`It is a nice cut, isn't it? The tailor takes his measures from a sentry-box, and the coat then fits a whole regiment.' I had `a sentry-box coat' made, of rough grey cloth, with trousers and waistcoat to match. With a grey hat and a huge cravat of woollen material, I looked exactly like a first-year student. . . ."Dressed in this style, she explored the streets, museums, cathedrals, libraries, painters' studios, clubs and theatres. She heard Frederick Lemaitre one day, and the next day Malibran. One evening it was one of Dumas' pieces, and the next night _Moise_ at the Opera.
She took her meals at a little restaurant, and she lived in an attic.
She was not even sure of being able to pay her tailor, so she had all the joys possible. "Ah, how delightful, to live an artist's life!
Our device is liberty!" she wrote.[6] She lived in a perpetual state of delight, and, in February, wrote to her son Maurice as follows:
"Every one is at loggerheads, we are crushed to death in the streets, the churches are being destroyed, and we hear the drum being beaten all night."[7] In March she wrote to Charles Duvernet: "Do you know that fine things are happening here? It really is amusing to see.
We are living just as gaily among bayonets and riots as if everything were at peace. All this amuses me."[8]
[6] _Correspondance_: To Boucoiran, March 4, 1831. [7] _Ibid_.
To Maurice Dudevant, February 15, I831. [8] _Ibid_. To Charles Duvernet, March 6, 1831.
She was amused at everything and she enjoyed everything.
With her keen sensitiveness, she revelled in the charm of Paris, and she thoroughly appreciated its scenery.
"Paris," she wrote, "with its vaporous evenings, its pink clouds above the roofs, and the beautiful willows of such a delicate green around the bronze statue of our old Henry, and then, too, the dear little slate-coloured pigeons that make their nests in the old masks of the Pont Neuf . . ."[9]
[9] Unpublished letters of Dr. Emile Regnault.
She loved the Paris sky, so strange-looking, so rich in colouring, so variable.[10]
[10] _Ibid_.
She became unjust with regard to Berry. "As for that part of the world which I used to love so dearly and where I used to dream my dreams," she wrote, "I was there at the age of fifteen, when Iwas very foolish, and at the age of seventeen, when I was dreamy and disturbed in my mind. It has lost its charm for me now."[11]
[11] _Ibid_.
She loved it again later on, certainly, but just at this time she was over-excited with the joy of her newly-found liberty. It was that really which made her so joyful and which intoxicated her.
"I do not want society, excitement, theatres, or dress; what I want is *******," she wrote to her mother. In another letter she says:
"I am absolutely independent. I go to La Chatre, to Rome. I start out at ten o'clock or at midnight. I please myself entirely in all this."[12]
[12] _Correspondance_: To her mother, May 31, 1831.
She was free, and she fancied she was happy. Her happiness at that epoch meant Jules Sandeau.
In a letter, written in the humoristic style in which she delighted, she gives us portraits of some of her comrades of that time.
She tells us of Duvernet, of Alphonse Fleury, surnamed "the Gaulois,"and of Sandeau.
"Oh, fair-haired Charles!" she writes, "young man of melancholy thoughts, with a character as gloomy as a stormy day. . . .
And you, gigantic Fleury, with your immense hands and your alarming beard. . . . And you, dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of fragrant savannahs!"[13]
[13] _Correspondance_: December 1, 1830.
The "dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of fragrant savannahs," was to be Baronne Dudevant's Latin Quarter _liaison_. Her biographers usually pass over this _liaison_ quickly, as information about it was not forthcoming.
Important documents exist, though, in the form of fifty letters written by George Sand to Dr. Emile Regnault, then a medical student and the intimate friend and confidant of Jules Sandeau, who kept nothing back from him. His son, Dr. Paul Regnault, has kindly allowed me to see this correspondence and to reproduce some fragments of it. It is extremely curious, by turn lyrical and playful, full of effusions, ideas, plans of work, impressions of nature, and confidences about her love affairs. Taken altogether it reflects, as nearly as possible, the state of the young woman's mind at this time.
The first letter is dated April, 1831. George Sand had left Paris for Nohant, and is anxiously wondering how her poor Jules has passed this wretched day, and how he will go back to the room from which she had torn herself with such difficulty that morning.
In her letter she gives utterance to the gratitude she owes to the young man who has reconciled her once more to life. "My soul," she says, "eager itself for affection, needed to inspire this in a heart capable of understanding me thoroughly, with all my faults and qualities.
A fervent soul was necessary for loving me in the way that Icould love, and for consoling me after all the ingratitude which had made my earlier life so desolate. And although I am now old, I have found a heart as young as my own, a lifelong affection which nothing can discourage and which grows stronger every day.
Jules has taught me to care once more for this existence, of which Iwas so weary, and which I only endured for the sake of my children.
I was disgusted beforehand with the future, but it now seems more beautiful to me, full as it appears to me of him, of his work, his success, and of his upright, modest conduct. . . . Oh, if you only knew how I love him! . . . ."[14]
[14] This quotation and those that follow are borrowed from the unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault.
