world--the change could not be loss to her. She had suffered, and was
likely to suffer still more.

And now, am I to tell you that I have seen George Sand twice, and am to
see her again? Ah, there is no time to tell you, for I must shut up this
letter. She sate, like a priestess, the other morning in a circle of
eight or nine men, giving no oracles, except with her splendid eyes,
sitting at the corner of the fire, and warming her feet quietly, in a
general silence of the most profound deference. There was something in
the calm disdain of it which pleased me, and struck me as
characteristic. She was George Sand, that was enough: you wanted no
proof of it. Robert observed that 'if any other mistress of a house had
behaved so, he would have walked out of the room'--but, as it was, no
sort of incivility was meant. In fact, we hear that she 'likes us very
much,' and as we went away she called me 'chere Madame' and kissed me,
and desired to see us both again.

I did not read myself the passage in question from Miss M.'s book. I
couldn't make up my mind, my courage, to look at it. But I understood
from Robert.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysees:
February 27, [1852].

I get your second letter, my dearest Mrs. Martin, before I answer your
first, which makes me rather ashamed.

... Dearest friend, it is true that I have seldom been so upset as by
this act of poor dear Miss Mitford's, and the very impossibility of
being vindictive on this occasion increased my agitation at the
moment....

There are defects in delicacy and apprehensiveness, one cannot deny it,
and yet I assure you that a more generous and fervent woman never lived
than dear Miss Mitford is, and if you knew her you would do her this
justice. She is better in herself than in her books--more large, more
energetic, more human altogether. I think I understand her better on the
whole than she understands me (which is not saying much), and I admire
her on various accounts. She talks better, for instance, than most
writers, male or female, whom I have had any intercourse with. And
affectionate in the extreme, she has always been to me.

So I have mystified you and disgusted you with my politics, and my
friends in England have put me in the corner; just so....

The French nation is very peculiar. We choose to boast ourselves of
being different in England, but we have simply _les qualites de nos