n collaboration with Sandeau which appeared under the
signature of Jules Sand towards the end of 1831. It was entitled, _Rose
et Blanche, ou la Comedienne et la Religieuse_.

It begins by a scene in a coach, rather like certain novels by Balzac,
but accompanied by insignificant details in the worst taste imaginable.
Two girls are travelling in the same coach. Rose is a young comedian,
and Sister Blanche is about to become a nun. They separate at Tarbes,
and the scene of the story is laid in the region of the Pyrenees, in
Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and finishes with the return to Paris.
Rose, after an entertainment which is a veritable orgy, is handed over
by her mother to a licentious young man. He is ashamed of himself,
and, instead of leading Rose astray, he takes her to the Convent of the
Augustines, where she finds Sister Blanche once more. Sister Blanche has
not yet pronounced her vows, and the proof of this is that she marries
Horace. But what a wedding! As a matter of fact, Sister Blanche was
formerly named Denise. She was the daughter of a seafaring man of
Bordeaux, and was both pretty and foolish. She had been dishonoured by
the young libertine whom she is now to marry. The memory of the past
comes back to Blanche, and makes her live over again her life as Denise.
In the mean time Rose had become a great singer. She now arrives, just
in time to be present at her friend's deathbed. She enters the convent
herself, and takes the place left vacant by Sister Blanche. The whole of
this is absurd and frequently very disagreeable.

It is quite easy to distinguish the parts due to the two collaborators,
and to see that George Sand wrote nearly all the book. There are
the landscapes, Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and a number of
recollections of the famous journey to the Pyrenees and of her stay
at Guillery with the Dudevant family. The Convent of the Augustines
in Paris, with its English nuns and its boarders belonging to the best
families, is the one in which Aurore spent three years. The cloister can
be recognized, the garden planted with chestnut trees, and the cell
from which there was a view over the city. All her dreams seemed so near
Heaven there, for the rich, cloudy sky was so near--"that most beautiful
and ever-changing sky, perhaps the most beautiful in the world," of
which we read in _Rose et Blanche_. But together with this romance of
religious life is a libertine novel with stories of orgies, of a c