A kind of terror seized me in presence of a new duty which I
was to take upon me. I was not under the illusion of passion.
I had for the artist a kind of maternal adoration which was
very warm, very real, but which could not for a moment contend
with maternal love, the only chaste feeling which may be
passionate.

I was still young enough to have perhaps to contend with love,
with passion properly so called. This contingency of my age,
of my situation, and of the destiny of artistic women,
especially when they have a horror of passing diversions,
alarmed me much, and, resolved as I was never to submit to any
influence which might divert me from my children, I saw a
less, but still possible danger in the tender friendship with
which Chopin inspired me.

Well, after reflection, this danger disappeared and even
assumed an opposite character--that of a preservative against
emotions which I no longer wished to know. One duty more in my
life, already so full of and so overburdened with work,
appeared to me one chance more to attain the austerity towards
which I felt myself attracted with a kind of religious
enthusiasm.

If this is a sincere confession, we can only wonder at the height of
self-deception attainable by the human mind; if, however, it is meant
as a justification, we cannot but be surprised at the want of skill
displayed by the generally so clever advocate. In fact, George Sand has
in no instance been less happy in defending her conduct and in setting
forth her immaculate virtuousness. The great words "chastity" and
"maternity" are of course not absent. George Sand could as little leave
off using them as some people can leave off using oaths. In either case
the words imply much more than is intended by those from whose mouths or
pens they come. A chaste woman speculating on "real love" and "passing
diversions," as George Sand does here, seems to me a strange phenomenon.
And how charmingly naive is the remark she makes regarding her relations
with Chopin as a "PRESERVATIVE against emotions which she no longer
wished to know"! I am afraid the concluding sentence, which in its
unction is worthy of Pecksniff, and where she exhibits herself as an
ascetic and martyr in all the radiance of saintliness, will not have the
desired effect, but will make the reader laugh as loud as Musset is said
to have done when she upbraided him with his ungratefulness to her, who
had been