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George Sand: Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings

by René Doumic · English · Gutenberg #138 · 406,264 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: George Sand: Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings

Author: René Doumic

Translator: Alys Hallard


        
Release date: March 11, 2006 [eBook #138]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/138

Credits: Produced by Charles E. Keller and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE SAND: SOME ASPECTS OF HER LIFE AND WRITINGS ***

GEORGE SAND

Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings

by Rene Doumic

Translated by Alys Hallard




First published in 1910. This volume is dedicated to Madame L. Landouzy
with gratitude and affection


This book is not intended as a study of George Sand. It is merely a
series of chapters touching on various aspects of her life and writings.
My work will not be lost if the perusal of these pages should inspire
one of the historians of our literature with the idea of devoting to the
great novelist, to her genius and her influence, a work of this kind.




CONTENTS

     I    AURORE DUPIN
     II   BARONNE DUDEVANT
     III  A FEMINIST OF 1832
     IV   THE ROMANTIC ESCAPADE
     V    THE FRIEND OF MICHEL (DE BOURGES)
     VI   A CASE OF MATERNAL AFFECTION IN LOVE
     VII  THE HUMANITARIAN DREAM
     VIII 1848
     IX   THE 'BONNE DAME' OF NOHANT
     X    THE GENIUS OF THE WRITER



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

     GEORGE SAND (From a photogravure by N. Desmardyl, after a Painting
     by A. Charpentier)
     GEORGE SAND (From an engraving by L. Calamatia)
     JULES SANDEAU (From an etching by M. Desboutins)
     ALFRED DE MUSSET (From a lithograph)
     FACSIMILE OF AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER OF GEORGE SAND (Written from
     Venice to Hipp. Chatiron)
     GEORGE SAND (From a lithograph)
     F. CHOPIN (From a photograph)
     PIERRE LEROUX (From a lithograph by A. Collette)
     GEORGE SAND (From a lithograph)



GEORGE SAND




I

AURORE DUPIN

PSYCHOLOGY OF A DAUGHTER OF ROUSSEAU


In the whole of French literary history, there is, perhaps, no subject
of such inexhaustible and modern interest as that of George Sand. Of
what use is literary history? It is not only a kind of museum, in which
a few masterpieces are preserved for the pleasure of beholders. It is
this certainly, but it is still more than this. Fine books are, before
anything else, living works. They not only have lived, but they continue
to live. They live within us, underneath those ideas which form our
conscience and those sentiments which inspire our actions. There is
nothing of greater importance for any society than to make an inventory
of the ideas and the sentiments which are composing its moral atmosphere
every instant that it exists. For every individual this work is the very
condition of his dignity. The question is, should we have these ideas
and these sentiments, if, in the times before us, there had not been
some exceptional individuals who seized them, as it were, in the air and
made them viable and durable? These exceptional individuals were capable
of thinking more vigorously, of feeling more deeply, and of expressing
themselves more forcibly than we are. They bequeathed these ideas
and sentiments to us. Literary history is, then, above and beyond all
things, the perpetual examination of the conscience of humanity.

There is no need for me to repeat what every one knows, the fact that
our epoch is extremely complex, agitated and disturbed. In the midst of
this labyrinth in which we are feeling our way with such difficulty, who
does not look back regretfully to the days when life was more simple,
when it was possible to walk towards a goal, mysterious and unknown
though it might be, by straight paths and royal routes?

George Sand wrote for nearly half a century. For fifty times three
hundred and sixty-five days, she never let a day pass by without
covering more pages than other writers in a month. Her first books
shocked people, her early opinions were greeted with storms. From that
time forth she rushed head-long into everything new, she welcomed
every chimera and passed it on to us with more force and passion in it.
Vibrating with every breath, electrified by every storm, she looked up
at every cloud behind which she fancied she saw a star shining. The work
of another novelist has been called a repertory of human documents. But
what a repertory of ideas her work was! She has said what she had to say
on nearly every subject; on love, the family, social institutions and on
the various forms of government. And with all this she was a woman.
Her case is almost unique in the history of letters. It is intensely
interesting to study the influence of this woman of genius on the
evolution of modern thought.

I shall endeavour to approach my subject conscientiously and with all
due respect. I shall study biography where it is indispensable for the
complete understanding of works. I shall give a sketch of the original
individuals I meet on my path, portraying these only at their point
of contact with the life of our authoress, and it seems to me that
a gallery in which we see Sandeau, Sainte-Beuve, Musset, Michel (of
Bourges), Liszt, Chopin, Lamennais, Pierre Leroux, Dumas _fils_,
Flaubert and many, many others is an incomparable portrait gallery. I
shall not attack persons, but I shall discuss ideas and, when necessary,
dispute them energetically. We shall, I hope, during our voyage, see
many perspectives open out before us.

I have, of course, made use of all the works devoted to George Sand
which were of any value for my study, and among others of the two
volumes published, under the name of Wladimir Karenine,(1) by a woman
belonging to Russian aristocratic society. For the period before
1840, this is the most complete work that has been written. M. Samuel
Rocheblave, a clever University professor and the man who knows more
than any one about the life and works of George Sand, has been my guide
and has helped me greatly with his wise advice. Private collections
of documents have also been placed at my service most generously. I am
therefore able to supply some hitherto unpublished writings. George Sand
published, in all, about a hundred volumes of novels and stories, four
volumes of autobiography, and six of correspondence. In spite of all
this we are still asked for fresh documents.

     (1) WLADIMIR KARENINE:  _George Sand, Sa vie et ses
     oeuvres._ 2 Vols.  Ollendorf.

It is interesting, as a preliminary study, to note the natural gifts,
and the first impressions of Aurore Dupin as a child and young girl, and
to see how these predetermined the woman and the writer known to us as
George Sand.

Lucile-Amandine-Aurore Dupin, legitimate daughter of Maurice Dupin and
of Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, was born in Paris, at 15 Rue Meslay, in
the neighbourhood of the Temple, on the 1st of July, 1804. I would call
attention at once to the special phenomenon which explains the problem
of her destiny: I mean by this her heredity, or rather the radical and
violent contrast of her maternal and paternal heredity.

By her father she was an aristocrat and related to the reigning houses.

Her ancestor was the King of Poland, Augustus II, the lover of the
beautiful Countess Aurora von Koenigsmarck. George Sand's grandfather
was Maurice de Saxe. He may have been an adventurer and a _condottiere_,
but France owes to him Fontenoy, that brilliant page of her history.
All this takes us back to the eighteenth century with its brilliant,
gallant, frivolous, artistic and profligate episodes. Maurice de Saxe
adored the theatre, either for itself or for the sake of the women
connected with it. On his campaign, he took with him a theatrical
company which gave a representation the evening before a battle. In this
company was a young artiste named Mlle. de Verrieres whose father was
a certain M. Rinteau. Maurice de Saxe admired the young actress and a
daughter was born of this _liaison_, who was later on recognized by
her father and named Marie-Aurore de Saxe. This was George Sand's
grandmother. At the age of fifteen the young girl married Comte de Horn,
a bastard son of Louis XV. This husband was obliging enough to his wife,
who was only his wife in name, to die as soon as possible. She then
returned to her mother "the Opera lady." An elderly nobleman, Dupin de
Francueil, who had been the lover of the other Mlle. Verrieres, now
fell in love with her and married her. Their son, Maurice Dupin, was
the father of our novelist. The astonishing part of this series
of adventures is that Marie-Aurore should have been the eminently
respectable woman that she was. On her mother's side, though, Aurore
Dupin belonged to the people. She was the daughter of Sophie-Victoire
Delaborde milliner, the grandchild of a certain bird-seller on the
Quai des Oiseaux, who used to keep a public-house, and she was the
great-granddaughter of Mere Cloquart.

This double heredity was personified in the two women who shared George
Sand's childish affection. We must therefore study the portraits of
these two women.

The grandmother was, if not a typical _grande dame_, at least a typical
elegant woman of the latter half of the eighteenth century. She was very
well educated and refined, thanks to living with the two sisters, Mlles.
Verrieres, who were accustomed to the best society. She was a good
musician and sang delightfully. When she married Dupin de Francueil, her
husband was sixty-two, just double her age. But, as she used to say
to her granddaughter, "no one was ever old in those days. It was the
Revolution that brought old age into the world."

Dupin was a very agreeable man. When younger he had been _too_
agreeable, but now he was just sufficiently so to make his wife very
happy. He was very lavish in his expenditure and lived like a prince,
so that he left Marie-Aurore ruined and poor with about three thousand a
year. She was imbued with the ideas of the philosophers and an enemy of
the Queen's _coterie_. She was by no means alarmed at the Revolution and
was very soon taken prisoner. She was arrested on the 26th of November,
1793, and incarcerated in the _Couvent des Anglaises_, Rue des
Fosse's-Saint-Victor, which had been converted into a detention house.
On leaving prison she settled down at Nohant, an estate she had recently
bought. It was there that her granddaughter remembered her in her early
days. She describes her as tall, slender, fair and always very calm. At
Nohant she had only her maids and her books for company. When in Paris,
she delighted in the society of people of her own station and of her
time, people who had the ideas and airs of former days. She continued,
in this new century, the shades of thought and the manners and Customs
of the old _regime._

As a set-off to this woman of race and of culture, Aurore's mother
represented the ordinary type of the woman of the people. She was small,
dark, fiery and violent. She, too, the bird-seller's daughter, had been
imprisoned by the Revolution, and strangely enough in the _Couvent des
Anglaises_ at about the same time as Maurice de Saxe's granddaughter.
It was in this way that the fusion of classes was understood under the
Terror. She was employed as a _figurante_ in a small theatre. This was
merely a commencement for her career. At the time when Maurice Dupin met
her, she was the mistress of an old general. She already had one child
of doubtful parentage. Maurice Dupin, too, had a natural son, named
Hippolyte, so that they could not reproach each other. When Maurice
Dupin married Sophie-Victoire, a month before the birth of Aurore, he
had some difficulty in obtaining his mother's consent. She finally
gave in, as she was of an indulgent nature. It is possible that
Sophie-Victoire's conduct was irreproachable during her husband's
lifetime, but, after his death, she returned to her former ways. She was
nevertheless of religious habits and would not, upon any account, have
missed attending Mass. She was quick-tempered, jealous and noisy and,
when anything annoyed her, extremely hot-headed. At such times she would
shout and storm, so that the only way to silence her was to shout still
more loudly. She never bore any malice, though, and wished no harm
to those she had insulted. She was of course sentimental, but more
passionate than tender, and she quickly forgot those whom she had loved
most fondly. There seemed to be gaps in her memory and also in her
conscience. She was ignorant, knowing nothing either of literature or of
the usages of society. Her _salon_ was the landing of her flat and her
acquaintances were the neighbours who happened to live next door to her.
It is easy to imagine what she thought of the aristocrats who visited
her mother-in-law. She was amusing when she joked and made parodies
on the women she styled "the old Countesses." She had a great deal of
natural wit, a liveliness peculiar to the native of the faubourgs, all
the impudence of the street arab, and a veritable talent of mimicry.
She was a good housewife, active, industrious and most clever in turning
everything to account. With a mere nothing she could improvise a dress
or a hat and give it a certain style. She was always most skilful with
her fingers, a typical Parisian work-girl, a daughter of the street and
a child of the people. In our times she would be styled "a midinette."

Such are the two women who shared the affection of Aurore Dupin. Fate
had brought them together, but had made them so unlike that they were
bound to dislike each other. The childhood of little Aurore served as
the lists for their contentions. Their rivalry was the dominating note
in the sentimental education of the child.

As long as Maurice Dupin lived, Aurore was always with her parents in
their little Parisian dwelling. Maurice Dupin was a brilliant officer,
and very brave and jovial. In 1808, Aurore went to him in Madrid, where
he was Murat's _aide-de-camp_. She lived in the palace of the Prince
of Peace, that vast palace which Murat filled with the splendour of his
costumes and the groans caused by his suffering. Like Victor Hugo,
who went to the same place at about the same time and under similar
conditions, Aurore may have brought back with her:

     _de ses courses lointaines_
     _Comme un vaguefaisceau de lueurs incertaines._

This does not seem probable, though. The return was painful, as they
came back worried and ill, and were glad to take refuge at Nohant.
They were just beginning to organize their life when Maurice Dupin died
suddenly, from an accident when riding, leaving his mother and his wife
together.

From this time forth, Aurore was more often with her grandmother at
Nohant than with her mother in Paris. Her grandmother undertook the care
of her education. Her half-brother, Hippolyte Chatiron, and she received
lessons from M. Deschartres, who had educated Maurice Dupin. He was
steward and tutor combined, a very authoritative man, arrogant and a
great pedant. He was affectionate, though, and extremely devoted. He
was both detestable and touching at the same time, and had a warm heart
hidden under a rough exterior. Nohant was in the heart of Berry, and
this meant the country and Nature. For Aurore Dupin Nature proved to be
an incomparable educator.

There was only one marked trait in the child's character up to this
date, and that was a great tendency to reverie. For long hours she would
remain alone, motionless, gazing into space. People were anxious about
her when they saw her looking so _stupid_, but her mother invariably
said: "Do not be alarmed. She is always ruminating about something."
Country life, while providing her with fresh air and plenty of exercise,
so that her health was magnificent, gave fresh food and another turn to
her reveries. Ten years earlier Alphonse de Lamartine had been sent
to the country at Milly, and allowed to frequent the little peasant
children of the place. Aurore Dupin's existence was now very much the
same as that of Lamartine. Nohant is situated in the centre of the Black
Valley. The ground is dark and rich; there are narrow, shady paths. It
is not a hilly country, and there are wide, peaceful horizons. At all
hours of the day and at all seasons of the year, Aurore wandered along
the Berry roads with her little playfellows, the farmers' children.
There was Marie who tended the flock, Solange who collected leaves, and
Liset and Plaisir who minded the pigs. She always knew in what meadow or
in what place she would find them. She played with them amongst the hay,
climbed the trees and dabbled in the water. She minded the flock with
them, and in winter, when the herdsmen talked together, assembled round
their fire, she listened to their wonderful stories. These credulous
country children had "seen with their own eyes" Georgeon, the evil
spirit of the Black Valley. They had also seen will-o'-the-wisps,
ghosts, the "white greyhound" and the "Big Beast"! In the evenings, she
sat up listening to the stories told by the hemp-weaver. Her fresh
young soul was thus impregnated at an early age with the poetry of the
country. And it was all the poetry of the country, that which comes from
things, such as the freshness of the air and the perfume of the flowers,
but also that which is to be found in the simplicity of sentiments and
in that candour and surprise face to face with those sights of Nature
which have remained the same and have been just as incomprehensible ever
since the beginning of the world.

The antagonism of the two mothers increased, though. We will not go into
detail with regard to the various episodes, but will only consider the
consequences.

The first consequence was that the intelligence of the child became more
keen through this duality. Placed as she was, in these two different
worlds, between two persons with minds so unlike, and, obliged as she
was to go from one to the other, she learnt to understand and appreciate
them both, contrasts though they were. She had soon reckoned each of
them up, and she saw their weaknesses, their faults, their merits and
their advantages.

A second consequence was to increase her sensitiveness. Each time that
she left her mother, the separation was heartrending. When she was
absent from her, she suffered on account of this absence, and still more
because she fancied that she would be forgotten. She loved her mother,
just as she was, and the idea that any one was hostile or despised her
caused the child much silent suffering. It was as though she had an
ever-open wound.

Another consequence, and by no means the least important one, was to
determine in a certain sense the immense power of sympathy within her.
For a long time she only felt a sort of awe, when with her reserved and
ceremonious grandmother. She felt nearer to her mother, as there was
no need to be on ceremony with her. She took a dislike to all those who
represented authority, rules and the tyranny of custom. She considered
her mother and herself as oppressed individuals. A love for the people
sprang up in the heart of the daughter of Sophie-Victoire. She belonged
to them through her mother, and she was drawn to them now through the
humiliations she underwent. In this little enemy of reverences and of
society people, we see the dawn of that instinct which, later on, was to
cause her to revolt openly. George Sand was quite right in saying,
later on, that it was of no use seeking any intellectual reason as the
explanation of her social preferences. Everything in her was due to
sentiment. Her socialism was entirely the outcome of her suffering and
torments as a child.

Things had to come to a crisis, and the crisis was atrocious. George
Sand gives an account of the tragic scene in her _Histoire de ma vie_.
Her grandmother had already had one attack of paralysis. She was anxious
about Aurore's future, and wished to keep her from the influence of her
mother. She therefore decided to employ violent means to this end. She
sent for the child to her bedside, and, almost beside herself, in a
choking voice, she revealed to her all that she ought to have concealed.
She told her of Sophie-Victoire's past, she uttered the fatal word
and spoke of the child's mother as a lost woman. With Aurore's extreme
sensitiveness, it was horrible to receive such confidences at the age of
thirteen. Thirty years later, George Sand describes the anguish of the
terrible minute. "It was a nightmare," she says. "I felt choked, and it
was as though every word would kill me. The perspiration came out on my
face. I wanted to interrupt her, to get up and rush away. I did not want
to hear the frightful accusation. I could not move, though; I seemed to
be nailed on my knees, and my head seemed to be bowed down by that voice
that I heard above me, a voice which seemed to wither me like a storm
wind."

It seems extraordinary that a woman, who was in reality so kind-hearted
and so wise, should have allowed herself to be carried away like this.
Passion has these sudden and unexpected outbursts, and we see here a
most significant proof of the atmosphere of passion in which the child
had lived, and which gradually insinuated itself within her.

Under these circumstances, Aurore's departure for the convent was a
deliverance. Until just recently, there has always been a convent in
vogue in France in which it has been considered necessary for girls in
good society to be educated. In 1817, _the Couvent des Anglaises_ was in
vogue, the very convent which had served as a prison for the mother
and grandmother of Aurore. The three years she spent there in that "big
feminine family, where every one was as kind as God," she considered the
most peaceful and happy time of her life. The pages she devotes to them
in her _Histoire de ma vie_ have all the freshness of an oasis.
She describes most lovingly this little world, apart, exclusive and
self-sufficing, in which life was so intense.

The house consisted of a number of constructions, and was situated
in the neighbourhood given up to convents. There were courtyards and
gardens enough to make it seem like a small village. There was also
a labyrinth of passages above and underground, just as in one of
Anne Radcliffe's novels. There were old walls overgrown with vine and
jasmine. The cock could be heard at midnight, just as in the heart of
the country, and there was a bell with a silvery tone like a woman's
voice. From her little cell, Aurore looked over the tops of the great
chestnut trees on to Paris, so that the air so necessary for the lungs
of a child accustomed to wanderings in the country was not lacking
in her convent home. The pupils had divided themselves into three
categories: the _diables_, the good girls, who were the specially
pious ones, and the silly ones. Aurore took her place at once among
the _diables_. The great exploit of these convent girls consisted in
descending into the cellars, during recreation, and in sounding the
walls, in order to "deliver the victim." There was supposed to be an
unfortunate victim imprisoned and tortured by the good, kindhearted
Sisters. Alas! all the _diables_ sworn to the task in the _Couvent des
Anglaises_ never succeeded in finding the victim, so that she must be
there still.

Very soon, though, a sudden change-took place in Aurore's soul. It
would have been strange had it been otherwise. With so extraordinarily
sensitive an organization, the new and totally different surroundings
could not fail to make an impression. The cloister, the cemetery, the
long services, the words of the ritual, murmured in the dimly-lighted
chapel, and the piety that seems to hover in the air in houses where
many prayers have been offered up--all this acted on the young girl. One
evening in August, she had gone into the church, which was dimly lighted
by the sanctuary lamp. Through the open window came the perfume of
honeysuckle and the songs of the birds. There was a charm, a mystery
and a solemn calm about everything, such as she had never before
experienced. "I do not know what was taking place within me," she said,
when describing this, later on, "but I breathed an atmosphere that was
indescribably delicious, and I seemed to be breathing it in my very
soul. Suddenly, I felt a shock through all my being, a dizziness came
over me, and I seemed to be enveloped in a white light. I thought I
heard a voice murmuring in my ear: _'Tolle Lege.'_ I turned round, and
saw that I was quite alone. . . ."

Our modern _psychiatres_ would say that she had had an hallucination of
hearing, together with olfactory trouble. I prefer saying that she
had received the visit of grace. Tears of joy bathed her face and she
remained there, sobbing for a long time.

The convent had therefore opened to Aurore another world of sentiment,
that of Christian emotion. Her soul was naturally religious, and the
dryness of a philosophical education had not been sufficient for it. The
convent had now brought her the aliment for which she had instinctively
longed. Later on, when her faith, which had never been very enlightened,
left her, the sentiment remained. This religiosity, of Christian form,
was essential to George Sand.

The convent also rendered her another eminent service. In the _Histoire
de ma vie_, George Sand retraces from memory the portraits of several of
the Sisters. She tells us of Madame Marie-Xavier, and of her despair
at having taken the vows; of Sister Anne-Joseph, who was as kind as an
angel and as silly as a goose; of the gentle Marie-Alicia, whose
serene soul looked out of her blue eyes, a mirror of purity, and of the
mystical Sister Helene, who had left home in spite of her family, in
spite of the supplications and the sobs of her mother and sisters, and
who had passed over the body of a child on her way to God. It is like
this always. The costumes are the same, the hands are clasped in the
same manner, the white bands and the faces look equally pale, but
underneath this apparent uniformity what contrasts! It is the inner life
which marks the differences so vigorously, and shows up the originality
of each one. Aurore gradually discovered the diversity of all these
souls and the beauty of each one. She thought of becoming a nun, but
her confessor did not advise this, and he was certainly wise. Her
grandmother, who had a philosopher's opinion of priests, blamed their
fanaticism, and took her little granddaughter away from the convent.
Perhaps she felt the need of affection for the few months she had still
to live. At any rate, she certainly had this affection. One of the first
results of the larger perspicacity which Aurore had acquired at the
convent was to make her understand her grandmother at last. She was able
now to grasp the complex nature of her relative and to see the delicacy
hidden under an appearance of great reserve. She knew now all that
she owed to her grandmother, but unfortunately it was one of those
discoveries which are made too late.

The eighteen months which Aurore now passed at Nohant, until the death
of her grandmother, are very important as regards her psychological
biography. She was seventeen years old, and a girl who was eager to live
and very emotional. She had first been a child of Nature. Her convent
life had taken her away from Nature and accustomed her to falling back
on her own thoughts. Nature now took her back once more, and her beloved
Nohant feted her return.

"The trees were in flower," she says, "the nightingales were singing,
and, in the distance, I could hear the classic, solemn sound of the
labourers. My old friends, the big dogs, who had growled at me the
evening before, recognized me again and were profuse in their caresses.
. . ."

She wanted to see everything again. The things themselves had not
changed, but her way of looking at them now was different. During her
long, solitary walks every morning, she enjoyed seeing the various
landscapes, sometimes melancholy-looking and sometimes delightful. She
enjoyed, too, the picturesqueness of the various things she met, the
flocks of cattle, the birds taking their flight, and even the sound of
the horses' feet splashing in the water. She enjoyed everything, in
a kind of voluptuous reverie which was no longer instinctive, but
conscious and a trifle morbid.

Added to all this, her reading at this epoch was without any order or
method. She read everything voraciously, mixing all the philosophers
up together. She read Locke, Condillac, Montesquieu, Bossuet, Pascal,
Montaigne, but she kept Rousseau apart from the others. She devoured
the books of the moralists and poets, La Bruyere, Pope, Milton, Dante,
Virgil, Shakespeare. All this reading was too much for her and excited
her brain. She had reserved Chateaubriand's _Rene_, and, on reading
that, she was overcome by the sadness which emanates from these
distressing pages. She was disgusted with life, and attempted to commit
suicide. She tried to drown herself, and only owed her life to the
healthy-mindedness of the good mare Colette, as the horse evidently had
not the same reasons as its young mistress for wishing to put an end to
its days.

All this time Aurore was entirely free to please herself. Deschartres,
who had always treated her as a boy, encouraged her independence. It
was at his instigation that she dressed in masculine attire to go out
shooting. People began to talk about her "eccentricities" at Landerneau,
and the gossip continued as far as La Chatre. Added to this,
Aurore began to study osteology with a young man who lived in the
neighbourhood, and it was said that this young man, Stephane Ajasson de
Grandsaigne, gave her lessons in her own room. This was the climax.

We have a curious testimony as regards the state of the young girl's
mind at this epoch. A review, entitled _Le Voile de pourpre_, published
recently, in its first number, a letter from Aurore to her mother, dated
November 18, 1821. Her mother had evidently written to her on hearing
the gossip about her, and had probably enlarged upon it.

"You reproach me, mother, with neither having timidity, modesty,
nor charm," she writes, "or at least you suppose that I have these
qualities, but that I refrain from showing them, and you are quite
certain that I have no outward decency nor decorum. You ought to know me
before judging me in this way. You would then be able to form an opinion
about my conduct. Grandmother is here, and, ill though she is, she
watches over me carefully and lovingly, and she would not fail to
correct me if she considered that I had the manners of a dragoon or of a
hussar."

She considered that she had no need of any one to guide or protect her,
and no need of leading-strings.

"I am seventeen," she says, "and I know my way about."

If this Monsieur de Grandsaigne had ventured to take any liberty with
her, she was old enough to take care of herself.

Her mother had blamed her for learning Latin and osteology. "Why should
a woman be ignorant?" she asks. "Can she not be well educated without
this spoiling her and without being pedantic? Supposing that I should
have sons in the future, and that I had profited sufficiently by my
studies to be able to teach them, would not a mother's lessons be as
good as a tutor's?"

She was already challenging public opinion, starting a campaign against
false prejudices, showing a tendency to generalize, and to make the
cause of one woman the cause of all women.

We must now bear in mind the various traits we have discovered, one
after another, in Aurore's character. We must remember to what parentage
she owed her intellectuality and her sentimentality. It will then
be more easy to understand the terms she uses when describing her
fascination for Rousseau's writings.

"The language of Jean-Jacques and the form of his deductions impressed
me as music might have done when heard in brilliant sunshine. I compared
him to Mozart, and I understood everything."

She understood him, for she recognized herself in him. She sympathized
with that predominance of feeling and imagination, that exaggeration of
sentiment, that preference for life according to Nature, that emotion
on beholding the various sights of the country, that distrust of people,
those effusions of religious sentimentality, those solitary reveries,
and that melancholy which made death seem desirable to him. All this
was to Aurore Dupin the gospel according to Rousseau. The whole of her
psychology is to be found here.

She was an exceptional being undoubtedly; but in order to be a genial
exception one must have within oneself, and then personify with great
intensity all the inspirations which, at a certain moment, are dispersed
in the atmosphere. Ever since the great agitation which had shaken
the moral world by Rousseau's preaching, there had been various vague
currents and a whole crowd of confused aspirations floating about.
It was this enormous wave that entered a feminine soul. Unconsciously
Aurore Dupin welcomed the new ideal, and it was this ideal which was
to operate within her. The question was, what would she do with it,
in presence of life with all its everyday and social realities. This
question is the object of our study. In the solution of it lies the
interest, the drama and the lesson of George Sand's destiny.




II

BARONNE DUDEVANT MARRIAGE AND FREEDOM--THE ARRIVAL IN PARIS--JULES
SANDEAU

We must now endeavour to discover what the future George Sand's
experiences of marriage were, and the result of these experiences on the
formation of her ideas.

"You will lose your best friend in me," were the last words of the
grandmother to her granddaughter on her death-bed. The old lady spoke
truly, and Aurore was very soon to prove this. By a clause in her will,
Madame Dupin de Francueil left the guardianship of Aurore to a cousin,
Rene de Villeneuve. It was scarcely likely, though, that Sophie-Victoire
should consent to her own rights being frustrated by this illegal
clause, particularly as this man belonged to the world of the "old
Countesses." She took her daughter with her to Paris. Unfortunately for
her, Aurore's eyes were now open, and she was cultured enough to have
been in entire sympathy with her exquisite grandmother. It was no longer
possible for her to have the old passionate affection and indulgence for
her mother, especially as she felt that she had hitherto been deserted
by her. She saw her mother now just as she was, a light woman belonging
to the people, a woman who could not resign herself to growing old. If
only Sophie-Victoire had been of a tranquil disposition! She was most
restless, on the contrary, wanting to change her abode and change her
restaurant every day. She would quarrel with people one day, make it up
the next; wear a different-shaped hat every day, and change the colour
of her hair continually. She was always in a state of agitation. She
loved police news and thrilling stories; read the _Sherlock Holmes_ of
those days until the middle of the night. She dreamed of such stories,
and the following day went on living in an atmosphere of crime. When
she had an attack of indigestion, she always imagined that she had been
poisoned. When a visitor arrived, she thought it must be a burglar.
She was most sarcastic about Aurore's "fine education" and her literary
aspirations. Her hatred of the dead grandmother was as strong as ever.
She was constantly insulting her memory, and in her fits of anger said
unheard-of things. Aurore's silence was her only reply to these storms,
and this exasperated her mother. She declared that she would correct her
daughter's "sly ways." Aurore began to wonder with terror whether her
mother's mind were not beginning to give way. The situation finally
became intolerable.

Sophie-Victoire took her daughter to spend two or three days with some
friends of hers, and then left her there. They lived in the country at
Plessis-Picard, near Melun. Aurore was delighted to find a vast park
with thickets in which there were roebucks bounding about. She loved
the deep glades and the water with the green reflections of old willow
trees. Monsieur James Duplessis and his wife, Angele, were excellent
people, and they adopted Aurore for the time being. They already had
five daughters, so that one more did not make much difference. They
frequented a few families in the neighbourhood, and there was plenty of
gaiety among the young people. The Duplessis took Aurore sometimes to
Paris and to the theatre.

"One evening," we are told in the _Histoire de ma vie_, "we were having
some ices at Tortoni's after the theatre, when suddenly my mother Angele
said to her husband, 'Why, there's Casimir!' A young man, slender and
rather elegant, with a gay expression and a military look, came and
shook hands, and answered all the questions he was asked about his
father, Colonel Dudevant, who was evidently very much respected and
loved by the family."

This was the first meeting, the first appearance of Casimir in the
story, and this was how he entered into the life of Aurore.

He was invited to Plessis, he joined the young people good-humouredly in
their games, was friendly with Aurore, and, without posing as a suitor,
asked for her hand in marriage. There was no reason for her to refuse
him. He was twenty-seven years of age, had served two years in the army,
and had studied law in Paris. He was a natural son, of course, but he
had been recognized by his father, Colonel Dudevant. The Dudevant family
was greatly respected. They had a _chateau_ at Guillery in Gascony.
Casimir had been well brought up and had good manners. Aurore might as
well marry him as any other young man. It would even be preferable to
marry him rather than another young man. He was already her friend, and
he would then be her husband. That would not make much difference.

The marriage almost fell through, thanks to Sophie-Victoire. She did
not consider Casimir good-looking enough. She was not thinking of her
daughter, but of herself. She had made up her mind to have a handsome
son-in-law with whom she could go out. She liked handsome men, and
particularly military men. Finally she consented to the marriage, but, a
fortnight before the ceremony, she arrived at Plessis, like a veritable
thunderbolt. An extraordinary idea had occurred to her. She vowed that
she had discovered that Casimir had been a waiter at a _cafe_. She had
no doubt dreamt this, but she held to her text, and was indignant at the
idea of her daughter marrying a waiter! . . .

Things had arrived at this crisis when Casimir's mother, Madame
Dudevant, who had all the manners of a _grande dame_, decided to pay
Sophie-Victoire an official visit. The latter was greatly flattered,
for she liked plenty of attention paid to her. It was in this way that
Aurore Dupin became Baronne Dudevant.


She was just eighteen years of age. It is interesting to read her
description of herself at this time. In her _Voyage en Auvergne_, which
was her first writing, dated 1827, she traces the following portrait,
which certainly is not exaggerated.

"When I was sixteen," she says, "and left the convent, every one could
see that I was a pretty girl. I was fresh-looking, though dark. I was
like those wild flowers which grow without any art or culture, but with
gay, lively colouring. I had plenty of hair, which was almost black. On
looking at myself in the glass, though, I can truthfully say that I was
not very well pleased with myself. I was dark, my features were well
cut, but not finished. People said that it was the expression of my face
that made it interesting. I think this was true. I was gay but dreamy,
and my most natural expression was a meditative one. People said, too,
that in this absent-minded expression there was a fixed look which
resembled that of the serpent when fascinating his prey. That, at any
rate, was the far-fetched comparison of my provincial adorers."

They were not very far wrong, these provincial adorers. The portraits
of Aurore at this date show us a charming face of a young girl,
as fresh-looking as a child. She has rather long features, with a
delicately-shaped chin. She is not exactly pretty, but fascinating, with
those great dark eyes, which were her prominent feature, eyes which,
when fixed on any one, took complete possession of them--dreamy,
passionate eyes, sombre because the soul reflected in them had profound
depths.

It is difficult to define that soul, for it was so complex. To judge by
appearances, it was a very peaceful soul, and perhaps, too, it was in
reality peaceful. George Sand, who knew herself thoroughly, frequently
spoke of her laziness and of her apathy, traits peculiar to the natives
of Berry. Superficial observers looked no further, and her mother used
to call her "St. Tranquillity." The nuns, though, of her convent had
more perspicacity. They said, when speaking of her: "Still waters run
deep." Under the smooth surface they fancied that storms were gathering.
Aurore had within her something of her mother and of her grandmother,
and their opposite natures were blended in her. She had the calmness of
Marie-Aurore, but she also had the impetuousness of Sophie-Victoire,
and undoubtedly, too, something of the free and easy good humour of her
father, the break-neck young officer. It certainly is not surprising to
find a love of adventure in a descendant of Maurice de Saxe.

Beside all these inner contrasts, the observer was particularly struck
by her sudden changes of humour, by the way in which, after a fit of
melancholy sadness, she suddenly gave way to the most exuberant gaiety,
followed by long fits of depression and nervous exhaustion. Personally,
I do not believe much in the influence of the physical over the moral
nature, but I am fully convinced of the action of the moral over
the physical nature. In certain cases and in presence of extremely
accentuated conditions, physiological explanations must be taken into
account. All these fits of melancholy and weeping, this prostration,
these high spirits and the long walks, in order to sober down, denote
the exigencies of an abnormal temperament. When once the crisis was
passed, it must not be supposed that, as with many other people, nothing
remained of it all. This was by no means the case, as in a nature so
extraordinarily organized for storing up sensations nothing was lost,
nothing evaporated, and everything increased. The still water seemed
to be slumbering. Its violence, though held in check, was increasing in
force, and when once let loose, it would carry all before it.

Such was the woman whom Casimir Dudevant was to marry. The fascination
was great; the honour rather to be feared, for all depended on his skill
in guiding this powerful energy.

The question is whether he loved her. It has been said that it was a
marriage of interest, as Aurore's fortune amounted to twenty thousand
pounds, and he was by no means rich. This may have been so, but there is
no reason why money should destroy one's sentiments, and the fact that
Aurore had money was not likely to prevent Casimir from appreciating
the charms of a pretty girl. It seems, therefore, very probable that he
loved his young wife, at any rate as much as this Casimir was capable of
loving his wife.

The next question is whether she loved him. It has been said that she
did, simply because she declared that she did not. When, later on, after
her separation, she spoke of her marriage, all her later grievances were
probably in her mind. There are her earlier letters, though, which some
people consider a proof that she cared for Casimir, and there are also a
few words jotted down in her notebook. When her husband was absent, she
was anxious about him and feared that he had met with an accident.
It would be strange indeed if a girl of eighteen did not feel some
affection for the man who had been the first to make love to her, a man
whom she had married of her own free-will. It is rare for a woman to
feel no kind of attachment for her husband, but is that attachment love?
When a young wife complains of her husband, we hear in her reproaches
the protest of her offended dignity, of her humbled pride. When a woman
loves her husband, though, she does not reproach him, guilty though he
may be, with having humiliated and wounded her. What she has against him
then, is that he has broken her heart by his lack of love for her. This
note and this accent can never be mistaken, and never once do we find
it with Aurore. We may therefore conclude that she had never loved her
husband.

Casimir did not know how to win her affection. He did not even realize
that he needed to win it. He was very much like all men. The idea never
occurs to them that, when once they are married, they have to win their
wife.

He was very much like all men. . . . That is the most faithful portrait
that can be traced of Casimir at this epoch. He had not as yet the vices
which developed in him later on. He had nothing to distinguish him from
the average man. He was selfish, without being disagreeable, rather
idle, rather incapable, rather vain and rather foolish. He was just
an ordinary man. The wife he had married, though, was not an ordinary
woman. That was their misfortune. As Emile Faguet has very wittily put
it, "Monsieur Dudevant, about whom she complained so much, seems to have
had no other fault than that of being merely an ordinary man, which, of
course, is unendurable to a superior woman. The situation was perhaps
equally unendurable for the man." This is quite right, for Casimir was
very soon considerably disconcerted. He was incapable of understanding
her psychology, and, as it seemed impossible to him that a woman was
not his inferior, he came to the logical conclusion that his wife was
"idiotic." This was precisely his expression, and at every opportunity
he endeavoured to crush her by his own superiority. All this seems to
throw some light on his character and also on the situation. Here was
a man who had married the future George Sand, and he complained, in all
good faith, that his wife was "idiotic"!

Certainly, on comparing the _Correspondance_ with the _Histoire de ma
vie_, the difference of tone is most striking. The letters in
which Baronne Dudevant tells, day by day, of her home life are too
enthusiastic for the letters of an unhappy wife. There are receptions at
Nohant, lively dinners, singing and dancing. All this is, at any rate,
the surface, but gradually the misunderstandings are more pronounced,
and the gulf widens.

There may have been a misunderstanding at the very beginning of their
married life, and Aurore may have had a surprise of the nature of the
one to which Jane de Simerose confesses in _L'Ami des femmes_. In an
unpublished letter written much later on, in the year 1843, from George
Sand to her half-brother Hippolyte Chatiron on the occasion of his
daughter's engagement, the following lines occur: "See that your
son-in-law is not brutal to your daughter the first night of their
marriage. . . . Men have no idea that this amusement of theirs is a
martyrdom for us. Tell him to sacrifice his own pleasure a little, and
to wait until he has taught his wife gradually to understand things
and to be willing. There is nothing so frightful as the horror, the
suffering and the disgust of a poor girl who knows nothing and who is
suddenly violated by a brute. We bring girls up as much as possible like
saints, and then we hand them over like fillies. If your son-in-law
is an intelligent man and if he really loves your daughter, he will
understand his _role_, and will not take it amiss that you should speak
to him beforehand."(2)

     (2) Communicated by M. S. Rocheblave.

Is George Sand recalling here any hidden and painful memories? Casimir
had, at bottom, a certain brutality, which, later on, was very evident.
The question is whether he had shown proofs of it at a time when it
would have been wiser to have refrained.

However that may be, the fundamental disagreement of their natures was
not long in making itself felt between the husband and wife. He was
matter-of-fact, and she was romantic; he only believed in facts, and
she in ideas; he was of the earth, earthy, whilst she aspired to the
impossible. They had nothing to say to each other, and when two people
have nothing to say, and love does not fill up the silences, what
torture the daily _tete-a-tete_ must be. Before they had been married
two years, they were bored to death. They blamed Nohant, but the fault
was in themselves. Nohant seemed unbearable to them, simply because they
were there alone with each other. They went to Plessis, perhaps in the
hope that the remembrance of the days of their engagement might have
some effect on them. It was there, in 1824, that the famous scene of the
blow took place. They were playing at a regular children's game in the
park, and throwing sand at each other. Casimir lost his patience and
struck his wife. It was certainly impolite, but Aurore did not appear
to have been very indignant with her husband at the time. Her grievances
were quite of another kind, less tangible and much more deeply felt.

From Plessis they went to Ormesson. We do not know what took place
there, but evidently something which made a deep impression morally,
something very serious. A few years later, referring to this stay at
Ormesson, George Sand wrote to one of her friends: "You pass by a wall
and come to a house. . . . If you are allowed to enter you will find a
delightful English garden, at the bottom of which is a spring of water
hidden under a kind of grotto. It is all very stiff and uninteresting,
but it is very lonely. I spent several months there, and it was there
that I lost my health, my confidence in the future, my gaiety and my
happiness. It was there that I felt, and very deeply too, my first
approach of trouble. . . ."(3)

     (3) Extract from the unpublished letters of George Sand to
     Dr. Emile Regnault.

They left Ormesson for Paris, and Paris for Nohant, and after that, by
way of trying to shake off the dulness that was oppressing them, they
had recourse to the classical mode of diversion--a voyage.


They set off on the 5th of July, 1825, for that famous expedition to the
Pyrenees, which was to be so important a landmark in Aurore Dudevant's
history. On crossing the Pyrenees, the scenery, so new to her--or
rather the memory of which had been lying dormant in her mind since
her childhood--filled her with wild enthusiasm. This intense emotion
contributed to develop within her that sense of the picturesque which,
later on, was to add so considerably to her talent as a writer. She had
hitherto been living in the country of plains, the Ile-de-France and
Berry. The contrast made her realize all the beauties of nature, and,
on her return, she probably understood her own familiar scenery, and
enjoyed it all the more. She had hitherto appreciated it vaguely.
Lamartine learnt to love the severe scenery of Milly better on returning
to it after the softness of Italy.

The Pyrenees served, too, for Baronne Dudevant as the setting for an
episode which was unique in her sentimental life.

In the _Histoire de ma vie_ there is an enigmatical page in which George
Sand has intentionally measured and veiled every expression. She speaks
of her moral solitude, which, at that time, was profound and absolute,
and she adds: "It would have been mortal to a tender mind and to a girl
in the flower of her youth, if it had not been filled with a dream which
had taken the importance of a great passion, not in my life, as I had
sacrificed my life to duty, but in my thoughts. I was in continual
correspondence with an absent person to whom I told all my thoughts, all
my dreams, who knew all my humble virtues, and who heard all my platonic
enthusiasm. This person was excellent in reality, but I attributed to
him more than all the perfections possible to human nature. I only saw
this man for a few days, and sometimes only for a few hours, in the
course of a year. He was as romantic, in his intercourse with me, as I
was. Consequently he did not cause me any scruples, either of religion
or of conscience. This man was the stay and consolation of my exile,
as regards the world of reality." It was this dream, as intense as any
passion, that we must study here. We must make the acquaintance of this
excellent and romantic man.

Aurelien de Seze was a young magistrate, a few years older than Aurore.
He was twenty-six years of age and she was twenty-one. He was the
great-nephew of the counsel who pleaded for Louis XVI. There was,
therefore, in his family a tradition of moral nobility, and the young
man had inherited this. He had met Aurore at Bordeaux and again at
Cauterets. They had visited the grottoes of Lourdes together. Aurelien
had appreciated the young wife's charm, although she had not attempted
to attract his attention, as she was not coquettish. She appreciated in
him--all that was so lacking in Casimir--culture of mind, seriousness of
character, discreet manners which people took at first for coldness, and
a somewhat dignified elegance. He was scrupulously honest, a magistrate
of the old school, sure of his principles and master of himself. It was,
probably, just that which appealed to the young wife, who was a true
woman and who had always wished to be dominated. When they met again at
Breda, they had an explanation. This was the "violent grief" of which
George Sand speaks. She was consoled by a friend, Zoe Leroy, who found
a way of calming this stormy soul. She came through this crisis crushed
with emotion and fatigue, but calm and joyful. They had vowed to love
each other, but to remain without reproach, and their vow was faithfully
kept.

Aurore, therefore, had nothing with which to reproach herself, but with
her innate need of being frank, she considered it her duty to write a
letter to her husband, informing him of everything. This was the
famous letter of November 8, 1825. Later on, in 1836, when her case for
separation from her husband was being heard, a few fragments of it were
read by her husband's advocate with the idea of incriminating her. By
way of reply to this, George Sand's advocate read the entire letter in
all its eloquence and generosity. It was greeted by bursts of applause
from the audience.

All this is very satisfactory. It is exactly the situation of the
Princess of Cleves in Madame de Lafayette's novel. The Princess of
Cleves acknowledges to her husband the love she cannot help feeling for
Monsieur de Nemours, and asks for his help and advice as her natural
protector. This fine proceeding is usually admired, although it cost
the life of the Prince of Cleves, who died broken-hearted. Personally, I
admire it too, although at times I wonder whether we ought not rather
to see in it an unconscious suggestion of perversity. This confession of
love to the person who is being, as it were, robbed of that love, is in
itself a kind of secret pleasure. By speaking of the love, it becomes
more real, we bring it out to light instead of letting it die away in
those hidden depths within us, in which so many of the vague sentiments
which we have not cared to define, even to ourselves, die away. Many
women have preferred this more silent way, in which they alone have been
the sufferers. But such women are not the heroines of novels. No one has
appreciated their sacrifice, and they themselves could scarcely tell all
that it has cost them.

Aurelien de Seze had taken upon himself the _role_ of confidant to this
soul that he had allotted to himself. He took his _role_ very seriously,
as was his custom in all things. He became the young wife's director in
all matters of conscience. The letters which he wrote to her have
been preserved, and we know them by the extracts and the analysis that
Monsieur Rocheblave has given us and by his incisive commentaries of
them.(4) They are letters of guidance, spiritual letters. The laic
confessor endeavours, before all things, to calm the impatience of this
soul which is more and more ardent and more and more troubled every day.
He battles with her about her mania of philosophizing, her wish to sift
everything and to get to the bottom of everything. Strong in his own
calmness, he kept repeating to her in a hundred different ways the
words: "Be calm!" The advice was good; the only difficulty was the
following of the advice.

     (4) "George Sand avant George Sand," by S. Rocheblave
     (_Revue de Paris_, December 15, 1894).

Gradually the professor lost his hold on his pupil, for it seems as
though Aurore were the first to tire. Aurelien finally began to doubt
the efficacy of his preaching. The usual fate of sentiments outside
the common order of things is that they last the length of time that a
crisis of enthusiasm lasts. The best thing that can happen then is that
their nature should not change, that they should not deteriorate, as is
so often the case. When they remain intact to the end, they leave behind
them, in the soul, a trail of light, a trail of cold, pure light.

The decline of this platonic _liaison_ with Aurelien de Seze dates from
1828. Some grave events were taking place at Nohant about this time. For
the last few years Casimir had fallen into the vices of certain country
squires, or so-called gentlemen farmers. He had taken to drink, in
company with Hippolyte Chatiron, and it seems that the intoxication
peculiar to the natives of Berry takes a heavy and not a gay form. He
had also taken to other bad habits, away from home at first, and
later on under the conjugal roof. He was particularly partial to
the maid-servants, and, the day following the birth of her daughter,
Solange, Aurore had an unpleasant surprise with regard to her husband.
From that day forth, what had hitherto been only a vague wish on her
part became a fixed idea with her, and she began to form plans. A
certain incident served as a pretext. When putting some papers in order,
Aurore came upon her husband's will. It was a mere diatribe, in which
the future "deceased" gave utterance to all his past grievances against
his _idiotic_ wife. Her mind was made up irrevocably from this moment.
She would have her freedom again; she would go to Paris and spend three
months out of six there. She had a young tutor from the south of France,
named Boucoiran, educating her children. This Boucoiran needed to be
taken to task constantly, and Baronne Dudevant did not spare him.(5)

     (5) An instance of her disposition for lecturing will be
     seen in the following curious letter sent by George Sand to
     her friend and neighbour, Adolphe Duplomb.  This letter has
     never been published before, and we owe our thanks for it to
     Monsieur Charles Duplomb.

     _Nohant, July_ 23,1830.

     "Are you so very much afraid of me, my poor Hydrogene?  You
     expect a good lecture and you will not expect in vain.  Have
     patience, though.  Before giving you the dressing you
     deserve, I want to tell you that I have not forgotten you,
     and that I was very vexed on returning from Paris, to find
     my great simpleton of a son gone. I am so used to seeing
     your solemn face that I quite miss it. You have a great many
     faults, but after all, you are a good sort, and in time you
     will get reasonable.  Try to remember occasionally, my dear
     Plombeus, that you have friends.  If I were your only
     friend, that would be a great deal, as I am to be depended
     on, and am always at my post as a friend, although I may not
     be very tender. I am not very polite either, as I speak the
     truth plainly. That is my characteristic, though.  I am a
     firm friend nevertheless, and to be depended on.  Do not
     forget what I have said now, as I shall not often repeat
     this.  Remember, too, that happiness in this world depends
     on the interest and esteem that we inspire. I do not say
     this to every one, as it would be impossible, but just to a
     certain number of friends.  It is impossible to find one's
     happiness entirely in one's self, without being an egoist,
     and I do not think so badly of you that I imagine you to be
     one. A man whom no one cares for is wretched, and the man
     who has friends is afraid of grieving them by behaving
     badly.  As Polyte says, all this is for the sake of letting
     you know that you must do your best to behave well, if you
     want to prove to me that you are not ungrateful for my
     interest in you.  You ought to get rid of the bad habit of
     boasting that you have adopted through frequenting young men
     as foolish as yourself.  Do whatever your position and your
     health allow you to do, provided that you do not compromise
     the honour or the reputation of any one else. I do not see
     that a young man is called upon to be as chaste as a nun.
     But keep your good or bad luck in your love affairs to
     yourself. Silly talk is always repeated, and it may chance
     to get to the ears of sensible people who will disapprove.
     Try, too, not to make so many plans, but to carry out just
     one or two of them.  You know that is why I quarrel with you
     always.  I should like to see more constancy in you.  You
     tell Hippolyte that you are very willing and courageous.  As
     to physical courage, of the kind that consists in enduring
     illness and in not fearing death, I dare say you have that,
     but I doubt very much whether you have the courage necessary
     for sustained work, unless you have very much altered.
     Everything fresh delights you, but after a little time you
     only see the inconveniences of your position.  You will
     scarcely find anything without something that is annoying
     and troublesome, but if you cannot learn to put up with
     things you will never be a man.

     "This is the end of my sermon.  I expect you have had enough
     of it, especially as you are not accustomed to reading my
     bad handwriting. I shall be glad to hear from you, but do
     not consider your letter as a State affair, and do not
     torment yourself to arrange well-turned phrases.  I do not
     care for such phrases at all. A letter is always good enough
     when the writer expresses himself naturally, and says what
     he thinks.  Fine pages are all very well for the
     schoolmaster, but I do not appreciate them at all. Promise
     me to be reasonable, and to think of my sermons now and
     then. That is all I ask.  You may be very sure that if it
     were not for my friendship for you I should not take the
     trouble to lecture you. I should be afraid of annoying you
     if it were not for that. As it is, I am sure that you are
     not displeased to have my lectures, and that you understand
     the feeling which dictates them.

     "Adieu, my dear Adolphe.  Write to me often and tell me
     always about your affairs.  Take care of yourself, and try
     to keep well; but if you should feel ill come back to your
     native place. There will always be milk and syrup for you,
     and you know that I am not a bad nurse.  Every one wishes to
     be remembered to you, and I send you my holy blessing.

     "AURORE D----"

She considered him idle, and reproached him with his lack of dignity and
with making himself too familiar with his inferiors. She could not admit
this familiarity, although she was certainly a friend of the people
and of the peasants. Between sympathy and familiarity there was a
distinction, and Aurore took care not to forget this. There was always
something of the _grande dame_ in her. Boucoiran was devoted, though,
and she counted on him for looking after her children, for keeping
her strictly _au courant_, and letting her know in case of illness.
Perfectly easy on this score, she could live in Paris on an income of
sixty pounds by adding to it what she could earn.

Casimir made no objections. All that happened later on in this
existence, which was from henceforth so stormy, happened with his
knowledge and with his consent. He was a poor sort of man.

Let us consider now, for a moment, Baronne Dudevant's impressions after
such a marriage. We will not speak of her sadness nor of her disgust. In
a union of this kind, how could the sacred and beneficial character
of marriage have appeared to her? A husband should be a companion.
She never knew the charm of true intimacy, nor the delight of thoughts
shared with another. A husband is the counsellor, the friend. When she
needed counsel, she was obliged to go elsewhere for it, and it was from
another man that guidance and encouragement came. A husband should be
the head and, I do not hesitate to say, the master. Life is a ceaseless
struggle, and the man who has taken upon himself the task of defending a
family from all the dangers which threaten its dissolution, from all the
enemies which prowl around it, can only succeed in his task of protector
if he be invested with just authority. Aurore had been treated brutally:
that is not the same thing as being dominated. The sensation which never
left her was that of an immense moral solitude. She could no longer
dream in the Nohant avenues, for the old trees had been lopped, and the
mystery chased away. She shut herself up in her grandmother's little
boudoir, adjoining her children's room, so that she could hear them
breathing, and whilst Casimir and Hippolyte were getting abominably
intoxicated, she sat there thinking things over, and gradually becoming
so irritated that she felt the rebellion within her gathering force. The
matrimonial bond was a heavy yoke to her. A Christian wife would
have submitted to it and accepted it, but the Christianity of Baronne
Dudevant was nothing but religiosity. The trials of life show up the
insufficiency of religious sentiment which is not accompanied by faith.
Marriage, without love, friendship, confidence and respect, was for
Aurore merely a prison. She endeavoured to escape from it, and when she
succeeded she uttered a sigh of relief at her deliverance.

Such, then, is the chapter of marriage in Baronne Dudevant's psychology.
It is a fine example of failure. The woman who had married badly now
remained an individual, instead of harmonizing and blending in a general
whole. This ill-assorted union merely accentuated and strengthened
George Sand's individualism.

Aurore Dudevant arrived in Paris the first week of the year 1831. The
woman who was rebellious to marriage was now in a city which had just
had a revolution.

The extraordinary effervescence of Paris in 1831 can readily be
imagined. There was tempest in the air, and this tempest was bound to
break out here or there, either immediately or in the near future, in an
insurrection. Every one was feverishly anxious to destroy everything, in
order to create all things anew. In everything, in art, ideas and even
in costume, there was the same explosion of indiscipline, the same
triumph of capriciousness. Every day some fresh system of government was
born, some new method of philosophy, an infallible receipt for bringing
about universal happiness, an unheard-of idea for manufacturing
masterpieces, some invention for dressing up and having a perpetual
carnival in the streets. The insurrection was permanent and masquerade
a normal state. Besides all this, there was a magnificent burst of youth
and genius. Victor Hugo, proud of having fought the battle of _Hernani_,
was then thinking of _Notre-Dame_ and climbing up to it. Musset had just
given his _Contes d'Espagne el d'Italie_. Stendhal had published _Le
Rouge et le Noir_, and Balzac _La Peau de Chagrin_. The painters of the
day were Delacroix and Delaroche. Paganini was about to give his
first concert at the Opera. Such was Paris in all its impatience and
impertinence, in its confusion and its splendour immediately after the
Revolution.

The young wife, who had snapped her bonds asunder, breathed voluptuously
in this atmosphere. She was like a provincial woman enjoying Paris to
the full. She belonged to the romantic school, and was imbued with the
principle that an artist must see everything, know everything, and have
experienced himself all that he puts into his books. She found a little
group of her friends from Berry in Paris, among others Felix Pyat,
Charles Duvernet, Alphonse Fleury, Sandeau and de Latouche. This was
the band she frequented, young men apprenticed either to literature,
the law, or medicine. With them she lived a student's life. In order to
facilitate her various evolutions, she adopted masculine dress. In her
_Histoite de ma vie_ she says: "Fashion helped me in my disguise, for
men were wearing long, square frock-coats styled a _la proprietaire_.
They came down to the heels, and fitted the figure so little that my
brother, when putting his on, said to me one day at Nohant: 'It is a
nice cut, isn't it? The tailor takes his measures from a sentry-box, and
the coat then fits a whole regiment.' I had 'a sentry-box coat' made, of
rough grey cloth, with trousers and waistcoat to match. With a grey
hat and a huge cravat of woollen material, I looked exactly like a
first-year student. . . ."

Dressed in this style, she explored the streets, museums, cathedrals,
libraries, painters' studios, clubs and theatres. She heard Frederick
Lemaitre one day, and the next day Malibran. One evening it was one of
Dumas' pieces, and the next night _Moise_ at the Opera. She took her
meals at a little restaurant, and she lived in an attic. She was not
even sure of being able to pay her tailor, so she had all the joys
possible. "Ah, how delightful, to live an artist's life! Our device is
liberty!" she wrote.(6) She lived in a perpetual state of delight,
and, in February, wrote to her son Maurice as follows: "Every one is at
loggerheads, we are crushed to death in the streets, the churches are
being destroyed, and we hear the drum being beaten all night."(7) In
March she wrote to Charles Duvernet: "Do you know that fine things are
happening here? It really is amusing to see. We are living just as gaily
among bayonets and riots as if everything were at peace. All this amuses
me."(8)

     (6) _Correspondance_:  To Boucoiran, March 4, 1831.

     (7) _Ibid_. To Maurice Dudevant, February 15, 1831.

     (8) _Ibid_. To Charles Duvernet, March 6, 1831.

She was amused at everything and she enjoyed everything. With her keen
sensitiveness, she revelled in the charm of Paris, and she thoroughly
appreciated its scenery.

"Paris," she wrote, "with its vaporous evenings, its pink clouds above
the roofs, and the beautiful willows of such a delicate green around
the bronze statue of our old Henry, and then, too, the dear little
slate-coloured pigeons that make their nests in the old masks of the
Pont Neuf . . ."(9)

     (9) Unpublished letters of Dr. Emile Regnault.

She loved the Paris sky, so strange-looking, so rich in colouring, so
variable.(10)

     (10) _Ibid_.

She became unjust with regard to Berry. "As for that part of the world
which I used to love so dearly and where I used to dream my dreams," she
wrote, "I was there at the age of fifteen, when I was very foolish, and
at the age of seventeen, when I was dreamy and disturbed in my mind. It
has lost its charm for me now."(11)

     (11) _Ibid_.

She loved it again later on, certainly, but just at this time she was
over-excited with the joy of her newly-found liberty. It was that really
which made her so joyful and which intoxicated her. "I do not want
society, excitement, theatres, or dress; what I want is freedom,"
she wrote to her mother. In another letter she says: "I am absolutely
independent. I go to La Chatre, to Rome. I start out at ten o'clock or
at midnight. I please myself entirely in all this."(12)

     (12) _Correspondance_:  To her mother, May 31, 1831.

She was free, and she fancied she was happy. Her happiness at that epoch
meant Jules Sandeau.

In a letter, written in the humoristic style in which she delighted, she
gives us portraits of some of her comrades of that time. She tells us of
Duvernet, of Alphonse Fleury, surnamed "the Gaulois," and of Sandeau.

"Oh, fair-haired Charles!" she writes, "young man of melancholy
thoughts, with a character as gloomy as a stormy day. . . . And you,
gigantic Fleury, with your immense hands and your alarming beard. . . .
And you, dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of
fragrant savannahs!"(13)

     (13) _Correspondance_:  December 1, 1830.

The "dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of
fragrant savannahs," was to be Baronne Dudevant's Latin Quarter
_liaison_. Her biographers usually pass over this _liaison_ quickly,
as information about it was not forthcoming. Important documents exist,
though, in the form of fifty letters written by George Sand to Dr. Emile
Regnault, then a medical student and the intimate friend and confidant
of Jules Sandeau, who kept nothing back from him. His son, Dr. Paul
Regnault, has kindly allowed me to see this correspondence and to
reproduce some fragments of it. It is extremely curious, by turn lyrical
and playful, full of effusions, ideas, plans of work, impressions of
nature, and confidences about her love affairs. Taken altogether it
reflects, as nearly as possible, the state of the young woman's mind at
this time.

The first letter is dated April, 1831. George Sand had left Paris for
Nohant, and is anxiously wondering how her poor Jules has passed this
wretched day, and how he will go back to the room from which she had
torn herself with such difficulty that morning. In her letter she gives
utterance to the gratitude she owes to the young man who has reconciled
her once more to life. "My soul," she says, "eager itself for
affection, needed to inspire this in a heart capable of understanding
me thoroughly, with all my faults and qualities. A fervent soul was
necessary for loving me in the way that I could love, and for consoling
me after all the ingratitude which had made my earlier life so desolate.
And although I am now old, I have found a heart as young as my own, a
lifelong affection which nothing can discourage and which grows stronger
every day. Jules has taught me to care once more for this existence,
of which I was so weary, and which I only endured for the sake of my
children. I was disgusted beforehand with the future, but it now seems
more beautiful to me, full as it appears to me of him, of his work, his
success, and of his upright, modest conduct. . . . Oh, if you only knew
how I love him! . . . ."(14)

     (14) This quotation and those that follow are borrowed from
     the unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault.

"When I first knew him I was disillusioned about everything, and I no
longer believed in those things which make us happy. He has warmed my
frozen heart and restored the life that was dying within me." She then
recalls their first meeting. It was in the country, at Coudray,
near Nohant. She fell in love with her dear Sandeau, thanks to his
youthfulness, his timidity and his awkwardness. He was just twenty, in
1831. On approaching the bench where she was awaiting him, "he concealed
himself in a neighbouring avenue--and I could see his hat and stick
on the bench," she writes. "Everything, even to the little red ribbon
threaded in the lining of his grey hat, thrilled me with joy. . . ."

It is difficult to say why, but everything connected with this young
Jules seems absurd. Later on we get the following statement: "Until the
day when I told him that I loved him, I had never acknowledged as much
to myself. I felt that I did, but I would not own it even to my own
heart. Jules therefore learnt it at the same time as I did myself."

People at La Chatre took the young man for her lover. The idea of
finding him again in Paris was probably one of her reasons for wishing
to establish herself there. Then came her life, as she describes it
herself, "in the little room looking on to the quay. I can see Jules
now in a shabby, dirty-looking artist's frock-coat, with his cravat
underneath him and his shirt open at the throat, stretched out over
three chairs, stamping with his feet or breaking the tongs in the heat
of the discussion. The Gaulois used to sit in a corner weaving great
plots, and you would be seated on a table."

All this must certainly have been charming. The room was too small,
though, and George Sand commissioned Emile Regnault to find her a flat,
the essential condition of which should be some way of egress for Jules
at any hour.

A little flat was discovered on the Quay St. Michel. There were three
rooms, one of which could be reserved. "This shall be the dark room,"
wrote George Sand, "the mysterious room, the ghost's retreat, the
monster's den, the cage of the performing animal, the hiding-place for
the treasure, the vampire's cave, or whatever you like to call
it. . . ."

In plainer language, it was Jules' room; and then follows some touching
eloquence about the dear boy she worshipped who loved her so dearly.

This is the beginning of things, but later on the tone of the
correspondence changes. The letters become less frequent, and are also
not so gay. George Sand speaks much less of Jules in them and much more
of little Solange, whom she intended to bring back to Paris with her.
She is beginning to weary of Jules and to esteem him at his true value.
He is lazy, and has fits of depression and all the capriciousness of
a spoilt child. She has had enough of him, and then, too, it is very
evident from the letters that there has been some division among
the lively friends who had sworn to be comrades for life. There are
explanations and justifications. George Sand discovers that there are
certain inconveniences connected with intimacies in which there is
such disproportion of age and of social position. Finally there are the
following desperate letters, written in fits of irritation: "My dear
friend, go to Jules and look after him. He is broken-hearted, and you
can do nothing for him in that respect. It is no use trying. I do not
ask you to come to me yet, as I do not need anything. I would rather be
alone to-day. Then, too, there is nothing left for me in life. It will
be horrible for him for a long time, but he is so young. The day will
come, perhaps, when he will not be sorry to have lived. . . .
Do not attempt to put matters right, as this time there is no remedy.
We do not blame each other at all, and for some time we have been
struggling against this horrible necessity. We have had trouble enough.
There seemed to be nothing left but to put an end to our lives, and if
it had not been for my children, we should have done this."

The question is, Was George Sand blameless in the matter? It appears
that she had discovered that her dear Jules was faithless to her, and
that, during her absence, he had deceived her. She would not forgive
him, but sent him off to Italy, and refused to see him again. The last
of these letters is dated June 15, 1833.

"I shall make a parcel of a few of Jules' things that he left in
the wardrobe," she says, "and I will send them to you. I do not want
anything to do with him when he comes back, and, according to the last
words of the letter you showed me, his return may be soon. For a long
time I have been very much hurt by the discoveries I made with regard
to his conduct, and I could not feel anything else for him now but
affectionate compassion. His pride, I hope, would refuse this. Make him
clearly understand, if necessary, that there can never be anything more
between us. If this hard task should not be necessary, that is, if Jules
should himself understand that it could not be otherwise, spare him the
sorrow of hearing that he has lost everything, even my respect. He
must undoubtedly have lost his own self-esteem, so that he is punished
enough."

Thus ended this great passion. This was the first of George Sand's
errors, and it certainly was an immense one. She had imagined that
happiness reigns in students' rooms. She had counted on the passing
fancy of a young man of good family, who had come to Paris to sow his
wild oats, for giving her fresh zest and for carving out for herself a
fresh future. It was a most commonplace adventure, utterly destitute of
psychology, and by its very bitterness it contrasted strangely with
her elevated sentimental romance with Aurelien de Seze. That was the
quintessence of refinement. All that is interesting about this second
adventure is the proof that it gives us of George Sand's wonderful
illusions, of the intensity of the mirage of which she was a dupe, and
of which we have so many instances in her life.

Baronne Dudevant had tried conjugal life, and she had now tried free
love. She had been unsuccessful in both instances. It is to these
adventures though, to these trials, errors and disappointments that
we owe the writer we are about to study. George Sand was now born to
literature.




III

A FEMINIST OF 1832

THE FIRST NOVELS AND THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE


When Baronne Dudevant arrived in Paris, in 1831, her intention was to
earn her living with her pen. She never really counted seriously on the
income she might make by her talent for painting flowers on snuff-boxes
and ornamenting cigar-cases with water-colours. She arrived from her
province with the intention of becoming a writer. Like most authors who
commence, she first tried journalism. On the 4th of March, she wrote as
follows to the faithful Boucoiran: "In the meantime I must live, and
for the sake of that, I have taken up the worst of trades: I am writing
articles for the _Figaro_. If only you knew what that means! They are
paid for, though, at the rate of seven francs a column."

She evidently found it worth while to write for the _Figaro_, which at
that time was quite a small newspaper, managed by Henri de Latouche, who
also came from Berry. He was a very second-rate writer himself, and
a poet with very little talent but, at any rate, he appreciated
and discovered talent in others. He published Andre Chenier's first
writings, and he introduced George Sand to the public. His new
apprentice was placed at one of the little tables at which the various
parts of the paper were manufactured. Unfortunately she had not the
vocation for this work. The first principle with regard to newspaper
articles is to make them short. When Aurore had come to the end of her
paper, she had not yet commenced her subject. It was no use attempting
to continue, so she gave up "the worst of trades," lucrative though it
might be.

She could not help knowing, though, that she had the gift of writing.
She had inherited it from her ancestors, and this is the blest part of
her atavism. No matter how far back we go, and in every branch of her
genealogical tree, there is artistic heredity to be found. Maurice de
Saxe wrote his _Reveries_. This was a fine book for a soldier to write,
and for that alone he would deserve praise, even if he had not beaten
the English so gloriously. Mademoiselle Verrieres was an actress and
Dupin de Francueil a dilettante. Aurore's grandmother, Marie-Aurore, was
very musical, she sang operatic songs, and collected extracts from the
philosophers. Maurice Dupin was devoted to music and to the theatre.
Even Sophie-Victoire had an innate appreciation of beauty. She not only
wept, like Margot, at melodrama, but she noticed the pink of a cloud,
the mauve of a flower, and, what was more important, she called her
little daughter's attention to such things. This illiterate mother had
therefore had some influence on Aurore and on her taste for literature.

It is not enough to say that George Sand was a born writer. She was a
born novelist, and she belonged to a certain category of novelists.
She had been created by a special decree of Providence to write her
own romances, and not others. It is this which makes the history of
the far-back origins of her literary vocation so interesting. It is
extremely curious to see, from her earliest childhood, the promises of
those faculties which were to become the very essence of her talent.
When she was only three years old, her mother used to put her between
four chairs in order to keep her still. By way of enlivening her
captivity, she tells us what she did.

"I used to make up endless stories, which my mother styled my novels.
. . . I told these stories aloud, and my mother declared that they were
most tiresome on account of their length and of the development I gave
to my digressions. . . . There were very few bad people in them,
and never any serious troubles. Everything was always arranged
satisfactorily, thanks to my lively, optimistic ideas. . . ."

She had already commenced, then, at the age of three, and these early
stories are the precursors of the novels of her maturity. They are
optimistic, drawn out, and with long digressions. Something similar is
told about Walter Scott. There is evidently a primordial instinct in
those who are born story-tellers, and this urges them on to invent fine
stories for amusing themselves.

A little later on we have another phenomenon, almost as curious, with
regard to Aurore. We are apt to wonder how certain descriptive writers
proceed in order to give us pictures, the various features of which
stand out in such intense relief that they appear absolutely real to us.
George Sand tells us that when Berquin's stories were being read to
her at Nohant, she used to sit in front of the fire, from which she was
protected by an old green silk screen. She used gradually to lose the
sense of the phrases, but pictures began to form themselves in front of
her on the green screen.

"I saw woods, meadows, rivers, towns of strange and gigantic
architecture. . . . One day these apparitions were so real that I was
startled by them, and I asked my mother whether she could see them."


With hallucinations like these a writer can be picturesque. He has
in front of him, although it may be between four walls, a complete
landscape. He has only to follow the lines of it and to reproduce the
colours, so that in painting imaginary landscapes he can paint them from
nature, from this model that appears to him, as though by enchantment.
He can, if he likes, count the leaves of the trees and listen to the
sound of the growing grass.

Still later on, vague religious or philosophical conceptions began
to mingle with the fiction that Aurore always had in her mind. To her
poetical life, was added a moral life. She always had a romance going
on, to which she was constantly adding another chapter, like so many
links in a never-ending chain. She now gave a hero to her romance, a
hero whose name was Corambe. He was her ideal, a man whom she had made
her god. Whilst blood was flowing freely on the altars of barbarous
gods, on Corambe's altar life and liberty were given to a whole crowd
of captive creatures, to a swallow, to a robin-redbreast, and even to a
sparrow. We see already in all this her tendency to put moral intentions
into her romantic stories, to arrange her adventures in such a way that
they should serve as examples for making mankind better. These were the
novels, with a purpose, of her twelfth year.

Let us now study a striking contrast, by way of observing the first
signs of vocation in two totally different novelists. In the beginning
of _Facino Cane_, Balzac tells us an incident of the time when, as an
aspiring writer, he lived in his attic in the Rue Lesdiguieres. One
evening, on coming out of the theatre, he amused himself with following
a working-man and his wife from the Boulevard du Pontaux-Choux to the
Boulevard Beaumarchais. He listened to them as they talked of the piece
they had just seen. They then discussed their business matters, and
afterwards house and family affairs. "While listening to this couple,"
says Balzac, "I entered into their life. I could feel their clothes on
my back and, I was walking in their shabby boots."

This is the novelist of the objective school, the one who comes out of
himself, who ceases to be himself and becomes another person.

Instead of this exterior world, to which Balzac adapts himself, Aurore
talks to us of an inner world, emanating from her own fancy, the
reflection of her own imagination, the echo of her own heart, which is
really herself. This explains the difference between Balzac's impersonal
novel and George Sand's personal novel. It is just the difference
between realistic art, which gives way to the object, and idealistic
art, which transforms this according to its own will and pleasure.

Up to this time George Sand's ideas had not been put on to paper. Both
_Corambe_ and the stories composed between four chairs were merely
fancies of a child's mind. Aurore soon began to write, though. She had
composed two novels while in the convent, one of which was religious and
the other a pastoral story. She was wise enough to tear them both up. On
leaving the convent she wrote another novel for Rene' de Villeneuve, and
this shared the same fate. In 1827, she wrote her _Voyage en Auvergne_,
and in 1829, another novel. In her _Histoire de ma vie_ she says of
this: "After reading it, I was convinced that it was of no value, but at
the same time I was sure I could write a better one. . . . I saw that
I could write quickly and easily, and without feeling any fatigue.
The ideas that were lying dormant in my mind were quickened and became
connected, by my deductions, as I wrote. With my meditative life, I had
observed a great deal, and had understood the various characters which
Fate had put in my way, so that I really knew enough of human nature
to be able to depict it." She now had that facility, that abundance of
matter and that nonchalance which were such characteristic features of
her writing.

When George Sand began to publish, she had already written a great deal.
Her literary formation was complete. We notice this same thing whenever
we study the early work of a writer. Genius is revealed to us, perhaps,
with a sudden flash, but it has been making its way for a long time
underground, so that what we take for a spontaneous burst of genius is
nothing but the final effort of a sap which has been slowly accumulating
and which from henceforth is all-powerful.

George Sand had to go through the inevitable period of feeling her way.
We are glad to think that the first book she published was not written
by herself alone, so that the responsibility of that execrable novel
does not lie solely with her.

On the 9th of March, 1831, George Sand wrote to Boucoiran as follows:
"Monstrosities are in vogue, so we must invent monstrosities. I am
bringing forth a very pleasant one just at present. . . ." This was the
novel written in collaboration with Sandeau which appeared under the
signature of Jules Sand towards the end of 1831. It was entitled, _Rose
et Blanche, ou la Comedienne et la Religieuse_.

It begins by a scene in a coach, rather like certain novels by Balzac,
but accompanied by insignificant details in the worst taste imaginable.
Two girls are travelling in the same coach. Rose is a young comedian,
and Sister Blanche is about to become a nun. They separate at Tarbes,
and the scene of the story is laid in the region of the Pyrenees, in
Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and finishes with the return to Paris.
Rose, after an entertainment which is a veritable orgy, is handed over
by her mother to a licentious young man. He is ashamed of himself,
and, instead of leading Rose astray, he takes her to the Convent of the
Augustines, where she finds Sister Blanche once more. Sister Blanche has
not yet pronounced her vows, and the proof of this is that she marries
Horace. But what a wedding! As a matter of fact, Sister Blanche was
formerly named Denise. She was the daughter of a seafaring man of
Bordeaux, and was both pretty and foolish. She had been dishonoured by
the young libertine whom she is now to marry. The memory of the past
comes back to Blanche, and makes her live over again her life as Denise.
In the mean time Rose had become a great singer. She now arrives, just
in time to be present at her friend's deathbed. She enters the convent
herself, and takes the place left vacant by Sister Blanche. The whole of
this is absurd and frequently very disagreeable.

It is quite easy to distinguish the parts due to the two collaborators,
and to see that George Sand wrote nearly all the book. There are
the landscapes, Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and a number of
recollections of the famous journey to the Pyrenees and of her stay
at Guillery with the Dudevant family. The Convent of the Augustines
in Paris, with its English nuns and its boarders belonging to the best
families, is the one in which Aurore spent three years. The cloister can
be recognized, the garden planted with chestnut trees, and the cell
from which there was a view over the city. All her dreams seemed so near
Heaven there, for the rich, cloudy sky was so near--"that most beautiful
and ever-changing sky, perhaps the most beautiful in the world," of
which we read in _Rose et Blanche_. But together with this romance of
religious life is a libertine novel with stories of orgies, of a certain
private house, and of very risky and unpleasant episodes. This is the
collaborator's share in the work. The risky parts are Sandeau's.

Such, then, is this hybrid composition. It was, in reality, the
monstrosity announced by George Sand.

It had a certain success, but the person who was most severe in her
judgment of it was Sophie-Victoire, George Sand's mother, who had very
prudish tastes in literature. This woman is perfectly delightful,
and every time we come across her it is a fresh joy. Her daughter was
obliged to make some excuse for herself, and this she did by stating
that the work was not entirely her own.

"I do not approve of a great deal of the nonsense," she writes, "and
I only let certain things pass to please my publisher, who wanted
something rather lively. . . . I do not like the risky parts
myself. . . ." Later on in the same letter, she adds: "There is nothing
of the kind in the book I am writing now, and I am using nothing of my
collaborator's in this, except his name."(15)

     (15) _Correspondance_:  To her mother, February 22, 1832.

This was true. Jules Sand had had his day, and the book of which she now
speaks was _Indiana_. She signed this "George Sand."

The unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault, some fragments of
which we have just read, contains a most interesting letter concerning
the composition of _Indiana_. It is dated February 28, 1832. George Sand
first insists on the severity of the subject and on its resemblance to
life. "It is as simple, as natural and as positive as you could wish,"
she says. "It is neither romantic, mosaic, nor frantic. It is just
ordinary life of the most _bourgeois_ kind, but unfortunately this is
much more difficult than exaggerated literature. . . . There is not the
least word put in for nothing, not a single description, not a
vestige of poetry. There are no unexpected, extraordinary, or amazing
situations, but merely four volumes on four characters. With only just
these characters, that is, with hidden feelings, everyday thoughts,
with friendship, love, selfishness, devotion, self-respect, persistency,
melancholy, sorrow, ingratitude, disappointment, hope, and all the
mixed-up medley of the human mind, is it possible to write four volumes
which will not bore people? I am afraid of boring people, of boring them
as life itself does. And yet what is more interesting than the history
of the heart, when it is a true history? The main thing is to write true
history, and it is just that which is so difficult. . . ."

This declaration is rather surprising to any one who reads it to-day.
We might ask whether what was natural in 1832 would be natural in 1910?
That is not the question which concerns us, though. The important fact
to note is that George Sand was no longer attempting to manufacture
monstrosities. She was endeavouring to be true, and she wanted above
everything else to present a character of woman who would be the typical
modern woman.

"Noemi (this name was afterwards left to Sandeau, who had used it in
_Marianna_. George Sand changed it to that of _Indiana_) is a typical
woman, strong and weak, tired even by the weight of the air, but capable
of holding up the sky; timid in everyday life, but daring in days of
battle; shrewd and clever in seizing the loose threads of ordinary life,
but silly and stupid in distinguishing her own interests when it is a
question of her happiness; caring little for the world at large, but
allowing herself to be duped by one man; not troubling much about
her own dignity, but watching over that of the object of her choice;
despising the vanities of the times as far as she is concerned, but
allowing herself to be fascinated by the man who is full of these
vanities. This, I believe," she says, "is the usual woman, an
extraordinary mixture of weakness and energy, of grandeur and of
littleness, a being ever composed of two opposite natures, at times
sublime and at times despicable, clever in deceiving and easily deceived
herself."

This novel, intended to present to us the modern woman, ought to be
styled a "feminist novel." It was also, as regards other points of view.
_Indiana_ appeared in May, 1832, _Valentine_ in 1833, and _Jacques_ in
1834. In these three books I should like to show our present feminism,
already armed, and introduced to us according to George Sand's early
ideas.


_Indiana_ is the story of a woman who had made an unfortunate marriage.
At the age of nineteen she had married Colonel Delmare. Colonels were
very much in vogue in those days, and the fact that he had attained that
rank proves that he was much older than she was. Colonel Delmare was an
honest, straightforward man in the Pharisaical sense of the word. This
simply means that he had never robbed or killed any one. He had no
delicacy and no charm, and, fond as he was of his own authority, he
was a domestic tyrant. Indiana was very unhappy between this execrable
husband and a cousin of hers, Ralph, a man who is twice over English,
in the first place because his name is Brown, and then because he is
phlegmatic. Ralph is delightful and most excellent, and it is on his
account that she is insensible to the charms of Raymon de Ramieres an
elegant and distinguished young man who is a veritable lady-killer.

Space forbids us to go into all the episodes of this story, but the
crisis is that Colonel Delmare is ruined, and his business affairs call
him to the Isle of Bourbon. He intends to take Indiana with him, but she
refuses to accompany him. She knows quite well that Raymon will do all
he can to prevent her going. She hurries away to him, offers herself to
him, and volunteers to remain with him always. It is unnecessary to give
Raymon's reply to this charming proposal. Poor Indiana receives a very
wet blanket on a cold winter's night.


She therefore starts for the Isle of Bourbon, and, some time after her
arrival there, she gets a letter from Raymon which makes her think that
he is very unhappy. She accordingly hastens back to him, but is received
by the young wife whom Raymon has just married. It is a very
brilliant marriage, and Raymon could not have hoped for anything more
satisfactory. Poor Indiana! The Seine, however, is quite near, and she
throws herself into it. This was quite safe, as Ralph was there to
fish her out again. Ralph was always at hand to fish his cousin out of
everything. He is her appointed rescuer, her Newfoundland dog. In the
country or in the town, on _terra firma_ or on the boat which takes
Indiana to the Isle of Bourbon, we always see Ralph turn up, phlegmatic
as usual. Unnecessary to say that Ralph is in love with Indiana. His
apparent calmness is put on purposely. It is the snowy covering under
which a volcano is burning. His awkward and unprepossessing appearance
conceals an exquisite soul. Ralph brings Indiana good news. Colonel
Delmare is dead, so that she is free. What will she do now with her
liberty? After due deliberation, Ralph and Indiana decide to commit
suicide, but they have to agree about the kind of death they will die.
Ralph considers that this is a matter of certain importance. He does not
care to kill himself in Paris; there are too many people about, so that
there is no tranquillity. The Isle of Bourbon seems to him a pleasant
place for a suicide. There was a magnificent horizon there; then, too,
there was a precipice and a waterfall. . . .

Ralph's happy ideas are somewhat sinister, but the couple set out
nevertheless for the Isle of Bourbon in search of a propitious
waterfall. A sea-voyage, under such circumstances, would be an excellent
preparation. When once there, they carry out their plans, and Ralph
gives his beloved wise advice at the last moment. She must not jump from
the side, as that would be bad. "Throw yourself into the white line that
the waterfall makes," he says. "You will then reach the lake with that,
and the torrent will plunge you in." This sounds enticing.

Such a suicide was considered infinitely poetical at that epoch, and
every one pitied Indiana in her troubles. It is curious to read such
books calmly a long time afterwards, books which reflect so exactly the
sentiments of a certain epoch. It is curious to note how the point of
view has changed, and how people and things appear to us exactly the
reverse of what they appeared to the author and to contemporaries.

As a matter of fact, the only interesting person in all this is Colonel
Delmare, or, at any rate, he is the only one of whom Indiana could
not complain. He loved her, and he loved no one else but her. The like
cannot be said for Indiana. Few husbands would imitate his patience and
forbearance, and he certainly allowed his wife the most extraordinary
freedom. At one time we find, a young man in Indiana's bedroom, and at
another time Indiana in a young man's bedroom. Colonel Delmare receives
Raymon at his house in a friendly way, and he tolerates the presence of
the sempiternal Ralph in his home. What more can be asked of a husband
than to allow his wife to have a man friend and a cousin? Indiana
declares that Colonel Delmare has struck her, and that the mark is left
on her face. She exaggerated, though, as we know quite well what took
place. In reality all this was at Plessis-Picard. Delmare-Dudevant
struck Indiana-Aurore. This was certainly too much, but there was no
blood shed. As to the other personages, Raymon is a wretched little
rascal, who was first the lover of Indiana's maid. He next made love
to poor Noun's mistress, and then deserted her to make a rich marriage.
Ralph plunges Indiana down a precipice. That was certainly bad treatment
for the woman he loved. As regards Indiana, George Sand honestly
believed that she had given her all the charms imaginable. As a matter
of fact, she did charm the readers of that time. It is from this model
that we have one of the favourite types of woman in literature for the
next twenty years--the misunderstood woman.

The misunderstood woman is pale, fragile, and subject to fainting. Up to
page 99 of the book, Indiana has fainted three times. I did not continue
counting. This fainting was not the result of bad health. It was the
fashion to faint. The days of nerves and languid airs had come back. The
women whose grandmothers had walked so firmly to the scaffold, and
whose mothers had listened bravely to the firing of the cannon under the
Empire, were now depressed and tearful, like so many plaintive elegies.
It was just a matter of fashion. The misunderstood woman was supposed
to be unhappy with her husband, but she would not have been any happier
with another man. Indiana does not find fault with Colonel Delmare for
being the husband that he is, but simply for being the husband!

"She did not love her husband, for the mere reason, perhaps, that she
was told it was her duty to love him and that it had become her second
nature, a principle and a law of her conscience to resist inwardly
all moral constraint." She affected a most irritating gentleness, an
exasperating submissiveness. When she put on her superior, resigned
airs, it was enough to unhinge an angel. Besides, what was there to
complain about, and why should she not accommodate herself to conditions
of existence with which so many others fall in? She must not be compared
to others, though. She is eminently a distinguished woman, and she asks
without shrinking: "Do you know what it means to love a woman such as I
am?"

In her long silences and her persistent melancholy, she is no doubt
thinking of the love appropriate to a woman such as she is. She was a
princess in exile and times were then hard for princesses. That is why
the one in question took refuge in her homesick sorrow. All this is what
people will not understand. Instead of rising to such sublimities, or of
being lost in fogs, they judge from mere facts. And on coming across
a young wife who is inclined to prefer a handsome, dark young man to a
husband who is turning grey, they are apt to conclude: "Well, this is
not the first time we have met with a similar case. It is hardly worth
while making such a fuss about a young plague of a woman who wants to
go to the bad." It would be very unjust, though, not to recognize that
_Indiana_ is a most remarkable novel. There is a certain relief in the
various characters, Colonel Delmare, Raymon, Ralph and Inaiana. We ought
to question the husbands who married wives belonging to the race of
misunderstood women brought into vogue by _Indiana_.


_Valentine_, too, is the story of a woman unhappily married.

This time the chief _role_ is given to the lover, and not to the woman.
Instead of the misunderstood woman, though, we have the typical frenzied
lover, created by the romantic school. Louise-Valentine de Raimbault
is about to marry Norbert-Evariste de Lansac, when suddenly this young
person, who is accustomed to going about in the country round and to the
village fetes, falls in love with the nephew of one of her farmers.
The young man's name is Benedict, and he is a peasant who has had some
education. His mentality is probably that of a present-day elementary
school-teacher. Valentine cannot resist him, although we are told that
Benedict is not very handsome. It is his soul which Valentine loves in
him. Benedict knows very well that he cannot marry Valentine, but he can
cause her a great deal of annoyance by way of proving his love. On the
night of the wedding he is in the nuptial chamber, from which the
author has taken care to banish the husband for the time being. Benedict
watches over the slumber of the woman he loves, and leaves her an
epistle in which he declares that, after hesitating whether he should
kill her husband, her, or himself, or whether he should kill all three,
or only select two of the three, and after adopting in turn each of
these combinations, he has decided to only kill himself. He is found
in a ditch in a terrible plight, but we are by no means rid of him.
Benedict is not dead, and he has a great deal of harm to do yet. We
shall meet with him again several times, always hidden behind curtains,
listening to all that is said and watching all that takes place. At the
right moment he comes out with his pistol in his hand. The husband is
away during all this time. No one troubles about him, though. He is a
bad husband, or rather he is--a husband, and Benedict has nothing to
fear as far as he is concerned. But one day a peasant, who does not like
the looks of Benedict, attacks him with his pitchfork and puts an end to
this valuable life.

The question arises, by what right Benedict disturbs Valentine's
tranquillity. The answer is by the right of his passion for her. He has
an income of about twenty pounds a year. It would be impossible for him
to marry on that. What has he to offer to the woman whose peace of mind
he disturbs and whose position he ruins? He offers himself. Surely that
should be enough. Then, too, it is impossible to reason with individuals
of his temperament. We have only to look at him, with his sickly pallor
and the restless light in his eyes. We have only to listen to the sound
of his voice and his excited speeches. At times he goes in for wild
declamation, and immediately afterwards for cold irony and sarcasm. He
is always talking of death. When he attempts to shoot himself he always
misses, but when Adele d'Hervey resists him, at the time he has taken
the name of Antony, he kills her. He is therefore a dangerous madman.

We now have two fresh personages for novels, the misunderstood woman and
the frenzied lover. It is a pity they do not marry each other, and so
rid us of them.

We must not lose sight, though, of the fact that, contestable as
_Valentine_ certainly is as a novel of passion, there is a pastoral
novel of the highest order contained in this book. The setting of the
story is delightful. George Sand has placed the scene in that Black
Valley which she knew so well and loved so dearly. It is the first of
her novels in which she celebrates her birthplace. There are walks along
the country pathways, long meditations at night, village weddings
and fetes. All the poetry and all the picturesqueness of the country
transform and embellish the story.


In _Jacques_ we have the history of a man unhappily married, and this,
through the reciprocity which is inevitable under the circumstances, is
another story of a woman unhappily married.

At the age of thirty-five, after a stormy existence, in which years
count double, Jacques marries Fernande, a woman much younger than he
is. After a few unhappy months he sees the first clouds appearing in his
horizon. He sends for his sister Sylvia to come and live with himself
and his wife. Sylvia, like Jacques, is an exceptional individual. She
is proud, haughty and reserved. It can readily be imagined that, the
presence of this pythoness does not tend to restore the confidence which
has become somewhat shaken between the husband and wife. A young man
named Octave, who was at first attracted by Sylvia, soon begins to
prefer Fernande, who is not a romantic, ironical and sarcastic woman
like her sister-in-law. He fancies that he should be very happy with the
gentle Fernande. Jacques discovers that Octave and his wife are in love
with each other. There are various alternatives for him. He can dismiss
his rival, kill him, or merely pardon him. Each alternative is a very
ordinary way out of the difficulty, and Jacques cannot resign himself to
anything ordinary. He therefore asks his wife's lover whether he really
cares for his wife, whether he is in earnest, and also whether this
attachment will be durable. Quite satisfied with the result of this
examination, he leaves Fernande to Octave. He then disappears and kills
himself, but he takes all necessary precautions to avert the suspicion
of suicide, in order not to sadden Octave and Fernande in their
happiness. He had not been able to keep his wife's love, but he does not
wish to be the jailer of the woman who no longer loves him. Fernande
has a right to happiness and, as he has not been able to ensure that
happiness, he must give place to another man. It is a case of suicide
as a duty. There are instances when a husband should know that it is his
duty to disappear. . . . Jacques is "a stoic." George Sand has a great
admiration for such characters. She gives us her first sketch of one in
Ralph, but Jacques is presented to us as a sublime being.

Personally, I look upon him as a mere greenhorn, or, as would be said in
Wagner's dramas, a "pure simpleton."

He did everything to ruin his home life. His young wife had confidence
in him; she was gay and naive. He went about, folding his arms in a
tragic way. He was absent-minded and gloomy, and she began to be awed by
him. One day, when, in her sorrow for having displeased him, she flung
herself on her knees, sobbing, instead of lifting her up tenderly, he
broke away from her caresses, telling her furiously to get up and never
to behave in such a way again in his presence. After this he puts his
sister, the "bronze woman," between them, and he invites Octave to live
with them. When he has thus destroyed his wife's affection for him, in
spite of the fact that at one time she wished for nothing better than
to love him, he goes away and gives up the whole thing. All that is too
easy. One of Meilhac's heroines says to a man, who declares that he is
going to drown himself for her sake, "Oh yes, that is all very fine. You
would be tranquil at the bottom of the water! But what about me? . . ."

In this instance Jacques is tranquil at the bottom of his precipice, but
Fernande is alive and not at all tranquil. Jacques never rises to the
very simple conception of his duty, which was that, having made a woman
the companion of his life's journey, he had no right to desert her on
the way.

Rather than blame himself, though, Jacques prefers incriminating the
institution of marriage. The criticism of this institution is very
plain in the novel we are considering. In her former novels George, Sand
treated all this in a more or less vague way. She now states her theory
clearly. Jacques considers that marriage is a barbarous institution.
"I have not changed my opinion," he says, "and I am not reconciled to
society. I consider marriage one of the most barbarous institutions
ever invented. I have no doubt that it will be abolished when the human
species makes progress in the direction of justice and reason. Some
bond that will be more human and just as sacred will take the place of
marriage and provide for the children born of a woman and a man, without
fettering their liberty for ever. Men are too coarse at present, and
women too cowardly, to ask for a nobler law than the iron one which
governs them. For individuals without conscience and without virtue,
heavy chains are necessary."

We also hear Sylvia's ideas and the plans she proposes to her brother
for the time when marriage is abolished.

"We will adopt an orphan, imagine that it is our child, and bring it up
in our principles. We could educate a child of each sex, and then marry
them when the time came, before God, with no other temple than the
desert and no priest but love. We should have formed their souls to
respect truth and justice, so that, thanks to us, there would be one
pure and happy couple on the face of the earth."

The suppression of marriage, then, was the idea, and, in a future more
or less distant, free love!

It is interesting to discover by what series of deductions George Sand
proceeds and on what principles she bases everything. When once her
principles are admitted, the conclusion she draws from them is quite
logical.

What is her essential objection to marriage? The fact that marriage
fetters the liberty of two beings. "Society dictates to you the formula
of an oath. You must swear that you will be faithful and obedient to me,
that you will never love any one but me, and that you will obey me in
everything. One of those oaths is absurd and the other vile. You cannot
be answerable for your heart, even if I were the greatest and most
perfect of men." Now comes the question of love for another man. Until
then it was considered that such love was a weakness, and that it might
become a fault. But, after all, is not passion a fatal and irresistible
thing?

"No human creature can command love, and no one is to be blamed for
feeling it or for ceasing to feel it. What lowers a woman is untruth." A
little farther on we are told: "They are not guilty, for they love each
other. There is no crime where there is sincere love." According to
this theory, the union of man and woman depends on love alone. When love
disappears, the union cannot continue. Marriage is a human institution,
but passion is of Divine essence. In case of any dissension, it is
always the institution of marriage which is to be blamed.

The sole end in view of marriage is charm, either that of sentiment or
that of the senses, and its sole object is the exchange of two fancies.
As the oath of fidelity is either a stupidity or a degradation, can
anything more opposed to common sense, and a more absolute ignorance
of all that is noble and great, be imagined than the effort mankind
is making, against all the chances of destruction by which he is
surrounded, to affirm, in face of all that changes, his will and
intention to continue? We all remember the heart-rending lamentation of
Diderot: "The first promises made between two creatures of flesh," he
says, "were made at the foot of a rock crumbling to dust. They called on
Heaven to be a witness of their constancy, but the skies in the Heaven
above them were never the same for an instant. Everything was changing,
both within them and around them, and they believed that their heart
would know no change. Oh, what children, what children always!" Ah,
not children, but what men rather! We know these fluctuations in our
affections. And it is because we are afraid of our own fragility that
we call to our aid the protection of laws, to which submission is no
slavery, as it is voluntary submission. Nature does not know these laws,
but it is by them that we distinguish ourselves from Nature and that
we rise above it. The rock on which we tread crumbles to dust, the sky
above our heads is never the same an instant, but, in the depth of our
hearts, there is the moral law--and that never changes!

In order to reply to these paradoxes, where shall we go in search of our
arguments? We can go to George Sand herself. A few years later, during
her intercourse with Lamennals, she wrote her famous _Lettres a Marcie_
for _Le Monde_. She addresses herself to an imaginary correspondent,
to a woman supposed to be suffering from that agitation and impatience
which she had experienced herself.

"You are sad," says George Sand to her, "you are suffering, and you are
bored to death." We will now take note of some of the advice she gives
to this woman. She no longer believes that it belongs to human dignity
to have the liberty of changing. "The one thing to which man aspires,
the thing which makes him great, is permanence in the moral state. All
which tends to give stability to our desires, to strengthen the human
will and affections, tends to bring about the _reign of God_ on earth,
which means love and the practice of truth." She then speaks of vain
dreams. "Should we even have time to think about the impossible if we
did all that is necessary? Should we despair ourselves if we were to
restore hope in those people who have nothing left them but hope?" With
regard to feminist claims, she says: "Women are crying out that they are
slaves: let them wait until men are free! . . . In the mean time we must
not compromise the future by our impatience with the present. . . . It
is to be feared that vain attempts of this kind and unjustifiable claims
may do harm to what is styled at present the cause of women. There is
no doubt that women have certain rights and that they are suffering
injustice. They ought to lay claim to a better future, to a wise
independence, to a greater participation in knowledge, and to more
respect, interest and esteem from men. This future, though, is in their
own hands."

This is wisdom itself. It would be impossible to put it more clearly,
and to warn women in a better way, that the greatest danger for
their cause would be the triumph of what is called by an ironical
term--feminism.

These retractions, though, have very little effect. There is a certain
piquancy in showing up an author who is in contradiction with himself,
in showing how he refutes his own paradoxes. But these are striking
paradoxes which are not readily forgotten. What I want to show is that
in these first novels by George Sand we have about the whole of
the feminist programme of to-day. Everything is there, the right to
happiness, the necessity of reforming marriage, the institution, in
a more or less near future, of free unions. Our feminists of to-day,
French, English, or Norwegian authoresses, and theoricians like Ellen
Key, with her book on _Love and Marriage_, all these rebels have
invented nothing. They have done nothing but take up once more the
theories of the great feminist of 1832, and expose them with less
lyricism but with more cynicism.

George Sand protested against the accusation of having aimed at
attacking institutions in her feminist novels. She was wrong in
protesting, as it is just this which gives her novels their value
and significance. It is this which dates them and which explains the
enormous force of expansion that they have had. They came just after
the July Revolution, and we must certainly consider them as one of
the results of that. A throne had just been overturned, and, by way of
pastime, churches were being pillaged and an archbishop's palace had
been sackaged. Literature was also attempting an insurrection, by way of
diversion. For a long time it had been feeding the revolutionary ferment
which it had received from romanticism. Romanticism had demanded the
freedom of the individual, and the writers at the head of this movement
were Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo and Dumas. They claimed this freedom
for Rene, for Hermann and for Antony, who were men. An example had been
given, and women meant to take advantage of it. Women now began their
revolution.

Under all these influences, and in the particular atmosphere now
created, the matrimonial mishap of Baronne Dudevant appeared to her
of considerable importance. She exaggerated and magnified it until it
became of social value. Taking this private mishap as her basis, she
puts into each of her heroines something of herself. This explains the
passionate tone of the whole story. And this passion could not fail to
be contagious for the women who read her stories, and who recognized in
the novelist's cause their own cause and the cause of all women.

This, then, is the novelty in George Sand's way of presenting feminist
grievances. She had not invented these grievances. They were already
contained in Madame de Stael's books, and I have not forgotten her.
Delphine and Corinne, though, were women of genius, and presented to
us as such. In order to be pitied by Madame de Stael, it was absolutely
necessary to be a woman of genius. For a woman to be defended by George
Sand, it was only necessary that she should not love her husband, and
this was a much more general thing.


George Sand had brought feminism within the reach of all women. This
is the characteristic of these novels, the eloquence of which cannot be
denied. They are novels for the vulgarization of the feminist theory.




IV

THE ROMANTIC ESCAPADE

THE VENICE ADVENTURE


George Sand did not have to wait long for success. She won fame with her
first book. With her second one she became rich, or what she considered
rich. She tells us that she sold it for a hundred and sixty pounds! That
seemed to her the wealth of the world, and she did not hesitate to leave
her attic on the Quay St. Michel for a more comfortable flat on Quay
Malaquais, which de Latouche gave up to her.

There was, at that time, a personage in Paris who had begun to exercise
a sort of royal tyranny over authors. Francois Buloz had taken advantage
of the intellectual effervescence of 1831 to found the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_. He was venturesome, energetic, original, very shrewd, though
apparently rough, obliging, in spite of his surly manners. He is still
considered the typical and traditional review manager. He certainly
possessed the first quality necessary for this function. He discovered
talented writers, and he also knew how to draw from them and squeeze out
of them all the literature they contained. Tremendously headstrong,
he has been known to keep a contributor under lock and key until his
article was finished. Authors abused him, quarrelled with him, and
then came back to him again. A review which had, for its first numbers,
George Sand, Vigny, Musset, Merimee, among many others, as contributors,
may be said to have started well. George Sand tells us that after a
battle with the _Revue de Paris_ and the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, both
of which papers wanted her work, she bound herself to the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_, which was to pay her a hundred and sixty pounds a year for
thirty-two pages of writing every six weeks. In 1833 the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_ published Lelia, and on January 1, 1876, it finished publishing
the _Tour de Percemont_. This means an uninterrupted collaboration,
extending over a period of forty-three years.

The literary critic of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ at that time was
a man who was very much respected and very little liked, or, in other
words, he was universally detested. This critic was Gustave Planche.
He took his own _role_ too seriously, and endeavoured to put authors
on their guard about their faults. Authors did not appreciate this.
He endeavoured, too, to put the public on guard against its own
infatuations. The public did not care for this. He sowed strife and
reaped revenge. This did not stop him, though, for he went calmly on
continuing his executions. His impassibility was only feigned, and this
is the curious side of the story. He suffered keenly from the storms of
hostility which he provoked. He had a kindly disposition at bottom
and tender places in his heart. He was rather given to melancholy and
intensely pessimistic. To relieve his sadness, he gave himself up to
hard work, and he was thoroughly devoted to art. In order to comprehend
this portrait and to see its resemblance, we, who knew our great
Brunetiere, have only to think of him. He, too, was noble, fervent
and combative, and he sought in his exclusive devotion to literature a
diversion from his gloomy pessimism, underneath which was concealed such
kindliness. It seemed with him, too, as though he took a pride in making
a whole crowd of enemies, whilst in reality the discovery of every fresh
adversary caused him great suffering.

When _Lelia_ appeared, the novel was very badly treated in _L'Europe
litteraire_. Planche challenged the writer of the article, a certain
Capo de Feuillide, to a duel. So much for the impassibility of
severe critics. The duel took place, and afterwards there was a
misunderstanding between George Sand and Planche. From that time forth
critics have given up fighting duels for the sake of authors.

About the same time, George Sand made use of Sainte-Beuve as her
confessor. He seemed specially indicated for this function. In the first
place, he looked rather ecclesiastical, and then he had a taste for
secrets, and more particularly for whispered confessions. George Sand
had absolute confidence in him. She considered that he had an almost
angelic nature. In reality, just about that time, the angelic man was
endeavouring to get into the good graces of the wife of his best friend,
and was writing his _Livre d'Amour_, and divulging to the world a
weakness of which he had taken advantage. This certainly was the most
villainous thing a man could do. But then he, too, was in love and was
struggling and praying. George Sand declares her veneration for him, and
she constituted herself his penitent.

She begins her confession by an avowal that must have been difficult for
her. She tells of her intimacy with Merimee, an intimacy which was
of short duration and very unsatisfactory. She had been fascinated by
Merimee's art.

"For about a week," she says, "I thought he had the secret of
happiness." At the end of the week she was "weeping with disgust,
suffering and discouragement." She had hoped to find in him the devotion
of a consoler, but she found "nothing but cold and bitter jesting."(16)
This experiment had also proved a failure.

     (16) Compare _Lettres a Sainte-Beuve_.

Such were the conditions in which George Sand found herself at this
epoch. Her position was satisfactory; she might have been calm and
independent. Her inner life was once more desolate, and she was
thoroughly discouraged. She felt that she had lived centuries, that she
had undergone torture, that her heart had aged twenty years, and that
nothing was any pleasure to her now. Added to all this, public life
saddened her, for the horizon had clouded over. The boundless hopes and
the enthusiasm of 1831 were things of the past. "The Republic, as it was
dreamed of in July," she writes, "has ended in the massacres of Warsaw
and in the holocaust of the Saint-Merry cloister. The cholera has just
been raging. Saint Simonism has fallen through before it had settled the
great question of love."(17)

     (17) _Histoire de ma vie_.

Depression had come after over-excitement. This is a phenomenon
frequently seen immediately after political convulsions. It might be
called the perpetual failure of revolutionary promises.

It was under all these influences that George Sand wrote _Lelia_. She
finished it in July, and it appeared in August, 1833.

It is absolutely impossible to give an analysis of _Lelia_. There really
is no subject. The personages are not beings of flesh and blood. They
are allegories strolling about in the garden of abstractions. Lelia is
a woman who has had her trials in life. She has loved and been
disappointed, so that she can no longer love at all. She reduces the
gentle poet Stenio to despair. He is much younger than she is, and he
has faith in life and in love. His ingenuous soul begins to wither
and to lose its freshness, thanks to the scepticism of the beautiful,
disdainful, ironical and world-weary Lelia. This strange person has a
sister Pulcherie, a celebrated courtesan, whose insolent sensuality is
a set-off to the other one's mournful complaints. We have here the
opposition of Intelligence and of the Flesh, of Mind and Matter. Then
comes Magnus, the priest, who has lost his faith, and for whom Lelia
is a temptation, and after him we have Trenmor, Lelia's great friend,
Trenmor, the sublime convict. As a young man he had been handsome. He
had loved and been young. He had known what it was to be only twenty
years of age. "The only thing was, he had known this at the age
of sixteen" (!!) He had then become a gambler, and here follows an
extraordinary panegyric on the fatal passion for gambling. Trenmor
ruins himself, borrows without paying back, and finally swindles "an old
millionaire who was himself a defrauder and a dissipated man" out of
a hundred francs. Apparently the bad conduct of the man Trenmor robs,
excuses the swindling. He is condemned to five years of hard labour. He
undergoes his punishment, and is thereby regenerated. "What if I were to
tell you," writes George Sand, "that such as he now is, crushed, with a
tarnished reputation, ruined, I consider him superior to all of us, as
regards the moral life. As he had deserved punishment, he was willing to
bear it. He bore it, living for five years bravely and patiently among
his abject companions. He has come back to us out of that abominable
sewer holding his head up, calm, purified, pale as you see him, but
handsome still, like a creature sent by God."

We all know how dear convicts are to the hearts of romantic people.
There is no need for me to remind you how they have come to us recently,
encircled with halos of suffering and of purity. We all remember
Dostoiewsky's _Crime and Punishment_ and Tolstoi's _Resurrection_. When
the virtue of expiation and the religion of human suffering came to
us from Russia, we should have greeted them as old acquaintances, if
certain essential works in our own literature, of which these books are
the issue, had not been unknown to us.

The last part of the novel is devoted to Stenio. Hurt by Lelia's
disdain, which has thrown him into the arms of her sister Pulcherie,
he gives himself up to debauch. We find him at a veritable orgy in
Pulcherie's house. Later on he is in a monastery at Camaldules, talking
to Trenmor and Magnus. In such books we must never be astonished. . . .
There is a long speech by Stenio, addressed to Don Juan, whom he
regrets to have taken as his model. The poor young man of course commits
suicide. He chooses drowning as the author evidently prefers that mode
of suicide. Lelia arrives in time to kneel down by the corpse of the
young man who has been her victim. Magnus then appears on the scene,
exactly at the right moment, to strangle Lelia. Pious hands prepare
Lelia and Stenio for their burial. They are united and yet separated up
to their very death.

The summing up we have given is the original version of _Lelia_.
In 1836, George Sand touched up this work, altering much of it and
spoiling, what she altered. It is a pity that her new version, which
is longer, heavier and more obscure, should have taken the place of the
former one. In its first form _Lelia_ is a work of rare beauty, but with
the beauty of a poem or an oratorio. It is made of the stuff of which
dreams are composed. It is a series of reveries, adapted to the soul
of 1830. At every different epoch there is a certain frame of mind, and
certain ideas are diffused in the air which we find alike in the works
of the writers of that time, although they did not borrow them from each
other. _Lelia_ is a sort of summing up of the themes then in vogue in
the personal novel and in lyrical poetry. The theme of that suffering
which is beneficent and inspiring is contained in the following words:
"Come back to me, Sorrow! Why have you left me? It is by grief alone
that man is great." This is worthy of Chateaubriand. The theme of
melancholy is as follows: "The moon appeared. . . . What is the moon,
and what is its nocturnal magic to me? One hour more or less is nothing
to me." This might very well be Lamartine. We then have the malediction
pronounced in face of impassible Nature: "Yes, I detested that radiant
and magnificent Nature, for it was there before me in all its stupid
beauty, silent and proud, for us to gaze on, believing that it was
enough to merely show itself." This reminds us of Vigny in his _Maison
du berger_. Then we have the religion of love: "Doubt God, doubt men,
doubt me if you like, but do not doubt love." This is Musset.

But the theme which predominates, and, as we have compared all this to
music, we might say the _leit-motiv_ of all, is that of desolation, of
universal despair, of the woe of life. It is the same lamentation which,
ever since Werther, was to be heard throughout all literature. It is the
identical suffering which Rene, Obermann and Lara had been repeating to
all the echoes. The elements of it were the same: pride which prevents
us from adapting ourselves to the conditions of universal life, an abuse
of self-analysis which opens up our wounds again and makes them bleed,
the wild imagination which presents to our eyes the deceptive mirage of
Promised Lands from which we are ever exiles. Lelia personifies, in her
turn, the "_mal du siecle_." Stenio reproaches her with only singing
grief and doubt. "How many, times," he says, "have you appeared to me
as typical of the indescribable suffering in which mankind is plunged
by the spirit of inquiry! With your beauty and your sadness, your
world-weariness and your scepticism, do you not personify the excess of
grief produced by the abuse of thought?" He then adds: "There is a great
deal of pride in this grief, Lelia!" It was undoubtedly a malady, for
Lelia had no reason to complain of life any more than her brothers in
despair. It is simply that the general conditions of life which all
people have to accept seem painful to them. When we are well the play of
our muscles is a joy to us, but when we are ill we feel the very weight
of the atmosphere, and our eyes are hurt by the pleasant daylight.

When _Lelia_ appeared George Sand's old friends were stupefied. "What,
in Heaven's name, is this?" wrote Jules Neraud, the _Malgache._ "Where
have you been in search of this? Why have you written such a book?
Where has it sprung from, and what is it for? . . . This woman is a
fantastical creature. She is not at all like you. You are lively and can
dance a jig; you can appreciate butterflies and you do not despise puns.
You sew and can make jam very well."(18)

     (18) _Histoire de ma vie_.

It certainly was not her portrait. She was healthy and believed in life,
in the goodness of things and in the future of humanity, just as Victor
Hugo and Dumas _pere_, those other forces of Nature, did, at about the
same time. A soul foreign to her own had entered into her, and it was
the romantic soul. With the magnificent power of receptivity which she
possessed, George Sand welcomed all the winds which came to her from
the four quarters of romanticism. She sent them back with unheard-of
fulness, sonorous depth and wealth of orchestration. From that time
forth a woman's voice could be heard, added to all the masculine voices
which railed against life, and the woman's voice dominated them all!

In George Sand's psychological evolution, _Lelia_ is just this: the
beginning of the invasion of her soul by romanticism. It was a borrowed
individuality, undoubtedly, but it was not something to be put on and
off at will like a mask. It adhered to the skin. It was all very fine
for George Sand to say to Sainte-Beuve: "Do not confuse the man himself
with the suffering. . . . And do not believe in all my satanical airs.
. . . This is simply a style that I have taken on, I assure you. . . ."

Sainte-Beuve had every reason to be alarmed, and the confessor was quite
right in his surmises. The crisis of romanticism had commenced. It
was to take an acute form and to reach its paroxysm during the Venice
escapade. It is from this point of view that we will study the famous
episode, which has already been studied by so many other writers.


No subject, perhaps, has excited the curiosity of readers like this one,
and always without satisfying that curiosity. A library could be formed
of the books devoted to this subject, written within the last ten years.
Monsieur Rocheblave, Monsieur Maurice Clouard, Dr. Cabanes, Monsieur
Marieton, the enthusiastic collector, Spoelberch de Lovenjoul and
Monsieur Decori have all given us their contributions to the debate.(19)
Thanks to them, we have the complete correspondence of George Sand and
Musset, the diary of George Sand and Pagello's diary.

     (19) Consult:  Rocheblave, _La fin dune Legende;_ Maurice
     Clouard, _Documents inedits sur A. de Musset;_ Dr. Cabanes,
     _Musset et le Dr. Pagello_; Paul Marieton, _Une histoire
     d'amour;_ Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, _La vrai histoire
     d'Elle et Lui;_ Decori, _Lettres de George Sand et Musset._

With the aid of all these documents Monsieur Charles Maurras has written
a book entitled _Les Amants de Venise_. It is the work of a psychologist
and of an artist. The only fault I have to find with it is that the
author of it seems to see calculation and artifice everywhere, and not
to believe sufficiently in sincerity. We must not forget, either, that
as early as the year 1893, all that is essential had been told us by
that shrewd writer and admirable woman, Arvede Barine. The chapter which
she devotes to the Venice episode, in her biography of Alfred de Musset,
is more clear and simple, and at the same time deeper than anything that
had yet been written.

It is a subject that has been given up to the curiosity of people and
to their disputes. The strange part is the zeal which at once animates
every one who takes part in this controversy. The very atmosphere seems
to be impregnated with strife, and those interested become, at once,
the partisans of George Sand or the partisans of Musset. The two parties
only agree on one point, and that is, to throw all the blame on the
client favoured by their adversary. I must confess that I cannot take
a passionate interest in a discussion, the subject of which we cannot
properly judge. According to _Mussetistes_, it was thanks to George
Sand that the young poet was reduced to the despair which drove him to
debauchery. On the other hand, if we are to believe the _Sandistes_,
George Sand's one idea in interesting herself in Musset was to rescue
him from debauchery and convert him to a better life. I listen to all
such pious interpretations, but I prefer others for myself. I prefer
seeing the physiognomy of each of the two lovers standing out, as it
does, in powerful relief.

It is the custom, too, to pity these two unfortunates, who suffered so
much. At the risk of being taken for a very heartless man, I must own
that I do not pity them much. The two lovers wished for this suffering,
they wanted to experience the incomparable sensations of it, and they
got enjoyment and profit from this. They knew that they were working for
posterity. "Posterity will repeat our names like those of the immortal
lovers whose two names are only one at present, like Romeo and Juliette,
like Heloise and Abelard. People will never speak of one of us without
speaking of the other."

Juliette died at the age of fifteen and Heloise entered a convent. The
Venice lovers did not have to pay for their celebrity as dearly as
that. They wanted to give an example, to light a torch on the road of
humanity. "People shall know my story," writes George Sand. "I will
write it. . . . Those who follow along the path I trod will see where it
leads." _Et nunc erudimini_. Let us see for ourselves, and learn.

Their _liaison_ dates from August, 1833.

George Sand was twenty-nine years of age. It was the time of her
greatest charm. We must try to imagine the enchantress as she then
was. She was not tall and she was delightfully slender, with an
extraordinary-looking face of dark, warm colouring. Her thick hair was
very dark, and her eyes, her large eyes, haunted Musset for years after.

     "_Ote-moi, memoire importune_,
     _Ote-moi ces yeux que  je vois toujours!_"

he writes.


And this woman, who could have been loved passionately, merely for her
charm as a woman, was a celebrity! She was a woman of genius! Alfred de
Musset was twenty-three years old. He was elegant, witty, a flirt, and
when he liked he could be irresistible. He had won his reputation by
that explosion of gaiety and imagination, _Les Contes d'Espagne el
d'Italle_. He had written some fine poetry, dreamy, disturbing and
daring. He had also given _Les Caprices de Marianne_, in which he
figures twice over himself, for he was both Octave the sceptic, the
disillusioned man, and Coelio, the affectionate, candid Coelio. He
imagined himself Rolla. It was he, and he alone, who should have been
styled the sublime boy.

And so here they both are. We might call them Lelia and Stenio, but
_Lelia_ was written before the Venice adventure. She was not the
reflection of it, but rather the presentiment. This is worthy of notice,
but not at all surprising. Literature sometimes imitates reality, but
how much more often reality is modelled on literature!

It was as though George Sand had foreseen her destiny, for she had
feared to meet Musset. On the 11th of March, she writes as follows to
Sainte-Beuve: "On second thoughts, I do not want you to bring Alfred de
Musset. He is a great dandy. We should not suit each other, and I was
really more curious to see him than interested in him." A little later
on, though, at a dinner at the _Freres provencaux_, to which Buloz
invited his collaborators, George Sand found herself next Alfred de
Musset. She invited him to call on her, and when _Lelia_ was published
she sent him a copy, with the following dedication written in the first
volume: _A Monsieur mon gamin d'Allred_; and in the second volume: _A
Monsieur le vicomte Allred de Musset, hommage respectueux de son devoue
serviteur George Sand_. Musset replied by giving his opinion of the new
book. Among the letters which followed, there is one that begins with
these words: "My dear George, I have something silly and ridiculous to
tell you. I am foolishly writing, instead of telling you, as I ought to
have done, after our walk. I am heartbroken to-night that I did not tell
you. You will laugh at me, and you will take me for a man who simply
talks nonsense. You will show me the door, and fancy that I am not
speaking the truth. . . . I am in love with you. . . ."

She did not laugh at him, though, and she did not show him the door.
Things did not drag on long, evidently, as she writes to her confessor,
Sainte-Beuve, on the 25th of August: "I have fallen in love, and very
seriously this time, with Alfred de Musset." How long was this to
last? She had no idea, but for the time being she declared that she was
absolutely happy.

"I have found a candour, a loyalty and an affection which delight me. It
is the love of a young man and the friendship of a comrade." There was
a honeymoon in the little flat looking on the Quay Malaquals. Their
friends shared the joy of the happy couple, as we see by Musset's
frolicsome lines:

     _George est dans sa chambrette,
     Entre deux pots de fleurs,
     Fumiant sa cigarette,
     Les yeux baignes de pleurs._

     _Buloz assis par terre
     Lui fait de doux serments,
     Solange par derriere
     Gribouille ses romans._

     _Plante commme une borne_,
     _Boucoiran tout crott_,
     _Contemple d'un oeil morne_
     _Musset tout debraille, etc._

It is evident that, as poetry, this does not equal the _Nuits._

In the autumn they went for a honeymoon trip to Fontainebleau. It was
there that the strange scene took place which is mentioned in _Elle
et Lui_. One evening when they were in the forest, Musset had an
extraordinary hallucination, which he has himself described:

     _Dans tin bois, sur une bruyere,
     Au pied d'un arbre vint s'asseoir
     Un jeune homme vetu de noir
     Qui me ressemblail comme un frere._

     _Le lui demandais mon chemin,
     Il tenait un luth d'ue main,
     De l'autre un bouquet d'eglantine.
     Il me fit tin salut d'ami
     Et, se detournant a demu,
     Me montra du doigt la colline._

He really saw this "double," dressed in black, which was to visit him
again later on. His _Nuit de decembre_ was written from it.

They now wanted to see Italy together. Musset had already written on
Venice; he now wanted to go there. Madame de Musset objected to this,
but George Sand promised so sincerely that she would be a mother to the
young man that finally his own mother gave her consent. On the evening
of December 12, 1833, Paul de Musset accompanied the two travellers to
the mail-coach. On the boat from Lyons to Avignon they met with a big,
intelligent-looking man. This was Beyle-Stendhal, who was then Consul at
Civita-Vecchia. He was on his way to his post. They enjoyed his lively
conversation, although he made fun of their illusions about Italy and
the Italian character. He made fun, though, of everything and of every
one, and they felt that he was only being witty and trying to appear
unkind. At dinner he drank too much, and finished by dancing round the
table in his great fur-lined boots. Later on he gave them some specimens
of his obscene conversation, so that they were glad to continue their
journey without him.

On the 28th the travellers reached Florence. The aspect of this city and
his researches in the _Chroniques florentines_ supplied the poet with
the subject for _Lorenzaccio_. It appears that George Sand and Musset
each treated this subject, and that a _Lorenzaccio_ by George Sand
exists. I have not read it, but I prefer Musset's version. They reached
Venice on January 19, 1834, and put up at the Hotel Danieli. By this
time they were at loggerheads.

The cause of their quarrel and disagreement is not really known, and the
activity of retrospective journalists has not succeeded in finding this
out. George Sand's letters only give details about their final quarrel.
On arriving, George Sand was ill, and this exasperated Musset. He was
annoyed, and declared that a woman out of sorts was very trying. There
are good reasons for believing that he had found her very trying for
some time. He was very elegant and she a learned "white blackbird."
He was capricious and she a placid, steady _bourgeois_ woman, very
hard-working and very regular in the midst of her irregularity. He used
to call her "personified boredom, the dreamer, the silly woman, the
nun," when he did not use terms which we cannot transcribe. The climax
was when he said to her: "I was mistaken, George, and I beg your pardon,
for I do not love you."

Wounded and offended, she replied: "We do not love each other any
longer, and we never really loved each other."

They therefore took back their independence. This is a point to note,
as George Sand considered this fact of the greatest importance, and she
constantly refers to it. She was from henceforth free, as regarded her
companion.

Illness kept them now at Venice. George Sand's illness first and then
Musset's alarming malady. He had high fever, accompanied by chest
affection and attacks of delirium which lasted six consecutive hours,
during which it took four men to hold him.


George Sand was an admirable nurse. This must certainly be acknowledged.
She sat up with him at night and she nursed him by day, and, astonishing
woman that she was, she was also able to work and to earn enough to pay
their common expenses. This is well known, but I am able to give another
proof of it, in the letters which George Sand wrote from Venice to
Buloz. These letters have been communicated to me by Madame Pailleron,
_nee_ Buloz, and by Madame Landouzy, _veuve_ Buloz, whom I thank for
the public and for myself. The following are a few of the essential
passages:


"February 4. _Read this when you are alone._

"MY DEAR BULOZ,--Your reproaches reach me at a miserable moment. If you
have received my letter, you already know that I do not deserve them.
A fortnight ago I was well again and working. Alfred was working too,
although he was not very well and had fits of feverishness. About five
days ago we were both taken ill, almost at the same time. I had an
attack of dysentery, which caused me horrible suffering. I have not yet
recovered from it, but I am strong enough, anyhow, to nurse him. He was
seized with a nervous and inflammatory fever, which has made such rapid
progress that the doctor tells me he does not know what to think about
it. We must wait for the thirteenth or fourteenth day before knowing
whether his life is in danger. And what will this thirteenth or
fourteenth day be? Perhaps his last one? I am in despair, overwhelmed
with fatigue, suffering horribly, and awaiting who knows what future?
How can I give myself up to literature or to anything in the world at
such a time? I only know that our entire fortune, at present, consists
of sixty francs, that we shall have to spend an enormous amount at the
chemist's, for the nurse and doctor, and that we are at a very expensive
hotel. We were just about to leave it and go to a private house. Alfred
cannot be moved now, and even if everything should go well, he probably
cannot be moved for a month. We shall have to pay one term's rent for
nothing, and we shall return to France, please God. If my ill-luck
continues, and if Alfred should die, I can assure you that I do not care
what happens after to me. If God allows Alfred to recover, I do not
know how we shall pay the expenses of his illness and of his return to
France. The thousand francs that you are to send me will not suffice,
and I do not know what we shall do. At any rate, do not delay sending
that, as, by the time it arrives, it will be more than necessary. I am
sorry about the annoyance you are having with the delay for publishing,
but you can now judge whether it is my fault. If only Alfred had a few
quiet days, I could soon finish my work. But he is in a frightful state
of delirium and restlessness. I cannot leave him an instant. I have been
nine hours writing this letter. Adieu, my friend, and pity me.

"GEORGE.

"Above everything, do not tell any one, not any one in the world, that
Alfred is ill. If his mother heard (and it only needs two persons for
telling a secret to all Paris) she would go mad. If she has to be told,
let who will undertake to tell her, but if in a fortnight Alfred is out
of danger, it is useless for her to grieve now. Adieu."


"February 13, 1834.

"My friend, Alfred is saved. There has been no fresh attack, and we
have nearly reached the fourteenth day without the improvement having
altered. After the brain affection inflammation of the lungs declared
itself, and this rather alarmed us for two days. . . . He is extremely
weak at present, and he wanders occasionally. He has to be nursed night
and day. Do not imagine, therefore, that I am only making pretexts for
the delay in my work. I have not undressed for eight nights. I sleep on
a sofa, and have to get up at any minute. In spite of this, ever since
I have been relieved in my mind about the danger, I have been able to
write a few pages in the mornings while he is resting. You may be sure
that I should like to be able to take advantage of this time to rest
myself. Be assured, my friend, that I am not short of courage, nor yet
of the will to work. You are not more anxious than I am that I should
carry out my engagements. You know that a debt makes me smart like a
wound. But you are friend enough to make allowances for my situation and
not to leave me in difficulties. I am spending very wretched days here
at this bedside, for the slightest sound, the slightest movement causes
me constant terror. In this disposition of mind I shall not write any
light works. They will be heavy, on the contrary, like my fatigue and my
sadness.

"Do not leave me without money, I beseech you, or I do not know what
will happen to me. I spend about twenty francs a day in medicine of all
sorts. We do not know how to keep him alive. . . ."


These letters give the lie to some of the gossip that has been spread
abroad with regard to the episode of the Hotel Danieli. And I too,
thanks to these letters, shall have put an end to a legend! In the
second volume of Wladimir Karenine's work on George Sand, on page 61, we
have the following words--

"Monsieur Plauchut tells us that, according to Buloz, Musset had been
enticed into a gambling hell during his stay in Venice, and had lost
about four hundred pounds there. The imprudent young man could not pay
this debt of honour, and he never would have been able to do so. He had
to choose between suicide or dishonour. George Sand did not hesitate a
moment. She wrote at once to the manager of the _Revue_, asking him to
advance the money." And this debt was on her shoulders for a long time.

The facts of the case are as follows, according to a letter from George
Sand to Buloz: "I beseech you, as a favour, to pay Alfred's debt and to
write to him that it is all settled. You cannot imagine the impatience
and the disturbance that this little matter cause him. He speaks to me
of it every minute, and begs me every day to write to you about it. He
owes these three hundred and sixty francs (L14 8_s_.) to a young man
he knows very little and who might talk of it to people. . . . You have
already advanced much larger sums to him. He has always paid you back,
and you are not afraid that this would make you bankrupt. If, through
his illness, he should not be able to work for a long time, my work
could be used for that, so be at ease. . . . Do this, I beseech you, and
write him a short letter to ease his mind at once. I will then read it
to him, and this will pacify one of the torments of his poor head. Oh,
my friend, if you only knew what this delirium is like! What sublime and
awful things he has said, and then what convulsions and shouts! I do not
know how he has had strength enough to pull through and how it is that I
have not gone mad myself. Adieu, adieu, my friend."

There really was a gambling debt, then, but we do not know exactly where
it was contracted. It amounted to three hundred and sixty francs,
which is very different from the ten thousand francs and the threat of
suicide.

And now we come to the pure folly! Musset had been attended by a young
doctor, Pietro Pagello. He was a straightforward sort of young man,
of rather slow intelligence, without much conversation, not speaking
French, but very handsome. George Sand fell in love with him. One night,
after having scribbled a letter of three pages, she put it into an
envelope without any address and gave it to Pagello. He asked her to
whom he was to give the letter. George Sand took the envelope back and
wrote on it: "To stupid Pagello." We have this declaration, and among
other things in the letter are the following lines: "You will not
deceive me, anyhow. You will not make any idle promises and false
vows. . . . I shall not, perhaps, find in you what I have sought for in
others, but, at any rate, I can always believe that you possess it.
. . . I shall be able to interpret your meditations and make your silence
speak eloquently. . . ." This shows us clearly the kind of charm George
Sand found in Pagello. She loved him because he was stupid.

The next questions are, when did they become lovers, and how did Musset
discover their intimacy? It is quite certain that he suspected it,
and that he made Pagello confess his love for George Sand.(20) A most
extraordinary scene then took place between the three of them, according
to George Sand's own account. "Adieu, then," she wrote to Musset, later
on, "adieu to the fine poem of our sacred friendship and of that ideal
bond formed between the three of us, when you dragged from him the
confession of his love for me and when he vowed to you that he would
make me happy. Oh, that night of enthusiasm, when, in spite of us, you
joined our hands, saying: 'You love each other and yet you love me,
for you have saved me, body and soul." Thus, then, Musset had solemnly
abjured his love for George Sand, he had engaged his mistress of the
night before to a new lover, and was from henceforth to be their best
friend. Such was the ideal bond, such the sacred friendship! This may be
considered the romantic escapade.

     (20) On one of George Sand's unpublished letters to Buloz
     the following lines are written in the handwriting of Buloz:

     "In the morning on getting up he discovered, in an adjoining
     room, a tea-table still set, but with only one cup.

     "'Did you have tea yesterday evening?'

     "'Yes,' answered George Sand, 'I had tea with the doctor.'

     "'Ah, how is it that there is only one cup?'

     "'The other has been taken away.'

     "'No, nothing has been taken away.  You drank out of the
     same cup.'

     "'Even if that were so, you have no longer the right to
     trouble about such things.'

     "'I have the right, as I am still supposed to be your lover.
     You ought at least to show me respect, and, as I am leaving
     in three days, you might wait until I have gone to do as you
     like.'

     "The night following this scene Musset discovered George
     Sand, crouching on her bed, writing a letter.

     "'What are you doing?' he asked.

     "'I am reading,' she replied, and she blew out the candle.

     "'If you are reading, why do you put the candle out?'

     "'It went out itself:  light it again.'

     "Alfred de Musset lit it again.

     "'Ah, so you were reading, and you have no book.  Infamous
     woman, you might as well say that you are writing to your
     lover.' George Sand had recourse to her usual threat of
     leaving the house. Alfred de Musset read her up:  'You are
     thinking of a horrible plan. You want to hurry off to your
     doctor, pretend that I am mad and that your life is in
     danger.  You will not leave this room. I will keep you from
     anything so base.  If you do go, I will put such an epitaph
     on your grave that the people who read it will turn pale,'
     said Alfred with terrible energy.

     "George Sand was trembling and crying.

     "'I no longer love you,' Alfred said scoffingly to George
     Sand.

     "'It is the right moment to take your poison or to go and
     drown yourself.'

     "Confession to Alfred of her secret about the doctor.
     Reconciliation. Alfred's departure.  George Sand's
     affectionate and enthusiastic letters."

     Such are the famous episodes of the _tea-cup_ and _the
     letter_ as Buloz heard them told at the time.

Musset returned in March, 1834, leaving George Sand with Pagello in
Venice. The sentimental exaggeration continued, as we see from the
letters exchanged between Musset and George Sand. When crossing
the Simplon the immutable grandeur of the Alps struck Alusset with
admiration, and he thought of his two "great friends." His head was
evidently turned by the heights from which he looked at things. George
Sand wrote to him: "I am not giving you any message from Pagello,
except that he is almost as sad as I am at your absence." "He is a fine
fellow," answered Musset. "Tell him how much I like him, and that my
eyes fill with tears when I think of him." Later on he writes: "When I
saw Pagello, I recognized in him the better side of my own nature,
but pure and free from the irreparable stains which have ruined mine."
"Always treat me like that," writes Musset again. "It makes me feel
proud. My dear friend, the woman who talks of her new lover in this way
to the one she has given up, but who still loves her, gives him a proof
of the greatest esteem that a man can receive from a woman. . . ." That
romanticism which made a drama of the situation in _L'Ecole des Femmes_,
and another one out of that in the _Precieuses ridicules_, excels in
taking tragically situations that belong to comedy and in turning them
into the sublime.

Meanwhile George Sand had settled down in Venice with Pagello--and with
all the family, all the Pagello tribe, with the brother, the sister, to
say nothing of the various rivals who came and made scenes. It was the
vulgar, ordinary platitude of an Italian intimacy of this kind. In spite
of everything, she continued congratulating herself on her choice.

"I have my love, my stay here with me. He never suffers, for he is never
weak or suspicious. . . . He is calm and good. . . . He loves me and is
at peace; he is happy without my having to suffer, without my having to
make efforts for his happiness. . . . As for me, I must suffer for some
one. It is just this suffering which nurtures my maternal solicitude,
etc. . . ." She finally begins to weary of her dear Pagello's stupidity.
It occurred to her to take him with her to Paris, and that was the
climax. There are some things which cannot be transplanted from one
country to another. When they had once set foot in Paris, the absurdity
of their situation appeared to them.

"From the moment that Pagello landed in France," says George Sand, "he
could not understand anything." The one thing that he was compelled to
understand was that he was no longer wanted. He was simply pushed out.
George Sand had a remarkable gift for bringing out the characteristics
of the persons with whom she had any intercourse. This Pagello, thanks
to his adventure with her, has become in the eyes of the world a
personage as comic as one of Moliere's characters.

Musset and George Sand still cared for each other. He beseeched her
to return to him. "I am good-for-nothing," he says, "for I am simply
steeped in my love for you. I do not know whether I am alive, whether I
eat, drink, or breathe, but I know I am in love." George Sand was afraid
to return to him, and Sainte-Beuve forbade her. Love proved stronger
than all other arguments, however, and she yielded.

As soon as she was with him once more, their torture commenced again,
with all the customary complaints, reproaches and recriminations. "I was
quite sure that all these reproaches would begin again immediately after
the happiness we had dreamed of and promised each other. Oh, God, to
think that we have already arrived at this!" she writes.

What tortured them was that the past, which they had believed to be "a
beautiful poem," now seemed to them a hideous nightmare. All this, we
read, was a game that they were playing. A cruel sort of game, of which
Musset grew more and more weary, but which to George Sand gradually
became a necessity. We see this, as from henceforth it was she who
implored Musset. In her diary, dated December 24, 1834, we read: "And
what if I rushed to him when my love is too strong for me. What if I
went and broke the bell-pull with ringing, until he opened his door to
me. Or if I lay down across the threshold until he came out!" She cut
off her magnificent hair and sent it to him. Such was the way in which
this proud woman humbled herself. She was a prey to love, which seemed
to her a holy complaint. It was a case of Venus entirely devoted to her
prey. The question is, was this really love? "I no longer love you," she
writes, "but I still adore you. I do not want you any more, but I cannot
do without you." They had the courage to give each other up finally in
March, 1835.

It now remains for us to explain the singularity of this adventure,
which, as a matter of fact, was beyond all logic, even the logic of
passion. It is, however, readily understood, if we treat it as a case
of acute romanticism, the finest case of romanticism, that has been
actually lived, which the history of letters offers us.

The romanticism consists first in exposing one's life to the public, in
publishing one's most secret joys and sorrows. From the very beginning
George Sand and Musset took the whole circle of their friends into their
confidence. These friends were literary people. George Sand specially
informs Sainte-Beuve that she wishes her sentimental life from
thenceforth to be known. They were quite aware that they were on show,
as it were, subjects of an experiment that would be discussed by "the
gallery."

Romanticism consists next in the writer putting his life into his
books, making literature out of his emotions. The idea of putting their
adventure into a story occurred to the two lovers before the adventure
had come to an end. It was at Venice that George Sand wrote her first
_Lettres d'un voyageur_, addressed to the poet--and to the subscribers
of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Musset, to improve on this idea, decides
to write a novel from the episode which was still unfinished. "I will
not die," he says, "until I have written my book on you and on myself,
more particularly on you. No, my beautiful, holy fiancee, you shall not
return to this cold earth before it knows the woman who has walked on
it. No, I swear this by my youth and genius." Musset's contributions to
this literature were _Confession d'un enfant du siecle_, _Histoire d'un
merle blanc_, _Elle et Lui_, and all that followed.

In an inverse order, romanticism consists in putting literature into our
life, in taking the latest literary fashion for our rule of action. This
is not only a proof of want of taste; it is a most dangerous mistake.
The romanticists, who had so many wrong ideas, had none more erroneous
than their idea of love, and in the correspondence between George Sand
and Musset we see the paradox in all its beauty. It consists in saying
that love leads to virtue and that it leads there through change.
Whether the idea came originally from _her_ or from _him_, this was
their common faith.

"You have said it a hundred times over," writes George Sand, "and it
is all in vain that you retract; nothing will now efface that sentence:
'Love is the only thing in the world that counts.' It may be that it
is a divine faculty which we lose and then find again, that we must
cultivate, or that we have to buy with cruel suffering, with painful
experience. The suffering you have endured through loving me was perhaps
destined, in order that you might love another woman more easily.
Perhaps the next woman may love you less than I do, and yet she may be
more happy and more beloved. There are such mysteries in these things,
and God urges us along new and untrodden paths. Give in; do not attempt
to resist. He does not desert His privileged ones. He takes them by the
hand and places them in the midst of the sandbanks, where they are to
learn to live, in order that they may sit down at the banquet at which
they are to rest. . . ." Later on she writes as follows: "Do you imagine
that one love affair, or even two, can suffice for exhausting or taking
the freshness from a strong soul? I believed this, too, for a long
time, but I know now that it is quite the contrary. Love is a fire that
endeavours to rise and to purify itself. Perhaps the more we have failed
in our endeavours to find it, the more apt we become to discover it, and
the more we have been obliged to change, the more conservative we
shall become. Who knows? It is perhaps the terrible, magnificent and
courageous work of a whole lifetime. It is a crown of thorns which will
blossom and be covered with roses when our hair begins to turn white."

This was pure frenzy, and yet there were two beings ready to drink in
all this pathos, two living beings to live out this monstrous chimera.
Such are the ravages that a certain conception of literature may make.
By the example we have of these two illustrious victims, we may imagine
that there were others, and very many others, obscure and unknown
individuals, but human beings all the same, who were equally duped.
There are unwholesome fashions in literature, which, translated into
life, mean ruin. The Venice adventure shows up the truth of this in
bright daylight. This is its interest and its lesson.




V

THE FRIEND OF MICHEL (DE BOURGES)

LISZT AND COMTESSE D'AGOULT. _MAUPRAT_


We have given the essential features of the Venice adventure. The love
affair, into which George Sand and Musset had put so much literature,
was to serve literature. Writers of the romantic school are given to
making little songs with their great sorrows. When the correspondence
between George Sand and Musset appeared, every one was surprised to
find passages that were already well known. Such passages had already
appeared in the printed work of the poet or of the authoress. An idea,
a word, or an illustration used by the one was now, perhaps, to be found
in the work of the other one.

"It is I who have lived," writes George Sand, "and not an unreal being
created by my pride and my _ennui_." We all know the use to which Musset
put this phrase. He wrote the famous couplet of Perdican with it: "All
men are untruthful, inconstant, false, chatterers, hypocritical, proud,
cowardly, contemptible and sensual; all women are perfidious, artful,
vain, inquisitive and depraved. . . . There is, though, in this world
one thing which is holy and sublime. It is the union of these two
beings, imperfect and frightful as they are. We are often deceived in
our love; we are often wounded and often unhappy, but still we love, and
when we are on the brink of the tomb we shall turn round, look back,
and say to ourselves: 'I have often suffered, I have sometimes been
deceived, but I have loved. It is I who have lived, and not an unreal
being created by my pride and _ennui_.'" Endless instances of this kind
could be given. They are simply the sign of the reciprocal influence
exercised over each other by George Sand and Musset, an influence to be
traced through all their work.

This influence was of a different kind and of unequal degree. It was
George Sand who first made literature of their common recollections.
Some of these recollections were very recent ones and were impregnated
with tears. The two lovers had only just separated when George Sand made
the excursion described in the first _Lettre d'un voyageur_. She goes
along the Brenta. It is the month of May, and the meadows are in flower.
In the horizon she sees the snowy peaks of the Tyrolese Alps standing
out. The remembrance of the long hours spent at the invalid's bedside
comes back to her, with all the anguish of the sacred passion in which
she thinks she sees God's anger. She then pays a visit to the Oliero
grottoes, and once more her wounded love makes her heart ache. She
returns through Possagno, whose beautiful women served as models for
Canova. She then goes back to Venice, and the doctor gives her a letter
from the man she has given up, the man she has sent away. These poetical
descriptions, alternating with lyrical effusions, this kind of dialogue
with two voices, one of which is that of nature and the other that of
the heart, remind us of one of Musset's _Nuits_.

The second of these _Lettres d'un voyageur_ is entirely descriptive. It
is spring-time in Venice. The old balconies are gay with flowers; the
nightingales stop singing to listen to the serenades. There are songs
to be heard at every street corner, music in the wake of every gondola.
There are sweet perfumes and love-sighs in the air. The delights of the
Venetian nights had never been described like this. The harmony of "the
three elements, water, sky and marble," had never been better expressed,
and the charm of Venice had never been suggested in so subtle and,
penetrating a manner. The second letter treats too of the gondoliers,
and of their habits and customs.

The third letter, telling us about the nobility and the women of Venice,
completes the impression. Just as the Pyrenees had moved George Sand, so
Italy now moved her. This was a fresh acquisition for her palette. More
than once from henceforth Venice was to serve her for the wonderful
scenery of her stories. This is by no means a fresh note, though, in
George Sand's work. There is no essential difference, then, in her
inspiration. She had always been impressionable, but her taste was
now getting purer. Musset, the most romantic of French poets, had an
eminently classical taste. In the _Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet_, he
defined romanticism as an abuse of adjectives. He was of Madame de
Lafayette's opinion, that a word taken out was worth twenty pennies, and
a phrase taken out twenty shillings. In a copy of _Indiana_ he crossed
out all the useless epithets. This must have made a considerable
difference to the length of the book. George Sand was too broad-minded
to be hurt by such criticism, and she was intelligent enough to learn a
lesson from it.

Musset's transformation was singularly deeper. When he started for
Venice, he was the youngest and most charming of poets, fanciful and
full of fun. "Monsieur mon gamin d'Alfred," George Sand called him at
that time. When he returned from there, he was the saddest of poets. For
some time he was, as it were, stunned. His very soul seemed to be bowed
down with his grief. He was astonished at the change he felt in himself,
and he did not by any means court any fresh inspiration.

     _J'ai vu, le temps ou ma jeunesse_
     _Sur mes levres etait sans cesse_
     _Prete a chanter comme un oiseau;_
     _Mais j'ai souffert un dur martyre_
     _Et le moins que j'en pourrais dire_,
     _Si je lessayais sur a lyre_,
     _La briserait comme un roseau_,

he writes.

In the _Nuit de Mai_, the earliest of these songs of despair, we have
the poet's symbol of the pelican giving its entrails as food to its
starving young. The only symbols that we get in this poetry are symbols
of sadness, and these are at times given in magnificent fulness of
detail. We have solitude in the _Nuit de decembre_, and the labourer
whose house has been burnt in the _Lettre a Lamartine_. The _Nuit
d'aout_ gives proof of a wild effort to give life another trial, but in
the _Auit d'octobre_ anger gets the better of him once more.

     _Honte a toi, qui la premiere
     M'as appris la trahison . . . !_

The question has often been asked whether the poet refers here to the
woman he loved in Venice but it matters little whether he did or not.
He only saw her through the personage who from henceforth symbolized
"woman" to him and the suffering which she may cause a man. And yet, as
this suffering became less intense, softened as it was by time, he began
to discover the benefit of it. His soul had expanded, so that he was now
in communion with all that is great in Nature and in Art. The harmony
of the sky, the silence of night, the murmur of flowing water, Petrarch,
Michel Angelo, Shakespeare, all appealed to him. The day came when he
could write:

     _Un souvenir heureux est peut-etre sur terre
     Plus vrai que le bonheur_.

This is the only philosophy for a conception of life which treats love
as everything for man. He not only pardons now, but he is grateful:

     _Je ne veux rien savoir, ni si les champs fleurissent,
     Nice quil adviendra di., simulacre humain,
     Ni si ces vastes cieux eclaireront demain
     Ce qu' ils ensevelissent heure, en ce lieu,
     Je me dis seulement:  a cette
     Un jour, je fus aime, j'aimais, elle etait belle,
     Jenfouis ce tresor dans mon ame immortelle
     Et je l'em porte a Dieu._

This love poem, running through all he wrote from the _Nuit de Mai_
to the _Souvenir_, is undoubtedly the most beautiful and the most
profoundly human of anything in the French language. The charming poet
had become a great poet. That shock had occurred within him which is
felt by the human being to the very depths of his soul, and makes of him
a new creature. It is in this sense that the theory of the romanticists,
with regard to the educative virtues of suffering, is true. But it is
not only suffering in connection with our love affairs which has this
special privilege. After some misfortune which uproots, as it were, our
life, after some disappointment which destroys our moral edifice, the
world appears changed to us. The whole network of accepted ideas and
of conventional opinions is broken asunder. We find ourselves in direct
contact with reality, and the shock makes our true nature come to the
front. . . . Such was the crisis through which Musset had just passed.
The man came out of it crushed and bruised, but the poet came through it
triumphant.

It has been insisted on too much that George Sand was only the
reflection of the men who had approached her. In the case of Musset
it was the contrary. Musset owed her more than she owed to him. She
transformed him by the force of her strong individuality. She, on the
contrary, only found in Musset a child, and what she was seeking was a
dominator.

She thought she had discovered him this very year 1835.

The sixth _Lettre d'un voyageur_ was addressed to Everard. This Everard
was considered by her to be a superior man. He was so much above the
average height that George Sand advised him to sit down when he was with
other men, as when standing he was too much above them. She compares him
to Atlas carrying the world, and to Hercules in a lion's skin. But among
all her comparisons, when she is seeking to give the measure of his
superiority, without ever really succeeding in this, it is evident
that the comparison she prefers is that of Marius at Minturnae. He
personifies virtue a _l'antique:_ he is the Roman.

Let us now consider to whom all this flattery was addressed, and who
this man, worthy of Plutarch's pen, was. His name was Michel, and he was
an advocate at Bourges. He was only thirty-seven years of age, but he
looked sixty. After Sandeau and Musset, George Sand had had enough of
"adolescents." She was very much struck with Michel, as he looked like
an old man. The size of his cranium was remarkable, or, as she said of
his craniums: "It seemed as though he had two craniums, one joined to
the other." She wrote: "The signs of the superior faculties of his mind
were as prominent at the prow of this strong vessel as those of his
generous instincts at the stern."(21) In order to understand this
definition of the "fine physique" by George Sand, we must remember that
she was very much taken up with phrenology at this time. One of her
_Lettres d'un voyageur_ was entitled Sur _Lavater et sur une Maison
deserte_. In a letter to Madame d'Agoult, George Sand tells that her
gardener gave notice to leave, and, on asking him his reason, the
simple-minded man replied: "Madame has such an ugly head that my wife,
who is expecting, might die of fright." The head in question was a
skull, an anatomical one with compartments all marked and numbered,
according to the system of Gall and Spurzheim. In 1837, phrenology was
very much in favour. In 1910, it is hypnotism, so we have no right to
judge the infatuation of another epoch.

     (21) _Histoire de ma vie_.

Michel's cranium was bald. He was short, slight, he stooped, was
short-sighted and wore glasses. It is George Sand who gives these
details for his portrait. He was born of peasant parents, and was of
Jacobin simplicity. He wore a thick, shapeless inverness and sabots. He
felt the cold very much, and used to ask permission to put on a muffler
indoors. He would then take three or four out of his pockets and put
them on his head, one over the other. In the _Lettre d'un voyageur_
George Sand mentions this crown on Everard's head. Such are the
illusions of love.

The first time she met Michel was at Bourges. She went with her two
friends, Papet and Fleury, to call on him at the hotel. From seven
o'clock until midnight he never ceased talking. It was a magnificent
night, and he proposed a walk in the town at midnight. When they came
back to his door he insisted on taking them home, and so they continued
walking backwards and forwards until four in the morning. He must have
been an inveterate chatterer to have clung to this public of three
persons at an hour when the great buildings, with the moon throwing its
white light over them and everything around, must have suggested the
majesty of silence. To people who were amazed at this irrepressible
eloquence, Michel answered ingenuously: "Talking is thinking aloud.
By thinking aloud in this way I advance more quickly than if I thought
quietly by myself." This was Numa Roumestan's idea. "As for me," he
said, "when I am not talking, I am not thinking." As a matter of fact,
Michel, like Numa, was a native of Provence. In Paris there was a
repetition of this nocturnal and roving scene. Michel and his friends
had come to a standstill on the Saints-Peres bridge. They caught sight
of the Tuileries lighted up for a ball. Michel became excited, and,
striking the innocent bridge and its parapet with his stick, he
exclaimed: "I tell you that if you are to freshen and renew your corrupt
society, this beautiful river will first have to be red with blood, that
accursed palace will have to be reduced to ashes, and the huge city you
are now looking at will have to be a bare strand where the family of the
poor man can use the plough and build a cottage home."

This was a fine phrase for a public meeting, but perhaps too fine for a
conversation between friends on the Saints-Peres bridge.

This was in 1835, at the most brilliant moment of Michel's career. It
was when he was taking part in the trial of the accused men of April.
After the insurrections of the preceding year at Lyons and Paris, a
great trial had commenced before the Chamber of Peers. We are told
that: "The Republican party was determined to make use of the
cross-questioning of the prisoners for accusing the Government and for
preaching Republicanism and Socialism. The idea was to invite a hundred
and fifty noted Republicans to Paris from all parts of France. In
their quality of defenders, they would be the orators of this great
manifestation." Barb'es, Blanqui, Flocon, Marie, Raspail, Trelat and
Michel of Bourges were among these Republicans. "On the 11th of May, the
revolutionary newspapers published a manifesto in which the committee
for the defence congratulated and encouraged the accused men. One
hundred and ten signatures were affixed to this document, which was a
forgery. It had been drawn up by a few of the upholders of the scheme,
and, in order to make it appear more important, they had affixed the
names of their colleagues without their authorization. Those who had
done this then took fright, and attempted to get out of the dangerous
adventure by a public avowal. In order to save the situation, two of the
guilty party, Trelat and Michel of Bourges, took the responsibility of
the drawing up of the manifesto and the apposition of the signatures
upon themselves. They were sentenced by the Court of Peers, Trelat
to four years of prison and Michel to a month."(22) This was the most
shocking inequality, and Michel could not forgive Trelat for getting
such a fine sentence.

     (22) Thureau Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet_,
     II.  297.

What good was one month of prison? Michel's career certainly had been a
very ordinary one. He hesitated and tacked about. In a word, he was just
a politician. George Sand tells us that he was obliged "to accept,
in theory, what he called the necessities of pure politics, ruse,
charlatanism and even untruth, concessions that were not sincere,
alliances in which he did not believe, and vain promises." We should say
that he was a radical opportunist. To be merely an opportunist, though,
is not enough for ensuring success. There are different ways of being an
opportunist. Michel had been elected a Deputy, but he had no _role_ to
play. In 1848, he could not compete with the brilliancy of Raspail, nor
had he the prestige of Flocon. He went into the shade completely after
the _coup d'etat_. For a long time he had really preferred business
to politics, and a choice must be made when one is not a member of the
Government.

It is easy to see what charmed George Sand in Michel. He was a
sectarian, and she took him for an apostle. He was brutal, and she
thought him energetic. He had been badly brought up, but she thought him
simply austere. He was a tyrant, but she only saw in him a master. He
had told her that he would have her guillotined at the first possible
opportunity. This was an incontestable proof of superiority. She was
sincere herself, and was consequently not on her guard against vain
boasting. He had alarmed her, and she admired him for this, and at once
incarnated in him that stoical ideal of which she had been dreaming for
years and had not yet been able to attribute to any one else.

This is how she explained to Michel her reasons for loving him. "I love
you," she says, "because whenever I figure to myself grandeur, wisdom,
strength and beauty, your image rises up before me. No other man has
ever exercised any moral influence over me. My mind, which has always
been wild and unfettered, has never accepted any guidance. . . . You
came, and you have taught me." Then again she says: "It is you whom
I love, whom I have loved ever since I was born, and through all
the phantoms in whom I thought, for a moment, that I had found you."
According to this, it was Michel she loved through Musset. Let us hope
that she was mistaken.

A whole correspondence exists between George Sand and Michel of Bourges.
Part of it was published not long ago in the _Revue illustree_ under
the title of _Lettres de lemmze_. None of George Sand's letters surpass
these epistles to Michel for fervent passion, beauty of form, and a
kind of superb _impudeur_. Let us take, for instance, this call to
her beloved. George Sand, after a night of work, complains of fatigue,
hunger and cold: "Oh, my lover," she cries, "appear, and, like the earth
on the return of the May sunshine, I should be reanimated, and would
fling off my shroud of ice and thrill with love. The wrinkles of
suffering would disappear from my brow, and I should seem beautiful and
young to you, for I should leap with joy into your iron strong arms.
Come, come, and I shall have strength, health, youth, gaiety, hope.
. . . I will go forth to meet you like the bride of the song, 'to her
well-beloved.'" The Well-beloved to whom this Shulamite would hasten was
a bald-headed provincial lawyer who wore spectacles and three mufflers.
But it appears that his "beauty, veiled and unintelligible to the
vulgar, revealed itself, like that of Jupiter hidden under human form,
to the women whom he loved."

We must not smile at these mythological comparisons. George Sand had,
as it were, restored for herself that condition of soul to which the
ancient myths are due. A great current of naturalist poetry circulates
through these pages. In Theocritus and in Rousard there are certain
descriptive passages. There is an analogy between them and that image of
the horse which carries George Sand along on her impetuous course.

"As soon as he catches sight of me, he begins to paw the ground and rear
impatiently. I have trained him to clear a hundred fathoms a second.
The sky and the ground disappear when he bears me along under those long
vaults formed by the apple-trees in blossom. . . . The least sound of my
voice makes him bound like a ball; the smallest bird makes him shudder
and hurry along like a child with no experience. He is scarcely five
years old, and he is timid and restive. His black crupper shines in the
sunshine like a raven's wing." This description has all the relief of an
antique figure. Another time, George Sand tells how she has seen Phoebus
throw off her robe of clouds and rush along radiant into the pure sky.
The following day she writes: "She was eaten by the evil spirits.
The dark sprites from Erebus, riding on sombre-looking clouds, threw
themselves on her, and it was in vain that she struggled." We might
compare these passages with a letter of July 10, 1836, in which she
tells how she throws herself, all dressed as she is, into the Indre,
and then continues her course through the sunny meadows, and with
what voluptuousness she revels in all the joys of primitive life, and
imagines herself living in the beautiful times of ancient Greece. There
are days and pages when George Sand, under the afflux of physical life,
is pagan. Her genius then is that of the greenwood divinities, who, at
certain times of the year, were intoxicated by the odour of the meadows
and the sap of the woods. If some day we were to have her complete
correspondence given to us, I should not be surprised if many people
preferred it to her letters to Musset. In the first place, it is not
spoiled by that preoccupation which the Venice lovers had, of writing
literature. Mingled with the accents of sincere passion, we do not find
extraordinary conceptions of paradoxical metaphysics. It is Nature which
speaks in these letters, and for that very reason they are none the less
sorrowful. They, too, tell us of a veritable martyrdom. We can easily
imagine from them that Michel was coarse, despotic, faithless and
jealous. We know, too, that more than once George Sand came very near
losing all patience with him, so that we can sympathize with her when
she wrote to Madame d'Agoult in July, 1836:

"I have had, my fill of great men (excuse the expression). . . . I
prefer to see them all in Plutarch, as they would not then cause me any
suffering on the human side. May they all be carved in marble or cast in
bronze, but may I hear no more about them!" _Amen_.

What disgusted George Sand with her Michel was his vanity and his
craving for adulation. In July, 1837, she had come to the end of her
patience, as she wrote to Girerd. It was one of her peculiarities to
always take a third person into her confidence. At the time of
Sandeau, this third person was Emile Regnault; at the time of Musset,
Sainte-Beuve, and now it was Girerd. "I am tired out with my own
devotion, and I have fought against my pride with all the strength of my
love. I have had nothing but ingratitude and hardness as my recompense.
I have felt my love dying away and my soul being crushed, but I am cured
at last. . . ." If only she had had all this suffering for the sake of a
great man, but this time it was only in imaginary great man.

The influence, though, that he had had over her thought was real, and in
a certain way beneficial.

At the beginning she was far from sharing Michel's ideas, and for some
of them she felt an aversion which amounted to horror. The dogma of
absolute equality seemed an absurdity to her. The Republic, or rather
the various republics then in gestation, appeared to her a sort of
Utopia, and as she saw each of her friends making "his own little
Republic" for himself, she had not much faith in the virtue of that form
of government for uniting all French people. One point shocked her above
all others in Michel's theories. This politician did not like artists.
Just as the Revolution did not find chemists necessary, he considered
that the Republic did not need writers, painters and musicians. These
were all useless individuals, and the Republic would give them a little
surprise by putting a labourer's spade or a shoemaker's awl into their
hands. George Sand considered this idea not only barbarous, but silly.

Time works wonders, for we have an indisputable proof that certain of
his opinions soon became hers. This proof is the Republican catechism
contained in her letters to her son Maurice, who was then twelve years
of age. He was at the Lycee Henri IV, in the same class as the princes
of Orleans. It is interesting to read what his mother says to him
concerning the father of his young school friends. In a letter, written
in December, 1835, she says: "It is certainly true that Louis-Philippe
is the enemy of humanity. . . ." Nothing less than that! A little later,
the enemy of humanity invites the young friends of his son Montpensier
to his _chateau_ for the carnival holiday. Maurice is allowed to
accept the invitation, as he wishes to, but he is to avoid showing
that gratitude which destroys independence. "The entertainments that
Montpensier offers you are favours," writes this mother of the Gracchi
quite gravely. If he is asked about his opinions, the child is to reply
that he is rather too young to have opinions yet, but not too young to
know what opinions he will have when he is free to have them. "You
can reply," says his mother, "that you are Republican by race and
by nature." She then adds a few aphorisms. "Princes are our natural
enemies," she says; and then again: "However good-hearted the child of
a king may be, he is destined to be a tyrant." All this is certainly a
great commotion to make about her little son accepting a glass of fruit
syrup and a few cakes at the house of a schoolfellow. But George Sand
was then under the domination of "Robespierre in person."

Michel had brought George Sand over to republicanism. Without wishing
to exaggerate the service he had rendered her by this, it appears to
me that it certainly was one, if we look at it in one way. Rightly or
wrongly, George Sand had seen in Michel the man who devotes himself
entirely to a cause of general interest. She had learnt something in
his school, and perhaps all the more thoroughly because it was in his
school. She had learnt that love is in any case a selfish passion. She
had learnt that another object must be given to the forces of sympathy
of a generous heart, and that such an object may be the service of
humanity, devotion to an idea.

This was a turn in the road, and led the writer on to leave the personal
style for the impersonal style.

There was another service, too, which Michel had rendered to George
Sand. He had pleaded for her in her petition for separation from her
husband, and she had won her case.

Ever since George Sand had taken back her independence in 1831, her
intercourse with Dudevant had not been disagreeable. She and her husband
exchanged cordial letters. When he came to Paris, he made no attempt to
stay with his wife, lest he should inconvenience her. "I shall put up
at Hippolyte's," he says in his letter to her. "I do not want to
inconvenience you in the least, nor to be inconvenienced myself, which
is quite natural." He certainly was a most discreet husband. When
she started for Italy, he begs her to take advantage of so good an
opportunity for seeing such a beautiful country. He was also a husband
ready to give good advice. Later on, he invited Pagello to spend a
little time at Nohant. This was certainly the climax in this strange
story.

During the months, though, that the husband and wife were together,
again at Nohant, the scenes began once more. Dudevant's irritability was
increased by the fact that he was always short of money, and that he was
aware of his own deplorable shortcomings as a financial administrator.
He had made speculations which had been disastrous. He was very
credulous, as so many suspicious people are, and he had been duped by
a swindler in an affair of maritime armaments. He had had all the more
faith in this enterprise because a picture of the boat had been shown
him on paper. He had spent ninety thousand francs of the hundred
thousand he had had, and was now living on his wife's income. Something
had to be decided upon. George Sand paid his debts first, and the
husband and wife then signed an agreement to the effect that their
respective property should be separated. Dudevant regretted having
signed this afterwards, and it was torn up after a violent scene which
took place before witnesses in October, 1835. The pretext of this scene
had been an order given to Maurice. In a series of letters, which have
never hitherto been published, George Sand relates the various incidents
of this affair. We give some of the more important passages. The
following letter is to her half-brother Hippolyte, who used to be
Casimir's drinking companion.


_"To Hippolyte Chatiron._

"My friend, I am about to tell you some news which will reach you
indirectly, and that you had better hear first from me. Instead of
carrying out our agreement pleasantly and loyally, Casimir is acting
with the most insane animosity towards me. Without my giving him any
reason for such a thing, either by my conduct or my manner of treating
him, he endeavoured to strike me. He was prevented by five persons, one
of whom was Dutheil, and he then fetched his gun to shoot me. As you can
imagine, he was not allowed to do this.

"On account of such treatment and of his hatred, which amounts to
madness, there is no safety for me in a house to which he always has the
right to come. I have no guarantee, except his own will and pleasure,
that he will keep our agreement, and I cannot remain at the mercy of a
man who behaves so unreasonably and indelicately to me. I have therefore
decided to ask for a legal separation, and I shall no doubt obtain this.
Casimir made this frightful scene the evening before leaving for
Paris. On his return here, he found the house empty, and me staying at
Dutheil's, by permission of the President of La Chatre. He also found a
summons awaiting him on the mantelshelf. He had to make the best of it,
for he knew it was no use attempting to fight against the result of his
own folly, and that, by holding out, the scandal would all fall on him.
He made the following stipulations, promising to adhere to them. Duthell
was our intermediary. I am to allow him a pension of 3,800 francs,
which, with the 1,200 francs income that he now has, will make 5,000
francs a year for him. I think this is all straightforward, as I am
paying for the education of the two children. My daughter will remain
under my guidance, as I understand. My son will remain at the college
where he now is until he has finished his education. During the holidays
he will spend a month with his father and a m

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