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Updated: May 28, 2025
Dudevant gave her a lesson or so whenever time allowed. She was as quick to learn as her father thought he was, and she was desperately determined. It was really not long before she understood much more than "wee and nong" when she was present at a business interview. "You are a wonderful young lady," Dudevant said, with that well-known yearning in his eyes. "You are most wonderful."
Few who have lately resided in Paris are ignorant of the gross sensualism of the astonishing Rachel, whose genius, though displayed in no permanent forms, is not less than that of the Shakspeare of her sex, the forever-to-be-famous Madame Dudevant, whose immoralities of conduct have perhaps been overdrawn, while those of De Staël and Rachel have rarely been spoken of save where they challenged direct observation.
Dudevant styling herself George Sand, a name by which she was to be illustrious ever after. As a novelist, she had found her real vocation. She was not yet well known, but she was on the verge of fame. As soon as she had written Indiana and Valentine, George Sand had secured a place in the world of letters.
Every eloquent tongue of the time-spirit urged self-expression and revolt. And she, obedient to the deepest impulses of her blood and her time, revolted. At the period when Madame Dudevant withdrew her neck from the conjugal yoke and plunged into her literary career in Paris, the doctrine that men are created for freedom, equality and fraternity was already somewhat hackneyed.
The step, though momentous in any case to Madame Dudevant, was one whose ultimate consequences were by none less anticipated than by herself, when to town she came, still undecided whether her future destiny were to decorate screens and tea-caddies, or to write books, but resolved to give the literary career a trial.
Her fortune was a fairly large one for the times, and yet not large enough to attract men who were quite her equals. Presently, however, it brought to her a sort of country squire, named Casimir Dudevant. He was the illegitimate son of the Baron Dudevant. He had been in the army, and had studied law; but he possessed no intellectual tastes.
She visited Paris in the winter, and became acquainted with Lamennais, Béranger, Mme Dudevant, and others. Thence, in the spring of 1847, she went to Italy, where she remained until she embarked in 1850 on board that doomed ship, the Elizabeth. As a resident in Rome, her safety was seriously imperiled during the French siege of 1849.
The existence which she now led was a curious one. She still visited her husband at Nohant, so that she might see her son, and sometimes, when M. Dudevant came to town, he called upon her in the apartments which she shared with Jules Sandeau. He had accepted the situation, and with his crudeness and lack of feeling he seemed to think it, if not natural, at least diverting.
That among the disciples of M. Louis Blanc there were gentlemen who had no respect for other men's property, because they had no property of their own, it is quite safe to believe; but that they had any fixed ideas about seizing property, or of providing labor at high wages for workmen, it would be impossible to believe, even if Albert, ouvrier, that most mythical of revolutionists, were to make solemn affidavit of it on the works of Aurora Dudevant.
They visited Paris, Plessis, returned to Nohant, made a journey in the Pyrenees, a visit to Guillery, the château of Colonel Dudevant. Still the dark guest pursued them. Aurore does not pretend that there was any special cause for her suffering. It was but the void which her passionate nature found in a conventional and limited existence, and for which as yet she knew no remedy.
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