k notice of
her; and to please him she wore the green uniform of a hussar.

But all this soon passed, and she was presently sent to live with her
grandmother at the estate now intimately associated with her
name--Nohant, in the valley of the Indre, in the midst of a rich
country, a love for which she then drank in so deeply that nothing in
her later life could lessen it. She was always the friend of the
peasant and of the country-folk in general.

At Nohant she was given over to her grand-mother, to be reared in a
strangely desultory sort of fashion, doing and reading and studying
those things which could best develop her native gifts. Her father had
great influence over her, teaching her a thousand things without
seeming to teach her anything. Of him George Sand herself has written:

Character is a matter of heredity. If any one desires to know me, he
must know my father.

Her father, however, was killed by a fall from a horse; and then the
child grew up almost without any formal education. A tutor, who also
managed the estate; believed with Rousseau that the young should be
reared according to their own preferences. Therefore, Aurore read poems
and childish stories; she gained a smattering of Latin, and she was
devoted to music and the elements of natural science. For the rest of
the time she rambled with the country children, learned their games,
and became a sort of leader in everything they did.

Her only sorrow was the fact that her mother was excluded from Nohant.
The aristocratic old grandmother would not allow under her roof her
son's low-born wife; but she was devoted to her little grandchild. The
girl showed a wonderful degree of sensibility.

This life was adapted to her nature. She fed her imagination in a
perfectly healthy fashion; and, living so much out of doors, she
acquired that sound physique which she retained all through her life.

When she was thirteen, her grandmother sent the girl to a convent
school in Paris. One might suppose that the sudden change from the open
woods and fields to the primness of a religious home would have been a
great shock to her, and that with her disposition she might have broken
out into wild ways that would have shocked the nuns. But, here, as
elsewhere, she showed her wonderful adaptability. It even seemed as if
she were likely to become what the French call a devote. She gave
herself up to mythical thoughts, and expressed a desire of taking the
veil. Her confe