ectual reason as the
explanation of her social preferences. Everything in her was due to
sentiment. Her socialism was entirely the outcome of her suffering and
torments as a child.

Things had to come to a crisis, and the crisis was atrocious. George
Sand gives an account of the tragic scene in her _Histoire de ma vie_.
Her grandmother had already had one attack of paralysis. She was anxious
about Aurore's future, and wished to keep her from the influence of her
mother. She therefore decided to employ violent means to this end. She
sent for the child to her bedside, and, almost beside herself, in a
choking voice, she revealed to her all that she ought to have concealed.
She told her of Sophie-Victoire's past, she uttered the fatal word
and spoke of the child's mother as a lost woman. With Aurore's extreme
sensitiveness, it was horrible to receive such confidences at the age of
thirteen. Thirty years later, George Sand describes the anguish of the
terrible minute. "It was a nightmare," she says. "I felt choked, and it
was as though every word would kill me. The perspiration came out on my
face. I wanted to interrupt her, to get up and rush away. I did not want
to hear the frightful accusation. I could not move, though; I seemed to
be nailed on my knees, and my head seemed to be bowed down by that voice
that I heard above me, a voice which seemed to wither me like a storm
wind."

It seems extraordinary that a woman, who was in reality so kind-hearted
and so wise, should have allowed herself to be carried away like this.
Passion has these sudden and unexpected outbursts, and we see here a
most significant proof of the atmosphere of passion in which the child
had lived, and which gradually insinuated itself within her.

Under these circumstances, Aurore's departure for the convent was a
deliverance. Until just recently, there has always been a convent in
vogue in France in which it has been considered necessary for girls in
good society to be educated. In 1817, _the Couvent des Anglaises_ was in
vogue, the very convent which had served as a prison for the mother
and grandmother of Aurore. The three years she spent there in that "big
feminine family, where every one was as kind as God," she considered the
most peaceful and happy time of her life. The pages she devotes to them
in her _Histoire de ma vie_ have all the freshness of an oasis.
She describes most lovingly this little world, apart, exclusive and
self-sufficing,