plendid
success; he sold the whole work for five hundred thousand francs--an
enormous price. But the concluding volumes were not forthcoming, and the
publisher demanded them--but in vain. For the last thirty years M.
Thiers has lived in a beautiful house in the place Saint Georges. He is
wealthy, and has always lived in good style.

It is currently reported that M. Thiers has been guilty of treating
certain members of his family with great meanness, and in society many
scandalous stories have been repeated illustrating his miserly economy.

When the revolution of 1848 broke out, M. Thiers ran away from Paris,
but afterward returned, and has since lived a very quiet life.

GEORGE SAND

[Illustration: GEORGE SAND.]

One of the most distinguished of the living writers of France is Madam
Dudevant, or GEORGE SAND, which is her _nom de plume_. She is by no
means a woman either after my ideal or the American ideal, but is a
woman of great genius. Her masculinity, and, indeed, her licentious
style, are great faults: but in sketching some of the most brilliant of
French writers, it would not do to omit her name.

The maiden name of George Sand was Amantine Aurore Dupin, and she is
descended from Augustus the Second, king of Poland. Her ancestors were
of king's blood, and the more immediate of them were distinguished for
their valor and high birth. She was born in the year 1804. She was
brought up by her grandmother, at the chateau Nahant, situated in one of
the most beautiful valleys of France. The old countess of Horn, her
grandmother, was a woman of brilliant qualities, but not a very safe
guide for a young child. Her ideas were anti-religious, and she was a
follower of Rousseau rather than of Christ. When Aurore was fifteen
years old, she knew well how to handle a gun, to dance, to ride on
horseback, and to use a sword. She was a young Amazon, charming, witty,
and yet coarse. She was fond of field sports, yet knew not how to make
the sign of the cross. When she was twenty years old she was sent to a
convent in Paris, to receive a religious education. She loved her
grandmother to adoration, and the separation cost her a great deal of
suffering. She often alludes in her volumes to this grandparent, in
terms of warm love and veneration. In her "_Letters of a Traveller_" she
gives us some details of her life with her grandmother at the chateau de
Nahant. She says:

"Oh, who of us does not recall with delight