, upon her. At last
it is too much, and she dies of heart-failure at forty years of age.

[Sidenote: Its balance of power.]

One might make a few cavils at this. The exact reason of what has been
called the "sacrifice" is not made clear, despite Lucrezia's soliloquy
in the olive wood. If it were meant as an atonement for her ill-spent
youth it would be intelligible. But there is no sign of this, and it
would not be in George Sand's way. Lucrezia merely resolves that she
will try to make everybody happy without trying or expecting to be happy
herself. But she must know more and more that she is _not_ making Karol
happy, and that the cohabitation cannot, even in Italy, but be
prejudicial to her children; though, to do him the very scanty justice
he deserves, he does not behave ill to them, little as he likes them.

Again, this long self-martyrdom would need no explanation if she
continued to love Karol. But it is very doubtful whether she had not
ceased to do so (she was admittedly good at "ceasing to love") when she
left the Wood of Olives, and the cessation admittedly took place long
before the ten years' torture came to an end. One is therefore,
from more than one point of view, left with a sort of Fakir
self-mortification, undertaken and "dreed" neither to atone for
anything, nor to propitiate any Power, nor really to benefit any man.
After all, however, such a thing is quite humanly possible. And these
_aporiae_ hardly touch knots--only very small spots--in a reed of
admirable strength and beauty. We know that George Sand did _not_
sacrifice herself for her lovers--very much the reverse. But we know
also that in her youth and early middle age she was very much of a
Lucrezia Floriani, something of a genius, if not so great a one as she
made her creature, something of a beauty, entirely negligent of ordinary
sexual morality, but thoroughly, if somewhat heartlessly, good-natured,
and (not merely at the times mentioned, but to the end of her life) an
affectionate mother, a delightful hostess, and a very satisfactory
friend. No imaginary Stenio or Karol, no actual Sandeau or Musset or
Chopin could have caused her at any time of her life the misery which
the Prince caused Lucrezia, because she would simply have "sent him
walking," as the vigorous French idiom has it. But it pleased her to
graft upon her actual nature something else that it lacked, and a
life-like and tragical story resulted.

It is not a bad "turn over