's garret," and occupied for a while a suite of rooms
in the Hotel de France, where resided also Madame d'Agoult. The _salon_
of the latter was a favorite _rendezvous_ of cosmopolitan artistic
celebrities, whose general _rendezvous_ just then was Paris. A very
Pantheon must have been an intimate circle that included, among others,
George Sand, Daniel Stern, Heine, the Polish poet Mickiewicz, Eugene
Delacroix, Meyerbeer, Liszt, Hiller, and Frederic Chopin.

The delicate health of her son forced Madame Sand to leave with him
shortly for Berry, where he soon became convalescent. Later in the
season, some of the same party of friends that had met in Paris met
again at Nohant. It was during this summer that George Sand wrote for
her child the well-known little tale, _Les Maitres Mosaistes_, in which
the adventures of the Venetian mosaic-workers are woven into so charming
a picture. "I do not know why, but it is seldom that I have written
anything with so much pleasure," she tells us. "It was in the country,
in summer weather, as hot as the Italian climate I had lately left. I
have never seen so many birds and flowers in my garden. Liszt was
playing the piano on the ground floor, and the nightingales, intoxicated
with music and sunshine, were singing madly in the lilac-trees around."

The party was abruptly dispersed upon the intelligence that reached
Madame Sand of her mother's sudden, and, as it proved, fatal illness.
She hurried to Paris, and remained with Madame Maurice Dupin during her
last days. The old fond affection between them, though fitful in its
manifestations on the part of the mother, had never been impaired, and
the breaking of this old link with the past was very deeply felt by
Madame Sand.

Before returning to Nohant, she spent a few weeks at Fontainebleau with
her son, from whom she never liked to separate. They passed their days
in exploring the forest, then larger and wilder than now, botanizing and
butterfly-hunting. At night she sat up writing, when all was quiet in
the inn. Just as, whilst at Venice, her fancy flew back to the scenes
and characters of French provincial life, and _Andre_ was the result, so
here, amid the forest landscapes of her own land, her imagination rushed
off to Venice and the shores of the Brenta, and produced _La Derniere
Aldini_.

This constant industry, which had now become her habit of life, was more
of a practical necessity than ever. Nohant, as already mentioned, barely