I, pp. 150-1) there has seemed to me to be some likeness
between the earlier stage of her heroine (if not of herself) and that of
George Sand in her "friendships." They both display a good deal of mere
sensuality, and both seem to me to have been quite ignorant of passion.
Helisenne did not reach the stage of "maternal" affection, and perhaps
it was well for her lover and not entirely bad for her readers. But the
best face that can be put on the "method" will be seen in _Lucrezia
Floriani_.

[Sidenote: and on _Un Hiver a Majorque_.]

The bluntness of taste and the intense concentration on self, which were
shown most disagreeably in _Elle et Lui_, appear on a different side in
another book which is not a novel at all--not even a novel as far as
masque and domino are concerned,--though indirectly it touches another
of George Sand's curious personal experiences--that with Chopin. _Un
Hiver a Majorque_ is perhaps the most ill-tempered book of travel,
except Smollett's too famous production, ever written by a novelist of
talent or genius. The Majorcans certainly did not ask George Sand to
visit them. They did not advertise the advantages of Majorca, as is the
fashion with "health resorts" nowadays. She went there of her own
accord; she found magnificent scenery; she flouted the sentiments of
what she herself describes as the most priest-ridden country in Europe
by never going to church, though and while she actually lived in a
disestablished and disendowed monastery. To punish them for which (the
_non sequitur_ is intentional) she does little but talk of dirt,
discomfort, bad food, extortion, foul-smelling oil and garlic, varying
the talk only to foul-smelling oil and garlic, extortion, bad food,
discomfort, or dirt. The book no doubt yields some of her finest
passages of descriptive prose, both as regards landscape, and in the
famous record of Chopin's playing; but otherwise it is hardly worth
reading.

[177] She survived into the next decade and worked till the last with no
distinct declension, but she did not complete it, dying in 1876. Her
famous direction about her grave, _Laissez la verdure_, is
characteristic of her odd mixture if theatricality and true nature. But
if any one wishes to come to her work with a comfortable preoccupation
in favor of herself, he should begin with her _Letters_. Those of her
old age especially are charming.

[178] Cf. Mr. Alfred Lammle on his unpoetical justice to Mr. Fledgeby in
_Ou