the first, books
he devoured! The cover of a ponderous old volume that you
found upon the shelf of a forgotten closet--does it not bring
back to you gracious pictures of your young years? Have you
not thought to see the wide meadow rise before you, bathed in
the rosy light of the evening when you saw it for the first
time? Oh! that the night should fall so quickly upon those
divine pages, that the cruel twilight should make the words
float upon the dim page!

"It is all over; the lambs bleat, the sheep are shut up in
their fold, the cricket chirps in the cottage and field It is
time to go home.

"The path is stony, the bridge narrow and slippery, and the
way is difficult.

"You are covered with sweat, but you have a long walk, you
will arrive too late, supper will have commenced.

"It is in vain that the old domestic whom you love will retard
the ringing of the bell as long as possible; you will have the
humiliation of entering the last one, and the grandmother,
inexorable upon etiquette, will reprove you in a voice sweet
but sad--a reproach very light, very tender, which you will
feel more deeply than a severe chastisement. But when, at
night, she demands that you account for your absence, and you
acknowledge, blushing, that in reading in the meadow you
forgot yourself, and when you are asked to give the book, you
draw with a trembling hand from your pocket--what? _Estelle et
Nemorin_.

"Oh then the grandmother smiles!

"You regain your courage, your book will be restored to you,
but another time you must not forget the hour of supper.

"Oh happy days! O my valley Noire! O Corinne! O Bernardin de
Saint Pierre! O the Iliad! O Milleroye! O Atala! O the willows
by the river! O my departed youth! O my old dog who could not
forget the hour of supper, and who replied to the distant
ringing of the bell by a dismal howl of regret and hunger!"

In other portions of her books George Sand refers to her early life, and
always in this enthusiastic manner.

Her grandmother exercised no surveillance upon her reading--she perused
the pages of Corinne, Atala, and Lavater, and the two former would raise
strange dreams in the head of a girl only fourteen years old. She read
everything which fell in her way.

In reading Lavater's essays upon Physiogomy, she