s almost impossible to overrate the importance to George Sand of a
conclusion that gave her back her old home of Nohant, and secured to her
the permanent companionship of her children. The present pecuniary
arrangement left M. Dudevant some hold over Maurice and his education,
concerning which his parents had long disagreed, and which for another
year remained a source of contention.

The affair thus concluded, Madame Sand entered formally into possession
of Nohant; and early in September she started with her two children for
Switzerland, where they spent the autumn holidays in a long-contemplated
visit to her friend the Comtesse d'Agoult, then at Geneva. This tour is
fancifully sketched in a closing number of the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_,
a volume which stands as a sort of literary memorial of two years of
unsettled, precarious existence, material and spiritual--a time of trial
now happily at an end.

_Simon_, a tale dedicated to Madame d'Agoult, and published in the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1836--a graceful story, of no high
pretentions--is noticeable as marking the commencement of a decided and
agreeable change in the tone of George Sand's fiction. Hitherto the
predominant note struck had been most often one of melancholy, if not
despair--the more hopelessly painful the subject, the more fervent,
apparently, the inspiration to the writer. In _Indiana_ she had
portrayed the double victim of tyranny and treachery; in _Valentine_, a
helpless girl sacrificed to family ambition and social prejudice; in
_Lelia_ and _Jacques_, the incurable _Weltschmerz_, heroism unvalued and
wasted; in _Leone Leoni_, the infatuation of a weak-minded woman for a
phenomenal scoundrel; in _Andre_, the wretchedness which a timid,
selfish character, however amiable, may bring down on itself and on all
connected with it. Henceforward she prefers themes of a pleasanter
nature. In _Simon_ she paints the triumph of true and patient love over
social prejudice and strong opposition. In _Mauprat_,[B] written in
1837, at Nohant, she exerts all the force of her imagination and
language to bring before us vividly the gradual redemption of a noble
but degraded nature, through the influence of an exclusive, passionate
and indestructible affection. The natural optimism of her temperament,
not her incidental misfortunes, began and continued to color her
compositions.

From Switzerland she returned for part of the winter to Paris. She had
given up her "poet