fear, interest, love."

This fatal look, as the experienced will readily conceive, did the
business. The young soldier dreamed only of a love affair like twenty
others which had made the pastime of his oft-changing quarters; but this
"dear woman," Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, daughter of an old
bird-fancier, was destined to become his wife, and the mother of his
daughter, Aurore Dupin, whom the world knows as George Sand. The
circumstances of her youth had been untoward. She was at this period
already the mother of one child, born out of marriage, and seems to have
been making the campaign of Italy under the so-called protection of some
rich man, whose name is not given us. This protection she hastened to
leave, following thenceforward with devotion the precarious fortunes
of the young soldier, and gaining her own subsistence, until their
marriage, by the toil of the needle, to which she had been bred. Of
course, Maurice's confidences to his mother under this head soon cease.
An amour with a person in Victoire's position could be admitted; but
a serious, solid affection, leading to marriage, this would break his
mother's heart, and indeed not without reason. The reader must remember
that this is a chapter out of French society, on which account we
suppress all hysterical comment upon a state of things universally
received and acknowledged therein. Maurice's trivial, and _we_ should
say, unprincipled pursuit of Victoire would be considered perfectly
legitimate in the sphere which made the world to him. The sequel,
perhaps, would not have been considered differently here and there; for,
however we may recognize the sacredness of true affection, a marriage
so unequal and with such sinister antecedents would be regarded in all
society with little approbation, or hope of good. His mother soon grew
alarmed, as various symptoms of an enduring and carefully concealed
attachment became evident to her keen observation. In the years that
followed, she left no means untried to break off this dangerous
connection;--her remonstrances were by turns tender and violent,--her
reasonings, no doubt, in great part just; but Maurice defended the woman
of his choice from all accusations, from every annoyance, on the ground
of her devoted and honorable attachment to him. After four years of
continued trouble and irresolution, in which, George tells us, he had
again and again made the endeavor to sacrifice Victoire to his mother's
happ