George Sand was successful because she simply presented her readers with the key to her own nature. Many who have heard of the authoress's irregular life, of her liaisons with Jules Sandeau, Alfred de Musset, Michel de Bourges, Chopin, Manceau, and half-a-dozen others, must have asked themselves how books that, with all their passion, are so pure and noble as hers, could be the outcome of such a disorderly and, according to accepted ideas, degraded life. And many have felt that the inherent curiosity of the artist nature (which she defined by saying that when the conversation turned upon cannibalism her first thought was: "I wonder what human flesh tastes like;") was not a sufficient explanation of her conduct. In _Lucrezia Floriani_ she has given us an exhaustive study of her own character at the age of thirty. I shall endeavour to make the character intelligible with the help of passages culled from different parts of the book. "Lucrezia Floriani by nature was--who would have believed it?--as chaste as is the soul of a little child. It certainly seems strange to hear this of a woman who had loved so much and so many.... It is probable that the sensual part of her organisation was especially powerfully developed; although to men who did not please her she seemed frigid.... In the rare intervals when her heart had been tranquil, her brain had been at rest; and if she could have been prevented from ever seeing the other sex, she would have made an excellent nun, calm and vigorous. This is as much as to say that nothing could be purer than her thoughts when she was alone, and that when she loved, all that was not her lover was to her, as far as the senses were concerned, solitude, emptiness, nonentity." Lucrezia says of love: "I know that it is said to be a sensual impulse; but this is not true in the case of clever women. With them it follows a regular course; it takes possession of the brain first, knocking at the door of the imagination. Without the golden key to that door it cannot enter. When it has established its mastery there, it descends into the lower regions; it insinuates itself into all our faculties; and then we love the man who rules us, as god, brother, husband, everything that a woman can love." The authoress explains how it was possible for Lucrezia's soul to be continually possessed afresh by the erotic illusion, and in particular how her last, ardently passionate attachment for Prince Karol (Chopin) came into being. "To these rich, strong natures the last love seems always the first; and certain it is, that if affection is to be measured by enthusiasm, Lucrezia had never loved so much. The enthusiasm she had felt for other men had been of short duration. They had been incapable of maintaining it or renewing it. Love had survived disillusionment for a certain time; then came the stage of generosity, solicitude, compassion, devotion, of the motherly feeling, to put it in a word.