until she was as weary of his talk as of his wooden shoes, his
shapeless greatcoat, his spectacles, and his skull-cap, Balzac
felt her fascination, but cared nothing for her, since his love
was given to Mme. Hanska.

In the meanwhile, she was paying visits to her husband at Nohant,
where she wrangled with him over money matters, and where he would
once have shot her had the guests present not interfered. She
secured her dowry by litigation, so that she was well off, even
without her literary earnings. These were by no means so large as
one would think from her popularity and from the number of books
she wrote. It is estimated that her whole gains amounted to about
a million francs, extending over a period of forty-five years. It
is just half the amount that Trollope earned in about the same
period, and justifies his remark--"adequate, but not splendid."

One of those brief and strange intimacies that marked the career
of George Sand came about in a curious way. Octave Feuillet, a man
of aristocratic birth, had set himself to write novels which
portrayed the cynicism and hardness of the upper classes in
France. One of these novels, Sibylle, excited the anger of George
Sand. She had not known Feuillet before; yet now she sought him
out, at first in order to berate him for his book, but in the end
to add him to her variegated string of lovers.

It has been said of Feuillet that he was a sort of "domesticated
Musset." At any rate, he was far less sensitive than Musset, and
George Sand was about seventeen years his senior. They parted
after a short time, she going her way as a writer of novels that
were very different from her earlier ones, while Feuillet grew