ound the sluices that chose to spring
up, briar and alder, oaks and rushes. The stream, left to follow its
devices, had forced its way through the sand and the grass in a network
of little waterfalls, covered below in the summer time with thick tufts
of aquatic plants.

It was enough; the seed was sown and the fruit resulted. "The apple
falling from the tree led Newton to the discovery of one of the grand
laws of the universe.... In scientific works of genius, reflection
derives the causes of things from a single fact. In art's humbler
fancies, that isolated fact is dressed and completed in a dream."

The picture given by Madame Sand and her guests of these years of her
life is charming enough, and in certain ways seems an ideal kind of
existence, amid beloved children, friends, pleasant and calm
surroundings, and the sweets of successful literary activity. But if it
had its bright lights, it had also its deep shadows. For every fresh
pleasure and interest crowded into her existence, there entered a fresh
source of anxiety and trouble. Age, in bringing her more power of
endurance, had not blunted her sensibilities. As usual with the
strongest natures in their hours of depression--and none so strong as
to escape these--she could then look for no help except from herself.
Those accustomed, like her, to shirk no responsibility, no burden, to
invite others to lean on them, and to ask no support, if their fortitude
gives way find the allowance, help and sympathy so easily accorded to
their weaker fellow-creatures nowhere ready for them. The exclamation
wrung from one of the characters in a later work of Madame Sand's, may
be but a faithful echo of the cry of her own nature in some moment of
mental torment. "Let me be weak; I have been seeming to be strong for so
long a time!"

Chopin, though the study of his genius had freshly inspired her own, and
greatly extended her comprehension of musical art, was a being to whom
the burden of his own life was too painful to allow him to lighten the
troubles of another; a partial invalid, a prey to nervous irritation, he
was dependent on her to soothe and cheer him at the best of times, and
to be nurse and secretary besides when he was prostrated by illness or
despondency. One is loth to call selfish a nature so attractive in its
refinement, so unhappy in its over-susceptibility. But it is obvious
that such a one might easily become a trial to those he loved. With all
its vigor her n