us see precisely as if we were admitted
to their intimacy.

But George Sand puzzles us most by peculiarities which it is difficult
for us to reconcile. She seemed to have no sense of chastity whatever;
yet, on the other hand, she was not grossly sensual. She possessed the
maternal instinct to a high degree, and liked better to be a mother
than a mistress to the men whose love she sought. For she did seek
men's love, frankly and shamelessly, only to tire of it. In many cases
she seems to have been swayed by vanity, and by a love of conquest,
rather than by passion. She had also a spiritual, imaginative side to
her nature, and she could be a far better comrade than anything more
intimate.

The name given to this strange genius at birth was Amantine Lucile
Aurore Dupin. The circumstances of her ancestry and birth were quite
unusual. Her father was a lieutenant in the French army. His
grandmother had been the natural daughter of Marshal Saxe, who was
himself the illegitimate son of Augustus the Strong of Poland and of
the bewitching Countess of Konigsmarck. This was a curious pedigree. It
meant strength of character, eroticism, stubbornness, imagination,
courage, and recklessness.

Her father complicated the matter by marrying suddenly a Parisian of
the lower classes, a bird-fancier named Sophie Delaborde. His daughter,
who was born in 1804, used afterward to boast that on one side she was
sprung from kings and nobles, while on the other she was a daughter of
the people, able, therefore, to understand the sentiments of the
aristocracy and of the children of the soil, or even of the gutter.

She was fond of telling, also, of the omen which attended on her birth.
Her father and mother were at a country dance in the house of a fellow
officer of Dupin's. Suddenly Mme. Dupin left the room. Nothing was
thought of this, and the dance went on. In less than an hour, Dupin was
called aside and told that his wife had just given birth to a child. It
was the child's aunt who brought the news, with the joyous comment:

"She will be lucky, for she was born among the roses and to the sound
of music."

This was at the time of the Napoleonic wars. Lieutenant Dupin was on
the staff of Prince Murat, and little Aurore, as she was called, at the
age of three accompanied the army, as did her mother. The child was
adopted by one of those hard-fighting, veteran regiments. The rough old
sergeants nursed her and petted her. Even the prince too