cousin of another, 
 and the daughter of the sister of the servant of 
 a third would raise a hue and cry, declaring that 
 you were a lover, the origin and cause of my con- 
 jugal disagreement. So here I am, you see, 
 condemned to live in this charming little country 
 town, at which I have laughed so often, and to 
 respect its manners and customs. You would be 
 amused if you could see how gracefully I dis- 
 charge this obligation, and with what an air of 
 prim propriety I walk through the stony streets 
 and the squares in which the loafers congregate." 
 
 The time passed, however, and George Sand's 
 troubles began to approach their term, though 
 there were to be further adjournments before the 
 actual end. At the May hearing the technical 
 points raised by M. Dudevant were decided in 
 
 1 Famous not only as a Saint-Simonian but also as a political 
 economist. He was, for a time, French Consul at Kazatlan 
 (Mexico) and Jassy, and afterwards editor of La Presse and of 
 L} Opinion nationale. 
 
 1 68 
 
A Cause Cdebre 
 
 his favour ; and the decision on the merits of the 
 case was postponed until the following July. 
 
 At last ! The whole neighbourhood was alert 
 with curiosity, and public opinion was, on the 
 whole, hostile to George Sand. She was an 
 abandoned creature a Republican and the friend 
 of Republicans an eccentric whose whole life 
 was a revolt if not a revolution a monster who 
 delighted in " red ruin and the breaking up of 
 homes." So argued the virtuous, who had never 
 known temptation, or had only sinned in secret 
 whose husbands were not " coureurs de femmes- 
 de-chambre" or who were willing to overlook 
 such marital peccadilloes ; and, with their pre- 
 judices thick upon them, they flocked to the 
 hearing of the cause ce'lebre. 
 
 It was such a cause ce'lebre as La Chatre 
 had never known before. Even the official re- 
 porter of the Gazette des Tribunaux was moved 
 to what nowadays we call " new journalism," and 
 described the personal appearance of the interest- 
 ing plaintiff as if he were writing for a modern 
 halfpenny evening paper. 
 
 " Not for a long time," he wrote, " had a civil 
 suit brought so great a crowd to the gates of the 
 Palace of Justice. The author of Indiana, Le*lia> 
 and Jacques took her seat behind her counsel, 
 Maitre Michel de Bourges. Parisians perhaps 
 would not have recognised her in the costume 
 appropriate to her sex, accustomed as they are to 
 
 169 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 see the lady, in the theatres and other public 
 places, attired in masculine garments, with her 
 beautiful blonde hair falling in waves and curls 
 over the collar of an overcoat of blue velvet. She 
 was dressed in all simplicity, in a white gown, 
 with a white hood, a collarette, and a flowered 
 shawl. Evidently she had only come to the 
 Court in the hope of finding some eloquently 
 inspired arguments against ill-assorted unions." 
 
 Such is the introduction, not quite in the severe 
 manner usual in the official reports of judicial pro- 
 ceedings ; and then follow the speeches of counsel. 
 
 Maltre Thiot-Varennes opened on behalf of the 
 husband. 
 
 M. Dudevant, he said, had loved his wife, and 
 had believed his affection to be returned. He 
 and his wife had lived happily together until 1825, 
 though the "adventurous character" of Madame 
 Dudevant had already declared itself and indicated 
 that his felicity would not be of long duration. 
 Presently his client made a distressing discovery. 
 In the course of a visit to Bordeaux, his wife had 
 conceived a passion for another, and had yielded 
 to it. Betrayed by the woman whom he adored, 
 he nevertheless forgave her. Touched by his 
 generosity and indulgence, she wrote him a letter 
 in which she confessed everything, and covered 
 herself with reproaches. 
 
 The reference was, of course, to George Sand's 
 friendship for Aurelien de Seze a friendship of 
 
 170 
 
M. Dudevant's Case 
 
 which Aurelien de Seze had tired precisely because 
 it showed no sign of developing into any more 
 intimate relation. In the construction which he 
 put upon it, the advocate was taking a liberty 
 with the truth. But it had at least been the out- 
 come and the expression of a divergence of tastes 
 and interests between the husband and the wife. 
 In insisting emphatically upon that divergence, 
 Maitre Thiot-Varennes was on firmer ground. 
 He was addressing an audience, not of artists, but 
 of average men and women an audience whose 
 views of the functions of women were those of 
 the philosopher Pericles and the apostle Paul. 
 Therefore he drew the contrast which he felt 
 would appeal most forcibly to their wooden heads. 
 
 " Madame Dudevant was passionately fond of 
 poetry, art, literary and philosophical conversation. 
 M. Dudevant had the simple tastes of the country 
 gentleman, more interested in looking after his 
 estate than in poetical descriptions of the scenery. 
 She was a dreamer, of melancholy disposition, 
 enamoured of solitude ; he had the habits and 
 the easy-going ways of a good bourgeois." 
 
 The Tribunal was composed of "good 
 bourgeois " ; the hall was packed with them. 
 The virtues attributed to M. Dudevant were 
 virtues which they could understand ; his weak- 
 nesses were weaknesses with which they could 
 sympathise. It was much to his credit, they 
 felt, that he had borne even for a moment 
 
 171 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 with the deplorable eccentricities of a woman 
 who had presumed to find the simple ways of 
 good bourgeois ridiculous. It had been her duty 
 to remain upon his intellectual level to try to 
 share his rustic tastes to overlook his bibulous 
 propensities, and turn a blind eye to his amorous 
 
 proceedings. Instead of which 
 
 It seemed strange, perhaps, that he objected 
 to be separated from a wife who had fallen so far 
 short of the good bourgeois ideal. Certainly it 
 could not plausibly be argued that it was for love 
 of her that he wished to keep her by his side ; 
 and Maitre Thiot-Varennes did not venture to 
 invoke that motive. But, he reminded the Court, 
 M. Dudevant was not only a husband but a 
 father. Madame Dudevant was not only his 
 wife but the mother of his children. He could 
 not bear that she should take them from him ; he 
 could not trust her with their future. That was 
 the note on which the speech ended ; and, for his 
 peroration, the speaker turned to George Sand and 
 addressed a passionate personal appeal to her : 
 
 " Madame, your husband was generous in 1825, 
 and he is generous still. Now, as then, he for- 
 gets the wrongs which you have done him, and 
 forgives you. How can M. Dudevant's children 
 be taken away from him and entrusted to the care 
 of a woman who has scandalised the world by her 
 licentious life and her immoral precepts? Your 
 books, madam, are full of the bitterness and the 
 
 172 
 
<c Return to your husband" 
 
 regrets which devour your heart ; they proclaim 
 your profound disgust with life. The torments 
 of your soul pursue you in the midst of your fame, 
 and poison your triumphs. You have sought 
 happiness everywhere, and you have found it 
 nowhere. Well ! I will show you the road to it. 
 Return to your husband. Go back to the house 
 in which the first years of your married life were 
 passed so pleasantly and peaceably. Resume 
 your position as a wife and a mother ; walk once 
 again in the path of duty and virtue ; submit 
 yourself to the laws of nature. In all other 
 courses you will find only error and deception ; 
 in that course alone will you find happiness and 
 peace." 
 
 The oration was the supreme expression of the 
 bourgeois point of view ; for the stupidity of the 
 bourgeois mind principally consists in applying 
 platitudes to the exceptional cases to which they 
 are clearly inapplicable. The task of Michel de 
 Bourges was to show that the case was not as 
 other cases, and to establish the claims of genius 
 to exemption from the bourgeois rules. George 
 Sand, for him, was " the glory of the age," 
 seeking to " reconquer her outraged liberty, and 
 her independence that has been trampled under 
 foot." It was a case of ''genius arresting its 
 lofty flight in the sanctuary of justice and bending 
 its majestic head before the sacred authority of 
 the law." 
 
 173 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 His learned brother had read an extract from 
 a letter in which his client was alleged to have 
 acknowledged infidelity to her husband. He 
 would read the whole of that letter, and the 
 Court should judge whether it bore the meaning 
 that had been put upon it. He read it, and 
 it was obvious that the sense of the words had 
 been strained. It was a composition of sublime 
 eloquence not a mere letter, but a piece of 
 literature. The law reporter himself was once 
 more shaken out of the severity of the official 
 manner : " This piece of prose, written at the 
 age of twenty, with a magic of style and a 
 brilliance of colour worthy of the most beautiful 
 pages that the author of Jacques has written since, 
 produced an impression which baffles description." 
 
 Having thus conciliated sympathies, Michel 
 soon carried the war into the enemy's camp. 
 "The pardon which you offer to your wife," he 
 shouted to M. Dudevant, "is an insult. It is you 
 who have wronged her." He reminded him that 
 he had been convicted of adultery under the 
 conjugal roof that there had been alleged 
 against him, and remained uncontradicted, 
 "conduct so atrocious that no human lips can 
 describe it in all its revolting ugliness." That 
 conduct, and nothing else, was the cause of the 
 desertion of which he complained. 
 
 " Was it not you who compelled her to quit her 
 home by filling her with disgust for it ? Not 
 
 174 
 
Michel's Peroration 
 
 only are you responsible for the causes of her 
 absence ; you are the instigator of it, and the 
 accomplice. Did you not leave your wife, young 
 and inexperienced as she was, to her own devices ? 
 Did you not desert her? How can you ask the 
 magistrates to give you back the reins which you 
 have yourself let fall ? To guide a woman aright, 
 a certain intelligence is necessary. What intelli- 
 gence do you possess, compared with hers, which 
 you have so misunderstood ? When a woman is 
 on the point of falling, a man should be capable 
 of raising her to her feet ; when she is weak, he 
 should be able to give her strength and to set her 
 a good example and what sort of an example is 
 it that you are able to offer ? And how can you 
 claim conjugal rights over a woman whom you 
 have left to her own devices for eight years? 
 Was it a guilty woman who revealed all the 
 beauties of her soul in the letter which you have 
 yourself put in evidence ? The wrongs which she 
 did you must have been of a very trifling 
 character, if you had to go to that letter for the 
 proofs of your grievances. For, since the date of 
 it, you have received your wife in your house, and 
 have corresponded with her, and have lived on 
 terms of intimacy with the honourable friend who, 
 in fact, treated her with the respect which she 
 deserved. Why, you have even shaken hands 
 with him ! What then was your motive for 
 abandoning a wife who had given you no cause 
 to reproach her ? " 
 
 175 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Michel exaggerated, of course it is the business 
 of counsel to exaggerate ; but the conduct of 
 M. Dudevant had given Michel's client the beau 
 role. The truth had not 'sufficed for him. He 
 had brought railing accusations of an atrocious 
 character, supporting them with the false testimony 
 of suborned domestics. It was, as Michel said, 
 " with invectives in his mouth " that he came into 
 Court to claim his wife. He " claimed her with 
 one hand while with the other he plunged a dagger 
 in her heart." The " triumphal arch" which he 
 had prepared for her return was " a pillory bearing 
 the indelible inscription of her dishonour." That 
 indictment at any rate was true ; and the answer 
 to the rhetorical outburst was necessarily of the 
 nature of an anti-climax. Maitre Thiot- Varennes 
 could only say that Time was a great physician, 
 and that, though M. Dudevant could not pretend 
 that he was passionately attached to his wife at 
 the moment, he would restore his affection to her 
 as soon as she showed herself worthy of it. 
 
 He sat down, and the Advocate-General rose 
 to sum up, coldly, judiciously, impartially. He 
 was inclined to think that, in the first instance, 
 the wife had been to blame, since her friendship 
 for Aurdien de Seze had at least amounted to 
 "a moral adultery." On the other hand, the 
 husband was also to blame, seeing that he had 
 insulted his wife with " infamous and impious 
 imputations." He concluded, therefore, in favour 
 of the separation demanded : the father to have 
 
 176 
 
Settled out of Court 
 
 the custody of the son, and the daughter to 
 remain with her mother. That was the view 
 of the Ministry of Justice ; but the decision rested 
 with the Court. 
 
 The Court retired to deliberate, and the judges 
 failed to agree. The case was therefore ad- 
 journed until the following Monday, the parties 
 being given the opportunity of coming to an 
 amicable arrangement in the meantime. They 
 did so, and we find the terms of the settlement 
 reported in a letter from George Sand to her 
 sister Caroline, now Madame Cazamajou. 
 
 " On the eve of the hearing my case was settled 
 by a bargain concluded between M. Dudevant and 
 myself. I am to hand him securities of the value 
 of ;i6oo, and he, in return, assigns the Hotel 
 de Narbonne to me. At the same time he gives 
 up his claims to both Maurice and Solange, and 
 undertakes not to persecute me any more. But 
 I invite you to admire his paternal love and 
 his disinterestedness. He demands not only 
 that he shall be allowed to see the children for 
 a few days every year, but also that I shall pay 
 half their travelling expenses when they visit him. 
 Tender and generous father ! When we were 
 settling up accounts, he did not blush to instruct 
 his legal representative to put in a claim for 
 fifteen pots of jam and a small stove which he 
 valued at a franc and a half." 
 
 That is all or at any rate all with which we 
 M 177 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 need concern ourselves. Five years afterwards 
 M. Dudevant startled George Sand by a further 
 claim for 125 francs somehow overlooked in the 
 taking of accounts ; but after that demand had 
 been met, hostilities ceased, and there was even 
 a partial, though not a sincere, reconciliation. 
 Maurice Sand occasionally carried a friendly 
 message from one of his parents to the other ; 
 and M. Dudevant even accepted an invitation 
 to be present at Solange's wedding in 1847. 
 " Never," George Sand then wrote to Mile de 
 Rozieres, 1 " was a marriage less gay, in appearance 
 at all events, thanks to the presence of this ami- 
 able personage, whose rancours and aversions are 
 still as keen as ever. Happily he got up early 
 and went away at four o'clock on the morning 
 following the ceremony." 
 
 And that is really the end. Though M. Dude- 
 vant lived until 1871, and was, at the time 
 of his death, engaged in some litigation on money 
 matters with his own children, he now passes 
 definitely out of this story. 
 
 It is a story in which, as the Court held, the 
 rights and wrongs are somewhat mixed ; and 
 it would be quite idle to attempt to judge it by 
 modern moral standards. Even if M. Dudevant 
 had been a better man than he was, it would 
 have been absurd that he and George Sand 
 should continue to live together as husband and 
 wife. He was, in fact, a fool, a boor, a 
 
 1 One of Chopin's favourite pupils. 
 
 178 
 
Rights and Wrongs 
 
 drunkard, and an avaricious spendthrift. For 
 such men no moral claims in excess of their 
 strict legal rights can be entertained. Their 
 influence upon all who come in contact with 
 them is degrading. When accident has married 
 them to women of superior tastes, talents, and 
 sensibilities, their place in the lives of such 
 women is merely that of obstacles to be removed. 
 It is only because they are fools or because 
 their motives are interested that they do not 
 readily recognise the fact. 
 
 That is really the summing up of the whole 
 matter in the case of George Sand and 
 M. Dudevant. One need not trouble to ask 
 whether it would have been right or wrong for 
 them to continue to live together. It would simply 
 have been ridiculous. Delayed by M. Dudevant's 
 indecent complaisance, and ultimately brought 
 about by his equally indecent brutality, the sepa- 
 ration was inevitable from the first. Whether 
 George Sand deserved her freedom from the 
 point of view of the Churches and the Divorce 
 Courts or not, it was at any rate good that she 
 should be free. The society of M. Dudevant 
 could have been of no use to her morally, 
 intellectually, or artistically. From all three 
 points of view alike, he was an obstruction an 
 irrelevance. Whatever the Courts might say, she 
 was bound to live her life without regard to him. 
 
 179 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Michel indoctrinates George Sand His revolutionary harangue 
 on the Pont des Saints-Peres She becomes a Republican 
 under his influence, and preaches his Gospel in her letters 
 to her boy at school She becomes his mistress Relations 
 become strained and they part. 
 
 THE story of Michel's professional relations with 
 George Sand having been told, the story of his 
 personal relations with her remains to be ex- 
 amined. 
 
 In the first instance it was curiosity that sent 
 her to see him. The great advocate was also 
 the Great Man of the vicinity. He laid down 
 the law, and his neighbours quoted his precepts. 
 Moreover, he had found time to read Ldlia 
 the book which George Sand considered the 
 most faithful expression of her personality and 
 to be piqued and fascinated ; so that the desire 
 to meet was mutual. When they met, they 
 pleased each other so well that, as has already 
 been mentioned, they prolonged their conver- 
 sation until the dawn, and then walked out 
 together to take the air in the empty streets of 
 Bourges. 
 
 Even then, however, they were far from having 
 exhausted all that they had to say. As soon as 
 
 1 80 
 
" Everard " 
 
 they had parted, Michel sat down and wrote 
 George Sand a letter. She replied with equal 
 promptitude. That was the beginning of a con- 
 siderable correspondence, which, on her part at 
 least, was largely literary. She began at once to 
 make " copy " out of Michel, and out of the clash of 
 opinion that resulted from their intercourse. Her 
 letters to him some of them, at all events 
 were published in the Revue des deux Mondes. 
 He is the Everard of the Lettres dun Voyageur. 
 His intellectual influence on the writer can be 
 followed from them, though the actual story of 
 their intercourse naturally needs to be supple- 
 mented from other sources. 
 
 The central fact of the story is that, for the 
 first time in her life, George Sand found herself 
 consciously yielding to a Great Man's influence. 
 Her lovers, up to that date, had been mere boys, 
 whose relations with her had been merely passionate 
 or sensual. Sandeau had been a student sowing 
 his wild oats ; Merime'e a precocious cynic who 
 would not take his mistress seriously ; Pagello a 
 nonentity ; Alfred de Musset, though a genius, a 
 degenerate. There had not been a strong man, 
 capable of dominating her, among them. Michel 
 was a man who expected not only to dominate 
 but to domineer. 
 
 He came into George Sand's life at the true 
 psychological moment. The severance from 
 Musset had been a shock, throwing the whole 
 machinery of her emotions out of gear. She had 
 
 181 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 staked her hopes upon passion, and passion had 
 failed her. She could not and she did not 
 nurse a grievance ; for she had herself willed the 
 separation. She even remonstrated sharply, as 
 we have seen, with friends, like Boucoiran, who 
 considered that she had a grievance and resented 
 it, adding that she was glad to hear that Alfred 
 had heard the news of her departure without any 
 distressing display of grief. But her departure 
 had none the less broken the continuity of her 
 life. She lacked a moral pivot, an ideal. She 
 was ready to be indoctrinated, and Michel was a 
 doctrinaire. 
 
 The attraction must, at first, have been solely 
 intellectual. Michel was singularly lacking in the 
 superficial graces by which women are most apt 
 to be fascinated. In the descriptions of his 
 personal appearance which we owe to George 
 Sand's pen, he figures as a grotesque, if not an 
 actually repellent personage. His head appeared 
 to be composed of "two skulls soldered together." 
 He was an invalid who complained of the state of 
 his liver and his stomach. He was short-sighted 
 and wore "ugly spectacles"; he " looked sixty," 
 though he was in fact rather less than forty. 
 And he dressed abominably. This is the graphic 
 picture : 
 
 "A peasant by birth, he had retained the 
 peasant's preference for comfortable garments of 
 coarse material. Both at home and in the streets, 
 
 182 
 
Michel's Personal Appearance 
 
 he wore an enormous and shapeless great-coat 
 and big wooden shoes. Everywhere, at all 
 seasons of the year, he felt cold, though, in his 
 politeness, he would never consent to wear his 
 hat in a lady's drawing-room. He used only to 
 ask to be allowed to tie a handkerchief over his 
 head, and, this permission granted, he would knot 
 three or four coloured handkerchiefs together, 
 holding them in his hands, dropping them and 
 picking them up again while he gesticulated, 
 and finally using them as a skull-cap, in which 
 he sometimes looked fantastic and sometimes 
 picturesque." 
 
 The portrait hardly suggests either an Apollo 
 or a Brurnmel, though the painter of it hastens 
 to add, with a burst of enthusiasm, that Michel 
 brushed his teeth and wore clean linen. This, 
 she adds, was his " secret sybaritism " to which 
 some democrats took exception ; but she could 
 not share their prejudice. " No sentiment," she 
 writes, " is so beautiful that it does not lose some 
 of its value when it issues from a filthy mouth." 
 And Michel's sentiments were very beautiful, and 
 he was very anxious to indoctrinate his new 
 disciple. 
 
 His great opportunity came when he was called 
 to Paris to act as one of the counsel for the 
 defence in the great political trial known as the 
 Proces ctAvril. The prisoners were Republicans 
 accused of a conspiracy to overthrow the Govern- 
 
 183 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 ment of Louis- Philippe. Their conspiracy was 
 rather potential than actual, invented, according 
 to the best authorities, by the police for the 
 purpose of imprisoning or banishing as many 
 Republicans as possible, and so securing the 
 Orleanist dynasty. They were defiant, however, 
 and resolved that their defence should be a 
 demonstration a public proclamation of hostility 
 to the King in his own Courts of Law. To 
 that end, they summoned the leading Republican 
 advocates from all quarters of France ; and 
 Michel of Bourges was one of the elect. 
 
 As it happened, he did not secure their acquittal, 
 but was himself sentenced to a month's imprison- 
 ment for contempt of court ; but that is a side 
 issue, irrelevant to the present story. What 
 concerns us is that George Sand followed him 
 to Paris, and that their friendship ripened in the 
 midst of the political agitation. She resumed her 
 masculine dress in order to obtain access to the 
 Court and hear the speeches ; and every evening 
 she received in her apartment a select company 
 of friends mostly Saint-Simonians to whom 
 Michel preached the Republican Gospel, or else 
 dined with Michel at a restaurant, and, after 
 dinner, rowed with him on the Seine, or walked 
 with him on the boulevards. It was, according 
 to the Autobiography, in the course of one of 
 these walks that Michel first fully expounded the 
 doctrines of which, in previous conversations, he 
 had only spoken vaguely. 
 
 184 
 
"An awful Declamation" 
 
 There was a ball at the Tuileries that night. 
 George Sand, and Planet, and Michel stood on 
 the Saints- Peres bridge, watching the reflection 
 of the Palace lights in the Seine, and listening to 
 the distant strains of the music, wafted to them 
 by the perfumed air of the Spring. They were 
 all enjoying the calm beauty of the scene when 
 suddenly she heard Michel's uplifted voice de- 
 nouncing civilisation. " Civilisation indeed ! I 
 tell you that before your accursed Society can 
 renew its youth, this river must run red with 
 blood, and this accursed Palace be reduced to 
 ashes, and this vast city which you behold be 
 made a field on which the poor man's family may 
 guide their plough and build their cottage." 
 
 And so forth, with violent gestures. "It 
 was," says George Sand, "an awful and magni- 
 ficent declamation against the wickedness of 
 Courts, the corruption of great cities, the ener- 
 vating influence of art, luxury, and industrialism. 
 It was a call for the dagger and the torch, the 
 pronouncement of a curse upon the impure 
 Jerusalem, and an apocalyptic prophecy. And 
 then, after these dark images, he spoke of the 
 world of the future as he dreamed that it might 
 be, of the ideal rural life, of the manners of the 
 Golden Age, and of the earthly Paradise that the 
 magic wand of some fairy might cause to flourish 
 on the old world's smoking ruins." 
 
 And so forth until the clock struck two. The 
 interruption gave George Sand a chance to inter- 
 
 185 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 pose, and say a good word for Art ; but the orator 
 would not listen. "He was beside himself," we 
 read. " He descended the step of the quay as he 
 declaimed ; he broke his walking-stick against 
 the walls of the old Louvre ; he bellowed such 
 seditious sentiments that I cannot think how it 
 was that the police did not come up and arrest 
 him. No other man in the world could have 
 behaved so eccentrically without appearing to be 
 mad, and without making himself ridiculous." 
 
 And so forth, until his companions were fright- 
 ened and fled, and Michel discovered that he had 
 been left declaiming in solitude to the night air. 
 Then he ran after them, and overtook them, and 
 quarrelled with them, and implored them to listen 
 to him for several hours longer, threatening that 
 he would never speak to them again if they refused. 
 11 One would have said," writes George Sand, " that 
 it was a lover's quarrel rather than an argument 
 on the doctrine of Babeuf." 
 
 They were not lovers yet, however. They 
 were only teacher and disciple ; and the stormy 
 scene was only an incident in indoctrination. 
 Probably there were other scenes, hardly less 
 stormy, before the indoctrination was completed. 
 George Sand, though she desired to be in- 
 doctrinated, had her own point of view which 
 she would not abandon without a struggle. 
 Michel's denunciation of the Arts was the great 
 stumbling-block to her. She could not see how 
 it would profit humanity that Taglioni should be 
 
 1 86 
 
Indoctrination 
 
 required to wear long skirts, or that the delicate 
 hands of Liszt should be employed to turn a 
 mangle ; nor would she believe that Michel him- 
 self was as indifferent to the Arts as he professed to 
 be. Had he not, she asked, once made a disturb- 
 ance at the theatre to prevent Othello from killing 
 Desdemona? So she resisted, only yielding the 
 ground step by step. The course of the resist- 
 ance may be traced in the eloquent pages of the 
 Lettres a Everard. 
 
 But Michel was a stern, domineering school- 
 master who insisted ; and he treated George 
 Sand as a child, even going so far, on one 
 occasion, as to lock her up in her room and 
 take away the key, in order that she might be 
 compelled, during his absence, to reflect in soli- 
 tude upon his admonitions. She nearly revolted 
 against his rough treatment, and defied him. 
 Just as she had run away from him when he 
 perorated on the Pont des Saints- Peres, so now 
 she threatened to leave him in Paris and join 
 Liszt and Madame d'Agoult at Geneva. One 
 of the Letters unfolds that programme ; and 
 George Sand jestingly challenges Michel to pro- 
 claim the Republic during her absence, con- 
 fiscate her property, drink her wine, smoke her 
 tobacco, turn out his horses to graze in her 
 garden, and make cartridges of the books in 
 her library : " All that I ask for on my return 
 is a pipe, a pen, and some ink. Granted these 
 things, I will earn my living gaily, and spend the 
 
 187 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 remainder of my life in writing in praise of your 
 performance." 
 
 She did not go, however. It is impossible to 
 be sure that she even meant to go. She remained 
 to be beaten in argument, to submit, and, in a 
 word, to be indoctrinated. The influence of 
 Michel grotesque philosopher though he ap- 
 peared to be was a real thing, and was to 
 outlast alike her friendship for him and the 
 sincerity of his convictions. She had reached 
 a turning-point of her life. He had helped her 
 round the corner, and set her on the new road 
 in which she was to walk for many years to 
 come. 
 
 For her, as for so many others, the storm and 
 stress of the Romantic period were over. She 
 had not, indeed, outlived her passions far from 
 that ; but their gratification was no longer to be 
 her guiding star. She was no longer to call upon 
 God to sanctify illicit love as the fulfilment of 
 the Divine will revealed to the human heart. 
 Illicit love was henceforward to be the by-play 
 of life and not its central drama. She had 
 accepted a new philosophy with a new summum 
 bonum ; she was a Republican, an altruist, a 
 Humanitarian. 
 
 The change of tone can easily be traced in the 
 novels, for the George Sand of Consuelo and 
 Mauprat is widely different from the George 
 Sand of Ldlia. It is even more obviously visible 
 in the Correspondence ; for George Sand, like 
 
 1 88 
 
Socialism for Schoolboys 
 
 most zealous disciples, did not wait to finish 
 learning before she began to teach. The pre- 
 cepts on which she meditated when Michel 
 locked her up in her room she handed on, as 
 soon as she was released, to Maurice at the lycee. 
 Her letters to the child suddenly became so many 
 propagandist pamphlets. 
 
 She warned the boy against "excessive self- 
 love"- the curse of the age, and the source of 
 vanity and the greed for gold. She drew his 
 attention to the war eternally raging between 
 "the sentiments of justice and those of cupidity," 
 though admitting that "those who defend the 
 rights of property with guns and bayonets are 
 more often fools than knaves." She asked him 
 if he thought it right that the fruits of the earth 
 and the means of industry should be unequally 
 divided that some men should be able to eat 
 more than was good for them, while others 
 starved. She begged him to pay no attention 
 to the erroneous lessons which his professors 
 drew from history. She promised to tell him in 
 other letters by what means the wrongs of the 
 downtrodden might be redressed and the whole 
 social system reorganised ; and she particularly 
 urged him on no account to discuss these matters 
 with his father, but to take advice from her 
 alone. 
 
 Nor was that all. Maurice was in the same 
 class at the lyce"e as the little Due de Mont- 
 pensier, who on his birthday invited all his 
 
 189 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 classmates to a party at the Palace. It was a 
 good opportunity for George Sand to put a 
 point upon her moral. Of course Maurice might 
 go he was too young for the matter to be 
 of any consequence. The favours shown him 
 by Montpensier pledged him to nothing. Still 
 favours they were, and if it so happened 
 that Maurice were asked his opinion on any 
 political question, he must reply that he was a 
 Republican by birth and disposition. Above all, 
 he must not let the grandeur of royalty dazzle 
 him. 
 
 " Never let yourself be persuaded that a 
 prince is naturally better or more worth listen- 
 ing to than any other man. On the contrary, 
 princes are our natural enemies ; and however 
 good a man a king's son may be, it is his destiny 
 to become a tyrant, while it is our destiny to 
 be degraded, downtrodden, or persecuted by him." 
 
 It was the oration of the Pont des Saints- Peres 
 rewritten in simple language for children. One 
 can imagine the affectionate amazement of the 
 particular child to whom it was addressed. But 
 Michel had spoken ; and, in season or out of 
 season, the Gospel according to Michel must be 
 preached. 
 
 In due course, as all the world knows, the 
 disciple became the teacher's mistress ; and one 
 wonders why. One is tempted to say that it 
 
 190 
 
Michel as Lover 
 
 was superfluous ; one is almost tempted to say 
 that it was absurd. 
 
 Michel, on his part, would seem to have been 
 much more anxious to indoctrinate than to 
 embrace. George Sand's description of him, 
 cited in some preceding paragraphs the reference 
 to his bald cranium, his quaint skull-cap, his stoop- 
 ing gait, his ill-cut clothes, his clattering wooden 
 shoes indicates a man far better fitted for the 
 role of teacher than for that of lover. Yet he 
 became a lover, and there was even some talk of 
 marriage, though the path to that consummation 
 was barred by the fact that there was already a 
 Madame Michel as well as a M. Dudevant. 
 Presumably his dictatorial arrogance the dis- 
 tinguishing note of his character, as George 
 Sand never tires of telling us required the 
 supreme concession. The Great Man, he may 
 have felt, ought not to be refused privileges 
 which so many lesser men had been accorded. 
 So far as he is concerned, that is the most 
 plausible explanation ; while, if we look at the 
 matter from George Sand's point of view, there 
 seems to be little to be said except that there are 
 certain habits with which women as well as men 
 find it very hard to break. 
 
 Probably, again, the very arrogance which made 
 Michel a success as a teacher made him a failure 
 as a lover. One divines as much from a letter 
 which George Sand presently wrote to Madame 
 d'Agoult, complaining of Great Men. She had 
 
 191 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 "had enough" of them, she said; they were "a 
 burden on her back." She bore the burden for 
 a while, but then her personality reasserted 
 itself. 
 
 The story cannot be told in any detail for lack 
 of documents. The volumes of the Correspond- 
 ence ignore the episode altogether. We have 
 only a certain fragment of a diary another 
 Journal Intime written by George Sand, and 
 bearing the quaint title, " Entretiens journaliers 
 avec le tres docte et tres habile docteur Piffoel, 
 professeur de Botanique et de Psychologic," and 
 a collection of letters, published in the Revue 
 Illustre'e in 1890-1891, and clearly demon- 
 strated, by internal evidence, to be some of 
 George Sand's letters to Michel. We have to 
 make what we can of these, and there is not much 
 to be made of them, seeing that they all relate 
 to a time when the liaison was already near 
 its end. 
 
 They are very different from the letters written 
 towards the close of the liaison with Musset. 
 George Sand's letters to the poet were written 
 with her heart's blood ; those to the philosopher 
 with ink. They are literary : when they were 
 first printed, and their authorship was as yet 
 unsuspected, they were accepted as a clever 
 imitation of the passionate style of 1830. But 
 the facts transpire in them, and they allow the 
 cause, though not the occasion, of the rupture 
 to be divined. 
 
 192 
 
Revolt 
 
 " Alas ! My God ! It is a yoke of iron that I 
 have endured. When it was imposed upon me in 
 the name of love, and with the persuasiveness of 
 affection, I submitted blindly to a lover's hand. 
 But when my lover tired of persuading and wished 
 to command when he claimed my submission 
 no longer in the name of love and friendship 
 but in virtue of some right or power over me 
 then I recovered the strength which my friends 
 do not know me to possess, which is known 
 only to myself. For I alone know how deeply 
 I love, how bitterly I regret, how profoundly I 
 suffer. 
 
 " Everard, you are a great master. I have 
 known you sublime in your tenderness, paternal, 
 persuasive, inspiring fanatical devotion. Why, 
 why, old veteran, has your heart grown hard ? 
 Why have you tried to make slaves of your 
 children ? Why have you preferred the name of 
 master to the gentler name of father ? And now, 
 see, you stand alone." 
 
 There is more in the same strain, but the single 
 extract may, for the moment, suffice ; the whole 
 of the emotional history of the lovers can be in- 
 ferred from it. Michel was a tyrant by nature, 
 and, one conjectures, had become a lover only in 
 order to assert a tyrant's right ; and one of the 
 rights which tyrants claim is to neglect their 
 mistresses, turning brusquely from their embraces 
 to what they regard as more serious occupations. 
 N 193 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 It may be that Michel drew back from a 
 liaison which threatened to compromise his 
 professional position. Advocates have to be 
 more careful than poets ; and George Sand 
 was not the woman to let herself be loved in 
 secret. She preferred to afficher herself, and 
 to discuss her love affairs with Sainte-Beuve, 
 and Boucoiran, and other friends ; and one 
 can understand that this did not suit Michel 
 a married man with a provincial bourgeois 
 clientele. Be that as it may, he at any rate 
 neglected her. For weeks he neither came to 
 
 o 
 
 see her nor wrote ; his letters, when he did 
 write, became "impossible." George Sand not 
 only wrote to him to protest and complain ; she 
 also wrote to her friends to ask if they, by 
 chance, knew of any reason that could account 
 for Michel's conduct. 
 
 They would not help her ; and Michel, on his 
 part, would not come and ask to be forgiven. So 
 the hour of the inevitable rupture approached ; 
 and it came in what precise circumstances is 
 not known towards the end of the summer of 
 
 1837- 
 
 Michel thereafter held aloof from politics, and 
 
 amassed a fortune in the exercise of his calling. 
 There were not wanting those who accused him 
 of avarice the favourite vice of men of his 
 peasant origin in France. When the Revolution 
 of 1848 brought him back to political life, the men 
 who had once acclaimed him as their leader had 
 
 194 
 
The End of the Influence 
 
 almost forgotten him ; and he made himself no 
 second reputation comparable with the first. But 
 George Sand continued to preach his Gospel, 
 cherishing the ideas with which he had in- 
 doctrinated her, under the influence of other 
 men, long after he had passed out of her life 
 for ever. 
 
 195 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Maurice Sand at the Tuileries George Sand's relations with 
 Lamennais The Saint - Simonians Their proposal that 
 George Sand should become their high-priestess Their gifts 
 to her Her reasons for rejecting their overtures. 
 
 GEORGE SAND'S attempts to indoctrinate her 
 schoolboy son with the principles of her lover's 
 philosophy cannot be said to have been crowned 
 with complete success. The letter in which she 
 exhorted the child to remember that he was a 
 Republican, even at the Tuileries, and to behave 
 himself there with the stern dignity of an ancient 
 Roman, elicited the following reply : 
 
 " MY DEAR MAMA, Montpensier invited me 
 to his party in spite of my political opinions. I 
 enjoyed myself very much. Montpensier made 
 us all spit out of the window on the heads of 
 the National Guards." 
 
 That, however, is by the way ; and it must be 
 noted that Michel's influence over George Sand, 
 great though it was, was never quite exclusive. 
 She had many other friends at the same period, 
 and saw a good deal of them. Among her inti- 
 mates were ex-Abbe* Lamennais, and Liszt, who 
 
 196 
 
The Influence of Lamennais 
 
 was also to be an Abbe* presently, but had just 
 then distinguished himself by running away with 
 the Comtesse d'Agoult, and the leading members 
 of the Saint-Simonian group, who tried hard to 
 persuade her to join them. 
 
 About Lamennais there is not a great deal to 
 be said, except that there is probably no truth in 
 the story that the austere author of the Paroles 
 dun Croyant was seen on the terrace at Nohant 
 smoking a hookah with his hostess, attired in 
 embroidered slippers and a flowered Oriental 
 dressing - gown. The austerity of Lamennais 
 was real enough ; and the amorous religiosity 
 of the Romantic School played no part in his 
 spiritual growth. For him, George Sand was 
 only a repentant Magdalen whose fluent pen, if 
 properly directed, might be a power for good ; 
 and she was so far in earnest that she declined 
 an invitation to contribute, at good prices, to 
 the Journal des Ddbdts, in order to have time 
 to contribute gratuitously to Lamennais's propa- 
 gandist organ, Le Monde. 
 
 The trouble was that, though they were both 
 progressives, they did not progress at the same 
 pace. " He pushed me along in front," says 
 George Sand in her Autobiography, "and then 
 complained that I walked too fast. I, on my 
 part, often thought that he walked too slowly 
 for my taste." She protested that Lamennais 
 did not understand "how extensive was the 
 mandate that God had given him " ; she also 
 
 197 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 protested that he did not understand life as well 
 as she understood it. " You have lived among 
 angels," she wrote to him. " I have lived with 
 men and women. I know all about suffering, 
 and I know all about sin." And then there 
 arose difficulties between them on the subject 
 of women's rights. George Sand thought that 
 those rights should be extended ; Lamennais that 
 they should be limited. He was steadily getting 
 rid of his religious beliefs ; but he still clung to 
 the Pauline precept that women should not be 
 suffered to preach. So he and George Sand, 
 after a brief alliance, drifted apart separated 
 not by any jealous contemporary influence, but 
 by the shadow of the Apostle of the Gentiles. 
 
 The Saint-Simonian doctrine had many points 
 of similarity with that of Lamennais, but on this 
 question of the position of women it differed from 
 it widely. Those doctrines, however, were not 
 always the same, but underwent remarkable de- 
 velopments which Saint - Simon himself never 
 contemplated ; so that a preliminary word on 
 the origin and history of Saint-Simonism seems 
 necessary. 
 
 When Saint-Simon died in 1825, his disciples 
 who followed him to the grave founded a news- 
 paper for the purpose of continuing his teachings. 
 The staff of the newspaper became the nucleus of 
 a group of thinkers concerned, like Michel de 
 Bourges, with the regeneration of a corrupt society. 
 In a work which makes no pretence to be an 
 
The Saint-Simonians 
 
 economic treatise, they may be described, with 
 rough appproximation to accuracy, as Socialists. 
 
 If they were Socialists, however, they were 
 also something more than Socialists. Their 
 inspiration was, or speedily became, romantic 
 as well as economic, and religious as well as 
 romantic. They were children if only illegiti- 
 mate children of the Romantic Movement ; 
 and the notes of that movement, as has already 
 been shown in the course of this work, were a 
 revolt against the conventions of conduct as 
 well as of literature, and a transference of 
 the sentiments of religious exaltation to the 
 sphere of illicit love. These tendencies soon 
 began to declare themselves among the Saint- 
 Simonians. They felt that society was not to 
 be regenerated by pamphlets and newspaper 
 articles alone : that the world needed not only 
 a doctrine but a religion and not only a re- 
 ligion but a Church. They set themselves, 
 much as Comte did at a later date, to supply 
 that need, and found that Church, with head- 
 quarters in Paris, and branches in the principal 
 provincial towns. 
 
 Brains, enthusiasm, and money are the chief 
 requisites for such an undertaking ; and these 
 things they possessed, in sufficiency if not in 
 superabundance. There were among them 
 stockbrokers, wine merchants, professors, and 
 officers in the " scientific branches " of the 
 army. We have a testimony to their earnest- 
 
 199 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 ness in the statement of a brother of the great 
 churchman Lacordaire that the zeal of their 
 missionaries reminded him of Saint Bernard 
 preaching the Crusade. We have a still more 
 eloquent testimony to it in the subscription list. 
 A large landed proprietor from Angers gave 
 the Church the whole of his estates. The director 
 of the Creusot arsenal subscribed nearly the whole 
 of his salary. The mother of one of the earliest 
 converts came forward with a donation of ^8000 ; 
 there were two donations of ^6000 and one of 
 ^4000. Altogether, a sum of about ,35,000 was 
 collected. 
 
 Funds thus provided, questions arose as to the 
 teaching and ritual of the Church ; and these were 
 elaborated by degrees after noisy debates, and 
 amid clamorous differences of opinion. 
 
 The presiding genius of the new revelation 
 was the celebrated Pere Enfantin, who had been 
 educated at the Ecole Polytechnique, and had 
 subsequently amassed a modest competency in 
 Germany and Russia as a dealer in wines and 
 spirits ; and he set to work at once to organise 
 a priesthood. " L'individu social," Saint-Simon 
 had written, "c'est l'homme et la femme." It 
 followed that the sacred office could not be filled 
 by a man alone, or by a woman alone, but must 
 be held by a man and a woman jointly officially 
 styled "a couple." But not a married couple. 
 Enfantin, though no longer a Catholic, was still 
 dominated by Catholic ideas. The priest and 
 
 200 
 
Pere Enfantin 
 
 priestess must live chastely, " separated by a 
 cloud of incense." 
 
 Enfantin, however, was a logical man, not 
 ashamed of changing his mind ; and chastity had 
 only a brief importance in the Saint -Simonian 
 system. The essence of the system was that 
 the superior should exercise influence over the 
 inferior. All means to that end were good ; 
 the flesh shared the sanctity of the spirit ; the 
 embrace was a legitimate means of moral pro- 
 pagandism. It must be permissible, therefore, 
 for the priests and priestesses not only to embrace 
 each other, but also to embrace the members of 
 their flocks. Moreover, the family was fatal to 
 collectivism, and collectivism was more important 
 than the family. Free love must therefore take 
 the place of marriage, and children must not be 
 allowed to know who their fathers were. That 
 was the revised creed, and, whatever other people 
 might do, Enfantin lived up to it, refusing, in the 
 name of religion, to marry the young woman 
 whom he had seduced under promise of marriage, 
 and writing, in a letter to his mother, that if he 
 were married he could conceive of circumstances 
 in which he would feel it his duty to yield his 
 wife to some other member of the brotherhood 
 "that she might hold him in her caressing arms 
 at the moment when a profound grief required 
 some such powerful diversion." 
 
 The difficulty was to find a woman who, when 
 these doctrines had been widely promulgated, 
 
 20 1 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 was both worthy and willing to take the office of 
 high-priestess of this very remarkable sect. At 
 the great ceremonies of the sect a chair used to 
 be left vacant for her. It was hoped and 
 expected that she would enter uninvited and 
 announce herself, and that all the worshippers 
 would recognise her as the high-priestess for 
 whom they were waiting. At one of the services, 
 the expectation seemed about to be fulfilled. A 
 beautiful young woman entered the hall, attired 
 in blue Greek draperies, with white roses in her 
 hair. She had that day come of age, she said, 
 and had dedicated herself to the Saint 4 - Simonian 
 Apostolate ; she proposed to travel in Egypt 
 with Pere Enfantin. But even as she spoke, 
 there was a noise without the high falsetto of 
 an indignant female voice ; and the door opened, 
 and an indignant female form appeared, and it 
 was: " My daughter! What is my daughter 
 doing here ? My daughter must come home ' 
 with me at once." The postulant was led away 
 in hysterics, and the office remained vacant. 
 
 But why should not George Sand fill it ? That 
 was the question that the Saint-Simonians began 
 to ask themselves. 
 
 She seemed, for clear reasons, more fit to be 
 a priestess of that order than of any other. They 
 regarded her as the typical New Woman the 
 pioneer who had shown by the example of her 
 life the path to the emancipation of her sex ; 
 and they knew that she had "substituted for 
 
 202 
 
The Saint-Simonian Garb 
 
 marriage" what the articles of their faith styled 
 " successive or rather progressive unions." More- 
 over, she had shown her intelligent interest in 
 their proceedings. Accompanied by Alfred de 
 Musset, she had visited the monastery which 
 they set up at Menilmontant, and had admired 
 them or so they may have supposed in their 
 monastic garb, which consisted of sky-blue coats, 
 white trousers, and white waistcoats, with the 
 wearers' names embroidered on them in red 
 letters ; and she had even written to them in 
 encouraging terms. 
 
 " Faithful to the old affections of my childhood," 
 she declared, "and to old social hatreds, I cannot 
 separate the idea of Republic from that of 
 Regeneration. For the salvation of the world 
 it seems to me to be necessary that we should 
 destroy and that you should reconstruct. While 
 the energetic arms of the Republicans make the 
 town, the sacred sermons of the Saint-Simonians 
 will make the city. We are the soldiers ; you 
 are the priests." 
 
 And she added, with a fine lyrical out- 
 pouring : 
 
 "In my poet's head I dream of Homeric 
 combats which I watch, with a throbbing heart, 
 from the mountain top, or in the midst of which 
 I plunge, drunk with enthusiasm and a holy 
 vengeance. I dream also of a new day after the 
 
 203 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 storm is over, of a splendid sunrise, of altars 
 decked with flowers, of legislators crowned with 
 olives, of the rehabilitation of human dignity : 
 man freed from the tyranny of man, and woman 
 from the tyranny of woman, and a tutelage of 
 love exercised by the man over the woman, 
 and the priest over the man. . . . Let me, 
 therefore, groan and pray over this Jerusalem 
 which has lost its gods and has not yet saluted 
 its Messiah. My vocation is to hate evil, to 
 love good, and to fall on my knees before 
 beauty." 
 
 Nothing was more natural than that the high- 
 priesthood should be offered to the hymnodist 
 who had shown that she possessed all the 
 hierophantic qualities ; and overtures were made. 
 The Saint-Simonians came to George Sand, with 
 gifts in their hands, on New Year's Day. Her 
 small apartment was encumbered with their 
 offerings, which numbered sixty-three in all. 
 Garlands and bouquets descended upon her in 
 showers. She was presented with several 
 pictures, a writing-desk, a yard-measure, a cup 
 and saucer, a thermometer, and a pack of playing- 
 cards. Her dressing-table was loaded with 
 perfumery ; jewellery was represented by rings, 
 brooches, earrings, and bracelets ; the articles 
 of wearing apparel offered included hats and 
 boots, aprons and slippers, and even the most 
 intimate of under-garments. 
 
 204 
 
Saint-Simonian Overtures 
 
 The temptation must have been strong ; but 
 we are left to conjecture the reasons why she 
 did not yield to it. Probably there were more 
 reasons than one, and the psychological moment 
 had been allowed to pass. The litigation with 
 M. Dudevant may have been one obstacle ; for 
 it would hardly have improved the prospects of 
 the plaintiff in a demand for a judicial separa- 
 tion to come into Court in the character of 
 high-priestess of the Saint-Simonian Order. The 
 objections of Michel may well have been 
 another ; for he was probably a jealous, though 
 not an ardent lover. The desire expressed in 
 one of the letters, that Maurice and Solange 
 might have "a respectable mother" may also 
 have counted for something ; and so too may 
 the counsels of the austere ex-Abbe* Lamennais, 
 and the fear of the laughter of the frivolous 
 Madame d'Agoult. 
 
 The fact remains, at any rate, that, as the Saint- 
 Simonians approached George Sand, her attitude 
 towards them became more critical. Coming 
 under other influences, she found fault with their 
 methods. She was interested to learn that two 
 hundred copies of her portrait had been distributed 
 among the " proletariat " members of the brother- 
 hood, and she asked that twenty copies of that 
 portrait might be sent to her for her own use. 
 But she was disappointed to hear that the Saint- 
 Simonians were sending representatives to the 
 East to look for a new revelation. The essence 
 
 205 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 of Saint -Simonism, as she understood it, was 
 the abolition of private property. The rest 
 was vanity and vexation of spirit: "Jesuitical 
 metaphysics, and a pretended system of morality 
 in which no one really believes." 
 
 That was the answer, delivered to Adolphe 
 Gu^roult ; and it was final. George Sand and 
 the Saint -Simonians went their separate ways ; 
 and Liszt and Madame d'Agoult came to pay a 
 visit to Nohant. 
 
 206 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 George Sand and Liszt Liszt's elopement with Madame d'Agoult 
 Friendship of George Sand for Madame d'Agoult She 
 visits Madame d'Agoult and Liszt at Geneva They visit her 
 at Nohant Relations begin to be strained Practical jokes at 
 Nohant Eugene Pelletan's experiences as tutor to George 
 Sand's children. 
 
 LISZT'S relations with George Sand were the 
 subject of malicious gossip. Heine first declared 
 that he was her lover, and afterwards with- 
 drew the charge in strangely offensive language, 
 saying that she had " never felt the least 
 attraction towards the swaggering little insect." 
 Apparently, however, the charge and the re- 
 tractation were equally untrue. There was a 
 moment, indeed, when Alfred de Musset was 
 jealous of Liszt ; but Musset was just then 
 capable of being jealous of anybody, on the 
 strength of any idle rumour that he heard. 
 All our evidence goes to show that the terms 
 on which they lived were only those of Bohemian 
 camaraderie. 
 
 The great pianist was at that time the spoiled 
 darling of Parisian salons, living not only " in the 
 movement," but in all the movements, Romantic, 
 Saint-Simonian, and fashionable. Musical critics 
 
 207 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 " ran " him against Thalberg ; and before his star 
 the star of Thalberg paled. Women pursued him, 
 as women always do pursue the fashionable 
 pianist of the hour, holding, as women generally 
 do hold in such a case, that love may level ranks, 
 on the one condition that it is illicit. Aristocratic 
 ladies refused him the hands of their daughters, 
 but offered him their own hearts freely ; and one 
 aristocratic lady Marie, Comtesse d'Agoult, 
 whom we have already met as one of George 
 Sand's correspondents did not even wait to be 
 asked before leaving her husband for his sake. 
 
 Madame d'Agoult, ne'e de Flavigny, was thirty, 
 and one of the most beautiful women of her day 
 blue-eyed and golden-haired. Her marriage had 
 been de convenance ; her husband a typical 
 grand seigneur of the ancien regime was 
 twenty years older than herself ; she was bored ; 
 she was clever ; she was romantic. Above all, 
 perhaps, romance attracted her when there was 
 re 1 dame attaching to it. Her chief ambition 
 would seem to have been that the eyes of the 
 world should be fixed upon her as the Beatrice of 
 an artist of genius. For such notoriety she would 
 account no sacrifice too great ; and Liszt was 
 the man whom destiny seemed to have marked 
 out to be her Dante. She had had many flirta- 
 tions ; but that was nothing. What she sought 
 was at once a grande passion and a coup 
 dtclat. 
 
 Liszt, being partly under religious influences, 
 208 
 
Liszt and Madame d'Agoult 
 
 hesitated. He was willing to love, but shrank 
 from the irreparable step of an elopement ; and 
 he pleaded, almost as a girl pleads not to be 
 compelled to marry a man whom she does not 
 love. He pleaded personally, and also through 
 emissaries. He called upon the mother of his 
 mistress, Madame de Flavigny, and laid the case 
 before her, and also before the family solicitor. 
 He sent Abbe* Duguerray the same Abbe 
 Duguerray whom the Communists were at 
 a later day to shoot to make representations 
 on his behalf. Lamennais also acted for him, 
 and besought Madame d'Agoult, with tears in 
 his eyes, not to impose this severe strain upon 
 their common friend's devotion. 
 
 But all in vain. Madame d'Agoult had made 
 up her mind, and nothing but the coup de 
 theatre would satisfy her. If Liszt would not 
 compromise her, she would find a way of 
 compromising him. So she told him that 
 she was going to Basle with her mother, and 
 begged him to join them there. There could be 
 no harm in that, of course especially if they 
 stayed at different hotels ; and Liszt did not see 
 his way to refuse. The next thing that happened 
 was that Madame d'Agoult left her mother, and 
 presented herself, with all her luggage, in Liszt's 
 apartments. He could resist no longer, but 
 submitted to his mistress's more imperious will. 
 
 Thoughts of divorce and remarriage crossed 
 his mind. "If only we were Protestants ! " he 
 o 209 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 sighed ; but Madame d'Agoult had no views 
 of that sort. Noblesse oblige! She was an 
 aristocrat to the finger-tips, and he was only a 
 wandering musician. "The Comtesse d'Agoult," 
 she told him, "could, in no circumstances, become 
 Madame Liszt ; " * and he, having his own 
 notions of what honour compelled, did not press 
 the matter, but accepted the situation into which 
 she had forced him, and took all the blame for it. 
 Paris denounced him, not so much for immorality 
 as for presumption. The charge was that he had 
 " abducted " a great nobleman's wife, whereas the 
 truth was that she had abducted him. " Very 
 well, I will bear it," he said, when the allegation 
 was reported to him ; and he and Madame 
 d'Agoult settled at Geneva. 
 
 A woman, however, needs a woman's sympathy 
 when she tosses her cap over the windmills and 
 challenges social outlawry. It is easier, indeed, 
 in such a case, for a woman to be satisfied with 
 the society of men than it would be for a man to 
 be satisfied with the society of women ; but she 
 needs at least one friend of her own sex to stand 
 by her and accord her moral support in her 
 theatrical defiance of accepted codes ; and George 
 Sand, in this case, seemed marked out for the 
 role of sympathetic confidante. She had set the 
 example which Madame d'Agoult had followed ; 
 
 1 Just as Dorothea von Lieven could not think of becoming 
 Madame Guizot in spite of her passionate attachment to the 
 statesman. 
 
 210 
 
George Sand and Madame d'Agoult 
 
 the elopement with Liszt was very much on the 
 lines of the earlier elopement with Musset ; and 
 the aristocrat had already descended from her 
 social heights to form a romantic friendship with 
 the romantic novelist. 
 
 It was the liaison, indeed, which had brought 
 the friendship about. Liszt had taken George 
 Sand into his confidence ; and the confidence had 
 been received with no censorious comments, but 
 with an outburst of romantic enthusiasm. Liszt 
 was an artist ; artists, according to the Saint- 
 Simonians, and George Sand was nearly a Saint- 
 Simonian, were the true priests of humanity. 
 George Sand, therefore, felt that she must see, 
 and know, and love the aristocrat who was 
 prepared to make such " noble" sacrifices for an 
 artist's sake. She took her pen, and sat down at 
 once, and wrote a letter to her " beautiful countess 
 with the golden hair." 
 
 "I do not know you personally, but I have 
 heard Franz speak of you, and I have seen you ; 
 and I think I can, on the strength of that, tell you 
 that I love you, and that you are the only beauti- 
 ful, estimable, and truly noble person whom I 
 have seen conspicuous in the patrician sphere. 
 Your power must indeed be great to have made 
 me forget that you are a countess. 
 
 " At present, however, you are for me the true 
 type of the princess of fairy tale an artist of 
 noble manners and passionate heart, in speech 
 
 211 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 and style resembling the kings' daughters of poetic 
 times. That is how I see you, and I wish to love 
 you as you are and for what you are." 
 
 Madame d'Agoult did not reply. No doubt 
 she felt that it was her privilege as an aristocrat 
 to make the first advances. She accepted, how- 
 ever, Liszt's invitation to meet George Sand at 
 dinner at his mother's house ; and then she 
 accepted a further invitation to visit George Sand 
 herself in her Bohemian apartment. We have a 
 charming picture of that visit in one of the 
 Lettres dun Voyageur addressed to Liszt. 
 
 The garret was hung with blue curtains ; a few 
 engravings after Raphael were on the wall ; there 
 were plenty of books, and flowers and pipes ; 
 the guests for whom there were no seats could 
 stretch themselves on rugs upon the floor. Liszt 
 sat at the piano, and George Sand sat on top of 
 it. Emmanuel Arago had lifted her on to that 
 graceful perch, laughing at her because she was so 
 small, proposing for the future to carry her about 
 with him in a paper bag. Michel de Bourges, 
 listening to the music, was wrapt in contemplation 
 and dissolved in tears. " Young man, you are 
 great ! " he sobbed, in the intervals between the 
 pieces. Liszt's pupil Puzzi, who afterwards be- 
 came a Carmelite monk, lay at the feet of ex- 
 Abbe' Lamennais " the Saint of Brittany " who 
 discoursed to him of spiritual things ; and in the 
 midst of this gathering, "the Peri in the blue 
 
 212 
 
A Romantic Friendship 
 
 dress descended, like the fairies who appear to 
 the poor artists in Hoffmann's joyous tales." 
 
 The romantic friendship dated from that day. 
 " The first time I saw you," George Sand after- 
 wards wrote, " I thought you pretty, but you 
 were cold. The second time I told you that I 
 detested the aristocracy, not knowing that you 
 belonged to it. Instead of boxing my ears as I 
 deserved, you talked to me about your soul, as if 
 I had known you for ten years." 
 
 That was the beginning of a long correspond- 
 ence ; and there was no fear that the flight to 
 Geneva would put an end to the relations thus in- 
 augurated. On the contrary, it was understood that 
 George Sand would be the guest of the fugitives 
 as soon as she could get away. Apparently, 
 as we have seen, she thought of taking refuge 
 with them when Michel, that truculent propa- 
 gandist, locked her up in her room to meditate 
 upon his doctrines. The repeated adjournments, 
 however, of her suit against M. Dudevant claimed 
 her presence in France, and it was not until 
 towards the end of the summer of 1836 that she 
 was able to start for Switzerland. 
 
 Her spirits were high, in spite of the fact that 
 her relations with Michel were already beginning 
 to be strained. Probably she felt a sense of 
 relief in the temporary escape from his jurisdic- 
 tion. At all events, her record of the excursion 
 reads like the chronicle of a schoolgirl's holiday. 
 She and her friends and Puzzi and Major Pictet 
 
 213 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 made a trip to Chamonix, and behaved with an 
 abandon which caused them to be mistaken for 
 strolling players. They gave each other queer nick- 
 names. Madame d'Agoult's party were " the Fel- 
 lows " ; George Sand and her maid who thought 
 Martigny was Martinique, and wept to find herself 
 so far away from home and Maurice and Solange 
 were the Famille Piffoels, a sobriquet which the 
 length of their noses suggested. Like many other 
 travellers of less renown, they made jocular entries 
 in the visitors' book. Liszt described himself as a 
 ' 'musician philosopher," born on Parnassus, and 
 journeying from Doubt to Truth. The particulars 
 which George Sand furnished were as follows : 
 
 Nom des voyageurs 
 
 Domicile 
 
 D'ou Us vtennent 
 
 Ou Us vont . 
 
 Lieu de naissancc 
 
 Qualith 
 
 Date de leurs titres 
 
 Ddlivrts par qui 
 
 Famille Piffoels. 
 
 La Nature. 
 
 De Dieu. 
 
 Au Ciel. 
 
 Europe. 
 
 Flaneurs. 
 
 Toujours. 
 
 Par 1'opinion publique. 
 
 In October the friends parted, and were better 
 friends than ever. There exists a document, 
 drafted by Madame d'Agoult in playful imitation 
 of a legal contract, whereby they professed to 
 conclude an ''offensive and defensive alliance." 
 The most interesting clause in the document is 
 the following : 
 
 "It is agreed between the parties that public 
 214 
 
A Salon 
 
 morality is a word that rings hollow, being com- 
 posed of ninty-nine million private immoralities 
 fused together to make a public morality on the 
 principle that two blacks make a white. And it 
 is further agreed between the parties that they 
 will protest against the said public morality in 
 thought, word, and action." 
 
 Such was the bond of union between the 
 travellers who told the quidnuncs that they came 
 from God and were on their way to heaven. 
 " Charming and angelic in its goodness " is George 
 Sand's description of the letter containing the 
 text of the treaty ; and presently measures were 
 taken to give effect to it. The allies took apart- 
 ments in the same house the Hotel de France 
 in the Rue neuve-Lafitte and jointly opened a 
 salon to defy the world. 
 
 The aristocracy naturally did not accept and 
 presumably did not receive invitations. Women, 
 too, were almost as scarce as they were, at a later 
 date, in the salon of Lady Blessington ; Madame 
 Marliani, wife of the Spanish Consul, being the 
 only habitude of her sex. But Liszt filled the 
 house with artists, and George Sand introduced 
 her literary friends. Lamennais came, not having 
 been informed, perhaps, that his hostesses had 
 declared public morality to be the Enemy ; so did 
 Pierre Leroux, whom we shall meet again in a 
 more intimate connection with George Sand ; so 
 did Sainte-Beuve, of whom it is recorded that, if 
 
 215 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 not on that occasion, then on some other, he 
 "taught George Sand to pray." Other guests 
 were Heine, unaccompanied, one conjectures, by 
 Mathilde ; Ballanche, who loved Madame 
 Re"camier ; Eugene Sue, who had not yet achieved 
 fame with Les Mysteres de Paris ; Mickiewics, 
 the Polish poet ; Charles Didier l of Geneva, Victor 
 Schoelcher, Adolphe Nourrit, 2 and the inevitable 
 Michel. Truly a notable salon, well worthy to 
 have its history written, though it was only in 
 existence for two months and a half! 
 
 At the end of that time George Sand withdrew 
 to Nohant, either because she was tiring of in- 
 terminable conversation, or because influenza 
 was raging in Paris. But the friendship was still 
 unimpaired, and it was arranged that her friend 
 should follow her, and make a long stay in her 
 house. An attack of influenza detained Madame 
 d'Agoult for a few days, but she came as soon as 
 she was convalescent ; and the visit lasted, with 
 an interruption in the Spring, from February until 
 July. Three weeks after her arrival, we find her 
 writing to her friend Louis de Ronchaud : " I am 
 very happy here. My affection for George is 
 increasing. The country suits her better than 
 Paris, and it suits me better too." And a letter 
 from Liszt to the same correspondent tells us 
 
 1 Poet, novelist, and traveller, best known for his Rome 
 souterraine. 
 
 2 The opera singer. He committed suicide by throwing himself 
 from a window at Naples. 
 
 2l6 
 
The Beginning of Estrangement 
 
 how the time was passed, in riding, and reading, 
 and walking, and music, and philosophical 
 discussion. 
 
 It was during this period, however, that the 
 romantic friendship began to cool ; and the 
 reasons why it did so and was bound to do so 
 are not difficult to conjecture. The friends 
 necessarily saw too much of each other. In spite 
 of the fact that they had made common cause 
 against "public morality," their tastes and 
 dispositions differed, and their characters clashed ; 
 while, in so far as they were two of a trade, there 
 was an obvious opening for jealousy. Madame 
 d'Agoult had literary aspirations literature has 
 something more than a nodding acquaintance 
 with her under the pseudonym of " Daniel Stern " 
 and the laurels of George Sand did not suffer 
 her to sleep. She was an amateur, envious of 
 the greater renown of the professional, and 
 probably unable to see that the professional was 
 any cleverer than herself. 
 
 On the other hand, Madame d'Agoult was 
 grande dame, and though George Sand was 
 capable of affecting the style of grande dame 
 when she remembered her grandmother's lessons 
 in deportment, she generally forgot those lessons, 
 and behaved quite otherwise. She was Bohemian, 
 don gar$on, and she conducted her house after 
 the approved style of Liberty Hall perhaps one 
 may even say, after the fashion of the country- 
 houses of that smart set denounced by Father 
 
 217 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Vaughan and other popular preachers of our own 
 time. Liszt's account of the life there is only a 
 partial picture which her own letters to various 
 friends supplement with surprising particulars. 
 
 Practical jokes, we gather, were the order of 
 the day. Apple-pie beds were made ; April fool 
 tricks were played not all of them in the best of 
 taste. A distinguished stranger, for example, 
 called, asking to be allowed to introduce himself 
 and pay his homage ; and it was arranged that he 
 should be received by the maid, who pretended to 
 be the mistress, while George Sand hid herself 
 behind a curtain, and watched her admirer 
 bowing low before the servant and complimenting 
 her upon her literary genius. Eugene Pelletan 
 the father of M. Camille Pelletan, recently French 
 Naval Minister who was then living at Nohant 
 as Maurice Sand's tutor, was practically driven 
 out of the house by the annoyances which he 
 suffered. One of the party pretended to be 
 drunk, and wept upon his breast at the dinner- 
 table. Another presented him with a comestible 
 which he tried to eat, and which he then 
 discovered to be something so nauseating that 
 George Sand would not even name it in Latin 
 when she told the story. She complains, again 
 and again, that the tutor will not take these 
 jokes in good part, but " looks stupid, becomes 
 melancholy, thinks of eternity and infinity and 
 his misunderstood genius, and retires to bed." 
 
 There is no evidence, indeed, that any of these 
 218 
 
Alienation 
 
 jokes were played at Madame d'Agoult's expense. 
 If, for instance, the water which was poured out 
 of the window on to Pelletan's head, had fallen 
 on one of her expensive dresses, we may be 
 tolerably sure that she would have packed and 
 departed without loss of time. But the atmo- 
 sphere in which such things happened cannot 
 have been congenial to her. The whole tone 
 of the house must have jarred upon her equally 
 as grande dame and as a sentimental student of 
 the reflections and philosophisings of Senancour. 1 
 She was dignified even when she was frivolous, 
 and she discovered that her friend was vulgar 
 even when she was a love-sick Socialist. So 
 the seeds of estrangement were sown. 
 
 There was no open quarrel. Correspondence, 
 ostensibly amicable, still continued after Madame 
 d'Agoult and Liszt had left Nohant for the 
 Italian Lakes. But the correspondents began 
 to neglect each other, and to make the neglect a 
 matter for mutual reproaches ; and presently the 
 correspondence began to contain certain personal 
 references of which alienation was the natural 
 sequel. We find the name of Mallefille in 
 the letters, and, a little later, we find the name 
 of Chopin ; but these names belong to other 
 sections of the story, so that the relation of the 
 actual rupture must be postponed. 
 
 1 The author of Obermann. 
 
 219 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Death of George Sand's mother Solange kidnapped by M. Dude- 
 vant Pursuit and recapture Letters to Girerd on the waning 
 of the love of Michel George Sand consoles herself for the 
 loss of Michel's love by becoming the mistress of Felicien 
 Mallefille She and Madame d'Agoult quarrel about Mallefille 
 Mallefille supplanted by Pierre Leroux. 
 
 THE multifarious character of George Sand's 
 activities has compelled departure from the 
 chronological order of relation ; and even now it 
 is still necessary to turn back, and recapitulate, 
 and supplement. 
 
 Never, perhaps, did a woman of letters live 
 a more crowded life than she did in the eighteen 
 months or so which terminated at the end of the 
 Summer of 1837. One might have thought that 
 her litigation and her love affairs would have 
 sufficed to fill her time ; but she found leisure for 
 several other interests and occupations. She 
 toyed, as has been told, with Saint-Simonism ; 
 she adopted a new social creed under the influence 
 of Michel, and modified it under the influence of 
 Lamennais ; she laughed with Liszt and Madame 
 d'Agoult, and joined in the practical jokes played 
 upon Eugene Pelletan. Nor was that all. She 
 also studied phrenology, and nursed her children 
 
 220 
 
Death of Madame Maurice Dupin 
 
 through an attack of smallpox, and poured out 
 romances for Buloz, who was exigent, having 
 paid her in advance. There were times when 
 she had to toil thirteen hours a day, and to 
 sit all night at her desk, in order to keep pace 
 with his demands. 
 
 One of her interruptions was a summons to 
 her mother's deathbed. The frivolous little 
 woman died as she had lived still coquettish at 
 the age of seventy. " Please put my hair 
 straight," were her last recorded words. " I 
 suffered a good deal at her hands. My worst 
 troubles were due to her," wrote George Sand 
 to her friend Papet ; and we need not call her 
 an unnatural daughter for making the confession. 
 Madame Maurice Dupin was a silly woman as 
 well as a loose woman ; she had the mind and 
 the manners, as well as the morals, of a 
 daughter of the regiment, and must always have 
 been a weight about her daughter's neck. 
 Sympathy between them was impossible. The 
 further statement in the letter to Papet that "she 
 came at last to understand my character and to do 
 me full justice " does not inspire conviction. As 
 fairly might one speak of a sparrow understanding 
 and doing justice to an eagle. George Sand, 
 if we may trust her own report, had only loved 
 her mother, as a child, from chivalrous perversity, 
 to annoy her grandmother; and there is no 
 reason to doubt that the loss was borne with 
 easy resignation. 
 
 221 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 A more serious, and almost simultaneous 
 trouble was due to the action of M. Dudevant, 
 who kidnapped and carried off Solange " in spite 
 of the child's piercing shrieks and the resistance 
 of her governess." The news roused the mother 
 to instant and indignant action. She " raised 
 the Devil," as she puts it. She pursued the 
 fugitives for three days and three nights in a 
 post-chaise. She called in the police and set the 
 law in motion. She overtook M. Dudevant, 
 attended by a sub-prefect, an officer of gen- 
 darmes, and an armed escort just in time, for 
 M. Dudevant was on the point of taking refuge 
 in Spain. The house in which he was staying 
 was surrounded, and he was summoned to 
 surrender. He had no choice but to do so ; 
 and Solange a self-willed, obstinate child, whose 
 screams probably had not been without their 
 influence was handed over to her mother "like 
 a princess on the frontier of two States." 
 
 The date of these events is also, approximately, 
 the date of the final rupture with Michel. A few 
 letters from George Sand to their common 
 friend Frederic Girerd supplement the documents 
 already quoted with reference to this branch of 
 the subject, but without really adding very much 
 to our knowledge of it. Girerd, it seems, had 
 warned her that the liaison would turn out badly, 
 and she admits that he was right. 
 
 " You think that I am happy, my friend. Far 
 222 
 
Michel 
 
 from that. In addition to the painful illnesses 
 in my house, I have suffered at Michel's hands 
 all that you foresaw, and the predictions con- 
 tained in your last letter have also been fulfilled. 
 Weary of my devotion, having fought my pride 
 with all the power of my love, and getting 
 nothing but hardness and ingratitude for my 
 reward, I have felt my soul broken and my love 
 extinguished. Now I am cured. Do not con- 
 gratulate me too warmly on this melancholy 
 happiness, and yet do not pity me too much ; 
 for, relatively speaking, I have reason to be 
 grateful to my destiny. These frightful agonies 
 have yielded to their own excess. By dint of 
 bleeding the wound is healed, and this time I 
 am sure of myself: I love no longer. I feel 
 that the veil has fallen, and that I have recovered 
 my strength. I need it, for I feel that I have 
 reached the lowest step on the ladder of dis- 
 enchantment. But what matter? Are we on 
 earth to be happy ? Have we the right to be 
 happy ? We have put out to sea, and the will 
 of the winds and the waves must be done." 
 
 That was apparently written in the Spring of 
 !^37, when the children were ill. Later letters 
 show Michel anxious for the renewal of relations 
 that have been suspended and George Sand 
 refusing. " I cannot and I will not" she writes, 
 and adds : 
 
 "Some day, perhaps, Michel will realise that 
 223 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 he has cruelly broken the most devoted heart 
 that ever beat for him. If that time ever comes, 
 and he desires my friendship, he will find in me 
 a sentiment which age will have rendered more 
 calm, but not less sincere and tender. But that 
 time is far remote. Years will be needed to 
 close the deep wound in my heart." 
 
 Michel, she continues, has expressed the wish 
 to see her, but she would prefer not to meet him. 
 She was quite sure that pride rather than affec- 
 tion was the motive of his wish. Would Girerd 
 make excuses to him, and tell him that she was 
 going away to an uncertain destination ? But 
 Michel persisted. Instead of going to visit 
 George Sand, he peremptorily summoned her 
 to visit him ; and then she writes : 
 
 11 You think I didn't go ? Then you are 
 wrong. I galloped eight leagues on a chilly 
 evening to see him for a moment. He spent 
 two days with me. He was on his way to 
 Niort ; and, on his way back, though he had 
 sworn he would never set foot at Nohant again, 
 he turned up in the middle of the night. His 
 kindness and tenderness are inconceivable after 
 all the cruel incidents in our relations. For the 
 rest, our respective positions are changed ; and 
 there have been such strange complications that 
 I can only tell you about them by word of 
 mouth. . . . Come and see me." 
 
 And the nature of those complications ? The 
 224 
 
Eugfene Pelletan 
 
 next letter, written only a few days later, gives 
 us a glimpse of them. 
 
 " I think I have at last struck down the dragon, 
 and I believe that this tenacious passion which 
 was destroying all my faculties has been cured by 
 a gentler affection, less enthusiastic, but not less 
 durable. Michel is now safely sheltered from 
 any despite that I might have felt towards him. 
 He is in the element in which alone he can live. 
 From time to time he sees some of my friends 
 and tells them that I am the only woman he 
 ever loved. What a love ! But I no longer 
 feel hurt. Calm and the sense of justice have 
 re-entered my heart ; and I love him to-day on 
 the same terms on which you love him yourself. 
 At least I flatter myself that it is so, and hope 
 that it is so, and labour to make it so." 
 
 And this means, when we name the names, 
 and put the dots upon the i's, that Eugene 
 Pelletan had resigned his position as Maurice 
 Sand's tutor and that Felicien Mallenlle had 
 been appointed in his place. 
 
 Madame Karenine, in her Life of George 
 Sand, makes an unnecessary puzzle of Pelletan's 
 departure. Apparently she has a lurking sus- 
 picion that he played the part of Joseph in the 
 house of Potiphar's wife ; but that explanation 
 is hardly needed. He was a very young man, 
 with a very keen sense of his personal dignity ; 
 r 225 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 and that dignity had not been respected. The 
 apple-pie beds, the false sausage, and the 
 other "poissons dAvril" upset his unstable 
 equanimity. He wrote to a friend complaining 
 of the strange treatment accorded to tutors in 
 that extraordinary establishment. George Sand 
 saw the letter, suspected its contents, opened it 
 and read it. It was inevitable, after that, that he 
 must either resign or be dismissed ; and we find 
 a not unnatural reflection of the rupture in the 
 fact that he and his pupil cut each other when 
 they passed in the streets of Paris. Mallefille 
 succeeded him. First he was private tutor ; 
 then he was private secretary ; then he supplied 
 that gentle affection, devoid of enthusiasm, which 
 consoled George Sand for the loss of the love of 
 Michel. Or, at any rate, he supplied a portion 
 of it for a period. 
 
 The episode is rather obscure. George Sand 
 and Mallefille, living in the same house, had no 
 need to correspond ; consequently theje are no 
 letters to be quoted ; and the story, in so far as 
 it can be reconstructed, is full of contradictions. 
 George Sand, in writing about Mallefille, always 
 took the tone of one who was suffering a fool, and 
 not suffering him particularly gladly. She laughed 
 at him for having "a beard seven feet long," and 
 also for not having any sense. She expressed the 
 wish that he would be more intelligent for a 
 change, and the opinion that some foolish pro- 
 ceeding of his on which she commented was 
 
 226 
 
Falicien Mallefille 
 
 "even more foolish than usual." And we find 
 Madame d'Agoult writing : 
 
 " Do you remember how we quarrelled about 
 
 M ? How ugly, and stupid, and silly, and 
 
 vain, and insufferable he was! You seemed to 
 be animated towards him with such furious 
 rage as Homer puts in the hearts of Juno and 
 Venus ; and I was obliged to tell you a mezza 
 voce that I thought it was necessary to try to 
 live on terms of peace with other people's 
 little vanities, though living on terms with one's 
 own vanity was perhaps the most difficult task 
 of all." 
 
 And yet Mallefille, however conceited, was not 
 a fool, for he lived not only to " ghost" for 
 Dumas, but also to write plays for the national 
 theatre, and to be the diplomatic representative 
 of his country at the Portuguese Court ; and his 
 status, in spite of the disdain expressed for him, 
 was indubitably that of a lover. Balzac bears 
 witness to the fact in one of the Lettres a 
 L'Etrangere ; and so do the journalists who 
 wrote his obituary notices when he died. In 
 later life, we gather from these necrologies, he 
 became the intimate friend of Jules Sandeau ; 
 and the two men used often to sit together, ex- 
 changing reminiscences of the woman who had 
 been the mistress of both of them. 
 
 It is a confused and confusing condition of 
 227 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 things, and one must reconcile the conflicting 
 facts as best one can. Presumably Mallefille's 
 alleged lack of intelligence was only the 
 gaucherie of an unformed youth ; and it also 
 seems fair to presume that that gaucherie was 
 more objectionable to Madame d'Agoult than 
 to George Sand herself. At all events, his 
 gaucherie ultimately caused quarrels between 
 them, a good deal more deadly than those re- 
 ferred to in the letter quoted. 
 
 Mallefille presumed to write a letter to Madame 
 d'Agoult, and Madame d'Agoult took offence, and 
 held George Sand responsible. George Sand, 
 she said, had had Mallefille in the house quite 
 long enough to teach him the art of polite letter 
 writing ; whence it may be inferred that Mallefille 
 had expressed himself without sufficient regard 
 for the reverence due to ladies of the ancienne 
 noblesse even when they run from their husbands 
 to live with wandering musicians. George Sand 
 showed the letter to Mallefille, and he also insisted 
 that the fault was hers ; so that there ensued a 
 lively three-cornered duel of recriminations. 
 
 The recriminations, however, were not the 
 immediate cause of Mallefille's withdrawal from 
 Nohant ; and his place in George Sand's life may 
 be best defined as that of a later analogue of 
 Pagello. Just as Pagello had been her temporary 
 refuge from Mussel's passionate extravagances, 
 so she fell back for a while upon Mallefille when 
 Michel became too dictatorial. The force of habit 
 
 228 
 
The Errand of Pierre Leroux 
 
 had made a lover necessary ; but she wanted 
 a lover who would not impose too severe a 
 strain upon a heart that had latterly been over- 
 taxed a lover too weak to make trouble or cause 
 remorse when the time came, as she foresaw that 
 it would, to treat him badly. 
 
 In the course of six months or so, the time 
 came, and she did treat Mallefille badly, and 
 with a sans-gne that was characteristic of her. 
 Tiring of intimacy, she suspended it, with as little 
 to-do as a sultan makes when deposing a harem 
 favourite, proposing that the tutor, though ex- 
 cluded from her embraces, should still live in her 
 house and teach her son. 
 
 As no letters passed, it is impossible to say 
 exactly what was Mallefille's attitude towards the 
 proposition. Apparently he was willing to accept 
 his diminished status believing, perhaps, that he 
 had only been provisionally degraded until he 
 discovered that a rival had supplanted him. He 
 soon suspected a rival, however ; and presently 
 we find George Sand writing to her new friend, 
 Pierre Leroux, that Mallefille has been making 
 scandals about her, and provoking her friends to 
 duels. For the moment, she says, he seems to 
 have got over his excitement ; but she fears that 
 the trouble may recommence at any time. Will 
 Leroux, therefore, please go to see him, and try 
 to calm him down ? 
 
 " When the question of women comes up 
 229 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 between you," she says, "tell him emphatically 
 that women do not belong to men by the right 
 of brute force, and that he will gain nothing by 
 cutting anybody's throat." And she adds : " Pray 
 be the saviour of the drowning man, and the 
 consoler of the unknown martyr who has adopted 
 a profession which he detests, but will not 
 abandon it because of the responsibility that 
 rests upon his shoulders." 
 
 Pierre Leroux went upon this .strange errand, 
 and discharged it with success. Then he re- 
 turned to Nohant and became the successor of 
 the man whom he had "saved." 
 
 
 230 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Balzac's visit to Nohant His estimate of George Sand's character 
 Pierre Leroux dismissed to the empyrean The origin of 
 the amour with Chopin. 
 
 BALZAC'S report to Madame de Hanska 1 of his 
 visit to George Sand at Nohant runs, the in- 
 essential being eliminated, as follows : 
 
 " CARA CONTESSINA, Hearing that George 
 Sand was at her country seat at Nohant, a short 
 distance from Frapesle, I went to call on her ; so 
 you shall have the autographs you want ; and 
 as you are as inquisitive as you are eminent 
 or as eminent as you are inquisitive I will tell 
 you the story of my visit. 
 
 " I arrived at Nohant on the Saturday before 
 Ash Wednesday at about half-past seven in the 
 evening, and I found our comrade George Sand 
 in her dressing-gown, smoking her after-dinner 
 cigar by the fireside in an immense and lonely 
 room. She was wearing pretty yellow slippers 
 ornamented with fringes, neat stockings, and red 
 pantaloons. That was her moral aspect ; phys- 
 
 1 The " Etrangere " with whom Balzac corresponded for so long, 
 and whom he ultimately married. 
 
 231 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 ically she had a double chin like an ecclesiastic. 
 In spite of her fearful misfortunes, she has not a 
 white hair on her head ; her dark complexion 
 remains unaltered ; her eyes are as bright as 
 ever. . . . She has been at Nohant for a year, 
 in a melancholy mood, working terribly hard. 
 Her manner of life bears a close resemblance to 
 my own. She goes to bed at six in the morning, 
 and gets up at midday, whereas I go to bed at 
 six in the evening and get up at midnight ; but, 
 naturally, I have adapted my habits to hers, and 
 for three days we have regularly gossiped from 
 five in the evening after dinner until five in 
 the morning, with the result that I have come to 
 know her better than during the four years when 
 she used to visit me from time to time better 
 than when she was in love with Sandeau, better 
 than when she was living with Musset. 
 
 " There was some advantage in my seeing her, 
 for we exchanged confidences concerning Sandeau. 
 I was the last man to blame her for leaving him ; 
 to-day I only feel a profound compassion for her. 
 She was still more unhappy, however, with Musset ; 
 and now she is living in complete retirement, con- 
 demning both marriage and love, since both these 
 estates have brought her nothing but deceptions. 
 
 "Her male complement was rare that is all 
 that there is to be said ; and her male complement 
 will be the more difficult to find because she is 
 not amiable and cannot win affection. She is 
 a female bachelor, she is an artist, she is great, 
 
 232 
 
A Visit from Balzac 
 
 she is generous, she is devoted, she is chaste. 
 Her dominant characteristics are those of a man. 
 Therefore, she is not to be regarded as a woman. 
 While talking to her for three days, and opening 
 my heart to her on all subjects, I never once 
 arrived at that superficial gallantry of manner 
 which one is expected, in France and Poland, 
 to display in conversing with every woman. I 
 felt that I was chatting with a comrade. . . . We 
 discussed with a high seriousness, a good faith, 
 a candour and a conscientiousness worthy of 
 great shepherds guiding human flocks, the great 
 questions of marriage and liberty. For, as she 
 said with an immense pride to which I myself 
 should not have ventured to aspire: "Our 
 writings are paving the way for a revolution in 
 the morals of the future, but I see the drawbacks 
 of the one condition as clearly as those of the 
 other." And we sat up all night discussing this 
 great problem. ... I have made great headway 
 if I have persuaded Madame Dudevant to 
 recognise the necessity of marriage ; but I am 
 sure that she will come to believe in it, and I 
 think I have done her some good in demonstrating 
 it to her. 
 
 " She is an excellent mother, adored by her 
 children ; but she dresses her daughter Solange 
 as a boy and that is bad. Morally she is like 
 a lad of twenty ; for, in her heart of hearts, she 
 is chaste and a prude. It is only in externals that 
 she comports herself as an artist. She smokes 
 
 233 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 a great deal more than is good for her ; perhaps 
 she is a little too fond of assuming the airs of a 
 princess, and I am convinced that she drew a 
 faithful picture of herself in the princess of the 
 Secretaire Intime. . . . Like myself, she laughs 
 at the glory which she has achieved, and has a 
 profound contempt for the public, which she styles 
 'Jumento.' 
 
 11 If I were to relate to you this woman's 
 immense and secret devotion to two men, you 
 would say that angels and devils have nothing in 
 common. All her follies are titles to glory in 
 the eyes of those whose souls are noble. She 
 has been duped by Dorval, by Bocage, by 
 Lamennais. In the same way she is the dupe 
 of Liszt and Madame d'Agoult but she is 
 beginning to see it, for she has a powerful in- 
 telligence, capable of recovering lost ground. 
 
 " Apropos of Liszt and Madame d'Agoult, she 
 gave me the subject of Les GaUriens, or 
 Amours forces. I am going to make some- 
 thing of it, for she in her position cannot." 
 
 That was written on March 2, 1838. From 
 the allusion to the Secretaire Intime we may 
 gather that Mallefille was still in favour ; while 
 from the nature of the allusion, and from the 
 environing remarks, we may also infer that 
 Mallefille was not taken seriously. He had no 
 hold upon his mistress through passion, like 
 Musset ; he could not dominate her through 
 
 234 
 
Pierre Leroux 
 
 his intellect like Michel ; there was hardly even 
 any sentimental link between them. He was 
 merely a nonentity on whom she imposed an 
 obligation ; and it seemed absurd to her that he 
 should be angry when released from it. She 
 had not intended to engage his heart ; he had 
 therefore no right to assume that his vanity was 
 compromised. He was an amorous boy, and must 
 be taught to see things in their true proportion. 
 Leroux must call on him, and lecture him ; his 
 reward should be to supplant the youth whom he 
 admonished. 
 
 And so, as we have seen, it happened ; only 
 Leroux was another of those who passed but 
 lightly through George Sand's life, leaving but 
 little trace behind. 
 
 His education had been interrupted through 
 the financial embarrassments of his parents. 
 Withdrawn from the Ecole Polytechnique, he 
 had had to make a fresh start in life as a stone- 
 mason and a compositor, and had found that the 
 way out lay through journalism. He had edited 
 the Globe, making it the organ of Saint- 
 Simonism, but had found himself , unable to 
 go all the way with Pere Enfantin. He could 
 not accept free love in theory, though in practice 
 the flesh might be weak. So he seceded, and 
 thought out a system of his own an eclectic 
 system to which Buddha and Pythagoras con- 
 tributed and, if only he had had more followers, 
 might have become a great intellectual leader. 
 
 235 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 George Sand, however, was a follower at all 
 events for a season. An " influence" had come 
 to be as necessary to her as a lover. Only by 
 pot-boiling under an influence could she persuade 
 herself that she raised pot-boiling to the dignity 
 of preaching. It was not necessary that the lover 
 should also be the influence, or that the influence 
 should also be the lover ; but the coincidence 
 tended to occur from time to time, and it occurred 
 in the case of Pierre Leroux, though their intimacy 
 was only, as it were, a passing salutation. 
 
 He was an absent-minded man, whose proper 
 dwelling-place was in the clouds of abstract 
 speculation. His helplessness in the ordinary 
 situations of everyday life is illustrated by the 
 account which he gave to George Sand of a call 
 which he paid upon Madame d'Agoult : "I was 
 all splashed with mud, and felt ashamed of myself, 
 and tried to hide in a corner. The lady came and 
 spoke to me with incredible kindness. How 
 beautiful she was ! " But he could not remember 
 whether she was short or tall, or fair or dark, and, 
 asked how he knew her to be beautiful, could only 
 answer, " I don't know. But she was carrying 
 a beautiful bouquet, and I inferred that she 
 herself must also be beautiful and good." 
 
 That is how the philosopher dreamed his way 
 through the world ; and George Sand's task was 
 to draw the dreamer down to the realities. She 
 and Madame Marliani had some plan for secretly 
 defraying the cost of the education of his children ; 
 
 236 
 
Fellow-Fighters 
 
 but he found them out, and his pride brought the 
 scheme to nothing. Calumny accused them of 
 getting drunk together, on Sunday afternoons, in 
 suburban restaurants, and reeling home arm-in- 
 arm ; but the charge is not very credible. The 
 real descent from the clouds only took place when 
 he became her lover ; and the re-ascent was a 
 natural and easy process. Leroux was not sensi- 
 tive, like Mallefille. His love was of his life a 
 thing apart an act of civility, perhaps an in- 
 cident, at any rate, to which he attached very little 
 importance. To get rid of him was as easy as 
 saying good-bye at the end of an afternoon call. 
 There was no breach in the continuity of either 
 influence or friendship : the friendship was merely 
 transferred from the lower to the higher plane. 
 
 Pierre Leroux and George Sand, therefore, 
 ceasing to be lovers, continued to be fellow-fighters 
 in Humanitarian causes. They even started the 
 Reviie Independante together because, when 
 Leroux offered to write an article on " God " for 
 the Revue des deux Mondes, Buloz declared the 
 subject to be "lacking in actuality." But the 
 sentimental connection was over long before that 
 alliance was concluded, and was never to be 
 renewed. From that point of view they were 
 ships that had passed in the night and spoken 
 each other in passing. Leroux's course was 
 presently to lead him through politics to exile. 
 George Sand's had already led her to the Balearic 
 Isles with Chopin. 
 
 237 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 She had known the musician for a couple of 
 years quite uneventfully. He was not disposed 
 to like her, and Madame d'Agoult had done her 
 best to prejudice her against him. " Chopin 
 coughs very gracefully," she had written ; and 
 also : " Chopin is the most inconstant of men ; 
 there is nothing permanent about him but his 
 cough." And George Sand had not cared 
 whether that was so or not ; for those were the 
 days of her devotion to Michel de Bourges. 
 
 Presently, however, came the rupture with 
 Michel ; and after the rupture with Michel came 
 the rupture with Mallefille ; and Leroux hardly 
 counted, but was ready to be dismissed to the 
 empyrean at any time. That was the condition 
 of things when George Sand and Chopin met 
 again. 
 
 He was sad so the story goes for a woman 
 whom he had loved had proved untrue. Marie 
 Wodzinska but that story would be out of place 
 upon this page. He mourned for Marie 
 Wodzinska ; and the theme on which he impro- 
 vised as he sat at the piano was a lamentation ; 
 and George Sand stood beside him listening 
 leaning towards him looking into his eyes 
 intoxicating him with the odour of violets. He 
 finished, and looked up, and met her gaze ; and 
 she bent down, without a word, and kissed him 
 on the lips. 
 
 According to one version of the story, she thus 
 kissed Chopin on the first occasion on which she 
 
 238 
 
Chopin 
 
 met him, without even waiting for him to be 
 presented to her ; but that seems to be untrue. 
 She waited two years, and dismissed three lovers, 
 before taking the initiative ; but it was she and 
 not Chopin who took it. He accepted the gift 
 which she offered ; and her kiss sealed him to her 
 for eight years. 
 
 239 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Chopin's early struggles His sudden success His proposal of 
 marriage to Marie Wodzinska The meeting with George 
 Sand and the decision to travel together to Majorca. 
 
 FRDRIC CHOPIN was the son of Nicolas Chopin, 
 who kept a boarding-school at Warsaw. Of 
 course he was precocious, and of course he was 
 petted by a society to which he did not, by birth, 
 belong : the biographies of great musicians always 
 run upon those lines. Of course, too, he left his 
 little provincial town to conquer the capitals ; 
 and of course he met with sentimental adventures 
 by the way. 
 
 He was a man of genius as much greater than 
 Liszt as Liszt was greater than Thalberg ; an 
 artist as well as a virtuoso ; a creator as well as 
 an executant ; self-confident, but not self-conscious ; 
 with an artist's narrow intensity of vision, purpose, 
 and interests. He was not, like Liszt, blown 
 about by every wind of fashionable doctrine, but 
 accepted, without question, the Catholic creed of 
 his fathers. Nor did he, like Liszt, run after 
 women. He needed their sympathy, indeed ; 
 but it came to him unsought, and it never filled 
 his life. He let himself be loved and waited 
 
 240 
 
Chopin's Early Struggles 
 
 upon and went on with his work. Love was 
 for him a comforting balm, not a consuming 
 fire. 
 
 His early struggles in Paris though short were 
 rather sharp. He gave a concert and lost money 
 over it. Kalkbrenner assumed patronising airs 
 and proposed to take him as his pupil for three 
 years, whereas Chopin was quite sure that he 
 played at least as well as Kalkbrenner. He 
 husbanded his resources carefully, but they were 
 nearly exhausted. A woman tempted him. She 
 was young and beautiful, and neglected by her 
 husband, and "musical," and she lived on the 
 same staircase as the musician. Would he not 
 call ? she asked. Would he not spend the after- 
 noon with her ? But he refused, held back not by 
 the principles of an austere virtue, but by a sense 
 of shame at his own poverty. So one gathers 
 from the cry of pain that escaped him in a letter 
 to a friend. " At least," he wrote, " I should have 
 found a good chimney corner and a good fire. 
 Ah ! How I should like to warm myself! " But 
 he was proud, and preferred to shiver. 
 
 The day came when he nearly had to acknow- 
 ledge himself beaten. He even made up his 
 mind to leave Europe and try his fortune in 
 America. " To-morrow," he wrote to his parents, 
 " I shall cross the sea ; " but at the eleventh hour 
 an accident saved him from that necessity. His 
 compatriot, Prince Valentin Radziwill, met him 
 in the street, and took him, the same evening, 
 Q 241 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 to a reception given by Baron James de Roths- 
 child. He played, and triumphed. Pupils 
 offered themselves ; invitations were showered 
 upon him. He became of a sudden the fashion 
 the darling of the drawing-rooms the rival, 
 though also the friend of Liszt. 
 
 That was towards the end of 1831 ; and for 
 five years from that date Chopin was both pros- 
 perous and happy. " Me voila lanct! " he writes. 
 " I mix in the very best society. I have my 
 place in it beside ambassadors, princes, and 
 ministers, though how I got there I don't know. 
 . . . Pixis has put my name on his orchestral 
 variations. Kalkbrenner himself has taken one 
 of my mazurkas as the theme of one of his 
 improvisations. Conservatoire pupils pupils, 
 that is to say, of Moscheles and Herz artists 
 of consummate merit come to me for lessons, 
 and assign me a position in the art of music at 
 least equal to that of Field. ... I have five 
 lessons to give in the course of the morning ; 
 but don't imagine that I am making my fortune. 
 My hired carriage, and my white gloves, without 
 which I should not be 'good form,' cost me 
 more than I am earning." 
 
 The last statement, of course, was a playful 
 exaggeration. Chopin was not amassing a 
 fortune, but his income sufficed for his needs. 
 He could afford to break up the furniture 
 when incompetent pupils struck false notes 
 and sometimes he did. He could afford to be 
 
 242 
 
Five Years of Happiness 
 
 arrogant with bourgeois who tried to patronise 
 him, and sometimes he was. This is the period 
 of the famous retort, " Really, sir, I have eaten 
 so little," discharged at the nouveau riche who 
 had invited him to a dinner party in the hope 
 of obtaining a gratuitous musical entertainment. 
 His real friends, in whose society he lived 
 naturally and happily, were musicians and other 
 artists : Berlioz, Liszt, and Meyerbeer ; Delacroix ; 
 Nourrit ; his compatriot poets Mickiewics and 
 Slowacki ; and Henri Heine, who exclaimed in 
 his enthusiasm, " Cherished child of the Muses, 
 Polish by birth, German by poetry, Italian by 
 art, French by your lucidity and elegance, you 
 are the fellow-countryman of all of us." 
 
 It was during these five years of happiness, 
 too, that Chopin visited Germany. He went to 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, to Carlsbad, to Dresden, to 
 Marienbad. He saw his father, whose ailments 
 had driven him to drink the waters ; he met 
 Mendelssohn, and Schumann, and Clara Wieck, 
 and Wenzel. Above all, he met and loved 
 and was separated from Marie Wodzinska. 
 
 They had met before. Her brothers one of 
 them became one of Chopin's biographers had 
 been pupils at Nicolas Chopin's boarding-school ; 
 and she had been taken there by her mother to visit 
 them. He had even given her music lessons, when 
 she was a child of five and he a child of ten, dressed 
 in the beautiful velvet suit to which he attributed 
 his first artistic triumphs. They had exchanged 
 
 243 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 such vows as such children do exchange, and 
 grew up remembering them ; and so the time 
 passed until Fritz she called him Fritz went 
 abroad to seek fame and fortune in a foreign 
 land, and Marie was taken by her mother to 
 finish her education at Geneva. 
 
 Their hearts were hardly faithful exclusively 
 faithful, at all events in the years that followed. 
 That would have been too much to expect, 
 seeing that they were both young, and both, in 
 their several ways, successful. Chopin, as we 
 have seen, was a success in the salon as well as 
 the concert hall ; and Marie Wodzinska was 
 surrounded by admirers. Louis Napoleon, then 
 an exile in Switzerland and an artillery officer 
 at Thun, was one of them, and called her his 
 "dark-eyed daughter of Euterpe." The Polish 
 poet Slovacki, already mentioned, was another. 
 Sometimes Marie Wodzinska corresponded with 
 Chopin while flirting with Slovacki ; sometimes 
 she corresponded with Slovacki while flirting with 
 Chopin. While travelling about the Continent, 
 she contrived to meet them alternately in different 
 towns, and she seems to have inspired them 
 both : Chopin to waltzes, Slovacki to his 
 famous poem entitled En Suisse. Evidently 
 she flirted her way through life, unconscious of 
 impending tragedy. 
 
 The tragedy if tragedy it is to be called 
 came to its crisis when, after long periods of 
 dalliance at Dresden and Marienbad, Chopin 
 
 244 
 
Marie Wodzinska 
 
 mustered his courage and declared himself, pro- 
 posing marriage. That, of course, was the cue 
 for the head of the family to enter and forbid 
 the banns. He was a nobleman. The daughter 
 of a nobleman could not marry a musician 
 least of all a musician whom the world only 
 knew as a strolling pianoforte player. It sounds 
 a hard saying to us who know Chopin ; but 
 the prejudice is hardly peculiar to the period. 
 Most noblemen would take the same tone towards 
 pianist suitors even to-day ; and it sounds, in 
 view of all the circumstances, a good deal less 
 offensive than " La Comtesse d'Agoult ne sera 
 jamais Madame Liszt." That was a case of 
 feline and improper pride. Of poor Marie 
 Wodzinska one can say no more than that she 
 feared her fate too much, and that her desert 
 was small. Her lover pressed her to defy 
 authority ; but her answer, as she confided to 
 her brother, was "that she would never 
 oppose the will of her parents, and did not 
 think she would be able to influence their 
 will, but that, whatever happened, her heart 
 would always, always, gratefully remember his 
 affection." 
 
 So they parted ; and, a year later, Marie 
 married Count Skarbeck. The marriage was 
 unhappy, and the Pope was persuaded to de- 
 clare it null ; but a second union with a 
 M. Orpiszewski was more fortunate. The wife 
 nursed the husband for eighteen years, and sur- 
 
 245 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 vived him, and still played Chopin's music in 
 preference to any other ; while Chopin, on his 
 part, kept the faded rose which she had given 
 him at Dresden. It was found, after his death, 
 in an envelope tied up with black ribbon, in 
 sign of mourning, and bearing the Polish in- 
 scription " Moi bie da " which means, being 
 interpreted, "my trouble, my grief, my regrets, 
 my torment, and my burden." 
 
 No doubt the rose did mean all that for 
 him at certain hours. It stood for an illusion 
 in which he could always believe because he 
 had never put it to the test - - the mirage 
 which had never dissolved because he had 
 always kept his distance from it. He had 
 dreamt of settling down with Marie in some 
 provincial Polish place, teaching music in happy 
 obscurity, and so finding an escape from life : 
 he had had no experience to teach him that, 
 wherever the escape from life may lie, the 
 path to it is not through the Philistia of the 
 provinces ; he could dream his dream over 
 again as often as his heart was sore and 
 tired. 
 
 Only that did not mean that he was inconsol- 
 able far from it. The more acute his distress, 
 the greater his need for consolation ; and his 
 sense of the need of an escape from life was the 
 more intense because the strain of overwork and 
 excessive excitement had told upon him, and he 
 was ill. Though doctors denied it, the seeds of 
 
 246 
 
Departure for Majorca 
 
 phthisis had almost certainly been sown. He 
 needed love ; and he also needed rest and sun- 
 shine to be waited upon and worshipped while 
 he basked in one of the back-waters of life. That 
 was his condition moral and physical when 
 George Sand listened to his playing, and flashed 
 her luminous dark eyes on him, and kissed him 
 on the lips, and made him come to see her every 
 day, and finally carried him off to spend a winter 
 with her in the Balearic Isles. 
 
 Which of the two actually proposed that they 
 should travel together one does not know. 
 Karsowski says that the suggestion was Chopin's ; 
 Liszt that it was George Sand's : the statements 
 in UHistoire de ma Vie are vague and non- 
 committal ; from Chopin, owing to the gaps in 
 his correspondence, we have no statement at all. 
 All that we do know for certain is that Chopin 
 was very far from flaunting his liaison after the 
 manner of Musset. Instead of making a public 
 departure with his mistress, as Musset did, in 
 the public coach, he stole away secretly to join 
 her at Perpignan. Only a few of his most intimate 
 friends were in his confidence, and these he 
 implored not to betray him. Even the selection 
 of such a terra incognita as Majorca in prefer- 
 ence to any well-known winter city must, one 
 surmises, have been due to his desire to evade 
 observation. The sudden change in George 
 Sand's plans disclosed in the Correspondence 
 cannot be accounted for on any other theory. 
 
 247 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Early in October her intention was to go to 
 either Switzerland or Italy for the benefit of her 
 son's health ; and she wrote to that effect to Major 
 Adolphe Pictet, of Geneva, asking him for practical 
 information as to prices, apartments, etc., and 
 adding that she wished to avoid "the English, 
 the water-drinkers, and the trippers." Perhaps 
 he replied that, in the neighbourhood of Geneva, 
 trippers were hardly to be avoided. At all events, 
 we find her, a little later in the same month, at 
 Lyons, en route for Perpignan, Port Vendres, 
 Barcelona, and Palma de Mallorca, proclaiming 
 as she went, in all her many letters to all her 
 many friends, the very secret which her companion 
 was imploring his own correspondents to keep. 
 
 248 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Life in Majorca The travellers find an apartment in a Carthusian 
 convent in the mountains Discomfort and demoralisation 
 Departure Chopin invites himself to Nohant George Sand 
 hesitates, but decides that he may come. 
 
 GEORGE SAND has written that the journey to 
 Majorca was "a fiasco." M. Rocheblave has 
 written that "as a piece of insanity it was the 
 proper pendant to the journey to Venice." The 
 fiasco, however, was rather material than moral, 
 and so was the disillusion. No ugly awakening, 
 as at Venice, succeeded the mad hallucination. 
 One says that confidently in spite of the suggestion 
 on the last page of Un hiver a Majorque, where 
 we read : 
 
 " The moral of this narrative childish, it may v 
 be, but sincere is that man is made to live, not 
 with the trees and the rocks, and the pure sky, 
 and the blue sea, and the flowers and the hills, 
 but with his fellow-men. 
 
 " In the stormy days of our youth we imagine 
 that solitude is the great refuge against all the 
 assaults of the world, the great remedy for the 
 wounds incurred in the struggle. It is a grave 
 
 249 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 mistake, and the teaching of the experience of 
 life is that, when we cannot live in peace with our 
 fellow-creatures, no poetical admiration and no 
 artistic joy is capable of filling the abysm that 
 has been formed in the depths of our soul. 
 
 " It had always been my dream to live in the 
 I desert ; and that is a whim which every good 
 dreamer knows. But, take my word for it, my 
 brothers, we have too much love in our hearts to 
 be able to do without each other, and our best 
 plan is to put up with each other. We are like 
 children suckled at the same breast, who quarrel, 
 and even fight, but still must not be separated." 
 
 All of which may be true enough in a general 
 way it even sounds like a reply, with poetical 
 embellishments, to Chopin's hope that he and 
 Marie Wodzinska might find a haven from the 
 storms of life in the quietude of a Polish provincial 
 town but must be read as a piece of literature, or 
 rhetoric, irrelevant to the circumstances of the 
 journey to Majorca. For the strain upon affection, 
 or self-sufficiency, which the passage indicates was 
 never really imposed. The party George Sand 
 aged thirty - four, Chopin aged twenty - eight, 
 Maurice Sand aged fifteen, and Solange aged ten 
 had assuredly resources enough, especially after 
 the importation of a piano, to last them for four 
 months. They had their work, and the means 
 of recreation, and the society of children, and a 
 glorious Southern climate. But they lacked the 
 
 250 
 
The Balearic Isles 
 
 comforts, and were hard put to it to procure even 
 the necessaries, of life. 
 
 The Balearic Isles, as the travellers discovered, 
 had hardly yet emerged from barbarism. Their 
 one link with the external world consisted in the 
 export trade in pigs ; and the passengers on their 
 steamboats travelled, as it were by favour, in the 
 midst of pigs a squeaking, grunting race, not 
 less liable than human beings to sea-sickness. 
 Moreover, even in the capital, there was no hotel 
 or inn of any sort. As George Sand says : - 
 
 " At Palma one needs to bring introductions 
 to a score of the most prominent citizens, and to 
 be expected for several months before one arrives, 
 if one is not to find oneself obliged to sleep in the 
 open air. The best that could be done for us 
 was to provide us with two furnished (or rather 
 unfurnished) rooms in a miserable locality in which 
 strangers often consider themselves fortunate to 
 be supplied with a truckle bed apiece, mattresses 
 about as soft as bags of slates, straw-seated chairs, 
 and, by way of provisions, as much pepper and 
 garlic as they can eat." 
 
 Somehow or other they managed to find a 
 furnished house which they hired for ^4 a month ; 
 and Chopin at any rate began to be happy. 
 
 " Here I am," he writes to his friend Fontana, 
 " in the midst of palms and cedars and cactuses and 
 
 251 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 olives and oranges and lemons and aloes and figs 
 and pomegranates. The sky is a turquoise blue, 
 the sea is azure, the mountains are emerald green ; 
 the air is pure like the air of paradise. All day 
 long the sun shines and it is warm, and every- 
 body walks about in summer clothes. At night 
 one hears guitars and serenades. Vines are 
 festooned on immense balconies ; Moorish walls 
 rise all around us ; the town, like everything else, 
 speaks of Africa. In a word, it is an enchanted 
 life that we are living." 
 
 The enchantment was shortlived, however, and 
 the delight evaporated when the winter rains 
 began to fall. The house was not built to resist 
 either damp or cold. The plaster on the walls 
 was like a wet sponge. The travellers rould 
 hardly endure the odour of the brasiers over 
 which they shivered. Chopin began to cough. 
 A doctor was called in, and prescribed, but "only 
 detestable drugs could be procured." The word 
 was passed round that the sufferer was in con- 
 sumption, and the Majorcans, unwittingly antici- 
 pating modern science, dreaded the contagion as 
 they dreaded that of the cholera or the plague, 
 though also declaring, inconsistently enough, that 
 it was a curse of God, a punishment of evil deeds, 
 and therefore a presumptive proof of impiety. 
 The landlord begged politely, but peremptorily, 
 that his tenants would be so good as to evacuate 
 the premises with the least possible delay. 
 
 252 
 
The Carthusian Monastery 
 
 They did so, having indeed no choice, though 
 not knowing where next to lay their heads ; and 
 fortune favoured them. Up in the mountains 
 was a Carthusian monastery, evacuated by the 
 brethren whom a recent law had dispersed ; and 
 the cells could be hired by the laity as apartments. 
 It happened that a certain political refugee who 
 was living there was willing not only to sub-let 
 his apartment, but also to sell his furniture for 
 40. The bargain was struck, and the party 
 climbed the hill, and settled down in their new 
 residence in the midst of pine forests, overlooking 
 the tree-clad plain and the Mediterranean. "In 
 the month of December," says George Sand, 
 "and in spite of the recent rains, the torrent was 
 only a charming brook babbling among the grass 
 and flowers. The mountain smiled on us, and 
 the valley opened at our feet like a valley in 
 Spring." And Chopin was happy, and wrote 
 gaily of his adventures among the doctors at 
 Palma. 
 
 " All the three doctors in the island came to 
 my bedside to consult. One of them said that I 
 should die eventually, another that I was then 
 dying, and the third that I was already dead ; and 
 yet, in spite of them, L continue to live just as I 
 lived before they were called in." 
 
 And then he describes his new retreat, and his 
 life therein. 
 
 253 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 " Lost between the rocks and the sea, in an 
 immense deserted convent of the Carthusians, 
 confined in a cell, the one door of which is rather 
 larger than the gates of Paris, you may picture 
 your Fr^ddric, with his hair all out of curl, de- 
 prived of his white gloves, and as pale as ever. 
 My cell is about as large as a coffin, a vault thick 
 with dust serving as a lid. The windows are 
 small, and underneath these windows grow 
 orange trees, palms, and cypresses. Opposite to 
 them, underneath a rose window in the Arabian 
 style, is my bed. Close to the bed is a small 
 table ; and on this table a great luxury stand 
 a metal candlestick, holding a miserable candle, 
 the works of Bach, and my own compositions in 
 manuscript. That is the full list of my belong- 
 ings. And what a silence ! One may shout at 
 the top of one's voice, and no one will hear. 
 Truly Nature is beautiful, though relations with 
 the inhabitants of these solitudes are best 
 avoided." 
 
 Evidently it was not Chopin who found the 
 flight into the wilderness disappointing. He 
 lived, not in a passionate ecstasy, but in a calm 
 contentment, enjoying the illusion of the haven 
 of rest, admired, nursed, and cosseted. He 
 accepted the attention, apparently, as a matter of 
 course the proper privilege of genius in physical 
 distress. It would not even seem that he ad- 
 mitted the right of his mistress to a separate 
 
 254 
 
A Busy Life 
 
 artistic life. She was welcome, of course, to 
 "make copy" for Buloz : Buloz paid her for 
 doing so, and the money was required. But the 
 task was mechanical, commanding no more re- 
 spect than is due to all honest toil. The author 
 was no torch-bearer handing on the sacred 
 flame. That was her patient's function ; hers 
 was merely to keep the flame alive in him, stand- 
 ing between him and the rude buffetings of the 
 world. So long as she thus protected him, he 
 would not complain. He had all the society he 
 needed, and, for the rest, his art sufficed. His 
 position, in short, was pretty much what hers 
 had been when she and Pagello had kept house 
 together on the lagoons of Venice. 
 
 But she, on her part, was overworked, and was 
 anxious and worried about many things. She 
 had to sit up all night to earn her living, she was 
 just then writing Spiridion, and in the daytime 
 she had to face all the trouble with the servants 
 and the tradespeople, as well as to give lessons 
 to Maurice and Solange. Meat, other than 
 pork, was hardly to be procured; the poultry 
 were often diseased, and had no flesh upon their 
 bones ; cow's milk was not to be had, and the 
 children who delivered the goat's milk drank most 
 of it, and filled up the measure with water. The 
 simplest articles of furniture any piece of bed- 
 room crockery even, other than a jug or basin 
 had to be imported from Barcelona. The de- 
 livery of such goods and indeed of all goods 
 
 255 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 was irregular, because the steamers always 
 awaited the convenience of the pigs. The 
 Custom House charges were exorbitant seven 
 hundred francs being demanded, though some- 
 what less was ultimately taken, for the admission 
 of Chopin's piano. Moreover, the general servant 
 struck work, so that George Sand had to add 
 cooking and sweeping to her other duties ; while 
 Chopin's health continued to be far from satis- 
 factory. Says the Histoire de ma Vie : 
 
 " The great artist poor man was a perfectly 
 detestable patient. The thing which I had feared 
 though I had not feared it sufficiently- 
 happened ; and he became completely de- 
 moralised. Actual suffering he bore with 
 courage, but he could not overcome the uneasi- 
 ness of his imagination. Even when he was 
 well, the cloister seemed to him to be full of 
 terrors and phantoms. He did not say so, but 
 I could divine it. When I returned from my 
 nocturnal explorations of the ruins with my 
 children, I used to find him, at ten o'clock at 
 night, sitting at his piano, pallid, with haggard 
 eyes, and hair standing on end. It was always 
 a minute or two before he could recognise us. 
 
 "It was there that he composed the finest of 
 the short pieces which he modestly styled 
 Preludes. They are masterpieces. Several of 
 them bring visions of departed monks before 
 your mind's eye, and make you listen to funeral 
 
 256 
 
The Composition of the Preludes 
 
 songs ; others are of a gentle melancholy, and 
 these came to him at the hours of sunshine and 
 good health, when he heard the laughter of the 
 children underneath his window, or the distant 
 music of guitars, or the songs of the birds in the 
 damp foliage. 
 
 " Others again are deeply sorrowful, and rend 
 your heart while they delight your ear. There 
 is one in particular which came to him on an 
 evening of lugubrious rain. He had been feeling 
 well that day, and Maurice and I had left him to 
 go to Palma to make some necessary purchases. 
 The rains had begun, and the torrents had over- 
 flowed their banks. We had travelled three 
 leagues in six hours, and arrived at the dead of 
 night, shoeless, deserted by our driver, having 
 escaped incredible dangers. We made haste, 
 because we knew that our invalid would be 
 uneasy about us. He had been so, in fact, but 
 his anxiety had been, as it were, transformed into 
 a kind of tranquil despair, and he was playing 
 his admirable Prelude, weeping while he played. 
 As he saw us enter, he rose, uttering a loud cry, 
 and then said, in strange tones, and an absent- 
 minded manner, " Ah yes, I knew that you were 
 dead." 
 
 Perhaps we may pass the criticism that this is 
 
 not demoralisation, but the artistic temperament 
 
 misunderstood, as George Sand was strangely 
 
 apt to misunderstand it. Her own eccentricities, 
 
 R 257 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 though often extravagant, were always common- 
 place, deliberate, and predictable. She defied 
 the conventions with the regularity of a clock- 
 work machine, even though she must work 
 fourteen hours a day in order to be able to 
 afford to do so. That was how she understood 
 the eccentricity of genius : the unexpected, the in- 
 calculable the wind blowing where it listed 
 always puzzled her. That was one of the 
 incompatibilities that separated her and Musset ; 
 and that is why she thought Chopin " demoralised " 
 when inspiration possessed him. 
 
 Certainly there is no trace of demoralisation in 
 the scraps of his own letters to Fontana. They 
 are very sane letters, and quite cheerful. The 
 invalid, effectively shielded, bears up brightly in 
 them. It was George Sand's nerves, not his, 
 that were affected and that though her nerves 
 were robust. 
 
 One cannot wonder. For months she had 
 been living on her nerves, and burning the candle 
 at both ends, acting at one and the same time 
 as breadwinner, children's governess, cook, house- 
 keeper, and sick-nurse. Everyone in her em- 
 ploy everyone with whom she did business- 
 had tried to rob her ; the peasants had looked 
 askance at her because she did not go to church. 
 To crown all, her patient spat blood, and she 
 herself endured rheumatic pains. It was clearly 
 necessary for them to go, and the sooner they 
 went the better. The pigs kept them waiting for 
 
 258 
 
Proposed Visit to Nohant 
 
 three weeks, but at last they were at liberty to 
 depart. 
 
 Chopin, George Sand says, had been querulous ; 
 but it is likely enough that his querulousness was 
 at least as much due to her rheumatism as to his 
 cough. Both ailments alike were relieved when 
 they returned, in the Spring, to the South of 
 France ; and, after a brief excursion to Genoa, 
 Chopin proposed to his mistress that he should 
 accompany her to Nohant and stay there. 
 
 It appears that she hesitated or so, at least, 
 the untrustworthy Autobiography says. She had 
 intended a honeymoon and nothing more ; she 
 shrank from forming fresh ties and contracting 
 new obligations. The illusions of passion did 
 not blind her eyes. Her feelings towards the 
 artist were of a maternal character ; but that did not 
 mean that she would sacrifice the interests of her 
 children to him. She was, moreover, still young 
 enough to fear lest she might have to struggle 
 against " passion properly so called." She 
 dreaded this eventuality to which " artists " were 
 particularly liable " especially when they had a 
 horror of transitory distractions. " Her tender feel- 
 ing for the musician might end by assuming this 
 more passionate shape. It would be deplorable. 
 And yet 
 
 And yet, of course, there was an alternative 
 possibility. The tender feeling might prove to 
 be not a danger but a safeguard. The friendship 
 might stand between George Sand and the 
 
 259 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 passion which she dreaded especially as it was 
 a friendship to which that much-abused word 
 ''Platonic" was not to be applied. The friends 
 were to be lovers at certain hours, and the lovers 
 were always to be friends. A friendship conceived 
 in that spirit, and hedged about by those conditions, 
 might endure might, in a way, calm and balance 
 the emotions. It was an experiment but one 
 worth trying. Better this quiet satisfaction 
 than the pursuit of perpetual adventure better 
 for her work, better for her family, more suited to 
 her age. 
 
 So ran the course of the sophistry to which she 
 yielded. To what extent Chopin himself pressed 
 her, believing that her mission was, still and 
 always, to shield genius from the buffetings of 
 a rough world, one does not know. What one 
 does know is that, in the end, she did invite him 
 to Nohant, and that he accepted the invitation, 
 and stayed with her, there and in Paris, for the 
 next eight years. 
 
 260 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 The destruction of George Sand's letters to Chopin The recovery 
 of Chopin's letters to his family " Vie rangee" The life at 
 Nohant The verdict of Mile de Rozieres : "Love is no 
 longer there." 
 
 MINUTE and well-attested particulars of George 
 Sand's life with Chopin are not very easy to 
 collect. Habent sua fata libelli. The documents 
 which might have been expected to throw full 
 light upon the episode have had strange 
 histories. 
 
 In the voluminous Correspondence there is 
 hardly a word upon the matter. That collection 
 contains only a single short letter to Chopin, 
 written at Cambrai in August 1840, and consist- 
 ing of little but mockery of the bourgeois citizens 
 of that provincial town. It is not in any sense 
 a love letter. The writer does not even " thee- 
 and-thou " her lover. "Aimez votre vieille 
 comme elle vous aime," " Love your old woman 
 as she loves you," is her only affectionate J 
 phrase. 
 
 There were other letters presumably of a 
 more ardent and certainly of a more intimate 
 character but these have perished. Dumas fils 
 
 261 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 discovered them by accident in a police station 
 on the Polish frontier, where he was detained 
 through some trouble about his passport. The 
 Chief of the Police gave them to him to read, to 
 beguile the tedium of his detention. He asked 
 permission to remove them and restore them to 
 their rightful owner. This request being refused, 
 he borrowed them for twenty-four hours, seized 
 the opportunity to steal them, conveyed them to 
 France, and sent them to George Sand with his 
 compliments. She burned them, and said, in her 
 letter of thanks : 
 
 " Assuredly there were no secrets there ; and 
 it is a matter for boasting rather than blushing 
 that I nursed and consoled like a child this noble 
 and incurable heart. But the correspondence 
 had its secret side, and you know what it was. 
 It was nothing of any great gravity, but I should 
 not have liked to see it commented upon and 
 magnified. . . . These family revelations might 
 assume importance in malevolent eyes ; and it 
 would have been very painful to me to open 
 to the world this mysterious volume of my 
 private life." 
 
 So the parcel was thrown into the fire ; and 
 Dumas, with proper delicacy, destroyed the notes 
 which he had taken of its contents. 
 
 The letters in the custody of Chopin's family 
 were long believed to have perished too. In the 
 
 262 
 
Chopin's Letters 
 
 course of the Polish insurrection of 1863 a bomb 
 was thrown from the house of Chopin's sister, 
 Isabelle Barcinska, who had charge of them. The 
 Russian soldiers invaded the house and sacked it. 
 They smashed the musician's piano, and tore up 
 his portrait by Ary Scheffer ; and it was supposed, 
 as all the early biographers tell us, that his papers 
 had disappeared at the same time. The legend 
 had, in fact, been spread for the purpose of 
 putting the curious off the scent ; the Chopin 
 family had kept the papers, wishing to choose 
 their own hour for the publication. They were 
 not printed, therefore, until 1904 ; and even then 
 the representatives of George Sand's family 
 forbade the publication, in France, of any of 
 the letters written either by her or by her 
 daughter. These letters are only to be found 
 in the Polish edition, published in Warsaw, of 
 M. Karlowics' Souvenirs inddits de Chopin. 
 
 The story of the liaison, in so far as it is 
 written anywhere, is written in those letters ; but 
 the collection is apparently incomplete. No doubt 
 the Russian soldiers, though they did not destroy 
 everything, made away with a good deal. The 
 letters relating to several entire years are lacking ; 
 and even when all the sources are laid under 
 contribution, a full consecutive narrative of the 
 episode remains impossible. 
 
 So far as externals go, the incidents at least 
 until the beginning of the end are few, and of 
 little interest or importance. Chopin spent his 
 
 263 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 summers with George Sand at Nohant, and 
 wintered with her in Paris. At Nohant he 
 composed, generally selling his compositions at 
 three hundred francs a piece ; in Paris he 
 gave lessons, at twenty francs the lesson. The 
 Paris address was, at first, Rue Tronchet, and 
 afterwards Square d'Orleans ; and we have 
 Chopin's letter of directions to his pupil Fontana, 
 who had undertaken to choose an apartment for 
 the manage. There must be three bedrooms, 
 he says. Two of them, he insists, must com- 
 municate ; the third must be remote, separated 
 from the others by one of the sitting-rooms. 
 And when this much is told, there remains 
 very little to tell until the gathering of the final 
 storm. 
 
 Perhaps we are warranted in saying that the 
 liaison, in its earlier years at all events, was 
 happy because it had no history. The theory 
 is borne out by Chopin's retrospective exclamation, 
 after it was all over for ever, " Huit anndes d'une 
 vie range*e ! " There was no " Sturm und Drang," 
 as in the Musset period. " Sturm und Drang" 
 had played havoc with George Sand's emotions, 
 and she was tired of them. The time had come, 
 if it was ever to come, when she must fulfil her 
 aspiration to "give her children a respectable 
 mother." She did not quite fulfil it, as we shall 
 see. But she came nearer to fulfilling it than she 
 had ever come before ; and Chopin was the man 
 to help her. He had no taste for the extravagant 
 
 264 
 
 , 
 
"Vie Rangte" 
 
 excesses of Romanticism. He was an invalid, 
 and the "vie rangde" was a necessity for his 
 health. He had had his honeymoon ; and only 
 asked to be allowed to settle down, and to be 
 cosseted when he was ill. 
 
 As to the terms on which he and George Sand 
 lived together, there has been much loud dispute 
 and free interchange of recriminations. Chopin 
 himself, indeed, being a gentleman, contributed 
 nothing to the controversy ; but his friends and 
 admirers have spoken on his behalf. His life, 
 they aver, though monogamous, did not lack 
 pernicious excitement ; they even go so far as 
 to say that his life was shortened by his mistress's 
 physical exactions. 1 And George Sand, on her 
 part, published her defence against the charge 
 even before it was preferred. Chopin, she 
 declared, was not her lover but her patient her 
 " malade ordinaire." She boasted of her self- 
 abnegation in living with him " chastely, like a 
 virgin." It may well be that both stories are 
 true, though relating to different periods of time ; 
 and we may be quite sure that, if George Sand's 
 story had contained the whole truth, the ultimate 
 estrangement would have been less embittered. 
 Nurses and their patients do not quarrel 
 
 1 One may quote here the words of Dumas fils : " Madame 
 Sand a de petites mains sans os, moelleuses, ouateuses, presque 
 gelatineuses. C'est done fatalement une curieuse excessive, 
 trompe*e, decue dans ses incessantes recherches, mais non une 
 passionee. C'est en vain qu'elle voudrait 1'etre, elle ne peut pas ; 
 sa nature physique s'y refuse." 
 
 265 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 quite as we shall presently see these two 
 quarrelling. 
 
 For a long time, however, for the greater 
 part of the eight years, in fact, we find no trace 
 of any shadow lying across the calm path of 
 their happiness. They could not be married, 
 since M. Dudevant still lived and is even heard 
 of in the Letters as sending his son Maurice six 
 pots of jam as a New Year's present but they 
 behaved as if they were. The time was still 
 remote when the concierge of the Paris apartment 
 was to wait upon Chopin with complaints of the 
 levity of George Sand's behaviour with her 
 husband ; and he comported himself very much 
 as a second husband and a stepfather, regarding 
 his relations as serious and permanent, entering 
 merrily into the amusements of the children, 
 and using his influence to impose a limit on 
 the Bohemian rowdyism which had too long 
 been de regie at Nohant. Such practical jokes 
 as we have seen played on Mallefille were by 
 no means to his taste, and he did his best to 
 put them down. On that point we have the 
 evidence of his pupil, Mademoiselle de Rozieres, 
 who came on a visit to the Chateau. 
 
 " In the evening her brother [Hippolyte 
 Chatiron] came to kick up a row. And what 
 a row ! Enough to split one's head open ! I 
 really thought he would have smashed the billiard- 
 table. He flung the billiard balls about, he 
 
 266 
 
Rowdyism at Nohant 
 
 shouted, he danced round the room in hob-nailed 
 boots. People only put up with him, as Madame 
 Sand does, because they are not obliged to do 
 so. If one were compelled to submit to it, it 
 would be a torture. He is far from clean, and 
 his conversation is vulgar. What a specimen of 
 a Berry yokel ! And nearly always drunk ! 
 I am told that the house was full of persons of 
 that sort before the reign of Chopin began." 
 
 From Chopin's own letters, too, we gather that 
 there were other matters in which he sided with 
 the angels and with decorum. There is a very 
 ugly story belonging to this period about a certain 
 Augustine, described sometimes as Solange's 
 cousin, and sometimes as George Sand's adopted 
 daughter, who came to live at Nohant. It is alleged 
 that she lived there in the character of Maurice's 
 mistress, with his mother's sanction and approba- 
 tion, and that Chopin opposed the proceeding 
 with all his power, though unsuccessfully. The 
 story is only told in full in a letter written after 
 the rupture ; and it has been denounced, by 
 M. Rocheblave and others, as a calumny on a 
 good woman's reputation ; but the many veiled 
 allusions to it in earlier letters afford a strong 
 presumption of its truth. It fits in, at any rate, 
 with what we know of Chopin's strained relations 
 with Maurice and of his solicitude for Solange. 
 
 Solange, according to George Sand, was the 
 only member of the household who did not 
 
 267 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 " spoil " Chopin. She seems even to have 
 resented his affection for Solange on the ground 
 that Solange did nothing to earn it. There is no 
 doubt, certainly, that Solange was a naughty 
 child, and troublesome wilful, petulant, and 
 idle. She had, in fact, to be sent to a boarding- 
 school because she could not be managed at 
 home. But even naughty children have their two 
 soul-sides ; and nothing is more clear than that 
 Chopin was very fond of Solange, and liked her 
 even to tease him and interrupt his work. He 
 writes of her much as a father might of his own 
 daughter, telling his sister that he has been 
 obliged to leave a letter to her unfinished, in 
 order to play duets with Solange, or to take 
 her and the dog for a drive, or to help her cut 
 down a tree in the garden, or to join her in 
 feasting off chocolate creams. Evidently he was 
 her special friend and confidant in the house, and 
 he liked to be so treated and regarded. That 
 part of the picture is pretty and idyllic, though 
 the friendship for the daughter contained the 
 germs of the dissolution of the attachment for the 
 mother. 
 
 For the rest, artistic reunions and house-parties 
 took the place of the boisterous Bohemianism 
 which Chopin had always detested, and which 
 George Sand herself was probably beginning to 
 outgrow. We get a trace of the old tone now 
 and again when we hear, for instance, of the 
 drunken irruptions of Hippolyte, and when we 
 
 268 
 
House-Parties at Nohant 
 
 read of the mistress of the house threatening to 
 throw a bucket of water over the man-servant 
 because he has been ringing the dinner-bell 
 too noisily and too long but not very often. 
 The arts were not only cultivated, but enjoyed ; 
 for most of the visitors were masters of one or 
 other of the arts. 
 
 There came, for instance, JDelacroiXj the 
 painter he in whose studio George Sand had 
 once sat for hours, deploring the loss of Alfred de 
 Musset's love, and who now loved Chopin as a 
 brother. There came Liszt, who had at last 
 escaped from his servitude to Madame d'Agoult, 
 and was, for the moment, heart-whole. There 
 came Madame Viardot, the singer, beloved of 
 Turgueneff, sister of La Malibran, and of that 
 old Manuel Garcia who died, a centenarian, only 
 a few years ago. There came also Chopin's 
 sister Louise, most devoted of sisters, and, as 
 we have already seen, his not less devoted pupil, 
 Mile de Rozieres. And harmony outward 
 harmony at all events prevailed. Sometimes 
 the musicians played ; sometimes the novelist 
 read extracts from her latest pages. The vocalist 
 sang to them on the terrace ; the painter set up 
 his easel in the park. Maurice Sand installed 
 a theatre and organised amateur performances. 
 Young men and maidens from the neighbourhood 
 were invited to come and take part in them ; 
 and we hear of Chopin himself not only directing 
 the orchestra, but " making up " as a Jew, a 
 
 269 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 dowager, a sentimental old maid, and a phleg- 
 matic Englishman. 
 
 On the surface all was well. For a season, 
 perhaps, all was well beneath the surface too. It 
 W was an orderly life, in a sense, and yet suffici- 
 ently diversified. But though the shadows took 
 a long time falling, it was not long before sharp 
 eyes foresaw them. One may surmise that there 
 were reasons why the eyes of Mile de Rozieres 
 were sharper than another's. She writes as one 
 who loved the Master, though she only presumed 
 to express her love in worship. She may have 
 been disposed, therefore, to imagine more than 
 she actually observed. George Sand herself 
 declared that her ''lingering looks followed him 
 without cessation, as if she would envelop him 
 with love." But her testimony, for what it is 
 worth, may be recorded. 
 
 " Chopin," she writes, "no longer looks like a 
 ghost. He tries to compose, and we are all on 
 the best of terms with each other. And yet 
 what I told you the other day is true. Love is 
 no longer there on one side, at all events. 
 There remain only tenderness and devotion, 
 mingled, according to the day's mood, with 
 regrets, and melancholy, and boredom, due to all 
 sorts of causes, but especially to the clash of their 
 characters, the divergence of their tastes, and 
 the differences in their opinions. I can only say 
 to him, ' Take care, you will never alter her 
 
 270 
 
" 
 
 The Dupe of her Goodness 
 
 ideas ; ' and other things of the kind. She 
 sometimes speaks to him very sharply, and that 
 cuts him to the heart. He, on his part, has 
 his fancies, his vivacities, his antipathies, his 
 exigencies ; and he evidently has to give way 
 because it is she who commands, and he has not 
 the strength to resist." 
 
 And then again : 
 
 " She is good, devoted, disinterested one 
 might conclude that she is the dupe of her 
 goodness. Oh yes ! she is very good indeed. 
 He calls her his angel ; but the angel has large 
 wings which sometimes knock against you and 
 hurt you." 
 
 That is the pupil's deposition. We must next 
 see how far it can be confirmed from Chopin's 
 own narrative, and from other independent 
 sources. 
 
 271 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Reasons for not trusting George Sand's account of the liaison 
 with Chopin Liszt's summary of the situation Lucrezia 
 Floriani Was " Prince Karol " meant for Chopin ? Extracts 
 from Chopin's and George Sand's letters to Chopin's sister. 
 
 DECIDEDLY it is not to George Sand's Histoire 
 de ma Vie that we must go for the veritable truth 
 concerning her relations with Chopin. That work 
 is a vague and sentimental retrospect. Like 
 Rousseau's Confessions, it confuses the things which 
 happened with the things which, in the view of 
 the writer, ought to have happened. The con- 
 temporary correspondence confutes it in a good 
 many particulars ; and the tone is that of a 
 woman who, accused of having behaved badly, 
 and desiring a reputation for "sensibility," and 
 even for sanctity, makes out the best case for 
 herself that she can, and finds that general state- 
 ments serve her purpose better than particulars. 
 
 It was her habit, in her personal writings, to 
 make self-justification the prelude to self-praise. 
 Buloz himself drew her attention to the fault, 
 and remonstrated, when she brought him the 
 manuscript of Elle et Lui the romance in which 
 she told the story of her liaison with Musset. 
 The public, he said, would find her too "severe," 
 
 272 
 
<c 
 
 Chastely like a Virgin" 
 
 It would be more becoming if she were silent 
 about her pecuniary relations with a man whom 
 she had loved, and if she represented Th^rese 
 that is to say, herself as " somewhat less 
 perfect " ; and he added : " A sort of saint liness y 
 if I may so put it, is too frequently attributed to 
 Therese." 
 
 No one who has compared Elle et Lui with 
 the true story on which it is founded, and has, 
 in particular, followed the Pagello interlude, can 
 question the justice of this criticism ; and the 
 criticism is also applicable, though not quite in 
 the same degree, to the section of the Autobio- 
 graphy consecrated to Chopin. The great artist 
 is handled with a sort of sentimental severity as 
 a spoiled child who received many benefits but 
 gave little in return for them. George Sand, 
 we gather, had rescued Chopin from Parisian 
 dissipations which were playing havoc with his 
 health, and had had but a poor reward. Not 
 only had she, for his sake, accepted the obliga- 
 tion of living " chastely like a virgin." In 
 addition to that deprivation she complains that 
 he " was not exclusive in the affections which 
 he bestowed, though he expected exclusiveness 
 in the affection which others felt for him," and 
 that his society was of no help to her in the 
 hours of her depression. Moreover, she says, 
 she could never convert him to her own pure 
 religion, whatever that may have been. He 
 could not emancipate himself from the orthodox 
 s 273 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Catholic dogmas, and lived in terror not only 
 of death but of damnation, so that she had to 
 ! sit up with him night after night and chase the 
 phantom of his ghostly enemy from his pillow. 
 And even so, she gives us to understand, she 
 would have borne with him, if he had not taken 
 the part of Solange in a bitter family quarrel. 
 But that was too much. It came to a quarrel, and 
 the first quarrel was the last. They separated ; 
 and when, once afterwards, they met again, he 
 turned his back on her. 
 
 That is the summary of the apologia ; and 
 the statement with which it concludes though 
 it has been embellished and become a legend- 
 is, as we shall have occasion to see, a complete 
 and deliberate untruth. The rest is, no doubt, 
 in a way, founded upon fact ; but there is very 
 little foundation, and a vast deal of superstruc- 
 ture. Or perhaps it would be better to say 
 that the superstructure is quite other than the 
 foundation should have suggested. For, though 
 the ethics of such a liaison as this a liaison so 
 closely resembling a marriage may be a little 
 difficult to fix, it is clearly impossible to regard 
 George Sand, in this instance, as the injured 
 victim of " sensibility." 
 
 She got tired of Chopin about that there is 
 absolutely no room for doubt. It was her habit 
 one cannot say her misfortune, for she never 
 recognised it or wept over it to get tired of 
 men ; and we may perhaps find the clue to the 
 
 274 
 
" Maternal Proclivities " 
 
 situation in one of the obiter dicta of Liszt, 
 reported by Janka Wohl. 
 
 " Madame Sand," says Liszt, " caught her 
 butterfly and tamed it in her box by giving it 
 grass and flowers this was the love period. 
 Then she stuck her pin into it when it struggled 
 
 this was the congd, and it always came 
 from her. Afterwards she vivisected it, stuffed 
 it, and added it to her collection of heroes for 
 novels. It was this traffic in souls which had 
 given themselves up reservedly to her which 
 eventually disgusted me with her friendship. . . . 
 For all that, George Sand was really very good 
 company ; and if one forgot she was a woman 
 
 a thing I rarely care to do and if one closed 
 one's eyes to her maternal proclivities a funny 
 term coined to express her own disenchantment 
 
 one could admire her, and even passionately 
 attach oneself to her." 
 
 The " maternal proclivities " were certainly 
 very much in evidence in George Sand's ulti- 
 mate attitude towards Chopin ; and it is hardly 
 less certain that she added him to her collection 
 of heroes for novels. She denied, indeed, with 
 sentimental vehemence, that Prince Karol in 
 Lucrezia Floriani was meant for him, and she 
 was able to indicate points of difference between 
 his and Prince Karol's characters. But that 
 proves nothing in face of the fact that Prince 
 
 275 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Karol was identified as Chopin, 1 not only by 
 his own friends, but also by the members of 
 her own family, by whom, in fact, Chopin's 
 attention was drawn to the resemblance. " My 
 dear M. Chopin," wrote Solange, "have you 
 read Lucrezia Florianit My mother has put you 
 in it." 
 
 And the thesis of Lucrezia Floriani is that 
 it is a nuisance for a woman of genius to be at 
 the beck and call of an invalid. The hint was 
 plain enough, though Chopin was too little sus- 
 picious to see it except under compulsion. One 
 can hardly doubt that, having seen it, he would 
 have taken it that it would have been re- 
 peated, more and more broadly, until he did 
 take it if other circumstances had not precipi- 
 tated the rupture. We shall come to that very 
 soon ; but we may pause first to turn over the 
 newly recovered collection of his letters, and 
 examine their record of the happy years before 
 the catastrophic climax had begun to loom in view. 
 
 Tranquillity is the note of them the tran- 
 quillity of an invalid who did not know how ill 
 he was, but felt himself too weak for passion, 
 for infidelity, or for jealousy. We seem to 
 be centuries removed from the tpanchements of 
 the Romantic Movement ; the impression is 
 rather of an old friend of the family making 
 a long sojourn in a country house. All verbal 
 homage is paid to the conventions. The 
 
 1 Turgueneff so identified him in a letter to Madame Viardot. 
 
 276 
 
"My Hostess" 
 
 assumption is that the writer's sister and mother 
 know nothing of the intimacy of his relations 
 with his hostess. He even speaks of her as 
 " my hostess," and as " the mistress of the 
 house" "la chatelaine!' For instance: " My 
 hostess embraces you. You know how fond 
 she is of you. She has written you a letter." 
 One cannot extract any connected story from 
 the documents ; and they have no claim to a 
 place among the letters which are also literature ; 
 but a few passages picked almost at random 
 will have their use as a mirror of the man and 
 of his life. The first passage is from a letter 
 to his sister, written shortly after her visit to 
 Nohant. 
 
 " I am sending you the little songs you heard 
 one evening. Solange, who sends you a kiss 
 (she has reminded me of it twice), has written 
 the words out for you from memory ; and I 
 have written the music. I hope you arrived 
 safely, and have had good news from Vienna 
 and Cracow. . . . 
 
 " Last night I saw you all in a dream ; and I 
 hope this journey has done no harm to your 
 health. Write me a line to say. For my own 
 part, I have been idling during the last few days. 
 Maurice is not yet here, but will return to- 
 morrow or the day after. Remember what I 
 told you when you left us that I should return 
 alone by the diligence, and that the post-chaise 
 
 277 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 journey was only undertaken for the maintenance 
 of certain convenances. To-day we are planning 
 an excursion to Ars. My hostess's aunt is here 
 with her ward, occupying your room, as I wrote 
 to you when you were at Vienna." 
 
 We hear presently of the arrival of another 
 visitor. 
 
 "We have been here more than a month. 
 Madame Viardot came with us and stayed for 
 three weeks. We are all very well, though the 
 fever has been raging in the country all through 
 the winter. The weather is now fine and favour- 
 able, but when we arrived there were terrible 
 thunderstorms. ... I was not made for country 
 life, but still I enjoy the fresh air. I do not 
 play much, for my piano is out of tune. I write 
 still less ; that is why yon have had nothing from 
 me for so long." 
 
 Next we come to a piece of gossip a story of 
 Victor Hugo not contained in the famous bio- 
 graphy written by " un te'moin de sa vie" 
 
 " M. Billard, an historical painter of no 
 particular account, and a very ugly man, had 
 a pretty wife whom M. Hugo seduced. 
 M. Billard caught them ' en flagrant de'lit,' so that 
 Hugo had to show his medal, proving that he 
 was a Peer of France, to the Commissaire of 
 Police, to avoid being arrested. M. Billard 
 
 278 
 
Victor Hugo 
 
 threatened to proceed against his wife, but was 
 satisfied with a separation by mutual consent. 
 Hugo has disappeared to travel for several 
 months. Madame Hugo, most magnanimously, 
 has taken Madame Billard under her protection ; 
 and Juliette, the actress of the Porte Saint 
 Martin, so notorious ten years ago, who has 
 been living for a long time under the protection 
 of M. Hugo in spite of his wife, his children, 
 and his poetry on the domestic affections this 
 Juliette, I say, has gone away with him. The 
 evil tongues of Paris are satisfied. They have 
 something to talk about ; and there is no deny- 
 ing that the story is amusing especially as 
 Hugo now wears five decorations, and never 
 loses an opportunity of posing as superior to all 
 human weaknesses." 
 
 A note on an afternoon's excursion : 
 
 " I have just returned from a drive with 
 Solange, who shook me up nicely in her 
 carriage, in the company of Jacques. Jacques 
 is the name of a very large and well-bred dog, 
 given to my hostess to take the place of the 
 old Simon, who, this year, aged very much, and 
 had one of his paws paralysed. When it rains, 
 he jumps into the carriage, and stretches himself 
 out in such a way that his head gets drenched 
 at one of the carriage doors and his tail at the 
 other. . . . 
 
 279 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 " My hostess is at this moment in the village 
 with the dear doctor, her neighbour. They 
 have gone to see a patient who, in spite of her 
 fever, insists upon taking a journey of several 
 leagues to consult a quack. There is no dis- 
 suading her." 
 
 A note on the illnesses that invade the 
 family : 
 
 " To-day everybody in the house has a cold 
 in the head. That I should have an intolerable 
 cough is not astonishing ; but my hostess's cold 
 is so bad and she has such a sore throat with 
 it that she cannot leave her room, and her 
 patience is exhausted. 
 
 "As a rule, the greater one's health the less 
 one's patience where physical ailments are con- 
 cerned ; but that cannot be helped. Argument 
 is of no avail. . . . To-day is a melancholy 
 Chrismas Eve, for the invalids will not have 
 the doctor, though their colds are awful, and 
 they have all gone to bed. 
 
 " Everybody abuses the climate of Paris, and 
 forgets that in the winter the climate in the 
 country is worse. Indeed, winter is winter 
 wherever you are, and these two months are 
 very difficult to get through. I often wonder 
 how impatient people manage to live under 
 skies still more inclement than ours. Some- 
 times I feel as if I would give several years of 
 
 280 
 
The " Injuncted " Correspondence 
 
 my life for an hour or two of sunshine. I have 
 survived so many people stronger and younger 
 than myself that I feel as if I were immortal. " 
 
 One need quote no more. The letters relate 
 nothing that at all intimately concerns this 
 narrative. Save for the very occasional spice of 
 scandal, they are trivial and almost childlike. 
 One would say, indeed, that they are rather 
 childish than reserved the letters of a man of 
 genius to whom it is not given to express 
 himself in print, and who very imperfectly 
 realises anything in the world about him which 
 is not connected with his art, and realises least 
 of all that love is a kind of war, and that if " the 
 beginnings are always happy," the end is apt 
 to be disaster. Chopin appears in them as one 
 who looks neither before nor after, assumes that 
 things will always be as they have always been, 
 treats incidents as incidental, expects no great 
 events to spring from little causes, and is un- 
 moved by the thought of the water always 
 flowing under the bridge : a man, in fine, who 
 did not cry out before he was hurt because he 
 never dreamed that he was going to be hurt. 
 
 George Sand herself, during the period which 
 the letters cover, was in correspondence with 
 Chopin's sister, Louise. This is the " injuncted " 
 correspondence, only procurable in Poland ; and 
 when one has read it and ruminated over it, one 
 still fails to conjecture any sound reason, even 
 
 281 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 from the Sand point of view, for its exclusion 
 from France. It is only moderately intimate. 
 It reveals no secrets, but is principally concerned 
 with the weather and the state of Chopin's health. 
 Once more the reader feels himself miles removed 
 from the explosive passion of the earlier affairs. 
 There are no confidences, no jealousies, none of 
 the old aspirations after a moral pivot, none of 
 the old lamentations over the " unarrangeable- 
 ness" of life. It is a "vie rangde" a "vie de 
 manage" with a matron rather than a mistress at 
 the head of it, that is depicted. For instance, in 
 the letter inviting Louise to Nohant : 
 
 " You will find my dear child rather poorly and 
 much changed since you saw him last ; but do 
 not be too much alarmed about his health. It 
 has not in a general way deteriorated in the six 
 years during which I have seen him every day. 
 He has a bad fit of coughing every morning, and 
 two or three crises, lasting two or three days only, 
 every winter, with attacks of neuralgic pains from 
 time to time. That is his ordinary state. For 
 the rest, his lungs are sound, and his delicate con- 
 stitution is not seriously impaired. I hope he will 
 grow stronger in time ; but I am sure that, if his 
 habits are regular and he takes care of himself, he 
 will live as long as other people. . . . 
 
 " For a long time he has only thought of the 
 happiness of those whom he loves instead of his 
 own happiness, which he can no longer share with 
 
 282 
 
Letters to Chopin's Sister 
 
 them. For my own part, I have done everything 
 in my power to mitigate the pain of this cruel 
 absence, and though I have not succeeded in 
 making him forget it, I have at least the con- 
 solation of having bestowed upon him and in- 
 spired in him as much affection as was possible 
 in the circumstances. So come with him to see 
 me, and believe that I love you in advance as a 
 sister. I only beg you to make the little Chopin, 
 as we call the great Chopin, your brother, take a 
 good rest before he starts upon his journey." 
 
 And then, in letters written at various dates 
 subsequent to the visit : 
 
 " Fre'de'ric is fairly well, although this March is 
 very cold and very gloomy in comparison with 
 the month of February, which was one of Nature's 
 mistakes, so bright and cold was it. Now we are 
 in the midst of hailstorms, clouds, and all the 
 caprices of an uncertain and changeable climate. 
 And yet your dear Fritz is not ill, and is always 
 working, too hard in my opinion, at his lessons. 
 To be without occupation does not suit his active 
 and nervous disposition. Soon I shall take him 
 away from the pupils who idolise him, and carry 
 him off to Nohant, where he must eat heavily, and 
 sleep long, and compose a little." 
 
 " The weather is superb ; the country is mag- 
 nificent ; and our dear child, I hope, is going to 
 
 283 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 be as well as mine are, under the influence of the 
 peaceable life and the beautiful sunshine." 
 
 " Your dear little brother has been very much 
 exhausted by the severe winter which lasted so 
 long here ; but since the fine weather set in, he 
 has quite recovered his health and youthfulness. 
 A fortnight's warm weather does him more good 
 than all the medicines in the world. His health 
 is very dependent on the state of the atmosphere, 
 so that I seriously think supposing I can earn 
 enough money this year to travel with my family 
 of taking him to the South for the three worst 
 months of the next winter. If one could only 
 shelter him from the cold for a whole year, he 
 would then, with the summer to follow, have a 
 clear eighteen months to get rid of his cough. I 
 shall have to bully him to make him agree to do 
 it ; for he loves Paris, whatever he may say. Not 
 to deprive him of his Paris for too long, or take 
 him away too long from his pupils, one might let 
 him pass September, October, and November 
 here, and return in March, and give him until 
 the end of May before obliging him to return to 
 Nohant. Those are my plans for this year and 
 next. Do you approve of them ? " 
 
 And so forth. For here again a few typical 
 excerpts are sufficient, seeing that the interest of 
 the letters lies in their tone, and not in any state- 
 ments of fact which they contain. It is the 
 
 284 
 
Grievances and Disagreements 
 
 maternal tone, which Liszt considered so sig- 
 nificant, though he could only attach his special 
 significance to it in the light of subsequent events. 
 There is no hint of any discord, or of any desire 
 to be quit of a burden, though, at the date of the 
 last of the letters, the end must have been almost 
 in sight. One would say, if one knew nothing 
 more of the story, that the burden was carried as 
 a privilege, and that the "vie rangde" with its 
 trivial round of duties and responsibilities, was all 
 that George Sand desired. 
 
 Only, as it happens, one knows and cannot 
 help knowing better. The portrait of Prince 
 Karol is one piece of evidence, and the letters 
 written in the period of recriminations furnish 
 others. All sorts of little grievances and disagree- 
 ments had paved the way for the final quarrel, of 
 which the immediate occasion was the marriage 
 of Solange Sand to Cldsinger. 
 
 285 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Solange Sand at school Her religious instruction She jilts 
 Fernand de Prdaulx and marries Clesinger Quarrel between 
 Solange and her mother Quarrels between Chopin and 
 George Sand because he takes the part of Solange Separa- 
 tion of Chopin and George Sand Chopin's correspondence 
 with Solange The references to the rupture in his letters to 
 his sister. 
 
 SOLANGE, as we have seen, was naughty and 
 troublesome, and would not do as she was told. 
 For that reason, as we have also seen, she was 
 sent to a boarding-school, kept by a Madame 
 Bascans, to whose husband George Sand wrote, 
 requesting that her daughter should be given 
 a very special kind of religious instruction. 
 
 " Religious ceremonies, I think, have a bad 
 effect upon her. I am afraid they may destroy 
 for ever that germ of enthusiasm which I have 
 tried to implant in her for the mission and the 
 teaching of Jesus, so strangely expounded in the 
 Churches. I beg you, therefore, to keep her 
 at home during the hours of service. But if you 
 should be willing, as I requested you last year, to 
 explain to her the philosophy of Christ, to make 
 her feel the poetical beauty of the life and death 
 of the Divine Man, to present the Gospel to her 
 
 286 
 
Betrothal of Solange 
 
 as the doctrine of equality, and to talk with her 
 about the Gospels, so scandalously mutilated 
 in the Catholic tradition, and so admirably 
 rehabilitated in the Book of Humanity of 
 Pierre Leroux, that is the sort of religious 
 instruction that I should like her to have in Holy 
 Week and at all times. Only this teaching 
 must be imparted to her by yourself, and not by 
 any of the 'sacred comedians,' as the Hussites 
 call them." 
 
 No doubt the programme was carried out ; but 
 it did not succeed in making Solange docile and 
 amenable. She wanted to have her own way, to 
 choose her own husband to make up her own 
 mind and to change it as she pleased, with as 
 little ceremony as her mother. Hence the 
 troubles which date from September 1846 two 
 years after her return to Nohant. 
 
 At that date a suitor presented himself one 
 Fernand de Preaulx, a country gentleman of 
 Berry, " handsome and good," George Sand 
 testifies, and four-and-twenty years of age. All 
 seemed to be going well. " My daughter," 
 George Sand wrote to her friend Poncy, 1 "is 
 passionately in love with her tall and handsome 
 cavalier. He is her slave, and only lives to 
 please her." That was on January 7, 1847. 
 But almost immediately afterwards there followed 
 
 1 A Socialist stone-mason of Toulon with whom George Sand 
 was for some time in correspondence. 
 
 287 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 another letter to the same correspondent: " I am 
 in trouble, in great trouble. Solange has refused 
 to marry the man she loved. She has been 
 inconsistent and a little hard about it." And 
 that brings us to Cl^singer. 
 
 Cl^singer had been a non-commissioned officer 
 in the Cuirassiers, and was now a sculptor. He 
 had introduced himself to George Sand as 
 an aspiring artist seeking the patronage and 
 encouragement of an artist of established reputa- 
 tion. She who, at that date, regarded artists 
 as the true priests of humanity, had answered 
 his letter; early in 1847 she made his per- 
 sonal acquaintance, and called upon him in 
 his studio, and it was arranged that he should 
 make her bust and then that of Solange. He 
 fell in love with Solange, and Solange with him, 
 with the result that she gave M. Fernand de 
 Pr^aulx his dismissal. As Chopin writes : 
 " They all came to Paris on purpose to sign 
 the marriage contract, and she refused her 
 signature." 
 
 That, save for the scandal, did not matter very 
 much. " Better before marriage than afterwards," 
 as Chopin wrote. But Cldsinger was not, in 
 George Sand's view, a satisfactory suitor. She 
 made inquiries about him, and the information 
 which she obtained was, she says, " bad enough 
 to hang him." Solange, however, was too 
 infatuated to be open to argument, and the 
 ex-non-commissioned officer of Cuirassiers was 
 
 288 
 
Marriage of Solange 
 
 ready for the role of Young Lochinvar. The 
 lovers eloped, and their marriage was the only 
 means of avoiding the gravest sort of scandal 
 a scandal which could only be hushed up on 
 condition that the marriage was hurried on. 
 George Sand accepted the inevitable, apparently 
 with a good grace, in spite of her knowledge that 
 her son-in-law was heavily in debt ; and wrote 
 on the subject to Poncy as follows : 
 
 "In the course of six weeks she [Solange] 
 has broken off a love affair which hardly affected 
 her at all and entered upon another in which 
 she is wrapped up heart and soul. She was on 
 the point of marrying her former lover. She 
 has given him his congk, and is marrying the 
 other man instead. It is odd. Above all, it is 
 rash. But, after all, she is within her rights, and 
 destiny smiles upon her." 
 
 And then again : 
 
 " My daughter Solange was married yesterday 
 to a gallant man and a great artist, Jean- 
 Baptiste Cldsinger. She is happy. So are 
 we all." 
 
 That was the situation when Cl^singer and 
 Solange set out for their honeymoon towards 
 the end of May 1847. When they returned 
 from it, they found that, though nothing had 
 happened, things nevertheless had changed. 
 T 289 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 George Sand, after turning the matter over in 
 her mind, had come to the conclusion not only 
 that she did not like Cldsinger, but that she 
 could not endure him that he was, in fact, a 
 noisy and boisterous person, whose presence at 
 Nohant, or in the neighbourhood, would be an 
 intolerable nuisance to her. She told Solange as 
 much when she came to see her ; and Solange 
 complained to Chopin : 
 
 " I found her very much changed, cold as 
 ice, and even hard. She began by saying 
 that if I quarrelled with my husband I might 
 return to Nohant, but that, as for him, she 
 refused to keep up his acquaintance." 
 
 On that plea Chopin, on behalf of Solange, 
 joined issue. 
 
 His feelings had already been hurt by neglect. 
 While the marriage was in contemplation, George 
 Sand had treated him as a stranger, neither 
 asking his advice nor even confiding in him. 
 She gives her reasons in a letter to their common 
 friend, Gryzmala. Chopin's advice, she says, is 
 not worth having. 
 
 "He has never been able to see things as they 
 are, or to understand anything about human 
 nature. His soul is all poetry and music, and he 
 cannot endure anybody who is different from him- 
 self. Besides, the exercise of his influence in my 
 family affairs would mean the loss of all dignity 
 
 290 
 
An Ultimatum 
 
 on my part and of all affection between my 
 children and myself. Talk to him, and try to 
 make him understand, in a general way, that he 
 had better abstain from meddling." 
 
 She goes on to say that her love for Chopin 
 has been <c absolutely chaste and maternal," and 
 that she has suffered " martyrdom," et cetera ; but 
 that, for the moment, is irrelevant. She also 
 wrote to Chopin himself, who was at the time in 
 Paris, conveying an ultimatum. She would only 
 have him at Nohant on condition that he did not 
 talk about Solange ; and he rejected the condition. 
 It seemed better. "It was so long," he wrote, 
 "since we had met without a battle and a scene," 
 which disposes of the allegation in the 
 Autobiography that their first quarrel was also 
 their last. 
 
 What follows belongs, perhaps, more properly 
 to the life of Solange than to that of Chopin ; but 
 it is impossible to appreciate the situation without 
 quoting from the letters written by Madame 
 Cl^singer to Chopin at this date. The first of 
 them is written from La Chatre, immediately 
 after the return from the honeymoon. 
 
 " I am ill. The journey in the Blois diligence 
 will tire me terribly. Will you lend me your carriage 
 to take me back to Paris ? Answer immediately, 
 please. I am awaiting your reply at La Chatre, 
 where I am in great distress. I have left Nohant 
 
 291 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 for ever, after the most frightful scenes with my 
 mother. Please wait for me before you leave 
 Paris. I am very anxious to see you at once. 
 They have absolutely refused to let me have your 
 carriage, so, if you are willing that I should use 
 it, write me a line giving permission, and I will 
 send to Nohant for it." 
 
 Chopin replied, placing his carnage at her dis- 
 position, and wrote to George Sand saying that 
 he had done so. There quickly followed another 
 letter complaining of further outrage. 
 
 "All the furniture has been taken out of my 
 room. They have removed the curtains, the bed, 
 and everything, and divided the room into two 
 parts. One half of it is now an auditorium, and 
 the other half is a stage. They play comedies 
 there. Ldontine, Henry, and Duvernet were 
 present at a performance. The dressing-room is 
 their theatrical wardrobe, and the boudoir is the 
 actors' green-room. Who would have believed 
 it ? A mother who sets up a theatre in the bridal 
 chamber of her darling daughter \ " 
 
 Chopin's answer is that of a peacemaker. He 
 affects to believe that there has been "a first step 
 towards reconciliation," and predicts that " time 
 will do the rest." But the confidences which he 
 receives continue to be in the same tone. 
 
 " I rather think all our belongings in Paris 
 292 
 
Letters from Solange 
 
 have been seized for debt. . . . One gets used to 
 everything, even to anxiety. Here am I, with 
 my extravagant tastes, who used to think a coach 
 with six horses hardly good enough to carry me 
 I who used to live in an imaginary world, in 
 dreams of poetry, amid clouds and flowers here 
 am I, living more prosaically than the most hum- 
 drum. I am sure I shall become a miser I 
 who once would have thrown millions out of the 
 window. I have aged more in a week than in 
 the previous eighteen years. 
 
 " On the one hand I have these anxieties about 
 money, and on the other a mother who brusquely 
 abandons me at a time when I know nothing 
 whatever about life. 
 
 " I know now what is the value of a friend, 
 especially when he is the only one I have. My 
 mother, the first and best friend that Providence 
 gave me, leaves me to the care of the saints of 
 Paradise, without even knowing whether any one 
 of them is willing to afford me protection." 
 
 And still Chopin tried to act as peacemaker ; 
 and did so in circumstances which once more 
 prove the inexactitude of the Histoire de ma 
 Vie. 
 
 All the world knows George Sand's story, 
 already referred to, of her one meeting with him 
 after the breach how she cooed " FrddeVic " at 
 him, and how he turned his back on her, whether 
 because he bore malice, or because he could not 
 
 293 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 trust himself to speak. But he did speak, as we 
 know from his letter written, on the following 
 morning, to Solange, and first printed by 
 M. Rocheblave in his George Sand et sa fille. 
 He says : 
 
 " Yesterday I called on Madame Marliani, and 
 as I was leaving I met your mother, who was 
 entering with Lambert, at the door. I said good- 
 morning to your mother, and my next words were 
 to ask her if it was long since she had heard from 
 you. 'A week/ she replied. 'You didn't hear 
 yesterday or the day before?' 'No.' 'Then I 
 can inform you that you are a grandmother. 
 Solange has a little daughter, and I am very 
 happy to be the first to give you the news.' I 
 bowed and went downstairs. Combes, the 
 Abyssinian traveller, was with me, and as I had 
 forgotten to say that you were well an important 
 item I begged Combes to go up again, since I 
 am bad at climbing stairs myself, and say that 
 you and the child were both doing nicely. I was 
 waiting for the Abyssinian down below, and your 
 mother accompanied him downstairs and ques- 
 tioned me with much interest about your health. 
 I told her that you had, with your own hands, 
 written a line to me in pencil, on the morning 
 after your child's birth, that you had suffered a 
 great deal, but that the sight of your little one 
 had caused you to forget all your suffering. She 
 asked me if your husband was with you, and I 
 
 294 
 
Solange and Chopin 
 
 replied that I thought the address of your note 
 was in his handwriting. She asked me how I 
 was. I answered that I was pretty well, and then 
 I asked the concierge to open the door for me. I 
 bowed, and presently found myself, led by the 
 Abyssinian, in the Square d'Orle'ans." 
 
 It seems actually to have been as the result of 
 this interview that the reconciliation was brought 
 about. A day or two afterwards we find Chopin 
 writing : " I am very glad to hear about the kind 
 letters which you have received from your 
 mother." But it was only the mother and 
 daughter who were thus reconciled. Though 
 Chopin had brought them together, his personal 
 relations to them remained unaltered. Solange 
 continued to complain to him as often as there 
 was a renewal of estrangement, and even begged 
 him to renew his kind offices as their inter- 
 mediary especially at the time of her child's 
 death. 
 
 " I daresay what I write to you will be of no 
 avail. She will not stir. If she loved me ever 
 so little, she would be with me already. My 
 God ! How can she treat me with so little tender- 
 ness ? I who have had a daughter and lost her, 
 though so young, cannot understand her. It is 
 such a cruel and terrible thing to be a mother no 
 longer. Ah ! she knows nothing about that. 
 But God preserve her she may know it soon." 
 
 295 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 This time, however, Chopin could not intervene. 
 He responded, indeed, to an appeal to give good 
 advice to Cl^singer, who received it respectfully, 
 if he did not follow it ; but he no longer met 
 George Sand, and was hardening his heart 
 against her. He was ill, and doubtless missed 
 the comforts of home-life ; and his letters to his 
 family reproduce his bitterness in crescendo tones. 
 Even before the final parting we find malicious 
 references to the "cousin," Augustine, who 
 " reckons upon Maurice because he profits from 
 her favours." Then we find the recitation of 
 Solange's grievances transmitted to Poland. 
 Then we read that "one would think that her 
 idea was to get rid of her daughter and myself 
 at the same time because she found us a nuisance," 
 and that she cannot endure to have either 
 Solange or himself near her because they are 
 " the mirror of her own conscience " ; and then : 
 
 " That is why she has not written a line to me ; 
 that is why she will not come to Paris this 
 winter. ... I do not regret having helped her 
 to endure the eight most delicate years of 
 her life those in which she was bringing up her 
 son. I do not regret what I have suffered. But 
 I do regret that her daughter, that plant so care- 
 fully tended, and shielded from so many storms, 
 has been broken in her mother's hands with an 
 imprudence and a levity which one might excuse in 
 a woman of twenty, but not in a woman of forty." 
 
 296 
 
Chopin's Letters 
 
 And then : 
 
 " It has been said that she is writing her 
 Memoirs ; but in a letter to Madame Marliani 
 Madame Sand writes that the work will not be 
 what is commonly understood by Memoirs, but 
 rather her reflections on art, literature, etc. 
 Indeed, it is too early for the other thing. The 
 dear Madame Sand will have many more adven- 
 tures in her life before she grows old ; many 
 things, both beautiful and ugly, will still happen 
 to her." 
 
 And then : 
 
 " She no longer writes to me, and I no longer 
 write to her. She has given instructions to her 
 landlord to let her apartment in Paris. Sol 
 writes to me that she is with her father Dudevant 
 in Gascony. Her husband is here finishing his 
 marbles for the Exhibition which will take place 
 in March. They have no money, so it is better 
 that Sol should pass the winter in a good climate. 
 But the poor child is bored. A pretty honeymoon 
 that! In the meantime the mother writes 
 beautiful serials for the Ddbdts. She gets up 
 private theatricals in the country in her daughter's 
 nuptial chamber ; she forgets her troubles, and 
 dazes herself as best she can, and will not rouse 
 herself until she feels her heart aching that heart 
 over which her head at present prevails. I have 
 borne my cross in the matter. God help her if 
 
 297 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 she cannot distinguish true attachment from 
 flattery ! Her friends and neighbours have long 
 been unable to comprehend her proceedings. 
 Indeed, no one will ever be able to keep pace 
 with a soul so capricious. Eight years of a 
 regular life were too much for her. God has 
 granted that these years were those in which her 
 children were growing up. If it had not been 
 for me, her children would long ago have left her 
 for their father ; and Maurice is likely to go and 
 join his father at the first good opportunity. 
 Perhaps those conditions are essential to her 
 talent and her happiness. But do not be dis- 
 tressed about it. Already it seems a long time 
 ago, and Time is a great physician, though I have 
 not yet quite recovered." 
 
 And finally there is the full relation of the 
 ugly story of Augustine " the dirty story of 
 which all Paris is talking." Maurice would not 
 marry her. Maurice will never marry except for 
 money. But he " wanted to have a pretty cousin 
 in the house," and was accommodated ; and then 
 the pretty cousin was married to the first husband 
 who could be found for her. Her father has 
 printed and circulated pamphlets setting forth her 
 wrongs. 
 
 "It is an unworthy act on his part, but the 
 story is true. That is the act of benevolence 
 which she said she would accomplish, and which 
 
 298 
 
Chopin's Letters 
 
 I opposed as strongly as I could when the 
 girl was brought to the house. . . . She 
 was dressed like Sol, and better cared for, 
 because Maurice insisted. When her parents 
 wanted her home again, they would not let her 
 go because Maurice objected. . . . The mother 
 was embarrassed by the daughter who, unfor- 
 tunately, saw all that was going on. Hence 
 lies, shame, further embarrassment, and all the 
 rest of it." 
 
 That is the note on which the letters quit the 
 subject. In the rest of the correspondence George 
 Sand's name is not even mentioned. 
 
 299 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Chopin's concert tour in England His return to Paris His last 
 illness George Sand refused admission to his apartment 
 His death. 
 
 AT the time when he parted from George Sand, 
 Chopin, though he probably did not know it, 
 was already a dying man. One cannot say, 
 indeed, exactly at what date the seeds of con- 
 sumption were sown in his delicate constitution, 
 for medical diagnosis was much less certain and 
 scientific in those days than it is in these ; but the 
 malady was at that time well advanced and 
 making rapid strides. It was as a dying man 
 that he undertook his great concert tour in 
 England, uttering his swan song in a blaze of 
 glory. 
 
 He was received with enthusiasm ; his triumph 
 was social as well as professional. Lord Fal- 
 mouth lent him his house for one of his con- 
 certs. He was invited everywhere, and met 
 everybody : Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the 
 Crown Prince of Prussia, the Duke of Wellington, 
 the Duchess of Sutherland, the Duchess of Argyll, 
 Lady Granville, Lady Cadogan, Lady Lansdowne, 
 and Lady Byron ; Lady Norton, Lady Blessing 
 
 300 
 
Chopin in London 
 
 ton, and Count D'Orsay ; Carlyle, Rogers, and 
 Dickens ; Mrs. Grote, and Monckton Milnes, 
 and Jenny Lind. He and Jenny Lind spent a 
 whole morning of four hours together at the piano. 
 Presently his pupil, Miss Sterling, carried him 
 off to Scotland, and he exclaimed, " What 
 delightful people these Scotswomen are ! I 
 cannot express a wish for anything without 
 immediately getting it. They even bring me the 
 French papers every day." His friends, moreover, 
 pressed him to winter in England, in spite of the 
 climate ; and for a moment he hesitated. 
 
 " I should prefer something else, but really I 
 don't know what. In October I shall see and 
 shall act according to the state of my health and 
 my purse. Another hundred guineas in my 
 pocket would not hurt me. If London were not 
 so gloomy, and if the people were not so dull and 
 heavy, and if there were not this smell of coal, 
 and these fogs, I would sit down and learn 
 English. But the English are so different from 
 the French, to whom I have attached myself as 
 to my own countrymen. ... If I were younger, 
 I would turn myself into a machine, and give 
 concerts everywhere, and play the most absurd 
 things, provided that I got well paid for it. But 
 it is difficult to turn myself into a machine at my 
 time of life." 
 
 Probably the stay in England did hasten the 
 301 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 end, and certainly England was no place for him. 
 In England music is a luxury, whereas elsewhere 
 it is an art. So Chopin noted when he made up 
 his mind to go. Only to a few choice spirits 
 could he ever be more than a popular entertainer. 
 Yet he can hardly have been unhappy here ; for 
 he lived with the few to whom he was an artist 
 perhaps the greatest of artists and from 
 whom he received an affectionate and reverent 
 adoration. There is no better testimony to the 
 lovableness of Chopin's character than the way in 
 which his pupils, both men and women, English, 
 and French, and Polish, rallied to him when he 
 needed them at the last. 
 
 When he returned to Paris in January 1849, 
 his state was pitiable. We read of him as "a 
 painful spectacle, the picture of exhaustion, the 
 back bent, head bowed but always amiable and 
 full of distinction." He was no longer strong 
 enough to give lessons, and the money that he 
 had saved was quickly spent. There are depths 
 of pathos in his last letter to his sister. 
 
 " Come to me, if you can. I am ill, and no 
 doctor can do me as much good as you. If you 
 have no money, borrow it. When I am better, I 
 shall earn some easily, and will repay whoever 
 has lent it to you ; but now I am too hard up to 
 send you anything. My apartment is large 
 enough to take you in even if you bring your two 
 children with you. ... I do not myself know 
 
 302 
 
Illness of Chopin 
 
 why I am anxious to have Louise with me. It 
 is like the whim of a woman with child. I do 
 hope the family will let her come. Who knows 
 if I shall not bring her back with me when I am 
 cured ? . . . Madame Obreskow, who has been 
 so kind as to write to her (I gave her Louise's 
 address), will perhaps persuade her better than I 
 can. Mile de Rozieres, too, will add a word in 
 support of my plea ; and Cochet, if he were here, 
 would also speak for me, for no doubt he would 
 see that I have got no better. ^Esculapius has 
 not turned up for the last ten days, having at 
 last perceived that my condition is beyond any 
 help that his science can give. ... So busy your- 
 self in procuring a passport and some money, and 
 make haste. You know that the cypresses have 
 their caprices, and my caprice to-day is to have 
 you with me. . . . Your brother, devoted to you 
 but very weak, CHOPIN." 
 
 Louise obeyed the summons, and arrived in 
 time ; for it was June when her brother sent for 
 her, and he was to live until October ; and she 
 found several other devoted friends gathered 
 round him, doing what they could. Madame 
 Obreskow had made a secret arrangement with 
 his landlord to pay half his rent. She was a 
 Russian helping a Pole, but the sympathies of 
 artists are stronger than racial enmities. Princess 
 Marceline Czartoryska sat by his bedside, like 
 a sister of charity, and nursed him. Madame 
 
 303 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Rubio, another pupil, knowing his necessities, 
 wrote to Miss Sterling ; and she and some other 
 Scottish and English friends subscribed no less a 
 sum than ^1000 and sent it for his relief. The 
 envelope containing the bank-notes was placed 
 surreptitiously on his mantelpiece, so that he might 
 not know to whom he owed the obligation, and 
 narrowly escaped being thrown into the fire by 
 mistake. 
 
 Other friends and pupils who were with him in 
 his last hours were Gutmann, and Gavard, and 
 Countess Delphine Potocka, who hurried all the 
 way from Nice, and whom he asked to sing to 
 him while he lay dying, and, of course, Solange, 
 and Franchomme, and Fontana, the same 
 Fontana to whom he had written happy letters 
 from Majorca, and whose help he had sought 
 when he was looking for an apartment with " two 
 communicating bedrooms." " I have never cursed 
 anyone," he said to Fontana now ; " but life has 
 grown so intolerable that I think it would help 
 me to die more easily if I were to curse Lucrezia." 
 For he knew now what Lucrezia meant, and 
 why it had been written ; and, knowing, he was 
 sick, not only of consumption, but of "the fever 
 called living " too. 
 
 And George Sand? 
 
 Well, George Sand, just then, had many other 
 things to think of besides Chopin's illness. The 
 storm started by the Revolution of 1848 was still 
 raging. The Republic which succeeded the 
 
 304 
 
Secretary to Ledru Rollin 
 
 Orleanist monarchy was struggling along under 
 difficulties, and she was a Republican who took 
 herself very seriously. She had offered her pen 
 to the cause, and the offer had been accepted. 
 She had been acting as secretary to Ledru Rollin, 
 and drafting official manifestoes, and expounding 
 her views on political philosophy in the high-class 
 magazines. She had been giving advice to 
 everybody, from Lamartine to her son Maurice, 
 who had been elected Mayor of Nohant. " You 
 are not a fanatic," she wrote to the former, "and 
 you ought to be you to whom God speaks on 
 Sinai." And to the latter : " We have plenty of 
 wine this year, so you had better invite the 
 National Guard into the kitchen, regale them for 
 an hour or two in moderation, talk to them, and 
 illuminate their darkness." 
 
 That to begin with, in the first heat of enthusiasm. 
 Afterwards there had come unexpected disappoint- 
 ments, and gradual disillusion : the discovery that 
 the bulk of the French people were only bourgeois 
 after all, that Lamartine was vain and weak, and 
 that Ledru Rollin was anything but a man of 
 action, and the consequent inclination to accept, 
 on terms, the Bonapartist solution of the crisis. 
 All these things kept her thoughts as well as her 
 pen busy. Decidedly there was no lack of occupa- 
 tion to cause her thoughts to dwell upon Chopin. 
 
 They did not dwell 'upon him, but at last they 
 turned to him. In September, just a month 
 before his death, she wrote to Louise : 
 u 305 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 " DEAR LOUISE, I did not know, but have 
 just heard, that you are in Paris. I shall be able 
 at last to hear from you the truth about Frederic. 
 Some tell me that he is much more ill than usual ; 
 others that he is only weak and indisposed, as I 
 have always known him to be. I venture to ask 
 you to write me a line, for one can be misunder- 
 stood and abandoned by one's children without 
 ceasing to love them. Believe me, I have never 
 passed a day of my life since first I knew you, 
 without thinking of you and cherishing your 
 memory. It may be that you no longer have a 
 place for me in your heart, but I do not think I 
 have deserved all that I have suffered." 
 
 We do not know how Louise replied to this. 
 What we do know is that George Sand said to 
 Franchomme, " He shall never die in any arms 
 but mine," and that she knocked at Chopin's 
 door, and was turned away from it. 
 
 Naturally and perhaps one may say rightly 
 and properly whether it was the dying man 
 himself, or his friends on his behalf, who thus 
 refused her admission. On his side pride was at 
 stake, and on hers only the vanity of sentiment. 
 He would not have her pity after he had lost her 
 love ; to have been pitied by the woman who had 
 so wounded his heart would have been terrible. 
 And hardly less shocking, since his heart still felt 
 the wound, would have been those pretences of 
 maternal love which, as Liszt insisted, were the 
 
 306 
 
Death of Chopin 
 
 invariable aftermath of her amours. There had 
 never been between him and any of those who 
 watched by his pillow such an intimacy of affection 
 as had once subsisted between him and her. But 
 they at least were sincere, and unconcerned with 
 their own sentimental reputations ; whereas George 
 Sand desired a deathbed scene as the crown and 
 climax of a sentimental legend. Such make- 
 believe would have been ghastly at such an 
 hour. 
 
 So the temptation and, in spite of his speech 
 about cursing Lucrezia, one can hardly doubt that 
 Chopin felt the temptation was resisted ; and 
 George Sand was excluded from the death- 
 chamber, and left to build her sentimental legend 
 as best she could without the help of that final 
 false pretence. 
 
 The end, when that happened, was already 
 very near; "the fever called living to which 
 the wound in his heart had brought his life had 
 nearly burnt itself out. For two days Chopin lay 
 helpless, speechless, almost unconscious, hovering 
 on the border-line between life and death. It 
 was three o'clock in the morning of Wednesday, 
 October the i;th, when the doctor who was 
 watching in the room, bent over him, letting the 
 light of the candle fall upon his face, and asked 
 him whether he was suffering much. 
 
 " Not any longer," he faintly whispered ; and 
 so the fever left him. 
 
 307 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 The importance of George Sand's novels Her relation to the 
 Romantic Movement. 
 
 THE end of the Chopin episode may give the 
 biographer a breathing space, and an opportunity 
 of saying, without appearing to digress, the little 
 that there is room to say in a work of this character 
 about George Sand's contributions to the treasure- 
 house of literature. 
 
 It seemed perilous to interrupt the narrative 
 for the purpose at any previous point. The books 
 rained in too continuous a shower ; and if one 
 had once begun reviewing them one would have 
 been perpetually embarrassed by the sensation 
 that here was a fresh parcel of them waiting to 
 be reviewed. Moreover, the writer's life appeared 
 always the more interesting theme of the two to 
 follow. The excitement of that drama, however, 
 necessarily flags with advancing years, while the 
 literary interest remains. The books, indeed, 
 are much too numerous to be analysed in detail 
 even in those easier conditions ; but the attempt 
 may be made to measure their collective signifi- 
 cance and force. 
 
 The usual method of the French critics is to 
 308 
 
A Glory of French Literature 
 
 begin with the general statement that George 
 Sand is one of the glories of French literature 
 and then to demonstrate in detail that she is 
 t not. It sounds paradoxical, but the paradox is 
 broadly speaking true. She is and she is not ; 
 she is not and yet she is. And one might, if 
 one chose, follow up the paradox with another, 
 saying that her worst books are her best and that 
 her best books are her worst, and also that she 
 was a great writer who never succeeded in writing 
 a great book. 
 
 Decidedly only the critics who use the word 
 "masterpiece" loosely would apply it to any of 
 her works ; decidedly she wrote no book of 
 which one can confidently say that it would have 
 " counted" even if she had never written any- 
 thing else, nothing that stands out definitely 
 above the ruck of books as do, in their several 
 4 'genres," Monte Cristo and Les Misdrables and 
 Pere Goriot and Madame Bovary. One does 
 not need to go through the list of them to prove 
 that statement. They have all been widely read, 
 and have had their chance ; and it is not among 
 the works of popular writers that one searches 
 diligently for examples of neglected merit. The 
 judgment that has been given against them 
 cannot have been given by default ; their claim 
 has not only been preferred but weighed and by 
 more than one generation. In a list of great 
 literary names the name of George Sand may 
 figure ; but Le'lia does not figure in any list of 
 
 309 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 great books, nor does Indiana nor Jacques nor 
 Consuelo nor La petite Fadette, nor any other 
 that may be selected from the catalogue. 
 
 Many reasons might be given for this failure 
 of her books to pass the highest standards. One 
 reason may certainly be found in their lack of 
 finish. They are not ''embalmed in style," but 
 are written in " ce style coulant cher aux bour- 
 geois " ; and work so written ages rapidly. 
 Another reason may He in George Sand's in- 
 ability especially when swayed by emotion or 
 bitten by ambition to realise the life about her. 
 Among the peasantry of Berry, indeed, she seems 
 as much at home, in spite of her tendency to 
 idealise, as Miss Wilkins among the provincial 
 people of New England. But her preference is 
 for the great passions and the advanced ideas ; 
 and these, whether they be amorous, religious, 
 or humanitarian, sweep her into strange waters, 
 where landmarks cease to be distinct and visible. 
 Her power of accurate observation is lost ; the 
 individual withers before her gaze ; apart from 
 the emotion or the idea, she only sees " men as 
 trees walking." 
 
 Even her theses, of course, lose in interest 
 through this vagueness ; for it means the ignor- 
 ing of the circumstances on which, in actual life, 
 the solution of the problems which she raises 
 would depend. But her stories, viewed as works 
 of art, suffer still more. We cannot, in practice, 
 separate our interest in emotions from our 
 
 310 
 
A Message to the Age 
 
 interest in individuals ; and, in George Sand, an 
 individual is too often only the embodiment of an 
 emotion, or the mouthpiece of a doctrine. Her 
 minor characters may occasionally be characters 
 in the full sense of the word ; her major per- 
 sonages are hardly ever so. She typifies the 
 individual, and does not individualise the type. 
 We should not recognise any of her people if we 
 met them in the street, as we should recognise 
 Bouvard, or P^cuchet ; we do not refer to any of 
 them, feeling that we know them, as we refer to 
 D'Artagnan or Lucien de Rubempre\ It is a 
 grave limitation, and has done much to help her 
 books to be forgotten. 
 
 And yet the books do count, and at their 
 psychological moment counted for a good deal, 
 having, as it were, a certain cumulative effect 
 as the vehement expression of a temperament, 
 and the reiterated delivery of a message to 
 which the age was just beginning to be prepared 
 to listen. Their author had her very definite 
 function to fulfil in the warfare waged by the 
 leaders of the Romantic Movement. 
 
 On its literary side the Romantic Movement 
 was a revolt against the classical conventions ; 
 and George Sand had not, consciously and de- 
 liberately at all events, very much to do with 
 that. But it was also, to some extent, a battle 
 for political and social liberty ; and when those 
 issues were at stake George Sand fought in the 
 forefront of the fray. She was a Republican, a 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Socialist, perhaps even a Communist ; but in 
 particular she fought for what she conceived to 
 be the rights of her sex, and for what one may 
 style their sentimental emancipation. 
 
 All the Romantic leaders were more or less 
 anarchists in sexual matters. The love stories of 
 the Romantic Movement form an interesting 
 chapter in sentimental as well as literary annals. 
 Victor Hugo, as Chopin has told us, took a lady 
 of light morals from the boards of the Porte Saint- 
 Martin, and established her as his mistress and 
 his Muse. Sainte-Beuve made love to Hugo's 
 wife, and boasted of her favours in disgraceful 
 verse. Liszt, as we have seen, was carried off 
 to Italy and Geneva by Madame d'Agoult. 
 Alfred de Vigny, in spite of his mother's warning 
 that the company of actresses was worse than 
 that of prostitutes, fell a victim to the fascinations 
 of Marie Dorval, who was soon unfaithful to him, 
 preferring her lovers to be " rigolo." Free love, 
 that is to say, was in the air even before the 
 Saint-Simonians made a cult of it. 
 
 The men, however, naturally looked at free 
 love from a man's point of view, which is pretty 
 much the same in all the ages. They had Don 
 Juan for their prototype, and were rather libertines 
 than preachers of a new sexual gospel. One can 
 even picture them saying of their mistresses 
 and of each other's mistresses what Cato said 
 of the prostitutes of Rome, " Behold the pro- 
 tectors of our wives and daughters ! " But 
 
 o 
 
 312 
 
" Love the only Law-Giver" 
 
 George Sand spoke on behalf of the wives and 
 daughters, claiming that they too should be freed 
 from the tyranny of convention and prescription, 
 and that, for them too, love should be the only 
 law-giver. Just as her life illustrated this side 
 of the Romantic Movement in practice, so her 
 early stories expounded it in theory, deducing 
 the conclusions from the premisses with an un- 
 flinching logic. 
 
 Her minor premiss was supplied by her own 
 unfortunate experience of married life, and by 
 her 4iscovery that her own heart was fickle even 
 in intrigue. Her major premiss came to her 
 from Rousseau through Madame de Stae'l. Like 
 them, she "posited" that love was a divine 
 instinct and the act of loving a virtue. Like 
 Madame de Stae'l for Rousseau's love affairs 
 were more imaginary than real she " felt good " 
 even when she behaved badly, and even when 
 she made herself ridiculous. It is the same with 
 the heroes and heroines of Ldlia and Jacques and 
 the other novels of that group. Not only their 
 irregularities, but also their infidelities appear as 
 acts of compliance with the Divine Harmony and 
 obedience to the Higher Law. The Jesuitical 
 maxim that " the end sanctifies the means " is, in 
 effect, transferred from clerical to amorous affairs. 
 And George Sand has, in her studies, so isolated 
 the phenomenon of which she treats that love 
 appears not as "three parts of life" but as the 
 whole of it. To love is the unique occupation 
 
 313 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 of her characters. They have no trade or pro- 
 fession, and no other interest than that. When 
 they cease to be in love, they feel that it is time 
 for them to die. 
 
 One might, of course, attack the premisses. 
 M. Jules Lemaitre lately did so, vigorously and 
 effectively, in an essay on La nouvelle Hdloise, 
 pointing out that love, so far from necessarily 
 inspiring virtuous conduct, may also, as the 
 newspapers daily show us, be the motive of 
 crime. But let that pass. It is just as profit- 
 able to take the syllogism as it stands, and 
 observe the conclusions to which George Sand 
 suffers herself to be led by it. Here is our 
 starting-point : 
 
 " The immense superiority of this sentiment 
 over all others the proof of its Divine origin 
 is that it does not originate as an act of human 
 will, and that man, unaided, is powerless to direct 
 it. He cannot bestow it, and he cannot recall 
 it, by an act of volition ; but the human heart 
 receives it from on high, no doubt for the pur- 
 pose of conferring it upon the creature chosen 
 for him by the designs of Providence ; and when 
 a soul of strength and energy has received it, 
 it is in vain that human considerations raise 
 their voices for its destruction. Its existence is 
 self-sufficient and independent." 
 
 That is the generalisation. A few lines farther 
 3H 
 
Glorification of Free Love 
 
 on, we find it particularised, for the benefit of a 
 pair of lovers who are not, as the world would 
 say, "free": 
 
 " Had not Supreme Providence, which, in spite 
 of man, is omnipresent, presided over this union ? 
 Each of the lovers was necessary to the other : 
 Benedict to Valentine, that he might teach her 
 the emotions without which life is incomplete ; 
 Valentine to Benedict, that she might import 
 peace and consolation into a stormy and 
 tormented life. But between them stood Society, 
 treating their choice as absurd, guilty, and im- 
 pious. Providence created the admirable order 
 of nature ; men have destroyed it. Which is 
 to be held to blame ? " 
 
 So much for the happy beginnings of illicit 
 love ; and it seems that Providence is still there 
 when love takes wings and prepares to fly 
 away. This is Jacques' pronunciamento on the 
 subject : 
 
 " I have never teased my imagination either 
 to kindle in my breast the sentiment which I 
 could not find there or to revive the sentiment 
 which had become extinct. Nor have I ever 
 imposed constancy upon myself as a duty. 
 When I have felt my love failing, I have ad- 
 mitted the fact without shame, and without 
 remorse, and have obeyed the Providence which 
 attracted me elsewhere." 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 In these passages we find the sanction of the 
 common saying, already quoted in this work, 
 that "in George Sand, when a woman wishes 
 to change her lover, God is always there to 
 facilitate the transfer." It follows, as a matter 
 of course, that the transfer has its solemn ritual. 
 Jacques' wife, Fernande, has forsaken him for 
 Octave : 
 
 " Oh, my dear Octave," she exclaimed to her 
 lover, "we will never pass the night together 
 without first kneeling down and praying for 
 Jacques." 
 
 The whole argument, if one may call it so, 
 of George Sand's early romances is in these 
 passages. Perhaps the reductio ad absurdum 
 of the argument is in them too. Certainly it 
 shocks one's sense of humour to look at the 
 matter from no higher point of view than that 
 to find the Christian God represented as 
 the tutelary deity of the adulterers, and the 
 suggestion put forward that those who are 
 about to profane the marriage tie should open 
 their proceedings with prayer for those whom 
 they despitefully use. It is a proposal which 
 seems even to pass the limits of farcical extrava- 
 ganza. 
 
 None the less, it was made seriously, and has 
 been taken seriously, even by readers whose 
 sound moral preconceptions forbade them to take 
 
 316 
 
The Ideal of Marriage 
 
 it literally. It has appealed, for instance, to George 
 Sand's English critic and admirer, Miss Bertha 
 Thomas, who appears to find in such passages 
 a high allegorical significance, who has per- 
 suaded herself that George Sand's " ideal of 
 marriage was a high one," and who insists that 
 " the alleged hostility of her romances to 
 marriage resumes itself into a declared hostility 
 to the conventional French system of match- 
 making." 
 
 It is not, indeed, very easy to see how the 
 text is to stand the interpretation which British 
 respectability thus aspires to put upon it. 
 Certainly nothing that we know of George 
 Sand's life favours Miss Thomas' gloss. But 
 the important thing is not that Miss Thomas 
 has offered an inconclusive apology for George 
 Sand's expression of her views, but that she 
 has been moved by them instead of being 
 shocked. For if they have thus moved her, 
 one can understand how much more they 
 must have moved thousands of others and 
 especially of the women, unhappily married, 
 who indulged in day-dreams of what might 
 have been. Those women and the young 
 men who sighed for them formed the audience 
 specially addressed. They took what they 
 wanted from the novels, and ignored the rest, 
 finding in them, as it were, a manual of devotion 
 which helped them to "feel good" while toying 
 with forbidden fruit a marriae service for use 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 when eloping with a neighbour's wife an 
 Imitatio Magdalentz or Samaritans. 
 
 Little of it was really new. Most of it had 
 been written before by Jean - Jacques in La 
 nouvelle Hdloise. But it seemed new because 
 it was modern, because it was explicit, and be- 
 because it was written from the woman's point 
 of view. It was, in fact, the first emphatic 
 presentment of the woman's point of view in 
 literature ; and though it is very obviously the 
 point of view of a woman who had the blood of 
 many light o' loves coursing in her veins, that 
 is why we are bound to admit that the books 
 count even if we find them unreadable. In 
 them, for the first time, the "feminine note in 
 literature " sounded loud enough for the world 
 to hear. They may be bad, but they are unique. 
 
 That is the inwardness of our paradox that 
 George Sand's worst books are also her best. 
 Her later writings are superior to them from 
 many points of view. They are more mature 
 and workmanlike ; their description and observa- 
 tion are both better. But they are not unique, 
 they are less individual. The feminine note is 
 still there, but it grows less personal ; and 
 though some of the idyllic pictures of the later 
 periods are delightful, they still fall short of that 
 supreme merit which one demands before one 
 admits that one is in the presence of a master- 
 piece destined to survive. 
 
 And this for various reasons. One reason is 
 
Outlived her Period 
 
 that George Sand was the child of her period, 
 and outlived it. She had not, like Victor Hugo, 
 a humanitarian gospel to deliver which was 
 absolutely independent of the circumstances of 
 the thirties. Consequently she was thrown back, 
 more and more, upon her technical skill as a story- 
 teller ; and that did not suffice to give her the 
 highest place. Another reason is that she worked 
 too hard, and tried to serve God and Mammon. 
 It seemed to her that she might, at one and the 
 same time, proclaim the philosophic and artistic 
 truth and " make copy for Buloz." But that could 
 not be ; and she fell between two stools, as many 
 another has done before and after her. 
 
 Moreover, the history of George Sand's 
 intellectual development is largely the history of 
 the development of a voice into an echo of a 
 teacher into a disciple. The severance from 
 Musset, in fact, is the great turning-point in her 
 career. He influenced her very little, though 
 his friends expressed the fear that he would 
 "leave his genius in that woman's bed," and 
 Sandeau and Merimee had influenced her still less. 
 After Musset had left her, however, she felt that she 
 needed not only a lover but also a moral support. 
 She found both, for a season, as we have seen, 
 in Michel de Bourges ; and thereafter she under- 
 went many influences, each of which in turn is 
 mirrored in her writings. She became the porte- 
 parole first of Michel, and then of Lamennais, 
 of Pierre Leroux, and others. 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 We need not stop to examine and discuss those 
 influences in detail. On the whole, they probably 
 were influences for good, though not the best to 
 which she could have submitted. One is not 
 called upon to prove, for instance, that the teaching 
 of Paroles d'un Croyant is both morally and 
 intellectually on a higher plane than the teaching 
 of Ltlia and Jacques. The important thing 
 is that the teaching is Lamennais' (or Leroux' or 
 Michel's) and not hers. She soaked it in with the 
 ready receptivity of a student preparing for an 
 examination ; she poured it out again with the 
 fluency of a counsel speaking from a brief. She 
 even passed it on, before she had thought it out 
 and absorbed it, in her letters to her boy at school. 
 Clever books, no doubt, can be written in that 
 superficial fashion ; but the foundations of the 
 literature that is to last must be laid more 
 deeply. 
 
 The conclusion seems clear. As a thinker 
 George Sand was shallow and second-hand an 
 ^^Eolian harp that made music of a sort when blown 
 upon by any wind of doctrine. She takes the 
 pose of an evangelist when, in reality, she is no 
 more than a vulgarisatrice. She is most interest- 
 ing because she is most original when she feels 
 for herself, and does not stop to think at all. 
 And to say that is to say, at the end, what we 
 said at the beginning that the real literary land- 
 marks in her life are the novels of the Jacques 
 and Ltlia group. They, at least, strike a new 
 
 320 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 note, a feminine note, and an individual note. 
 They are the expression of a temperament at 
 once typical and unique ; and though they leave 
 the modern reader cold, or even give him cause 
 to smile, they had a real influence on the genera- 
 tion to which they were addressed. 
 
 x 321 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 End of George Sand's sentimental life Manceau " the last link in 
 the chain " The affairs of Solange Her quarrels with her 
 husband Her separation from him Solange in Paris Her 
 correspondence with George Sand. 
 
 WE may take it that George Sand's romantic life 
 ended on the day on which Chopin's friends 
 refused to admit her to his room, and she learnt 
 the vanity of her vow that he should not die in 
 any arms but hers. 
 
 She was forty-five and a grandmother. She 
 had lost her beauty, and was becoming fat ; a 
 very few years later we find Edmond de 
 Goncourt, in his Diary, describing her face as 
 "mummified," and Matthew Arnold doubting 
 whether it was worth while "to go so far to meet 
 such a fat old Muse." Her manner even began 
 to acquire a certain stupefaction, due, no doubt, 
 to overwork ; she had domestic anxieties to 
 worry her. So she essayed no more romantic 
 enterprises, but rested from her labours, if not 
 thankfully, at least contentedly. Her heart was 
 a cemetery ; but there were no more crosses to be 
 set up in it, though she had still twenty-seven 
 years to live. It will be possible, therefore, to 
 pass over this last period rapidly and lightly. 
 
 322 
 
Manceau 
 
 The only name which it is imperative to 
 mention is that of Manceau. He was an 
 engraver in bad health who lived in George Sand's 
 house for many years a factotum filling in- 
 definite functions and M. Le Roy writes of him, 
 in George Sand et ses amis, as " the last link in 
 the chain in which the first link was Aurdlien de 
 Seze." She lamented him, when he died in 1865, 
 as one who had been something more than a 
 servant, writing of herself as " now at last left 
 quite alone," and adding : 
 
 " I do not regard him as unhappy in the 
 region in which he dwells ; but that image of 
 himself which he has left with me, and which is 
 only like a reflection in a mirror, seems to be 
 complaining that it can no longer speak to me." 
 
 That, however, proves nothing ; and there is 
 no other proof. We have no right to say that 
 the refined artisan was attached to the chain by 
 any stronger rivet than the aristocratic lawyer of 
 Bordeaux. The end of the series of experiences, 
 we may reasonably conjecture, was not less calm 
 than the beginning ; though between the begin- 
 ning and the end there had intervened the many 
 passionate passages of which we have had to 
 speak at length. We may resume the narrative 
 without further reference to Manceau. 
 
 In 1849, indeed, and in the early fifties, 
 George Sand was much more occupied with 
 
 323 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 her daughter's affairs than with her own. It 
 was well that Chopin had made the peace 
 between them, for Solange had need of her 
 mother. The marriage on which she had in- 
 sisted was a failure, not only for pecuniary 
 reasons, and it was not long before incompati- 
 bilities of temper declared themselves. Cl^singer, 
 though an artist, was a vulgarian. Solange had 
 an active, restless mind, incapable of concentra- 
 tion, and very capable of being bored. We 
 soon find her protesting angrily her right to a 
 happiness which she does not enjoy. 
 
 " You tell me that youth is the period in 
 which one's personality asserts itself. Certainly ; 
 you are quite right. In the first place because 
 [a line is missing here], save in exceptional cases, 
 age is the time when one is dull and egoistical. 
 And, in the second place, jeimesse oblige. I 
 mean that it is absolutely necessary that one 
 should be happy when one is young. When 
 is one to be happy if not then ? Happiness ! 
 I regard it as the most sacred right of youth. 
 Duty? It is a fine word that means nothing. 
 Virtue? It is a deception." 
 
 Complaints of Cl^singer quickly followed. He 
 " is a madman if ever there was one." Solange 
 wants a separation, and to have the custody of 
 her child. The little one must not be allowed 
 to grow up under the influence of "a man so 
 
 324 
 
Solange and Her Husband 
 
 coarse and cynical " a man who " respects 
 nothing in the world." But then it appears 
 that Cl^singer also has his grievances. Having 
 grounds for suspicion, he bursts unexpectedly 
 into his wife's bedroom to look for evidence 
 to confirm it. He finds love letters not 
 in his handwriting carries them off, and hands 
 them to his lawyer, to be used as pieces justifi- 
 catives putting him in the right in the pending 
 litigation. 
 
 That is the beginning of a long story, only 
 indirectly relevant to the present work. Husband 
 and wife communicated only through the medium 
 of their solicitors, and prosecuted each other 
 with the utmost rigour of the law. Disputes 
 about the custody of the child were complicated 
 with disputes about the dowry. The litigants 
 threatened to seize each other's furniture and 
 to sell each other up. It was an intricate and 
 sordid, as well as a violent, quarrel. Happily 
 we are only concerned with it in so far as it 
 affected George Sand. 
 
 At first we find her advising Solange to seek 
 peace of mind in literary work. The ennui of 
 which Solange complains may, she says, be 
 conquered in that way. Solange retorts effect- 
 ively with a quotation from her mother's own 
 Lettres d\tn Voyageur : " Ennui is a languor 
 of the soul, an intellectual want of tone, which 
 follows in the train of great emotions or great 
 desires. Neither work nor pleasure is a sufficient 
 
 325 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 distraction from it." But George Sand returns 
 to the charge. Let Solange try her hand at 
 composition, and send what she writes to Nohant 
 for correction. She will not merely tell her that 
 it is good, or bad, but will show her exactly 
 what is wrong with it. And she adds, drawing 
 on her own reminiscences : 
 
 "Youth is undoubtedly an age of suffering. 
 One cannot persuade oneself that certain dreams 
 are nothing more than dreams ; and if you rack 
 your brains over the matter as I did at your 
 age, you will never have finished. I can truly 
 say that I never began to live until the day on 
 which I began to work for my living." 
 
 No doubt one reason why this advice was 
 given, and reiterated, as we find it reiterated 
 at intervals throughout many years, was that 
 Solange often had to ask her mother for 
 money ; but the reasons alleged may also be 
 assumed to have been sincere. George Sand 
 was in a position to know, if anyone did, the 
 value of work as an anodyne. Presently, how- 
 ever, the development of the drama brought 
 the need for other counsel and other help. The 
 fight for the possession of poor little Jeanne 
 Cl^singer, commonly known by the pet name 
 of " Nini," was in progress, and Solange in- 
 voked her mother as an ally. 
 
 The child was sent to and fro, to and fro, 
 326 
 
"Hide Nini' : 
 
 between Besangon, where Clesinger's parents 
 lived, and Nohant. There was a day when 
 Nini, returning after a long absence to her 
 mother, did not recognise her. That was a pain- 
 ful blow, and another seemed to be imminent, for 
 Cl^singer was threatening to abduct the child. 
 " Hide Nini," wrote Solange to her mother ; 
 and George Sand took the precautions that 
 seemed necessary, and promised that Manceau 
 and the others would turn the hose on Clesinger 
 if he tried to carry out his threat. 
 
 A number of letters about Nini follow. Nini 
 at Nohant is evidently in danger of being spoilt. 
 She suffers from some infantile ailment, and 
 the doctor orders the application of a blister. 
 Nini submits only on condition that the blister 
 shall be decorated with pink and blue ribbons, 
 and that Manceau shall whistle her a tune 
 while it is being applied. George Sand finds 
 Nini " ravishing," and wants to keep her and 
 teach her to be good; but Solange " hungers 
 and thirsts " for Nini, and expects to be allowed 
 to pounce down upon Nohant and carry her 
 off at any moment. There is a sharp exchange 
 of opinions about this, and then there is talk 
 of sending Nini to a convent. It would be 
 easier to hide her from her father there than 
 anywhere else. Nuns might be found who 
 had no scruples, but would guard the child 
 in their cloistered retreat as in a fortress. 
 Better that she should be taught to believe 
 
 327 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 in the Immaculate Conception than that she 
 should fall into the hands of such women as 
 those whose company Clesinger has taken to 
 frequenting ! 
 
 Then, in the midst of these arguments, we 
 hear that Solange has been converted in part 
 if not entirely to the Roman Catholic faith. 
 "If I do not end by believing it all," she writes, 
 " it will not be my fault : Ma fille vaut bien 
 une messe ;" and she goes on to define the 
 articles of her belief: "I am convinced of the 
 divinity of Jesus Christ ; but I cannot swallow 
 the Immaculate Conception, the worship of the 
 Virgin, and the infallibility of the Church." 
 None the less, she means to live a "new life," 
 and regards herself not as a Protestant but 
 as a Catholic in the making, and receives her 
 " first communion " on that hypothesis. When 
 the news comes, a week later, that the Tribunal 
 has decided that Nini shall be brought up 
 by her grandmother, it seems an instance of 
 Providence rewarding piety. But George Sand, 
 recalling her own experiences of such litigation, 
 warns her that all is not yet over - - that an 
 appeal is possible ; and then we turn another 
 page of the correspondence and read of Nini's 
 death. 
 
 One might have expected the common sorrow 
 to draw mother and daughter closer together. 
 Perhaps it did so for a little while but not for 
 long. The natural course, if George Sand and 
 
 328 
 
Solange not Wanted 
 
 Solange had been like other people, would 
 have seemed to be for the daughter to make 
 her home thenceforward with her mother at 
 Nohant. But they were both different from 
 other people and though Solange more than 
 once made the suggestion, George Sand raised 
 objections. Solange, she said, would " catch 
 cold " at Nohant ; her desire to be near the 
 little one's grave was morbid. Moreover 
 
 "You know that I have other reasons for 
 not wishing you to return here. You would 
 cause me great annoyance if you insisted upon 
 visiting the neighbourhood at the present time. 
 I hope it will not be your pleasure to inflict 
 this pain upon me, and I cannot believe that 
 it will." 
 
 Those were her views in 1855, and we find 
 her repeating them in 1861. No biographer 
 can suggest a better reason than a fear that 
 Solange would interrupt her in the task of 
 " making copy for Buloz"; and there may 
 well have been grounds for that apprehension. 
 Solange was as violent as the whirlwind, and 
 as irresponsible. But she was wounded by 
 the tone her mother took ; and though there 
 was no open quarrel, she and her mother 
 thereafter mainly went separate ways. 
 
 To relate the daughter's subsequent adven- 
 tures would require a separate volume ; and 
 
 329 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 there are, in fact, in French, two volumes l devoted 
 to the subject. Here we can only note that the 
 daughter's career was, to a great extent, a 
 replica of the mother's, and of a nature to 
 remind the mother of the proverb about curses 
 coming home to roost. 
 
 Literature and love-making are commingled 
 in the one career as in the other, albeit in 
 different proportions. In the one career as 
 in the other there was a honeymoon in Italy, 
 whither Solange repaired as the companion 
 of an Italian count. In the second career 
 as in the first appears Sainte-Beuve, that lay 
 confessor, giving paternal advice. His study 
 strikes Solange as "something midway between 
 a parsonage and a library," and she remarks 
 that his housemaid is pretty. " For such a 
 learned man is her comment : an example 
 of the figure of speech which grammarians call 
 aposiopesis. And George Sand replies : "I 
 hope he will have as much influence on your 
 life as he had, on certain occasions, on mine." 
 One wonders whether, when she wrote that, 
 she remembered in what circumstances Sainte- 
 Beuve had introduced her to Merim^e. 
 
 Next, if we may allow ourselves to follow 
 Solange a step farther, we find her, at the 
 height of her youth and beauty, presiding over 
 a literary salon in the Rue Taitbout a salon 
 
 1 Lafille de George Sand by Georges d'Heylli, and George Sand 
 et safille by Samuel Rocheblave. 
 
 330 
 
Solange and Her Salon 
 
 numbering among its guests J. - J. Weiss, and 
 Henri Fouquier, and Herve*, and Gambetta. 
 Without visible means of subsistence, she was 
 nevertheless living luxuriously, and seems, for 
 some years, to have been estranged from her 
 mother in consequence. The inferences to be 
 drawn from her manner of life were obvious, 
 and we must assume George Sand to have 
 drawn them. Her own code, in the past, had 
 been lax, but never so lax as that. She, at 
 least, in love as in life, had always paid her 
 way by making copy for Buloz. Whereas her 
 
 daughter 
 
 But this is not the life of Solange. We must 
 return to George Sand and try to make our- 
 selves a picture of the life she was living 
 during the period thus reviewed with the rest 
 of her family at Nohant. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 George Sand grows old with dignity Her heart a cemetery The 
 account which she gave of herself to Louis d'Ulbach And 
 to Flaubert A conversation at the Magny dinner Elle et 
 Lui Correspondence with Buloz His advice to "tone 
 down" that work Lui et Elle George Sand's rejoinder 
 She thinks of publishing Musset's letters Sainte-Beuve's 
 advice Decision that they shall not be published until after 
 her death. 
 
 WE have only to draw the picture ; no incidents 
 remain to be related, and, literary work apart, 
 the last quarter of a century of George Sand's 
 life can be outlined in a few phrases. 
 
 Most of her time was passed iii the inter- 
 minable task of " making copy for Buloz," or 
 in making copy for other editors when her 
 relations with Buloz were strained. Writing 
 never became an effort to her, even when she 
 only wrote for money, and there never came 
 a time when she did not need the money. If 
 her gains were considerable, so also were her 
 expenses ; and her earnings, after all, were 
 but moderate, judged by modern standards, 
 or compared with those of some of her con- 
 temporaries : Victor Hugo, for instance, or 
 the elder Dumas, or Eugene Sue. Towards 
 the end she computed that she had altogether 
 
 332 
 
Impecuniosity 
 
 earned about ,40,000 with her pen no 
 inordinate sum when we consider how great 
 was her celebrity and how long it lasted and 
 none of it was saved or invested. To the 
 last, therefore, she continued to produce two 
 novels nearly every year, as well as occasional 
 plays and a number of newspaper articles. 
 Her impecuniosity was, indeed, at times so 
 notorious that we find Delacroix, who knew 
 her well, noting in his Journal : 
 
 "Gryzmala maintained, at dinner, that 
 Madame Sand had taken money from Meyer- 
 beer for the eulogistic articles which she 
 wrote about him. I cannot believe it, and 
 I protested. The poor woman is very badly 
 in need of money. She writes too much, and 
 writes for money. But that she should come 
 down to the level of such mercenary hacks ! 
 No, that is incredible." 
 
 Decidedly it is incredible. Whatever George 
 Sand's faults, there is no reason to believe that 
 her pen was ever venal ; and it would appear 
 from a comparison of dates that she escaped 
 from the particular monetary embarrassments to 
 which Delacroix refers by writing the Histoire 
 de ma Vie. But the fact remains that she was 
 never rich, and seldom free from anxiety, and 
 always regarded leisure as a luxury beyond her 
 means. The letters tell us sometimes of petty 
 
 333 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 economies a decision, for example, to go without 
 a new winter coat. But serious economies would 
 only have been possible if she had altered her 
 style of living, and this she never did. She was 
 not extravagant, but she was hospitable ; and her 
 income was just, with persistent effort, made to 
 keep pace with her expenditure. 
 
 Her headquarters were at Nohant ; and she 
 was nearly always there. Once she visited Italy ; 
 once, when convalescent from typhoid fever, she 
 wintered on the Riviera ; sometimes she spent 
 the summer months in watering-places on the 
 coast of Brittany ; for a little while she had a pied- 
 a-terre at Palaiseau, near Paris ; theatrical business 
 brought her to Paris at intervals ; during the 
 Franco-German War she left her home to escape, 
 not from the Prussians, but from an epidemic of 
 smallpox. But, on the whole, she travelled little 
 less and less as the years advanced. Her 
 son had married Lina Calmatta, the daughter of 
 the Italian engraver. He, and his wife and 
 family, lived with her ; and she delighted in the 
 society of her grandchildren, and learnt to write 
 with one baby sitting on her knee and another 
 sprawling at her feet. In fine, we may say that 
 she grew old with dignity. 
 
 It is the privilege of the intelligent to be able 
 to do this, even after a riotous and misspent youth. 
 It may not be a privilege of which they always 
 avail themselves, but it is theirs. Stupid people, 
 if they are dissolute when they are young, are 
 
 334 
 
Growing Old with Dignity 
 
 sure to become pitiably grotesque when they 
 grow old. They have no other resources than 
 the misconduct of which they have ceased to be 
 capable no potentialities, no reserve of dignity, 
 to fall back upon. George Sand's frivolous, 
 empty - headed mother - - the bird fancier's 
 daughter, and the camp follower of the Army 
 of Italy is one shocking example of the truth 
 of the saying ; so is her drunken brother that 
 graceless, grey-headed reprobate, Hippolyte 
 Chatiron. But she herself had art, and intellect, 
 and sentiment to fortify her. 
 
 There are points of view from which her 
 conduct, in her young days, had hardly been 
 morally distinguishable from her mother's. The 
 Merime'e episode, the Pagello episode, the 
 Mallefille episode to cite but these lacked 
 romantic no less than ethical warrant. There 
 are critics who, on the strength of these episodes, 
 have summed up George Sand's character by 
 speaking of her as " une fille." Perhaps. The 
 answer to the charge is not to be found in the 
 details of the episodes themselves. The true 
 defence is that George Sand was able to live 
 down such a past as hers without adopting a 
 penitential tone. The young generation, grow- 
 ing up around her, took her amours seriously, as 
 matters of historical importance, respecting her 
 as the incarnation of the great ideas of the 
 Romantic Movement ; and she, calmly, and as 
 though the matter were above and beyond 
 
 335 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 argument, took the same view of herself, though 
 her method of expressing it varied according 
 to her auditor. 
 
 M. Louis d'Ulbach, wishing to write a 
 personal article about her for a newspaper, asked 
 her for some information about herself, and to 
 him she wrote : 
 
 " I am only a worthy woman who has been 
 credited with altogether fantastic ferocities of 
 character. The charge has been brought against 
 me that I have not been able to love with 
 passion. It seems to me that my life has been 
 full of tenderness, and that people might very 
 well be satisfied with that. At present, thank 
 God, nothing else is asked from me, and those 
 who are good enough to love me in spite of the 
 lack of distinction in my life and my intelligence 
 do not complain of me." 
 
 M. Caro, the Academician, who afterwards 
 wrote a book about her, visited her at Nohant ; 
 and her confession to him was on the same lines 
 as her confession to Flaubert. 
 
 " The person called George Sand picks flowers, 
 arranges her botanical specimens, stitches dresses 
 for her young people and costumes for the 
 marionettes, reads music, and, above all, spends 
 hours and hours with her grandchildren. . . . 
 Things have not always been like that. Once 
 she was so silly as to be young ; but, as she 
 
 336 
 
" My Heart is a Cemetery'' 
 
 has done no harm to anyone, and experienced 
 no evil passions, and never lived for vanity, she 
 enjoys the happiness of a mind at ease, and the 
 capacity of finding amusement in everything." 
 
 That was her apologetic manner with persons 
 of whose sympathy she could not be sure ; and 
 M. Caro was only sympathetic within limits, as 
 his book was presently to demonstrate. To 
 other audiences George Sand spoke in another 
 style. " My heart is a cemetery," was then the 
 leit-motif-, and she certainly would not have been 
 disconcerted if she had heard Jules Sandeau's 
 retort that it was a necropolis. In these matters, 
 at any rate, she had no sense of humour ; and 
 she would probably have wished that she had 
 herself, in the first instance, employed the more 
 sonorous word. Cemetery or necropolis what 
 difference did it make, so long as it was her 
 melancholy privilege to meditate among the 
 tombs ? 
 
 Yet, though the meditations may have been 
 melancholy as all meditations in which we 
 mourn our dead youth as well as our dead loves 
 are bound to be George Sand seemed to glory 
 in them ; and we have an interesting instance 
 of her doing so in the Souvenirs of Madame 
 Juliette Adam. 
 
 It was at a dinner party at which, besides the 
 two ladies, there were present Flaubert, Dumas 
 fils, and Jules and Edmond de Goncourt ; and 
 Y 337 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 the conversation turned upon love in its relation 
 to the novelist's art. Was it necessary to have 
 loved in order to be a great writer of fiction ? 
 Did not the mere practice of so analytical an art 
 deprive the writer of the capacity for passion ? 
 Madame Adam thus reports the talk : 
 
 "It is a curious idea to state in my presence 
 that one is debarred from love because one is a 
 writer," added George Sand, laughing. 
 
 "Still there is truth in the statement," said 
 Edmond de Goncourt. 
 
 " Not a bit of it," retorted George Sand. 
 "For the principal reproach that can be brought 
 against women writers is precisely that they have 
 loved too much. My proof of that ? I find it in 
 my heart." 
 
 "You you have never loved anything except 
 the idea that you were evolving of the hero of 
 one of your future books, marionettes, as it were, 
 that you have dressed up to rehearse your piece," 
 said Dumas. " Surely you don't call that 
 loving ! " 
 
 "Come now," threw in Flaubert. "We four 
 important writers, are we grands amoureux ? " 
 
 " I don't know, and I don't care," rejoined 
 George Sand; "but it is silly to say take only 
 the latest instances that Madame de Stael, 
 Madame d'Agoult, Madame de Girardin, and I 
 have not been grandes amoureuses. On the 
 contrary, I think that it would now be difficult to 
 
 338 
 
Eugene de Mirecourt 
 
 prove that a pretty woman who writes may have 
 plenty of talent and yet remain a simple, loving, 
 and faithfjil wife." 
 
 "It would be a good subject for an essay," said 
 Jules de Goncourt. 
 
 The note of self-satisfaction rings loudly and 
 clearly there. " Militavi non sine gloria" might 
 be the speaker's motto. It might also have been 
 George Sand's motto when she sat down to write 
 Elle et Lui. 
 
 She had already toyed with the theme at 
 the time when Chopin was living with her. 
 There exists a brief fragment of a romance from 
 her pen, begun apparently in 1842, but never 
 finished, describing a journey to Venice with a 
 certain Theodore, and ending with the exclamation, 
 " Alas I poor Theodore! You could not foresee." 
 Perhaps it was meant as a reply to Musset's 
 Histoire dun merle blanc ; but that is mere 
 conjecture, and the fragment is too brief to call 
 for any sort of discussion. 
 
 In 1854 we find the subject cropping up again. 
 Jacquot, the scurrilous scandalmonger who signed 
 himself " Eugene de Mirecourt," had written some- 
 thing which seemed to call for a reply ; and 
 the rejoinder was printed in Alexandre Dumas' 
 newspaper, Le Mousquetaire. The most striking 
 passage in it is this : 
 
 "You say/ that, after the journey to Italy, I 
 339 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 have never seen M. de Musset again. You are 
 mistaken. I have met him frequently, and 
 never without shaking hands with him. I 
 rejoice in the satisfaction of being able to assure 
 you that I have never in my life borne malice 
 against anyone, just as I have never given 
 anyone not even my husband, M. Dudevant 
 good grounds for bearing any lasting malice 
 against me." 
 
 That was while Musset was still alive. In 
 1858, however, Musset was dead; and George 
 Sand had lately composed a difference of some 
 standing with Buloz, who had so long been 
 acquainted with rather more than the bare out- 
 line of her great love affair. She proposed to 
 write the story for him in full in the form of a 
 romance ; and Buloz agreed, not only thac the 
 story was one which ought to be written, but 
 also that the Revue des deux Mondes was 
 the organ in which it ought to appear. It was 
 as contributors to the Revue that the lovers 
 had first met. Both of them had repeatedly 
 made copy for Buloz out of their disagreements. 
 Musset had long since given the readers of the 
 Revue his version of the story in his Confession 
 dun Enfant du Siecle. It was the right and 
 proper and dramatic thing that the case for the 
 defence should be addressed to the same audience 
 from the same rostrum. So he argued, and 
 George Sand retired to the cemetery for a 
 
 340 
 
Elle et Lui 
 
 month, and composed the most famous of all her 
 meditations among the tombs. 
 
 We will not stop to analyse the work. To 
 do so would be to re-tell a story that has been 
 already told, and re-examine pleas that have 
 already been sifted. All that we have to note 
 is that the tone is one not of apology or regret 
 but of self-satisfaction, and that the self-satis- 
 faction would have been still more pronounced 
 if Buloz had not intervened with good advice. 
 His letter, already quoted in part, may here be 
 quoted at length : 
 
 " MY DEAR GEORGE, I have read your 
 biographical romance. For myself, knowing 
 the facts, and having always taken your part 
 against Alfred, I think you have kept within the 
 limits of truth and moderation in the portrait 
 which you have drawn. 
 
 " But the public, not knowing all that I know, 
 will find you rather severe. And perhaps there 
 are some things which one should not mention 
 when one is speaking of a person whom one has 
 loved I refer to pecuniary matters. 
 
 " I think, then, that when you come to look 
 over the proofs, you will do well, for your own 
 sake, to soften down certain passages, to make 
 more allowances for the artist, and to represent 
 Th^rese as less perfect. The attribute of 
 sanctity, if I may say so, is too often attributed 
 to Th^rese. You must weigh your words and 
 
 34i 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 be moderate, just as if Alfred were present and 
 could reply. 
 
 " I have remarked, too, with pleasure, in read- 
 ing the romance, that you had no intention of 
 suggesting and, save in a few expressions and 
 a few brief passages, did not suggest impressions 
 unfavourable to the author. It is a work of an 
 elevated character a fine picture of the man of 
 genius in his life-and-death struggle with vice 
 (in which alone the work might seem damaging 
 to our friend) and not a work of revenge. 
 
 " To sum up : when certain passages have 
 been modified or suppressed, the book will 
 perhaps be one of your finest compositions. It 
 is clear that you were anxious to repudiate 
 certain accusations which you have a perfect 
 right to repudiate because they are false for 
 Alfred would have repudiated them himself. But 
 you must try to repudiate them without assailing 
 his memory (as I am pleased to see that it was 
 your intention to do) by altering certain phrases 
 and certain sentences at which offence might be 
 taken. Assuredly you did not kill the poet, as 
 some have said. You furnished him with his 
 finest inspirations. What he wrote did not 
 always spare you ; but there was nothing for the 
 public to lay hold upon, whereas it will have no 
 difficulty whatever in putting the dots on the i's 
 in your novel. ..." 
 
 The advice here given was followed, and so 
 342 
 
Lui et Elle 
 
 was the advice conveyed in a later letter to " tone 
 down the scenes in which The*rese passes so 
 easily from the embraces of Laurent to those of 
 Palmer." Buloz opined that such scenes would 
 shock the general public a good deal more than 
 they shocked him, and George Sand was not too 
 proud to defer to his judgment. None the less, 
 there were anonymous letters of protest, followed 
 by an outburst of wrath on the part of the Musset 
 family. We presently find Buloz warning the 
 author that she is accused of having incorporated 
 in Elle et Lui the actual text of some of 
 Musset's letters, and that Paul de Musset is 
 preparing a biography of his brother in which 
 will appear some of Tattet's letters, designed to 
 turn the tables on her, and put her to confusion. 
 
 Paul de Musset carried out his threat to the 
 best of his ability by writing Lui et Elle a 
 pamphlet in intention though a romance in form. 
 Such use as seemed legitimate has been made 
 of its contents in the course of the narrative, 
 and there is no need to go over the ground again. 
 Nor need we concern ourselves with Lui, the 
 romance contributed to the discussion by Madame 
 Louise Colet, a woman novelist who had loved 
 Musset, some time after his separation from 
 George Sand. The allegations, however, seemed 
 to call for a reply ; and George Sand delivered 
 her reply in the preface of another novel, Jean 
 de la Roche. The essential passage is as 
 follows : 
 
 343 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 " We predict, for our part, that the illustrious 
 dead will, at the opportune moment, arise 
 indignant from his grave. He will claim to 
 resume possession of his own thoughts and his 
 true feelings. He will assert the right himself 
 to make the proud confession of his sufferings, 
 and to uplift his voice to heaven, uttering those 
 glorious cries of truth and justice which constitute 
 the best portion of his soul and the most intense 
 phase of his life. This time we shall not have 
 to do with a romance, or a pamphlet, or a 
 betrayal. We shall have a monument written 
 by his own hands and consecrated to his memory 
 by the hands of those who love him still. The 
 monument will be erected when those who insult 
 him have compromised themselves sufficiently. 
 To let them go their way is the only punishment 
 that one deigns to inflict upon them. So let 
 them blaspheme and pass." 
 
 The significance of this is clear. It meant that 
 George Sand proposed to publish the letters. She 
 went so far as to pack them up and send them 
 to Sainte-Beuve, with a request for his advice ; 
 but the critic discouraged the idea of printing 
 them. As literature, he thought, they belonged 
 to an extinct period, " elles sentaient trop leur 
 1830," and, for the rest, the muddy waters of 
 Camerina had been stirred sufficiently. And, 
 once more, George Sand deferred to wise counsel, 
 and decided that the letters should not be 
 
 344 
 
Magnanimity 
 
 published until after her death. They did not, 
 in fact, appear until many years after her death ; 
 and her final words upon the subject were as 
 follows : 
 
 "The dirty charges in the accusation levelled 
 at me, and the letters themselves, prove one 
 thing only : that behind the two romances La 
 Confession dun Enfant du Siecle and Elle et Lui 
 there is a true story emphasising the madness 
 of the one and the affection of the other (the 
 madness of both, if you prefer), but nothing odious 
 or treacherous nothing that leaves a stain upon 
 hearts that were sincere. 
 
 "In later days, owing to debauchery, bad 
 advice, bad companions, and increasing madness, 
 the poet became embittered. He continued to 
 be jealous, and he wanted to wound. But I think 
 that many lies have been put into his mouth, and 
 that he is less guilty than his friends have made 
 him appear. 
 
 " Peace and forgiveness : that is the conclusion 
 of the matter. But, in the future, a ray of light 
 to illuminate the story ! " 
 
 And thus, claiming magnanimity in addition 
 to all her other virtues, George Sand left the 
 subject, and returned to her grandchildren and her 
 friends, and to the double task of making copy and 
 growing old with dignity. 
 
 345 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 George Sand's friends and visitors Thdophile Gautier at Nohant 
 "Ragging" Flaubert Stories told by M. Henri Amic 
 Thiers' attempt to kiss George Sand Jane Essler Sarah 
 Bernhardt Why the society of actresses should be avoided 
 M. Emile Aucante on George Sand's manner of life and 
 methods of work. 
 
 SAINTE-BEUVE was the only one of the writers 
 of her own generation the writers who made 
 their debuts in the early days of the Romantic 
 Movement whom we find numbered among 
 George Sand's friends in her later years. 
 
 Even with him she was by no meanc so intimate 
 as she once had been ; and death and division 
 had sent the others very divers ways. Balzac 
 was dead ; Victor Hugo was in exile ; the elder 
 Dumas had become disreputable ; Merimee was 
 a courtier, much in request at the Palace of 
 Compiegne, and the reasons were obvious why 
 she was unlikely to cultivate his society or that 
 of Sandeau. Yet solitude though it were the 
 mitigated solitude of the family circle was 
 intolerable to her. She must always have friends 
 about her ; and she made many new friends 
 among the more distinguished of her juniors : 
 Dumas fils, The"ophile Gautier, Turgueneff, the 
 
 346 
 
Theophile Gautier 
 
 brothers de Goncourt, and Flaubert. She always 
 dined with some of them at the restaurant Magny 
 when she was in Paris ; and she generally had 
 a house party when she was at Nohant. 
 
 Permanently in residence at Nohant there 
 were, in addition to her son and his family, 
 Manceau the factotum, Emile Aucante, her 
 secretary and man of business, and Eugene 
 Lambert, the painter. Other guests were 
 always coming and going. With most of them, 
 when they were absent, she kept up a more 
 or less regular correspondence ; and even young 
 men of promising literary talent who were intro- 
 duced, or who introduced themselves, were often 
 permitted to join the circle of her intimates. 
 Matthew Arnold was one of those who thus 
 presented themselves ; but his account of his 
 visit lacks picturesque detail. For that we must 
 go to the French writers. 
 
 Thdophile Gautier may be our first witness, 
 and his deposition may be taken from the 
 Goncourt Diary. He was asked, on his return 
 from Nohant, how he had enjoyed himself there, 
 and he replied : 
 
 " It was about as amusing as a convent of 
 Moravian brothers. Marechal the painter and 
 Dumas fils were there. Lunch is at ten. 
 Madame Sand comes down with the air of a 
 somnambulist, and remains half asleep all through 
 the meal. After lunch we all go out in the 
 
 347 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 garden and play bowls, and that wakes her up 
 a little. At three Madame Sand goes upstairs 
 to make copy till six. After dinner she plays 
 Patience, without speaking a word, until midnight. 
 On the second day I said that, unless they talked 
 literature, I should go home again. Literature ! 
 The word seemed to recall them from another 
 world. There is only one thing that interests 
 them all, and that is mineralogy. Everybody 
 has his geological hammer, and never goes out 
 without it. All the same, Manceau has fixed up 
 Nohant very conveniently for copy-making. In 
 whatever room she sits down, there immediately 
 rise up in front of her, pens, blue ink, cigarette 
 papers, Turkish tobacco, and copy paper. And 
 the quantity that she uses ! Copy-making is a 
 function with Madame Sand. For the rest, one 
 is made very comfortable in her house. The 
 service, for example, is conducted in silence. In 
 the corridor there is a letter-box with two com- 
 partments. One of them is for letters to be 
 posted ; the other for letters directed to the 
 inmates of the house. Happening to need a 
 comb, I wrote, ' M. Gautier, such a room,' and 
 my request. On the following day, at six 
 o'clock, I was presented with thirty combs to 
 choose from." 1 
 
 1 A similar story is told by Charles Edmond, to whom George 
 Sand writes thus : " We have bought you an enormous wash- 
 hand basin, Solange having told me that you thought yours was 
 too small. Lina has set herself in motion, and has had an 
 
 348 
 
Edmond Plauchut 
 
 Gautier writes, of course, as a boulevardier 
 who has reluctantly quitted his favourite haunts 
 to take part in a mode of life for which nature 
 has not fitted him. Hence the piquancy, almost 
 of malice, in his criticism. But the story of his 
 sojourn at Nohant is not less piquant in the pages 
 of M. Edmond Plauchut. We read there that he 
 mistook George Sahd's somnolence for frigidity, 
 and went so far as to pack his traps, announcing 
 his intention of departing early in the morning, 
 without saying good-bye, because he had been 
 received as if he were an unwelcome guest. 
 Dumas, however, intervened, led " The"o " down 
 to his hostess's study, and explained the situation 
 boisterously, with the result that the three of 
 them remained talking gaily together until day- 
 light. 
 
 Nor was the life always so dull, or the hostess 
 always so lacking in animation, as Gautier's ex- 
 periences might suggest. There were the amateur 
 dramatic performances of which enough has already 
 been said, and there were the antics of Maurice 
 Sand's marionettes, though these apparently palled 
 upon some of the guests, and M. Caro cries out 
 against George Sand's conviction that other people 
 found them as amusing as she did. Reading 
 aloud, again, was a frequent pastime. Dumas 
 
 immense number of basins sent here from all the country round. 
 The Berry people, who have little use for such articles, opened 
 their mouths in astonishment and asked if we wanted them for 
 washing the clothes in." 
 
 349 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 read L? affaire Clemenceau^ Turgueneff read 
 passages from his forthcoming works. George 
 Sand herself did the same ; and it was agreed 
 that the true note of pathos must indeed have 
 been struck when one of the grandchildren wept 
 over the death of an elephant. Moreover, though 
 the early rowdiness had ceased, "ragging" was 
 not altogether unknown. M. Plauchut describes 
 such an episode, in which we find Flaubert 
 figuring. 
 
 "One day, when Flaubert was more furious 
 than usual against his publishers, or against some 
 bourgeois or other, Maurice Sand, seeing that 
 his mother was tired of the tirade, proposed that 
 I and his daughters should join him in organising 
 a ' rag ' in the dining-room adjoining the apart- 
 ment in which the assailant of the bourgeois was 
 holding forth. As soon as he heard the first 
 clatter of the tongs, Flaubert bounded towards us 
 in a state of boiling indignation, exclaiming that 
 he could not hear himself speak, and that we 
 were behaving like low comedians. Madame 
 Sand, who followed him, had, on her part, picked 
 up the coal shovel, and allied herself with the 
 rioters in the most spirited style. Flaubert fled 
 like a man in terror of assassination, but quickly 
 came back, dressed up as an Andalusian woman, 
 and dancing the most disorderly of fandangoes." 
 
 1 George Sand helped him with it. He, in return, helped her to 
 construct Le Marquis de Villemer. 
 
 350 
 
Henri Amic 
 
 Another of the friends of the later period was 
 M. Henri Amic, a young man of literary ambitions 
 who introduced himself with a letter of homage. 
 His letter brought him an invitation to call at 
 Nohant, and afterwards to stay there. George 
 Sand gave him much good advice about his work, 
 and about other matters also. She wrote him a 
 good many letters which have been published ; 
 and he saw her frequently in Paris as well as in 
 the country. He was one of those who really 
 enjoyed the marionettes, and, unlike Theophile 
 Gautier, he managed to interest himself in the 
 mineralogy. We owe to him a delightful story 
 of George Sand's objections to the embraces of 
 a statesman. 
 
 " I had been invited to dine with some dis- 
 tinguished people who were very anxious to 
 receive me, and it had been quite impossible for 
 me to refuse. But I had a horror of what is 
 called Society, and had made my hostess promise 
 that the party should be a small one. So far as 
 the dinner went, this programme was observed ; 
 but, after dinner, when we adjourned to the 
 drawing-room, there was a crush. I said nothing, 
 but I drew Emmanuel Arago aside into a sort of 
 vestibule, on the pretext that I had something to 
 tell him, and then asked him to get me my cloak. 
 I was quietly waiting for him when up came little 
 Thiers. He immediately began to speak to me 
 with a good deal of empressement, and I replied 
 
 35i 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 to him as best I could. But all of a sudden I 
 have never known why the fancy seized him to 
 kiss me. I declined, as you can well understand ; 
 and he seemed profoundly astonished, and looked 
 at me out of his funny little eyes, like a man 
 quite taken aback. When Emmanuel Arago 
 returned, I began to laugh heartily; but poor little 
 Thiers did not laugh. He looked furiously angry, 
 and quite disconcerted. Monsieur Thiers a Don 
 Juan ! I am sure you cannot picture that, my 
 young friend. You see what changes time can 
 work in a man." 
 
 To M. Amic also we owe our knowledge of 
 George Sand's later estimate of the theatre, and 
 especially of actresses. Actresses, she warned 
 her young friend, as Madame de Vigny had 
 vainly warned her son, were very dangerous 
 companions infinitely more treacherous and 
 deceitful than other women. It was not only 
 on the boards that they played a part, and pre- 
 tended. Did he want an example ? Then she 
 would tell him about Jane Essler, who had been 
 so successful in one of the roles of her Beaux 
 Messieurs de Bois-Dord. 
 
 "She lived for several years with a man of 
 letters who was a friend of mine. One fine day 
 she announced without rhyme or reason that 
 she was going to leave him. The poor fellow 
 worshipped her. He could not bear the idea 
 
 352 
 
Jane Essler and Sarah Bernhardt 
 
 of the separation, and he implored me to speak 
 to Jane Essler. I did as he asked, and returned, 
 heartbroken, from the interview. To all my 
 entreaties this woman coldly replied, ' He 
 gives me as much money as he can, but he is 
 not rich enough for me. I am as fond of him 
 as I am of anybody else, but I cannot be so 
 mad as to let my youth pass without trying to 
 establish myself in a good position.' ' 
 
 They were nearly all like that, George Sand 
 added ; and she told another story, more 
 interesting than the other because it introduces a 
 more illustrious name. 
 
 "One day they were playing UAutre at 
 the Ode*on. I went in there to see Duquesnel, 
 and found the whole theatre in commotion. 
 They told me that Sarah Bernhardt, the 
 artist who played the part of Helen with such 
 exquisite grace, had tried to poison herself. 
 I went up to see her. I argued with her. I 
 spoke to her of her son, and of the love and 
 care she owed to him. I said all that a woman 
 who is also a mother can find to say in such 
 a case. Sarah burst into tears and sobbed 
 aloud. She assured me that she was horrified 
 at the life she had so far led, that no one had 
 ever spoken to her as I had, and that she 
 would never forget my good advice. 
 
 "A few days afterwards, coming late to the 
 z 353 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 theatre, I passed on the staircase Sarah Bern- 
 hardt and her sister Jeanne, on their way to 
 the Bal Bullier in male costume. That was 
 all that had come of my remonstrances and my 
 lecture." 
 
 And the moral was, of course : 
 
 " Beware of the women of the theatre. They 
 are at once more seductive, more perverse, and 
 more dangerous than other women. You must 
 always be on your guard against them. They 
 have I will not say hours but minutes 
 of apparent sincerity ; but their motives are 
 seldom disinterested. There are exceptions, of 
 course, to all rules ; but the exceptions to this 
 rule are very rare." 
 
 Truly the George Sand who spoke like that 
 must have been a very different woman from 
 the George Sand who found Marie Dorval 
 " sublime"; for the relations of Marie Dorval 
 with Alfred de Vigny had not, in truth, been 
 very different from those of Jane Essler with 
 her unnamed literary lover. Partly, it may be, 
 the change in her attitude was brought about by 
 her more intimate acquaintance with the theatre 
 in the days when she was herself an accepted 
 playwright ; but it was also, no doubt, a de- 
 velopment involved in the art of growing old 
 with dignity. And that dignity was, on the 
 whole, well sustained. It always appears in 
 
 354 
 
Later Years 
 
 the pictures of her life drawn by those who, 
 in her later years, knew her best. 
 
 Probably the most trustworthy of all the 
 pictures is that drawn by M. Emile Aucante, 
 who, introduced to her by Pierre Leroux, became 
 her secretary, and remained with her in that 
 capacity for sixteen years. Still living at the 
 time when the centenary of her birth was being 
 celebrated, he was then interviewed by a 
 representative of the Gaulois, to whom he 
 poured out a rich store of recollections. 
 
 George Sand, according to him, was neither 
 bas-bleu nor poseuse, though she could be 
 grand dame when she chose. On the con- 
 trary, she was shy, and talked little, preferring 
 to listen to the conversation of others, and was 
 very reluctant to speak of her own books, the 
 contents of which she forgot as soon as she had 
 finished them. Her habits, too, were simple. 
 What jewellery she wore was mostly false, and 
 she made her own caps and trimmed her own 
 hats, and was very attentive to the needs of her 
 poorer neighbours, not only visiting them when 
 they were sick, but paying a physician and a 
 chemist an annual salary to look after them. 
 Her work, however, was her chief interest ; and, 
 living by line and rule, she passed her days 
 as follows : 
 
 " Madame Sand used to get up at one in the 
 afternoon and come down to the dining-room 
 
 355 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 just as her family and guests were finishing lunch. 
 She never ate anything but a boiled egg, and 
 never drank anything but a cup of black coffee 
 without sugar. Then, unless the weather was 
 very bad, she used to go out into the garden, and 
 stay working there clipping the roses, removing 
 the withered flowers, etc. until four ; and some- 
 times she took her guests, or let them take her, 
 for excursions in the neighbouring woods. She 
 loved the trees ; but these excursions always had 
 their motive. She brought back from them 
 plants, flowers, minerals, and fossils for her 
 collections. Her son Maurice, who devoted 
 himself especially to entomology, used to look 
 for certain chrysalides, from which butterflies 
 of the most marvellous beauty would presently 
 emerge. . . . 
 
 " At about four Madame Sand used to return 
 to the house. That was the hour at which the 
 post came in, and she never left a letter 
 unanswered. If her complete correspondence 
 were published, it would fill as many volumes as 
 her collected works. 
 
 "The dinner bell rang at a quarter to six, 
 and at six we sat down to dinner. Madame 
 Sand had an excellent appetite, though she ate 
 but moderately. She drank nothing but water 
 then, though she took a little Spanish wine at 
 night, when she was working. 
 
 "After dinner, the party went out into the 
 garden for a chat ; but soon returned to 
 
 356 
 
Methods of Work 
 
 the drawing-room, where, for a short time, they 
 played cards or dominoes. Sometimes, too, there 
 was a little music ; for Madame Sand was an 
 excellent musician. Afterwards somebody read 
 aloud, either from some new book, or from one 
 of Madame Sand's favourite authors : Walter 
 Scott, or Cooper, or Gabriel Ferry, or Balzac. 
 Madame Sand used to dress marionettes while 
 she listened, for her hands were never idle. 
 
 4 'At midnight Madame Sand withdrew. She 
 went upstairs to her study and worked until 
 five or six in the morning. Then she slept 
 uninterruptedly until midday, and that amount 
 of sleep sufficed for her." 
 
 There follows an interesting account of George 
 Sand's methods of work : 
 
 " Madame Sand wrote her novels on ordinary 
 notepaper. I used to prepare her a number of 
 little copy-books, consisting of twenty sheets sewn 
 together. Her object was to write exactly the 
 same number of lines on each sheet. This was 
 necessary in order to calculate the number of 
 letters contained in each work. Her novels were, 
 in fact, sold before they were written, on the 
 basis of so much for so many letters ; and she 
 had to adhere to the stipulated length, neither 
 exceeding nor surpassing it. 
 
 " As soon as one novel was finished she 
 began another, without pause or interruption. 
 
 357 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 Simply making a few notes of the names of the 
 principal personages, their respective characters, 
 and the scene in which the story was to be laid, 
 she then set to work without further delay. 
 
 " No outline of the plot was ever written out. 
 Had she any fixed plan, even of the vaguest 
 description, in her head ? All that I can say for 
 certain is that, except when she was at work, she 
 never seemed to be preoccupied with her subject, 
 and never talked about her books while she was 
 engaged upon them. 
 
 " She, who was often so embarrassed in her 
 speech, wrote with incredible facility, and was 
 never at a loss for a word. As each copy-book 
 was finished, she handed it over to me, and I 
 made a copy of it, which was sold in Belgium in 
 the days when literary piracy was still allowed 
 there. It often happened that Madame Sand 
 got appreciably ahead of me, and when I 
 expressed my astonishment at this, she replied, 
 * What ! You don't understand my going faster 
 than you ? The explanation is very simple. 
 When you have copied a sentence, you have to 
 read the next one before you can write it out. 
 This stops you for a moment, and these repeated 
 stoppages necessarily leave you behind me, 
 seeing that I write straight ahead without ever 
 losing a second.' 
 
 " When a novel was finished, Madame Sand 
 used to gather her manuscript together, without 
 correcting it, and leave it at the bottom of a 
 
 358 
 
Little Details 
 
 drawer for a fortnight. Then she took it out 
 again, and read it over as if it were the work of 
 another hand. She ' cut ' it a little, and erased or 
 altered expressions that did not please her ; but 
 she never made any changes of any importance. 
 
 " She was passionately fond of the tortoises that 
 lived in her study, at the bottom of an open box 
 which had to be put near the fire in winter in 
 order that they might not suffer from the cold. 
 One of them, called La Mayotte, had the privilege 
 of crawling about her desk and looking at her 
 while she worked." 
 
 And so forth. The details are trivial un- 
 doubtedly, but it is of little details that pictures 
 are composed, and it is through little details that 
 characters reveal themselves. 
 
 359 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 Friendship with Flaubert The correspondence Criticism of 
 books and criticism of life George Sand's optimism Her 
 last illness and death. 
 
 WE have finished with the anecdotes and the 
 small details ; and our last glimpse at George 
 Sand's last years may best be taken through 
 her correspondence with Flaubert. The letters 
 which she wrote to him are the outstanding 
 monument of that period of her life, and the 
 proof, convincing beyond all others, that, freed 
 at last from the sway of the passions, she knew 
 how to grow old with dignity. 
 
 The correspondents first met, presumably, at 
 one of the Magny dinners. They began to 
 exchange letters regularly in 1866, when George 
 Sand was sixty-two and Flaubert forty-five ; 
 and they continued to write regularly often 
 at intervals of only a few days until George 
 Sand's death at the age of seventy-two, Flaubert 
 being then fifty-five. The suggestion has never 
 been made that they were anything more than 
 friends. It is evident from the nature of the 
 letters that they were not. But the friendship 
 was of the closest and most intimate character 
 
 360 
 
Correspondence with Flaubert 
 
 so intimate that each of them, at one time, 
 offered to lend the other money. They opened 
 their hearts freely to each other, and revealed 
 their secrets in a true spirit of camaraderie. 
 
 The contents of the letters are infinitely various. 
 Sometimes they take us behind the scenes, and 
 relate the gossip of the literary coulisses : we 
 find Flaubert relating the story of Sainte-Beuve's 
 quarrel with Princess Mathilde, and acting as 
 George Sand's confidental intermediary, charged 
 to explain that a certain novel of hers was not 
 intended to reflect, as had been alleged, upon 
 the conduct of Empress Eugenie. At other 
 times questions of literary criticism arise ; and 
 we see Flaubert deploring the folly of Sainte- 
 Beuve, who persists upon writing for the papers 
 instead of writing books, and drawing George 
 Sand's attention to the works of those rising 
 young authors, Emile Zola and Alphonse Daudet. 
 The political references are frequent ; and we 
 note that George Sand has lost the illusions of 
 her red-hot Republican days without losing her 
 hopes for the future of her country, and are 
 impressed by the sanity of her outlook on 
 public affairs at the time when her countrymen 
 are parading Paris with the shout of " a Berlin ! " 
 
 Very frequent, too, and very interesting, are 
 the letters in which the two authors praise, and 
 judge, each other's books. Flaubert, indeed, 
 expressed an enthusiasm which one would not 
 have expected him to feel, and probably made 
 
 361 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 mental reservations. Such pleasure as he found 
 in the novels of George Sand's later period can 
 hardly have been what he regarded as the 
 highest kind of pleasure. He judged leniently, 
 one supposes, out of his respect for George 
 Sand's years, and because he liked her and was 
 under the spell of a personality stronger than 
 his own. But she, on her part, spoke out, and 
 proved herself a critic of no mean discrimination. 
 
 Saldmmbo and L 'Education sentimentale 
 those splendid failures were the works about 
 which she had most to say. She recognised 
 them as works of genius, and yet she under- 
 stood the reasons why they had failed to attract. 
 Saldmmbo had failed because of the impossi- 
 bility of interesting modern readers in ancient 
 heroes, especially when presented in pages over- 
 loaded with archaeological detail. L! Education 
 sentimentale had failed because it did not appeal 
 to the young. It was a book of disillusion, and 
 therefore it was necessary to be middle-aged in 
 order to perceive how true it was. The young 
 were discouraged by the pessimism. It seemed 
 to tell them that life was not worth while, whereas 
 their hearts and their instincts spoke otherwise. 
 That was what came of trying to write with too 
 close fidelity to life. 
 
 That was her judgment ; and though it was 
 the judgment of a writer whose very different 
 methods produced works of a very inferior 
 calibre, it is on a higher plane than the verdicts 
 
 362 
 
Opinions and Philosophies 
 
 of Francisque Sarcey, and Rene* Saint-Taillandier, 
 and Saint- Victor, and other contemporary critics. 
 And yet, good as the criticism is, the real interest 
 of the letters depends not upon their criticism 
 of books, but upon their criticism of life. 
 They are full of that sort of criticism, and 
 most clearly bring out the personalities as 
 well as the points of view of the two writers who 
 exchange opinions and philosophies. 
 
 Sometimes the discussion turns on rather curious 
 subjects. Throughout a considerable series 
 of letters the question at issue is : Ought a 
 certain young man his name is given who is 
 engaged, but cannot be married for three or four 
 years to come, to resist temptation and remain 
 chaste until his wedding day? Flaubert, with 
 characteristic cynicism, denounces the policy as 
 "absurd"; George Sand finds reasons for re- 
 commending it. It seems a strange topic for 
 argument between an elderly lady and a middle- 
 aged man ; but their opposing solutions of the 
 problem show how age, which was souring the 
 one, had only mellowed the other. And such 
 digressions at any rate are rare. As a rule, it is 
 round the circumstances of the writers' own lives 
 that the rival philosophies do battle. Their 
 temperaments clash strangely, and their roles 
 seem to be inverted. It is the man's voice that 
 is shrill ; the woman's that is confident and strong. 
 George Sand speaks almost as the Great 
 Physician, bidding the sick arise and walk. 
 
 363 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 In their origin Flaubert's ailments were 
 physical ; he was epileptic. His liability 
 to sudden seizures had led him to adopt 
 a solitary mode of life ; and the solitude, 
 combined with his preoccupation with purely 
 literary interests, had reacted on his mind. 
 He had his friends of both sexes ; but he saw 
 little of them, and, so far as the mass of mankind 
 were concerned, he was at once a misanthropist 
 and a misogynist. The average man was for 
 him a " bourgeois," and he hated the bourgeois 
 as the Anti-Semites hate the Jews. The main 
 purpose of most of his books was to ridicule 
 and irritate the bourgeois ; and he discovered 
 the profound truth that no weapon is so 
 formidable against them as a minute description 
 of their habits that the wounds thus inflicted 
 hurt the more because there is no means of 
 parrying the thrusts. 
 
 It was an ingenious game, and he played it 
 with unrivalled skill ; but he got little satisfaction 
 from his prowess. He might chuckle over it ; 
 but he hated too bitterly for the whole-hearted 
 laughter that would have saved him. As a 
 consequence the bourgeois were able to avenge 
 themselves sufficiently by continuing to behave 
 as before. Their doing so caused him some- 
 thing very like physical pain. Not his books 
 only but his conversation consisted of increasingly 
 desperate tirades against them ; and it became 
 a fixed idea with him that life was intolerable 
 
 364 
 
Good Advice 
 
 because of the density and folly of his fellow- 
 creatures. He dwelt alone in a suburb of Rouen 
 with this fixed idea, and with a deaf and bed- 
 ridden mother. The idea became an obsession ; 
 and he suffered, if ever any man did, from 
 the malady which has been called " impuissance 
 de vivre" 
 
 While he was in this state George Sand came 
 to him as a missionary with stimulating exhorta- 
 tions and abundant good advice. Not all her 
 advice, it is true, would be endorsed by preachers 
 of more orthodox persuasions. The moralists 
 would approve her suggestion that he should 
 get married, but not her alternative proposal 
 that he should " have mistresses." But we 
 must remember that the ordinary moralist would 
 have made no impression on Flaubert, who 
 would merely have called him a bourgeois, and 
 have considered the discussion closed. It was 
 precisely because she spoke as one having 
 authority and not as the bourgeois that George 
 Sand gained a hearing. Flaubert did not, 
 indeed, follow her counsel in this particular, nor 
 did he, in any particular, follow it very closely. 
 But at least he listened to her, and she did him 
 good. 
 
 Remaining an idealist and an optimist, she 
 devoted all her spare energy to taking him out 
 of himself, and trying to induce him to look upon 
 life with more cheerful eyes. She invited him 
 to Nohant far more often than she could persuade 
 
 365 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 him to come, promising that her children and 
 her marionettes should make him laugh whether 
 he would or not. She implored him not to 
 concern himself so much about human folly, 
 seeing that the foolish would continue to be 
 foolish in spite of all his furious denunciations ; 
 and she delivered formal little lectures such as 
 this : 
 
 " You mustn't be ill, and you mustn't be always 
 grumbling, my dear old troubadour. You must 
 cough it off your chest, and blow your nose, and 
 get well, and announce that France is mad, and 
 that humanity is idiotic, and that we are all 
 animals badly turned out ; but, at the same time, 
 you must love yourself, and your fellow-creatures, 
 and, above all, you must love your friends. I 
 too have my melancholy hours. But then I look 
 at my ' flowers ' those two little ones who are 
 always smiling and their charming mother, 
 and my son that sagacious naturalist, whom the 
 end of the world would still find hunting for 
 specimens, and cataloguing them, doing his 
 day's work as each day comes, and yet gay as 
 Punch himself at the rare hours at which he 
 allows himself to rest." 
 
 Or such as this : - 
 
 " The little girls are running about like rabbits 
 in the midst of bushes as tall as themselves. How 
 good life is when the objects of one's love are 
 
 366 
 
The Secret of Happiness 
 
 alive and active ! You are the one black point 
 in the life of my heart, because you are melancholy 
 and will not look up at the sun. As for the 
 people who are indifferent to me, I am equally 
 indifferent to their acts of malice or folly 
 towards me or towards each other. These 
 things will pass as the rain passes. The thing 
 that abides is a good heart's feeling for the 
 beautiful. You have both the good heart and 
 the feeling. Then good gracious! you have 
 no right to be anything but happy. Perhaps 
 your life has missed that intrusion of the feminine 
 sentiment at which you have turned up your nose. 
 I know that women are not worth much ; but 
 perhaps, in order to be happy, it is necessary to 
 have been unhappy in the past." 
 
 That is the note on which one likes to end. 
 The cynic might suggest that George Sand 
 had won her way to ultimate happiness quite 
 as much through the unhappiness which she 
 had inflicted on others as through that which 
 she had herself endured. Liszt and Chopin and 
 Musset would have said so ; so too, perhaps, would 
 Sandeau and Mallefille, who spent so much of 
 their old age in discussing the woman whom 
 they both had loved. But the rights and 
 wrongs in most of the cases were tangled ; and 
 if George Sand had been fickle, at least she 
 had never been " interested "; and she too had 
 suffered at her hours, in spite of her complacent 
 
 367 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 conviction that whatever she did was right ; and 
 from suffering she had gathered strength. 
 
 She had gathered strength, and she had 
 developed. The crude philosophies of youth 
 had left her together with its passions. There 
 had been a time, indeed, when there was little 
 but her intellect to distinguish her from the 
 grisettes ; but her intellect had triumphed, 
 and no disappointment had soured her. She 
 no longer railed at life because it did not yield 
 her impossible bliss, but accepted life as it was, 
 and found that it was very good. She had once 
 been very mad, but she now was very sane. She 
 had lived down scandals as well as troubles ; and 
 the temper of her old age was serene, reminding 
 us, as one would like the closing years of every 
 life to do, of that Land of Beulah " where the sun 
 shineth night and day," and where the pilgrims 
 foregathered and waited for the messenger to 
 come with his token "an arrow with a point 
 sharpened with love," and summon them to cross 
 the River. 
 
 Almost to the last George Sand enjoyed good 
 health. In one of the last letters perhaps it 
 was the last letter that she wrote, she told her 
 physician, Dr. Favre of Paris, that she felt well, 
 though she was not without anxiety. 
 
 "The general state of my health has not 
 deteriorated, and in spite of my age I shall 
 
 368 
 
Illness 
 
 soon be seventy-two I feel no symptoms of 
 senility. My legs are vigorous ; my sight is 
 better than it has been for the last twenty years ; 
 my sleep is untroubled ; my hands are as firm 
 and as skilful as when I was young. . . . Only, 
 a portion of the functions of life being now almost 
 completely suppressed, I wonder where I am 
 going, and whether I must not expect to take my 
 departure suddenly one of these fine mornings." 
 
 The end, however, was not to come quite so 
 suddenly as she expected. Ever since her serious 
 illness from typhoid fever, she had suffered from 
 gastric troubles ; and now they were not only 
 recurring, but increasing in severity. She com- 
 plained, in a letter to Flaubert, of " cruel cramps 
 in the stomach," of " atrocious persistence"; but 
 she made as light of them as she could. 
 
 " Physical suffering is a good lesson when it 
 leaves your mind free to profit by it. One learns 
 to endure it and to conquer it. Of course one has 
 some moments of discouragement in which one 
 throws oneself upon one's bed. But, for my 
 part, I always think of what my old cure" used 
 to say when he had the gout : Either it will 
 pass away> or else I shall bass away. And then 
 he used to laugh, pleased with his little joke." 
 
 She rallied after that, as the letter to Dr. Favre, 
 which was written two months later, shows ; but 
 not for long. What is described as paralysis of 
 2 A 369 
 
George Sand and Her Lovers 
 
 the intestines developed into something of the 
 nature of peritonitis very possibly appendicitis. 
 On May 30, 1876, George Sand took to the bed 
 which she was never again to leave. Maurice 
 Sand telegraphed to her daughter and her most 
 intimate friends. Solange came, and so did 
 M. Plauchut, and M. Amic, who could not even 
 sufficiently command his feelings to be taken to 
 her bedside. Dr. Pe"an operated, and for a 
 moment there was hope ; but the hope quickly 
 faded. George Sand sank slowly, and died on 
 the 8th of June. 
 
 The village priest had called, offering his 
 ministrations, but had been sent away again. 
 She had not asked for him, he was told ; they 
 must not take the risk of troubling instead of 
 soothing the last moments of a dying woman. 
 So the good man retired, and was seen praying 
 underneath her bedroom window. " 1 heard her 
 cries of pain," he said, "and I prayed God to 
 extend His infinite pity to her, and then I pro- 
 nounced the benediction. If my benediction was 
 not rejected, it will have reached her." 
 
 That was at eight o'clock in the morning. At 
 ten, Dr. Favre, who had been summoned from 
 Paris and was with her, came down to the 
 party gathered in the salon, and told them that 
 all was over. 
 
 The funeral took place in the graveyard of 
 the humble Nohant church ; and all literary 
 
 370 
 
Death and Burial 
 
 France was represented. Among others there 
 attended Prince Napoleon, Gustave Flaubert, 
 Ernest Renan, Edouard Cadol, Paul Meurice, 
 Charles Edmond, Armand Silvestre, Eugene 
 Lambert, Emile Aucante, and Dumas fils. 
 Victor Hugo had sent from Paris one of his 
 most magniloquent discourses, which he begged 
 Paul Meurice to read for him, " I weep for 
 one who is dead, and I salute one who is 
 immortal," but Dumas paid a homage which 
 touches the heart far more. He had sat up 
 all night composing the funeral oration which 
 he had promised to deliver ; and when the time 
 came he broke down and sobbed so that he could 
 not speak it. 
 
 37' 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adam, Madame Juliette, 337, 
 338. 
 
 Agoult, Comtesse d', 166, 167, 
 187, 191, 197, 205, 206, 208- 
 210, 212, 214, 216, 217, 219, 
 
 220, 227, 228, 234, 236, 238, 
 
 269, 312, 338. 
 
 Allart, Madame, 136. 
 Amic, 44, 351, 352, 370. 
 Arago, Emmanuel, 212, 351, 
 
 352. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 322, 347. 
 Aucante, Emile, 347, 35 5> 37 1- 
 
 Ballanche, 216. 
 Balzac, 227, 231, 346. 
 Beranger, 36. 
 Berlioz, 140, 243. 
 Bernhardt, Sarah, 353, 354. 
 Boucoiran, Jules, 28, 30, 32, 33, 
 35, 65, 86, 106, 109, 123, 124, 
 
 128, 129, 130, 134, 144, 145- 
 147, 182, 194. 
 
 Bouillon, Due de, 3. 
 
 Buloz, 41, 62, 65, 76, 102, 104, 
 
 129, 146, 221, 237, 255, 272, 
 319, 329, 331, 332, 340, 34i, 
 343- 
 
 Cadol, Edouard, 371. 
 Calmatta, Lina, 334. 
 Caro, 336, 337, 349. 
 Cazamajou, Madame, see also 
 
 Caroline Delaborde, 177. 
 Chateaubriand, 15, 16, 17. 
 Chatiron, Hippolyte, 7, 12, 18, 
 
 24, 27, 43, 163, 165, 266, 268, 
 
 335- 
 
 Chopin, Frederic, 219, 237-247, 
 250-254, 256, 258-276, 281- 
 
 283, 288, 290-293, 295, 296, 
 300, 302-308, 312, 322, 324, 
 
 339, 367. 
 
 Claretie, M. Jules, 51. 
 Clesinger, 285, 288-291, 296, 
 
 324-328. 
 
 Cle'singer, Jeanne, 326. 
 Cle'singer, Madame, see also 
 
 Solange Sand, 291. 
 Colet, Louise, 343. 
 
 Daudet, Alphonse, 361. 
 Dejazet, Madame, 101. 
 Delaborde, Caroline, 6, n. 
 
 See also Madame Cazamajou. 
 Delaborde, Lucie, 8, u. 
 Delaborde, Sophie, see also 
 
 Madame Maurice Dupin, 6, 
 
 8,9, 17,21. 
 
 Delacroix, 135, 140, 243, 269,333. 
 Deschatres, 8, 14. 
 Didier, Charles, 216. 
 Dorval, Marie, 49, 52, 53, 156, 
 
 234, 312, 354- 
 Dudevant, Casimir, 21, 22, 24, 
 
 43, 164-166, i68,*i7o-i72, 176- 
 
 179, 191, 205, 213, 222, 266, 
 
 297, 340. 
 Dudevant, Madame, see also 
 
 Aurore Dupin and George 
 
 Sand, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 
 
 37, 38, 41, 170-172, 233. 
 Dumas, Alexandre, 62, 227, 332, 
 
 346. 
 Dumas fils, 261, 262, 337, 338, 
 
 346, 347, 349, 37i. 
 Dupin, Amandine - Aurore - 
 Lucie, see also George Sand, 
 i, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17,20, 21, 
 
 22, 24, 25. 
 
 373 
 
Index 
 
 Dupin, Madame, 7,9, 10, 12, 17, 
 
 19. 
 
 Dupin, Maurice, 6, 7, 8, n. 
 Dupin, Madame Maurice, see 
 
 also Sophie Delaborde, 9, n, 
 
 20, 221. 
 
 Dupin de Francueil, M., 4, 6. 
 Duplessis, 21. 
 Duteil, Agasta, 167. 
 Duvernet, 32, 39. 
 
 Edmond, Charles, 371. 
 Epinay, M. d', 4. 
 Epinay, Madame d ; , 4. 
 Eugenie, Empress, 361. 
 
 Favre, Dr., 368-370. 
 
 Flaubert, 336, 337, 338, 347, 
 
 350, 360, 36i, 363-365, 371- 
 Fleury, 32. 
 Foucher, Paul, 60. 
 Fouquier, Henri, 331. 
 Frederick Augustus n., i. 
 
 Gautier, Theophile, 346, 347, 
 
 348, 349, 35i. 
 
 Girardin, Madame de, 338. 
 Goncourt, Edmond de, 322, 337, 
 
 338, 347- 
 Goncourt, Jules de, 337, 339, 
 
 347- 
 
 Grimm, 4. 
 Gryzmala, 333. 
 Gueroult, 168, 206. 
 
 Hanska, Madame de, 231. 
 Heine, 136, 207, 216, 243. 
 Herve, 331. 
 Horn, Comte de, 5. 
 Houghton, Lord, 57. 
 Hugo, Victor, 57, 60, 278, 279, 
 312, 319, 332, 346, 371. 
 
 Jouffroy, 1 60. 
 
 Kalkbrenner, 241, 242. 
 Keratry, M. de, 34. 
 Konigsmark, Aurora von, i. 
 
 La Harpe, 4. 
 
 Lambert, Eugene, 347, 371. 
 Lamennais, 196-198, 205, 209, 
 
 212, 215, 220, 234, 319, 320. 
 Latouche, 34, 35, 36. 
 Leroux, Pierre, 215, 229, 230, 
 
 235-238, 287, 319, 320, 355. 
 Liszt, 136, 139, 143, 148, 187, 
 
 196, 206-212, 214-216, 218, 
 
 220, 234, 240, 243, 247, 269, 
 275,285,306,312,367. 
 
 Mallefille, 219, 225-229, 234, 
 237, 238, 266, 335, 367. 
 
 Manceau, 323, 327, 347, 348. 
 
 Marliani, Madame, 215, 236, 
 294, 297. 
 
 Marmontel, 3. 
 
 Mathilde, Princesse, 156, 361. 
 
 Mendelssohn, 243. 
 
 Merimee, Prosper, 54, 55-56, 
 57, 61, 67, 92, 96, 181, 319, 
 330, 335, 346. 
 
 Meunce, Paul, 371. 
 
 Meyerbeer, 140, 243, 333. 
 
 Michel de Bourges, 162, 163, 
 169, 173, 174, 176, 180-194, 
 196, 198, 205, 212, 213, 216, 
 220, 222-226, 228, 235, 238, 
 319, 320. 
 
 Michel, Madame, 191. 
 
 Mickiewics, 216, 243. 
 
 Moscheles, 242. 
 
 Musset, Alfred de, 57-64, 66, 
 67, 69, 70, 73-76, 82, 84-86, 
 88-90, 93-103, 106-113, 115, 
 124-128, 130, 132-137, 139- 
 142, 145-1 50, 152-154, 156- 
 158, 164, 181, 182, 192, 203, 
 207, 211, 232, 234, 247, 258, 
 269, 272, 319, 339, 340-343, 
 367- 
 
 Musset, Madame de, 70, 102. 
 
 Musset, Paul de, 63, 64, 65, 69, 
 70, 71, 74, 75, 86, 98, 102, 
 150, 151, 343. 
 
 Musset, Madame Lardin de, 
 
 64, 98, 133- 
 
 Musset, Marquis de, 58. 
 Musset-Pathay, M. de, 58. 
 
 374 
 
Index 
 
 Napoleon, Prince, 371. 
 
 Nohant, 6, 7, 12, 25, 29, 127, 
 134, 141, 158, 165, 206, 230, 
 231. 259, 290, 291, 327, 329, 
 33i, 334, 336, 347, 348, 349, 
 365, 370. 
 
 Nouritt, Adolphe, 216, 243. 
 
 Pagello, Dr., 77, 80, 81, 82, 
 85-89, 92-96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 
 105, 107, 108, in-122, 124, 
 125-132, 159, 164, 181, 228, 
 
 255, 335- 
 
 Papet, 65, 133, 150, 221. 
 Pelletan, Eugene, 218, 220, 225. 
 Pictet, Major, 213, 248. 
 Planche, Gustave, 57, 65, 66, 67, 
 
 69, 133- 
 Potocka, Countess Delphine, 304. 
 
 Radziwill, Prince Valentin, 241. 
 Re'camier, Madame, 34, 216. 
 Regnault, Emile, 44, 45, 47. 
 Renan, Ernest, 371. 
 Rinteau, Genevieve, 2. 
 Rinteau, Marie, 2. 
 Rollinat, 133, 146. 
 Ronchaud, Louis de, 216. 
 Rothschild, Baron James de, 
 
 242. 
 
 Rousseau, 4, 6, 17. 
 Rozieres, Mademoiselle de, 266, 
 
 269, 270, 303. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, 54, 55, 60, 61, 
 67, 69, 101, 135, 136, 138, 141, 
 151, 153, 160, 162, 194, 215, 
 
 Saint-Simon, 37. 
 
 Saint-Simonians, 41, 184, 199, 
 202-206, 211. 
 
 Sand, George, I, et passim. 
 
 Sand, Maurice, 27, 28, 35, 43, 
 70, 73, 165, 166, 177, 178, 189, 
 190, 205, 214, 218, 225, 250, 
 255, 257, 266, 267, 269, 277, 
 296, 298, 299, 305, 349, 350, 
 356, 370. 
 
 Sand, Solange, 27, 35, 42, 53, 70, 
 165, 177, 178, 205, 214, 222, 
 233, 250, 255, 267, 268, 274, 
 276, 277, 285-291, 294-297, 
 
 299, 304, 324-331, 370. 
 Sandeau, Jules, 32, 36, 38, 43, 
 
 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55, 
 
 57,75, 1 06, 159, 181,227,232, 
 
 3i9, 337, 346, 367- 
 Sarcey, Francisque, 363. 
 Saxe, Aurore de, 5. 
 Saxe, Maurice de, I, 2, 3, 7. 
 Schoelcher, Victor, 216. 
 Schumann, 243. 
 Seze, Aurelien de, 24, 25, 52, 
 
 170, 176, 323. 
 Silvestre, Armand, 371. 
 Slowacki, 243, 244. 
 Stael, Madame de, 338. 
 Stendhal, 72. 
 Sterling, Miss, 301, 304. 
 "Stern, Daniel," see also 
 
 Comtesse d'Agoult, 217. 
 Sue, Eugene, 216, 332. 
 
 Tattet, Alfred, 100, 101, 102, 
 
 130, 133, 134, 142, 143, 343- 
 Thiers, 351, 352. 
 Thiot-Varennes, Maitre, 170 
 
 171, 172, 176. 
 Turgueneff, 346, 350. 
 
 Ulbach, Louis d', 336. 
 
 Verrieres, Genevieve de, see 
 
 also Rinteau, 4. 
 Verrieres, Marie de, see also 
 
 Rinteau, 3, 5. 
 
 Viardot, Madame, 269, 278. 
 Vigny, Alfred de, 53, 156, 312, 
 
 354- 
 Villeneuve, Rene de, 19, 20. 
 
 Weiss, J. J., 331. 
 Wieck, Clara, 243. 
 Wodzinska, Marie, 238, 243-246, 
 250. 
 
 Zola, Emile, 361. 
 
 375 
 
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