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The great in art and letters, leading critics, such as Sainte-Beuve and Gustave Planche, came eager to seek her acquaintance, and delighting to honor the obscure student of a year ago. Writing to M. Boucoiran after her return to Paris in December, 1832, she describes her altered position: All day long I am beset with visitors, who are not all entertaining.
"I have walked as much as four-and-twenty miles a day," she writes to M. Boucoiran, "and found out that this sort of exercise is very good for me, both morally and physically. Tell Buloz I will write some letters for the Revue, upon my pedestrian tours.
It was under his name that these compositions appeared, Madam Dudevant, in these first trial-attempts, being undesirous to bring hers before the public. "I have no time to write home," she pleads, petitioning M. Boucoiran for news from the country, "but I like getting letters from Nohant, it rests my heart and my head."
That to Alais on the north, proceeds for the most part along the valley of the Gardon, the names of the successive stations reminding the passing traveller of the embittered contests of which they were the scenes in former times: Nozières, Boucoiran, Ners, Vezenobres, and Alais itself, now a considerable manufacturing town, and the centre of an important coal-mining district.
At one of his meetings, held at Boucoiran on the Gardon, about half way between Nismes and Anduze, a Protestant nobleman a nouveau convertis, who had abjured his religion to retain his estates was present, and stood near the preacher during the service. One of the Government spies was present, and gave information. The name of the Protestant nobleman was not known.
But he was to be sent to school in two years, and for the meantime she had secured for him the care and services of M. Boucoiran, whom she thoroughly trusted. Her husband was to allow her £120 a year out of her fortune, and on condition that the allowance should not be exceeded, he left her at liberty to get on as she chose, abstaining from further interference.
Still, I shall soon be returning home again, perhaps without having succeeded in launching my boat, but with hopes of doing better another time, and with plans of working harder than ever. Three weeks later we find her writing to her son's tutor, M. Boucoiran, in the same strain: I am more than ever determined to follow the literary career.
In a letter, dated October, 1830, to her son's private tutor, M. Boucoiran, who had then been a year under their roof in that capacity, she remarks, significantly: You often wonder at my mobility of temper, my flexible character. What would become of me without this power of self-distraction?
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