for herself and her children would at this time have seemed
chimerical, but it haunted her as a dream long before it took definite
shape.

It was not in literature that she first fancied she saw her way to
earning an independent income. She had begun to make amateur essays in
novel-writing, but was as dissatisfied with them as with the
compositions of her childhood, and with a religious novelette she had
produced whilst in the convent, and speedily committed to the flames.
Again, alluding to her attempts, in 1825, at descriptions of the
Pyrenees, she says: "I was not capable then of satisfying myself by what
I wrote, for I finished nothing, and did not even acquire a taste for
writing."

But she had dabbled in painting, and remained fond of it. "The finest of
the arts," she calls it, writing to her mother in 1830, "and the most
pleasant, as a life-occupation, whether taken up for a profession, or
for amusement merely. If I had real talent, I should consider such a lot
the finest in the world." But neither did the decoration of fans and
snuff-boxes nor the production of little water-color likenesses of her
children and friends, beyond which her art did not go, promise anything
brilliant in the way of remuneration.

In her circle of friends at La Chatre--old family friends who had known
her all her life--were those who had recognized and admired her superior
ability. Here, too, she met more than one young spirit with literary
aspirations, and one, at least, M. Jules Sandeau, who was afterwards to
achieve distinguished literary success. The desire to go and do
likewise came and took hold of her, together with the conviction of her
capability to make her mark. However discontented with her essays in
novel-writing hitherto, she began to be conscious she was on the right
track. The Revolution of July, 1830, had just been successfully
accomplished, and new hopes and ambitions for the world in general, and
their own country in particular, lent a stimulus to the intellectual
activity of the youth of France--a movement too strong not to make
itself felt, even in Berry.

The state of things at Nohant for the last two years had, as we have
seen, been tending rather to stifle than to keep alive any hesitation or
compunction Madame Dudevant might have felt at breaking openly from her
present condition. In a letter, dated October, 1830, to her son's
private tutor, M. Boucoiran, who had then been a year under their roof
in that ca