ver,
perpetuating itself thenceforth in a brain sound as to all else. The
world does not know about this, and she herself tells us nothing. In
the "Lettres d'un Voyageur," however, she gives us to understand that
constancy is not her _forte_, and a sigh escapes with this confession,
"_Prie pour moi, o Marguerite Le Conte!_"

George Sand was now launched,--with brilliant success, in the world of
letters, unheeding the conventional restraints of domestic life. The
choicest spirits of the day gathered round her. She was the luminous
centre of a circle of light. She did not hold a _salon_, the mimic court
of every Frenchwoman of distinction,--nor were the worldly wits of
fashion her vain and supercilious satellites. But De Lamennais climbed
to her _mansarde_, and unfolded therein his theories of saintly and
visionary philosophy. Liszt and Chopin bound her in the enchantment
of their wonderful melodies. De Balzac feasted her in his fantastic
lodgings, and lighted her across the square with a silver-gilt flambeau,
himself attired in a flounced satin dressing-gown, of which he was
extremely proud. Pierre Leroux instructed her in the old and the new
religions, and taught her the history of secret societies. Louis Blanc,
Cavaignac, and Pauline Garcia were bound to her by ties of intimacy.
She knew Lablache, Quinet, Miekiewiez, whom she calls the equal of Lord
Byron. Her intimates in her own province were men of high character and
intelligence, nor were friends wanting among her own sex. Good-will
and sympathy, therefore, not ill-will and antipathy, inspired her best
works. Her views of parties were charitable and conciliatory, and her
revolutionism more reconstructive than destructive. Yet, with all this
array of good company, we cannot accord her a miraculous immunity from
the fatalities of her situation. Of the guilt we are not here called
upon to judge; of the suffering many pages in this record of her
life bear witness. Little as we know, however, of her own power of
self-protection against the tyranny of the selfish and the sensual, we
yet feel as if the really base could never have held her in other than
the briefest thraldom, and as if her nobler nature must have continually
asserted and reasserted itself, with a constant tendency towards that
higher liberty which she had sought in the abandonment of outward
restraints, but which can never be thus attained. Some great moral
safeguards she had in her tireless industry, her