ly in speech or manner, a strong
need in her case, from her having so much to express, was the spur that
drove her to seek and find the mode of so doing in art.

Her silence in company certainly did not detract from her fascination
upon a closer acquaintance. Of those who fell under the spell, the more
fortunate came at once to terms of friendship with her, which remained
undisturbed through life. Thus, of one among this numerous brotherhood,
Francois Rollinat, with whom she would congratulate herself on having
realized the perfection of such an alliance of minds, she could write
when recording their friendship, then already a quarter of a century
old, that it was still young as compared with some that she counted, and
that dated from her childhood.

Others fell in love with her, and found her unresponsive. With some of
these, jealousies and misunderstandings arose, and led to estrangements,
for the most part but temporary. Yet the winner of her heart was
scarcely to be envied. She was apt--she has herself thus expressed
it--to see people through a prism of enthusiasm, and afterwards to
recover her lucidity of judgment. Great, no doubt, was her power of
self-illusion; it betrayed her into errors that have been unsparingly
judged. For her power of calm and complete disillusion she was perhaps
unique among women, and it is no wonder if mankind have found it hard to
forgive.

CHAPTER IV.

LELIA.--ITALIAN JOURNEY.

It was less than two years since she had come up to the capital, to seek
her fortunes there in literature. Aurore Dudevant, hereafter to be
spoken of as George Sand (for she made her adopted name more her own
than that she had borne hitherto, and became George Sand for her private
friends as well as for the public,) found herself raised to eminence
among the eminent. And it was at an exceptionally brilliant epoch in
French imaginative literature that the distinction had been won. Such a
burst of talent as that which signalized the opening years of Louis
Philippe's reign is unexampled in French literary history. With Hugo,
Dumas, De Musset, Balzac, not to mention lesser stars, the author of
_Indiana_ and _Valentine_, although a woman, was acknowledged as worthy
to rank. The artist in her, a disturbing element in her inner life which
had driven her out of the spiritual bondage and destitution of a petty
provincial environment to secure for herself freedom and expansion, had
justified the audacity of t