us, but hints at the same time at many important reservations in her
acceptance of them.

In process of time she visited Italy with Alfred de Musset. The fever
seized on her at Genoa, and she saw the wonders of the fair land through
half-shut eyes, alternately shivering and burning. In the languor of
disease, she allowed the tossing of a coin to decide whether she should
visit Rome or Venice. Venice came uppermost ten times, and she chose to
consider it an affair of destiny. Her long stay in this city suggested
the themes of several of her romances, and the "Lettres d'un Voyageur"
might almost be pages from her own journal. Her companion was here
seized with a terrible illness. She nursed him day and night through all
its length, being so greatly fatigued at the time of his recovery that
she saw every object double, through want of sleep. Yet De Musset went
forth from his sick-room with a heart changed towards her. Hatred
had taken the place of love. Some say that this cruel change was the
punishment of as cruel a deception; others call it a mania of the fever,
perpetuating itself thenceforth in a brain sound as to all else. The
world does not know about this, and she herself tells us nothing. In
the "Lettres d'un Voyageur," however, she gives us to understand that
constancy is not her _forte_, and a sigh escapes with this confession,
"_Prie pour moi, ô Marguerite Le Conte!_"

George Sand was now launched,--with brilliant success, in the world of
letters, unheeding the conventional restraints of domestic life. The
choicest spirits of the day gathered round her. She was the luminous
centre of a circle of light. She did not hold a _salon_, the mimic court
of every Frenchwoman of distinction,--nor were the worldly wits of
fashion her vain and supercilious satellites. But De Lamennais climbed
to her _mansarde_, and unfolded therein his theories of saintly and