g friendship
which existed between Madame George Sand and Madame Emile de Girardin.
Note lastly, that Monsieur Paulin Limayrac had good reason to think that
I knew perfectly well who was really the author of the malicious attack
on me in "La Presse," which was his paper. Remember all this while I
repeat to you the dialogue which took place between us under an arcade
of the Rue Castiglione. I said to him,--

"Ah! my dear Sir, Madame George Sand must be gratified this time! Your
article this morning upon her autobiography really did hit the
bull's-eye, plumb! What fire! what enthusiasm! what lyric strains!"

"I could not help myself," replied he. "It is one of the fatigues of my
place, I was obliged to write it."

"Well, between you and me, the truth is that your admiration is a little
exaggerated. The work is less dull since Madame George Sand has reached
the really interesting periods of her life; but how fatiguing the first
part of it was! What stuff she thrust into it! What particulars relating
to her family and her mother, which were, to say the least of it,
useless!"

"Why, my dear fellow," replied Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, with a knowing
look, "don't you know the secret?"

"What secret?"

"Ah! you have not yet shaken off provincial dust! Madame George Sand,
with that carelessness one almost always finds in great artists, sent to
Monsieur Emile de Girardin that enormous packet of four-and-twenty
volumes, at the same time authorizing him to retrench at least one-third
of the manuscript, if he thought fit. But Madame de Girardin (who is
extremely astute) thought, that, if the work were published without the
numerous dull chapters of the first part, it would command too brilliant
a success; and Her Most Gracious Majesty determined that the whole
four-and-twenty volumes should appear without the omission of a single
line,--which is all the more noble, grand, and generous, as we pay a
high price for the 'copy,' and it has curtailed our subscription-list a
good deal."

"I thought Madame George Sand and Madame Emile de Girardin were upon the
footing of a most affectionate friendship."

"'Tis a woman's friendship. 'Tis a poet's love for a poet. Each adores
the other; but then what is more vulgar than to love one's friends when
they are successful? Every hind can do that; while none but delicate and
sensitive souls can shed torrents of tears over a friend's reverses."

A fortnight after this conversation took plac