The ruins did not interest her much.

"After spending several days in visiting urns, tombs, crypts and
columns, one feels the need of getting out of all this a little and of
seeing Nature."

Nature, however, did not compensate her sufficiently for her
disappointment in the ruins.

"The Roman Campagna, which has been so much vaunted, is certainly
singularly immense, but it is so bare, flat and deserted, so monotonous
and sad, miles and miles of meadow-land in every direction, that the
little brain one has left, after seeing the city, is almost overpowered
by it all."

This journey inspired her with one of the weakest of her novels, _La
Daniella_. It is the diary of a painter named Jean Valreg, who married
a laundry-girl. In 1861, after an illness, she went to Tamaris, in the
south of France. This name is the title of one of her novels. She does
not care for this place either. She considers that there is too much
wind, too much dust, and that there are too many olive-trees in the
south of France.

I am convinced that at an earlier time in her life she would, have been
won over by the fascination of Rome. She had comprehended the charm of
Venice so admirably. At an earlier date, too, she would not have
been indifferent to the beauties of Provence, as she had delighted in
meridional Nature when in Majorca.

The years were over, though, for her to enjoy the variety of outside
shows with all their phantasmagoria. A time comes in life, and it had
already come for her, when we discover that Nature, which has seemed so
varied, is the same everywhere, that we have quite near us all that we
have been so far away to seek, a little of this earth, a little water
and a little sky. We find, too, that we have neither the time nor the
inclination to go away in search of all this when our hours are counted
and we feel the end near. The essential thing then is to reserve for
ourselves a little space for our meditations, between the agitations of
life and that moment which alone decides everything for us.

X

THE GENIUS OF THE WRITER

CORRESPONDENCE WITH FLAUBERT--LAST NOVELS

With that maternal instinct which was so strong within her, George Sand
could not do without having a child to scold, direct and take to task.
The one to whom she was to devote the last ten years of her life, who
needed her beneficent affection more than any of those she had adopted,
was a kind of giant with hair turned back from his forehead and