the following statements on her
own authority. As she found her woman's attire too expensive, little
suited for facing mud and rain, and in other respects inconvenient,
she provided herself with a coat (redingote-guerite), trousers, and
waistcoat of coarse grey cloth, a hat of the same colour, a large
necktie, and boots with little iron heels. This latter part of her
outfit especially gave her much pleasure. Having often worn man's
clothes when riding and hunting at Nohant, and remembering that her
mother used to go in the same guise with her father to the theatre
during their residence in Paris, she felt quite at home in these
habiliments and saw nothing shocking in donning them. Now began what she
called her literary school-boy life (vie d'ecolier litteraire), her vie
de gamin. She trotted through the streets of Paris at all times and in
all weathers, went to garrets, studios, clubs, theatres, coffee-houses,
in fact, everywhere except to salons. The arts, politics, the romance
of society and living humanity, were the studies which she passionately
pursued. But she gives those the lie who said of her that she had the
"curiosite du vice."

The literary men with whom she had constant intercourse, and with whom
she was most closely connected, came, like herself, from Berry. Henri de
Latouche (or Delatouche, as George Sand writes), a native of La Chatre,
who was editor of the Figaro, enrolled her among the contributors to
this journal. But she had no talent for this kind of work, and at the
end of the month her payment amounted to perhaps from twelve to fifteen
francs. Madame Dudevant and the two other Berrichons, Jules Sandeau and
Felix Pyat, were, so to speak, the literary apprentices of Delatouche,
who not only was much older than they, having been born in 1785, but
had long ago established his reputation as a journalist, novelist, and
dramatic writer. The first work which Madame Dudevant produced was
the novel "Rose et Blanche"; she wrote it in collaboration with Jules
Sandeau, whose relation to her is generally believed to have been not
only of a literary nature. The novel, which appeared in 1831, was so
successful that the publishers asked the authors to write them another.
Madame Dudevant thereupon wrote "Indiana", but without the assistance of
Jules Sandeau. She was going to have it published under the nom de plume
Jules Sand, which they had assumed on the occasion of "Rose et Blanche."
But Jules Sandeau objected t