There were limitations in his view of her, as he never fully realised the scope of her genius, and looked on her as half a man, so that he would sometimes shock her by the breadth of his conversation. After her rupture with Jules Sandeau, whose side in the affair he espoused vehemently, he disapproved of her for some time, and contrasted rather contemptuously the versatility of her affairs of the heart with the ideal of passionate, enduring love portrayed in her novels. However, later on, when he himself had been disappointed in Sandeau, and when the latter had further roused his indignation by writing a novel called "Marianna," which was intended to drag George Sand's name through the mud, Balzac defended her energetically. About the same time (1839) he brought out his novel "Beatrix," in which she is portrayed as Mlle. de Touches, with "the beauty of Isis, more serious than gracious, and as if struck with the sadness of constant meditation." Her eyes, according to Balzac, were her great beauty, and all her expression was in them, otherwise her face was stupid; but with her splendid black hair and her complexion--olive by day and white in artificial light--she must have been a striking and picturesque figure. Later on Balzac appears to have partly reconciled himself to her moral irregularities, on the convenient ground that she, like himself, was an exceptional being; and we hear of several visits he paid to Nohant, where he delighted in long hours of talk on social questions with a comrade to whom he need not show the _galanteries d'epiderme_ necessary in intercourse with ordinary women. He says of her: "She had no littleness of soul, and none of those low jealousies which obscure so much contemporary talent. Dumas is like her on this point. George Sand is a very noble friend."[*] [*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere." This is all anticipation; we must now go back to 1828 and 1829, and picture Balzac's existence first in the Rue de Tournon and then in one room at the Rue Cassini. Insufficiently clad and wretchedly fed, he occasionally went to evening parties to collect material for his writing; at other times he visited some sympathising friend, and poured out his troubles to her; but he had only one real support--the sympathy and affection of Madame de Berny. It was a frightfully hard life. He took coffee to keep himself awake, and he wrote and wrote till he was exhausted; all the time being in the condition of a "tracked hare," harassed and pursued by his creditors, and knowing that all his gains must go to them.