e, does she
throw out against them those artful insinuations and mysterious hints
which are worse than open accusations? Probably her artistic instincts
suggested that a dark background would set off more effectively her own
glorious luminousness. However, I do not think that her indiscretions
and misrepresentations deserve always to be stigmatised as intentional
malice and conscious falsehood. On the contrary, I firmly believe that
she not only tried to deceive others, but that she actually deceived
herself. The habit of self-adoration had given her a moral squint, a
defect which was aggravated by a powerful imagination and excellent
reasoning faculties. For, swayed as these were by her sentiments and
desires, they proved themselves most fertile in generating flattering
illusions and artful sophisms. George Sand was indeed a great sophist.
She had always in readiness an inexhaustible store of interpretations
and subterfuges with which to palliate, excuse, or even metamorphose
into their contraries the most odious of her words and actions. It
is not likely that any one ever equalled, much less surpassed,
her expertness in hiding ugly facts or making innocent things look
suspicious. To judge by her writings and conversations she never acted
spontaneously, but reasoned on all matters and on all occasions.

At no time whatever [writes Paul Lindau in his "Alfred de
Musset"] is there to be discovered in George Sand a trace of
a passion and inconsiderateness, she possesses an
imperturbable calmness. Love sans phrase does not exist for
her. That her frivolity may be frivolity, she never will
confess. She calculates the gifts of love, and administers
them in mild, well-measured doses. She piques herself upon
not being impelled by the senses. She considers it more
meritorious if out of charity and compassion she suffers
herself to be loved. She could not be a Gretchen [a Faust's
Margaret], she would not be a Magdalen, and she became a Lady
Tartuffe.

George Sand's three great words were "maternity," "chastity," and
"pride." She uses them ad nauseam, and thereby proves that she did not
possess the genuine qualities. No doubt, her conceptions of the words
differed from those generally accepted: by "pride" (orgueil), for
instance, she seems to have meant a kind of womanly self-respect debased
by a supercilious haughtiness and self-idolatry. But, as I have said
already, she was a victim to self