repaid the owner the expenses of keeping it up. Madame Sand, who desired
to be liberal besides, to travel occasionally, to gratify little
artistic fancies as they arose, must look to her literary work to
furnish the means.

"Sometimes," she writes from Nohant, in October, 1837, to Madame
d'Agoult, then in Italy, "I am tempted to realize my capital, and come
and join you; but out there I should do no work, and the galley-slave is
chained up. If Buloz lets him go for a walk it is on _parole_, and
_parole_ is the cannon-ball the convict drags on his foot."

Nor was it for herself only that she worked in future, but for her
children, the whole responsibility of providing for both of whose
education she was now about definitely to take on her own shoulders. The
power of interference left to M. Dudevant by the recent legal decision
had been exercised in a manner leading to fresh vexatious contention,
and continual alarm on Madame Sand's part lest the boy should be taken
by force from her side. These skirmishes included the actual abduction
of Solange from Nohant by M. Dudevant during her mother's absence at
Fontainebleau; a foolish and purposeless trick, by which nothing was to
be gained, except annoyance and trouble to Madame Sand, whose right to
the control of her daughter had never been contested. A final settlement
entered into between the parties, in 1838, placed these matters
henceforward on a footing of peace, fortunately permanent. By this
agreement Madame Sand received back from M. Dudevant--who had lately
succeeded to his father's estate--some house property that formed part
of her patrimony, and paid down to him the sum of L2,000; he ceding to
her the remnant of his paternal rights; she freeing him from all charges
for Maurice's education, her authority over which, in future, was
recognized as complete.

CHAPTER VI.

SOLITUDE, SOCIETY AND SOCIALISM.

The charge of both children now resting entirely in her hands, Madame
Sand was enabled to fulfill her desire of permanently removing her boy,
now fourteen years of age, from the college Henri IV. Not only was she
opposed to the general _regime_ and educational system pursued in French
public schools of this type, she felt persuaded of its special
unsuitability to her son, whose tastes and temperament were artistic,
like her own, and whose classical studies had been repeatedly
interrupted by illness. His delicate health determined her to spend the
winter