Aurore Dudevant had regained her liberty, and made no secret of her intention to use it to the full. She endeavoured unsuc cessfully to eke out her irregularly paid allowance by various ex pedients, and lived in a garret. She found a friend in Delatouche, the editor of Figaro. He was a native of Berry, like herself, a stern but kindly taskmaster who taught her the trade of journal ism. On the staff of Figaro was another compatriot, Jules San deau, a clever and attractive young lawyer. Articles written in common soon led to a complete literary partnership, and in 1831 there appeared in the Revue de Paris a joint novel entitled Prima Donna and signed Jules Sand. Shortly after this was published in book form with the same signature a second novel, Rose et Blanche. The sequel to this literary alliance is best recounted in George Sand's own words: "I resisted him for three months but then yielded ; I lived in my own apartment in an unconven tional style." Her first independent novel, Indiana (1832), was written at the instigation of Delatouche, and the world-famous pseudonym George (originally Georges) Sand was adopted as a compromise between herself and her partner. The one wished to throw Indiana into the common stock, the other refused to lend his name, or even part of his name, to a work in which he had had no share. The novel was received with instant acclamation. Indiana is a direct transcript of the author's personal experiences (the disagreeable husband is M. Dudevant to the life), and an exposi tion of her theory of sexual relations which is founded thereon. To many critics it seemed that she had said her whole say and that nothing but replicas could follow. Valentine, which was pub lished in the same year, indicated that it was but the first chapter in a life of endless adventures, and that the imagination which turned the crude facts into poetry, and the fancy which played about them like a rainbow, were inexhaustible.
Her liaison with Jules Sandeau, which lasted more than a year, was abruptly terminated by the discovery in their apart ment on an unexpected return from Nohant of une blanchisseuse quelconque. For a short while she was broken hearted :—"My heart is a cemetery!" she wrote to Sainte-Beuve. "A necropolis," was the comment of her discarded lover when years later the remark was repeated to him.
Her third novel, Lelia (1833), is in the same vein, a stronger and more outspoken diatribe against society and the marriage law. Lelia is a female Manfred, and Dumas had some reason to complain that George Sand was giving them "du lord Byron au kilo." But a new chapter in her life was now to open. In her despair she turned for comfort and counsel to Sainte-Beuve, now constituted her regular father confessor. He recommended new friendships, but she found Dumas "trop commis-voyageur," Jouffroy too serenely virtuous and Musset "trop dandy." Meri mee was tried for a week, but the cool cynic and the perfervid apostle of women's rights proved mutually repulsive. Alfred de Musset was introduced, and the two natures leapt together.
is a limit to love-making, and George Sand, always practical, set to work to provide the means of living. Musset, though he de pended on her exertions, was first bored and then irritated at the sight of this terrible vache cl &lire, whose pen was going for eight hours a day, and sought diversion in the cafes and other less reputable resorts of pleasure. The consequence was a nervous illness, through which George Sand nursed him with tenderness and care. But she made love at the same time to a young Venetian doctor whom she had called in, by name Pagello. The two found their way eventually to Paris, leaving Musset in Italy, deeply wounded in his affections, but, to do him justice, taking all the blame for the rupture on himself. George Sand soon tired of her new love, and even before she had given him his conge was dying to be on again with the old. She cut off her hair and sent it to Musset as a token of penitence, but Musset, though he still flirted with her, never quite forgave her infidelity and refused to admit her to his deathbed. Among the mass of romans a clef and pamphlets which the adventure produced, two only have any literary importance, Musset's Confessions d'un enfant du siecle and George Sand's Elle et lui. In the former woman appears as the serpent whose trail is over all; in the latter, written twenty five years after the event, she is the guardian angel abused and maltreated by men. Lui et elle, the rejoinder of the poet's brother Paul de Musset, was even more a travesty of the facts with no redeeming graces of style.
It remains to trace the influence, direct or indirect, of the poet on the novelist. Jacques was the first outcome of the journey to Italy, and in precision and splendour of style it marks a dis tinct progress. In Les Lettres d'un voyageur, which ran in the Revue des deux mondes between 1834 and 1836, we have not only impressions of travel, but the direct impressions of men and things not distorted by the exigencies of a novel. The Everard of the Lettres introduces us to a new and for the time a dominant influence on the life and writings. Michel de Bourges was the counsel whose eloquent pleadings brought the suit for a judicial separation to a successful issue in 1836. Unlike her former lovers, he was a man of masterful will, a philosopher who carried her intellect by storm before he laid siege to her heart. He preached republicanism to her by the hour, and even locked her up in her bedroom to reflect on his sermons. She was but half converted, and fled before long from a republic in which art and poetry had no place. Other celebrities who figure in the Lettres under a transparent disguise are Liszt and Mme. d'Agoult (known to literature as Daniel Stern), whom she met in Switzer land and entertained for some months at Nohant. Liszt, in after years when they had drifted apart, wrote of her : "George Sand catches her butterfly and tames it in her cage by feeding it on flowers and nectar—this is the love period. Then she sticks her pin into it when it struggles—that is the conge and it always comes from her. Afterwards she vivisects it, stuffs it, and adds it to her collection of heroes for novels." There is some truth in the satire, but it wholly misrepresents her rupture with Chopin.