de or gesture with great care.

We give their impressions of George Sand. In March, 1862, they went to
call on her. She was then living in Paris, in the Rue Racine. They give
an account of this visit in their diary.

"_March_ 30, 1862.

"On the fourth floor, No. 2, Rue Racine. A little gentleman, very
much like every one else, opened the door to us. He smiled, and said:
'Messieurs de Goncourt!' and then, opening another door, showed us into
a very large room, a kind of studio.

"There was a window at the far end, and the light was getting dim, for
it was about five o'clock. We could see a grey shadow against the pale
light. It was a woman, who did not attempt to rise, but who remained
impassive to our bow and our words. This seated shadow, looking so
drowsy, was Madame Sand, and the man who opened the door was the
engraver Manceau. Madame Sand is like an automatic machine. She talks in
a monotonous, mechanical voice which she neither raises nor lowers,
and which is never animated. In her whole attitude there is a sort of
gravity and placidness, something of the half-asleep air of a person
ruminating. She has very slow gestures, the gestures of a somnambulist.
With a mechanical movement she strikes a wax match, which gives a
flicker, and lights the cigar she is holding between her lips.

"Madame Sand was extremely pleasant; she praised us a great deal, but
with a childishness of ideas, a platitude of expression and a mournful
good-naturedness that was as chilling as the bare wall of a room.
Manceau endeavoured to enliven the dialogue. We talked of her theatre
at Nohant, where they act for her and for her maid until four in the
morning. . . . We then talked of her prodigious faculty for work. She
told us that there was nothing meritorious in that, as she had always
worked so easily. She writes every night from one o'clock until four in
the morning, and she writes again for about two hours during the day.
Manceau explains everything, rather like an exhibitor of phenomena. 'It
is all the same to her,' he told us, 'if she is disturbed. Suppose you
turn on a tap at your house, and some one comes in the room. You simply
turn the tap off. It is like that with Madame Sand.'"

The Goncourt brothers were extremely clever in detracting from the
merits of the people about whom they spoke. They tell us that George
Sand had "a childishness in her ideas and a platitude of expression."
They were unkind without endeavouring to be