a sign of the writer’s fine democratic ease, which she carried at all times to all lengths, and of her charming habit of speech; but it somehow becomes further illustrational, testifying for the manner in which genius, if it be but great enough, lives its life at small cost, when we learn that after all, by a turn of the hand, the “paisible amie” was, under provocation, bundled out of the house as if the beautiful relation had not meant half of what appeared. Françoise and her presence were dispensed with, but the exquisite lines remain, which we would not be without for the world. III The various situations determined for the more eminent of George Sand’s intimate associates would always be independently interesting, thanks to the intrinsic appeal of these characters and even without the light reflected withal on the great agent herself; which is why poor Chopin’s figuration in the events of the year 1847, as Madame Karénine so fully reconstitutes them, is all that is wanted to point their almost nightmare quality. Without something of a close view of them we fail of a grasp of our heroine’s genius—her genius for keeping her head in deep seas morally and reflectively above water, though but a glance at them must suffice us for averting this loss. The old-world quality of drama, which throughout so thickens and tones the air around her, finds remarkable expression in the whole picture of the moment. Every connection involved bristles like a conscious consequence, tells for all it is worth, as we say, and the sinister complexity of reference—for all the golden clearings-up that awaited it on the ideal plane—leaves nothing to be desired. The great and odd sign of the complications and convulsions, the alarms and excursions recorded, is that these are all the more or less direct fruits of sensibility, which had primarily been indulged in, under the doom of a preparation of them which no preparation of anything else was to emulate, with a good faith fairly touching in presence of the eventual ugliness. Madame Sand’s wonderful mother, commemorated for us in “L’Histoire de ma Vie” with the truth surely attaching in a like degree to no mother in all the literature of so-called confession, had had for cousin a “fille entretenue” who had married a mechanic. This Adèle Brault had had in the course of her adventures a daughter in whom, as an unfortunate young relative, Madame Dupin had taken an interest, introducing her to the heiress of Nohant, who viewed her with favour—she appears to have been amiable and commendable—and eventually associated her with her own children. She was thus the third member of that illegitimate progeny with which the Nohant scene was to have become familiar, George Sand’s natural brother on her father’s side and her natural sister on her mother’s representing this element from the earlier time on. The young Augustine, fugitive