us woman, and by her grandmother, a serious,
cold, ceremonious old lady. Calm and well balanced, and possessing an
ardent imagination, she followed her own inclinations when, as a girl
of sixteen, she was married to a man for whom she had no love. After
living an indifferent sort of life with her husband for ten years,
they separated; and she, with her children, went to Paris to find
work.

After a number of unsuccessful efforts of a literary nature, she
wrote _Indiana_, which immediately made her success. Her articles were
sought by the journals, and from about 1830 her life was that of the
average artist and writer of the time. Her relations with Chopin and
Alfred de Musset are too well known to require repetition. After 1850
she retired to her home, the Chateau de Nohant, where she enjoyed the
companionship of her son, her daughter-in-law, and her grandchildren;
she died there in 1876.

To appreciate her works, it is more important to study her nature than
her career. This has been admirably done by the Comte d'Haussonville.
George Sand is said to have possessed a dual nature, which seemed
to contradict itself, but which explains her works--a dreamy and
meditative, and a lively, frolicsome nature; the first might throw
light upon her religious crisis, the second, upon her social side.
The combination of these two phases caused the numerous conflicts
of opinions and doctrines, extending her knowledge and inciting her
curiosity; the not infrequent result was an intellectual and moral
bewilderment and the deepest melancholy, from which she with great
difficulty freed herself. Because of these peculiarities she was
constantly agitated, her strongly reflective nature keeping her awake
to all important questions of the day.

Her intellectual development may be traced in her works, which, from
1830 to 1840, were personal, lyrical, spontaneous--a direct flow from
inspiration, issuing from a common source of emotions and personal
sorrows, being the expressions of her habitual reflections, of her
moral agitations, of her real and imaginary sufferings. These first
works were a protest against the tyranny of marriage, and expressed
her conception of a woman in love--a love profound and naive, exalted
and sincere, passionate and chaste: such is pictured in _Indiana_. In
_Valentine_ she portrays the impious and unfortunate marriage that the
sacrilegious conventions of the world have imposed, and the
results issuing therefrom.