rehended her future prospects,
that it can scarcely be understood without some sketch of her antecedent
career.

Sancerre at that time could boast of a Superior Woman, long misprized
indeed, but now, about 1836, enjoying a pretty extensive local
reputation. This, too, was the period at which two Sancerrois in Paris
were attaining, each in his own line, to the highest degree of glory
for one, and of fashion for the other. Etienne Lousteau, a writer in
reviews, signed his name to contributions to a paper that had eight
thousand subscribers; and Bianchon, already chief physician to a
hospital, Officer of the Legion of Honor, and member of the Academy of
Sciences, had just been made a professor.

If it were not that the word would to many readers seem to imply a
degree of blame, it might be said that George Sand created _Sandism_, so
true is it that, morally speaking, all good has a reverse of evil. This
leprosy of sentimentality would have been charming. Still, _Sandism_ has
its good side, in that the woman attacked by it bases her assumption of
superiority on feelings scorned; she is a blue-stocking of sentiment;
and she is rather less of a bore, love to some extent neutralizing
literature. The most conspicuous result of George Sand's celebrity
was to elicit the fact that France has a perfectly enormous number of
superior women, who have, however, till now been so generous as to leave
the field to the Marechal de Saxe's granddaughter.

The Superior Woman of Sancerre lived at La Baudraye, a town-house
and country-house in one, within ten minutes of the town, and in the
village, or, if you will, the suburb of Saint-Satur. The La Baudrayes of
the present day have, as is frequently the case, thrust themselves in,
and are but a substitute for those La Baudrayes whose name, glorious in
the Crusades, figured in the chief events of the history of Le Berry.

The story must be told.

In the time of Louis XIV. a certain sheriff named Milaud, whose
forefathers had been furious Calvinists, was converted at the time of
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. To encourage this movement in
one of the strong-holds of Calvinism, the King gave said Milaud a good
appointment in the "Waters and Forests," granted him arms and the title
of Sire (or Lord) de la Baudraye, with the fief of the old and genuine
La Baudrayes. The descendants of the famous Captain la Baudraye fell,
sad to say, into one of the snares laid for heretics by the ne