d the advantages offered to her
little girl by the proposed arrangement so material, that the older lady
gained her point in the end. Madame Maurice settled in Paris. Aurore
grew up her grandmother's ward, with Nohant for her home; a home she was
to keep, knowing no other, till the end of her life.

The separation was brought about very gradually to the child. The first
few winters were spent in Paris, where her grandmother had an
establishment. Then she could pass whole days with her mother, who, in
turn, spent summers at Nohant, and Aurore for years was buoyed up by the
hope that a permanent reunion would still be brought about. But meantime
domestic jealousy and strife, inflamed by the unprincipled meddling of
servants, raged more fiercely than ever, and could not but be a source
of more than ordinary childish misery to their innocent object. It was
but slowly that she became attached to her grandmother, whose
undemonstrative temper, formal habits and condescending airs were little
calculated to win over her young affections, or fire her with gratitude
for the anxiety displayed by this guardian to form her manners and
cultivate her intellect. Nay, the result was rather to implant in her a
premature dislike and distrust for conventional ideals. From the
standard of culture and propriety, from the temptations of social rank
and wealth held up for her preference, she instinctively turned to the
simple, unrestrained affection of the despised mother, and the greater
freedom and expansion enjoyed in such company. In vain did disdainful
lady's-maids try to taunt her into precocious worldly wisdom, asking if
she could really want to go and eat beans in a little garret. Such a
condition, naturally, she began to regard as the equivalent of a noble
and glorious existence!

Meantime, throughout all these alternations of content and distress,
Nohant and its surroundings were perforce becoming dear to her, as only
the home of our childhood can ever become. The scenery and
characteristics of that region are familiar to all readers of the works
of George Sand; a quiet region of narrow, winding, shady lanes, where
you may wander long between the tall hedges without meeting a living
creature but the wild birds that start from the honey-suckle and
hawthorn, and the frogs croaking among the sedges; a region of
soft-flowing rivers with curlew-haunted reed beds, and fields where
quails cluck in the furrows; the fertile plain studded with