necessary to get formal permission from Alfred's mother!

Naturally enough, Mme. de Musset refused consent. She had read
George Sand's romances, and had asked scornfully:

"Has the woman never in her life met a gentleman?"

She accepted the relations between them, but that she should be
asked to sanction this sort of affair was rather too much, even
for a French mother who has become accustomed to many strange
things. Then there was a curious happening. At nine o'clock at
night, George Sand took a cab and drove to the house of Mme. de
Musset, to whom she sent up a message that a lady wished to see
her. Mme. de Musset came down, and, finding a woman alone in a
carriage, she entered it. Then George Sand burst forth in a
torrent of sentimental eloquence. She overpowered her lover's
mother, promised to take great care of the delicate youth, and
finally drove away to meet Alfred at the coach-yard.

They started off in the mist, their coach being the thirteenth to
leave the yard; but the two lovers were in a merry mood, and
enjoyed themselves all the way from Paris to Marseilles. By
steamer they went to Leghorn; and finally, in January, 1834, they
took an apartment in a hotel at Venice. What had happened that
their arrival in Venice should be the beginning of a quarrel, no
one knows. George Sand has told the story, and Paul de Musset--
Alfred's brother--has told the story, but each of them has
doubtless omitted a large part of the truth.

It is likely that on their long journey each had learned too much