One of her companions in this sort of hand-to-mouth journalism was
a young student and writer named Jules Sandeau, a man seven years
younger than his comrade. He was at that time as indigent as she,
and their hardships, shared in common, brought them very close
together. He was clever, boyish, and sensitive, and it was not
long before he had fallen at her feet and kissed her knees,
begging that she would requite the love he felt for her. According
to herself, she resisted him for six months, and then at last she
yielded. The two made their home together, and for a while were
wonderfully happy. Their work and their diversions they enjoyed in
common, and now for the first time she experienced emotions which
in all probability she had never known before.

Probably not very much importance is to be given to the earlier
flirtations of George Sand, though she herself never tried to stop
the mouth of scandal. Even before she left her husband, she was
credited with having four lovers; but all she said, when the
report was brought to her, was this: "Four lovers are none too
many for one with such lively passions as mine."

This very frankness makes it likely that she enjoyed shocking her
prim neighbors at Nohant. But if she only played at love-making
then, she now gave herself up to it with entire abandonment,
intoxicated, fascinated, satisfied. She herself wrote:

How I wish I could impart to you this sense of the intensity and
joyousness of life that I have in my veins. To live! How sweet it
is, and how good, in spite of annoyances, husbands, debts,
relations, scandal-mongers, sufferings, and irritations! To live!