had secured a divorce from "That Man," and now
had her two children with her in Paris. That she could do her literary
work and still attend to her manifold social duties must ever mark her
as a phenomenon. She was no mere adventuress. That she was systematic,
orderly and abstemious in her habits must go without saying, otherwise
her vitality would not have held out and allowed her to attend the
funerals of nearly all her retainers.

In throwing overboard the Grub Street Sandeau for Franz Liszt, Madame
Dudevant certainly showed discrimination; but in retaining the name of
"Sand," she paid a delicate compliment to the man who first introduced
her to the world of art. Liszt was too strong a man to remain long
captive--he refused to supply the doglike and abject devotion which
Aurore always demanded. Then came Michael de Bourges the learned
counsel, Calmatto the mezzotinter, Delacroix the artist, De Musset the
poet, and Chopin the musician.

It was in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine, that Chopin and Sand
first met at a parlor musicale, where Chopin was taken by Liszt, half
against his will, simply because George Sand was to be there.

Chopin did not want to meet her.

All Paris had rung with the story of how she and De Musset had gone
together to Venice, and then in less than a year had quarreled and
separated. Both made good copy of the "poetic interval," as George Sand
called it. Chopin was not a stickler for conventionalities, but George
Sand's history, for him, proved her to be coarse and devoid of all the
finer feeling that we prize in women.

Chopin had no fear of her--not he--only he did not care to add to his
circle of acquaintances one so lacking in inward grace and delicacy.

He played at the musicale--it was all very informal--and George Sand
pushed her way up through the throng that stood about the piano and
looked at the handsome boy as he played--she looked at him with her big,
hazel, cow eyes, steadfastly, yearningly, and he glancing up, saw the
eyes were filled with tears.

When the playing ceased, she still stood looking at the great musician,
and then she leaned over the piano and whispered, "Your playing makes me
live over again every pain that has ever wrung my heart; and every joy,
too, that I have ever known is mine again."

* * * * *

After their first meeting, when Chopin played at a musicale, George Sand
was apt to be there too--they often came togethe