ch must be sent about her business
with kicks when one is in the right. [To her friend Adolphe
Gueroult. La Chatre, November 9, 1835.]

The materials made use of in the foregoing sketch of George Sand's life
up to 1836 consist to a very considerable extent of her own DATA, and in
part even of her own words. From this fact, however, it ought not to
be inferred that her statements can always be safely accepted without
previous examination, or at any time be taken au pied de la lettre.
Indeed, the writer of the Histoire de ma Vie reveals her character
indirectly rather than directly, unawares rather than intentionally.
This so-called "history" of her life contains some truth, although
not all the truth; but it contains it implicitly, not explicitly. What
strikes the observant reader of the four-volumed work most forcibly, is
the attitude of serene self-admiration and self-satisfaction which
the autobiographer maintains throughout. She describes her nature as
pre-eminently "confiding and tender," and affirms that in spite of the
great and many wrongs she was made to suffer, she never wronged anyone
in all her life. Hence the perfect tranquillity of conscience she always
enjoyed. Once or twice, it is true, she admits that she may not be an
angel, and that she as well as her husband may have had faults. Such
humble words, however, ought not to be regarded as penitent confessions
of a sinful heart, but as generous concessions of a charitable mind. In
short, a thorough belief in her own virtuousness and superior excellence
was the key-note of her character. The Pharisaical tendency to thank
God for not having made her like other people pervades every page of her
autobiography, of which Charles Mazade justly says that it is--

a kind of orgy of a personality intoxicated with itself, an
abuse of intimate secrets in which she slashes her friends,
her reminiscences, and--truth.

George Sand declares again and again that she abstains from speaking
of certain matters out of regard for the feelings or memories of other
persons, whereas in reality she speaks recklessly of everybody as long
as she can do so without compromising herself. What virtuous motives
can have prompted her to publish her mother's shame? What necessity
was there to expatiate on her brother's drunkenness? And if she was
the wronged and yet pitiful woman she pretended to be, why, instead of
burying her husband's, Musset's, and others' sins in silenc