he may
only do the things she desires to do after marriage. And it is very
unusual for any girl to object to the wishes of her friends in this
matter. The whole system of marriage in France is so utterly abominable
that no other civilized land would tolerate it; and this sacrifice of
the young and ignorant is only one of its diabolical features. Aurore
Dudevant did not seem to object more than the rest. She was married, and
lived for eight years with her husband, becoming the mother of two
children.

She then left him and her estate of Nohant, and went up to Paris, taking
her two children with her. She sacrificed her personal fortune--which
was considerable--in doing so, and was obliged to earn her own living.
She tried various things in the artistic line before she essayed the
writing of books. At last with one grand bound she leaped before the
world in "Indiana." Of course she had written some things of small value
before this, but that wonderful book was really her introduction to the
world. And it brought the whole literary world to her feet. Thereafter
her friends were the first men of France. De Lamennais, Pierre Leroux,
Michel, Alfred de Musset, Chopin, Liszt, Delacroix, Beranger,
Sainte-Beuve, Gustave Planche, Mazzini, were her friends, her intimates,
or her lovers.

Alfred de Musset was the first who found favor with her heart, it
appears; and they were inseparably associated for about three years.
This brilliant young poet, so sceptical, so sad, so audacious, so
dissolute, was the first of this famous coterie of men to become madly
infatuated with George Sand,--but far from the last. It is asserted that
each in turn, and many more besides, were the victims of her luring
wiles. For many years the wildest stories were afloat concerning her and
her enchantments. And the fact that two or three of her most ardent
worshippers ended their lives for her sake only added to the interest
and the horror with which the world of respectability and morality
looked upon this strange woman. She had broken once for all with the
world of conventionality, and was free to follow whatever inclination
seized upon her, unrestrained by aught but conscience,--for we are far
from thinking that she ever parted permanently with that disagreeable
but useful monitor.

So she lived out her brief romance with De Musset, and, apparently
unmindful of his tragic end, entered upon a new epoch of her life with
that most remarkable modern music