iviere, nee Marie Rinteau. This daughter, Marie
Aurore, married at the age of fifteen Comte de Home, a natural son of
Louis XV., who died soon after; and fifteen years later she condescended
to accept the hand of M. Dupin de Francueil, receveur general, who,
although of an old and well-connected family, did not belong to the
high nobility. The curious may read about Mdlle. de Verrieres in the
"Memoires" of Marmontel, who was one of her many lovers, and about
M. Dupin, his father, mother-in-law, first wife &c., in Rousseau's
"Confessions," where, however, he is always called De Francueil.
Notwithstanding the disparity of age, the husband being twice as old as
his wife, the marriage of M. Dupin and the Comtesse de Home proved to be
a very happy one. They had one child, a son, Maurice Francois Elisabeth
Dupin. He entered the army in 1798, and two years later, in the course
of the Italian campaign, became first lieutenant and then aide-de-camp
to General Dupont.

In Italy and about the same time Maurice Dupin saw and fell in love
with Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, the daughter of a Paris
bird-seller, who had been a supernumerary at some small theatre, and
whose youth, as George Sand delicately expresses it, "had by the
force of circumstances been exposed to the most frightful hazards."
Sacrificing all the advantages she was then enjoying, she followed
Maurice Dupin to France. From this liaison sprang several children, all
of whom, however, except one, died very young. A month before the
birth of her in whom our interest centres, Maurice Dupin married Sophie
Delaborde. The marriage was a civil one and contracted without the
knowledge of his mother, who was opposed to this union less on account
of Sophie's plebeian origin than of her doubtful antecedents.

It was on July 5, 1804, that Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, who under the
name of George Sand became famous all the world over, saw for the first
time the light of day. The baby, which by a stratagem was placed in the
arms of her grandmother, mollified the feelings of the old lady, whom
the clandestine marriage had put in a great rage, so effectually that
she forgave her son, received his wife, and tried to accommodate herself
to the irremediable. After the Spanish campaign, during which he acted
as aide-de-camp to Murat, Maurice Dupin and his family came to Nohant,
his mother's chateau in Berry. There little Aurora lost her father when
she was only four years old.