The mid-day breakfast at Nohant was not yet over when I reached the house, and I found a large party assembled. I entered with some trepidation, ... but the simplicity of Madame Sand’s manner put me at ease in a moment. She named some of those present; amongst them were her son and daughter, the Maurice and Solange so familiar to us from her books, and Chopin with his wonderful eyes. There was at that time nothing astonishing in Madame Sand’s appearance. She was not in man’s clothes; she wore a sort of costume not impossible, I should think (although on these matters I speak with hesitation), to members of the fair sex at this hour amongst ourselves, as an out-of-door dress for the country or for Scotland. She made me sit by her and poured out for me the insipid and depressing beverage, _boisson fade et mélancolique_, as Balzac called it, for which English people are thought abroad to be always thirsting,--tea. She conversed of the country through which I had been wandering, of the Berry peasants and their mode of life, of Switzerland, whither I was going; she touched politely, by a few questions and remarks, upon England and things and persons English--upon Oxford and Cambridge, Byron, Bulwer. As she spoke her eyes, head, bearing, were all of them striking; but the main impression she made was an impression of what I have already mentioned,--of _simplicity_, frank, cordial simplicity. After breakfast she led the way into the garden, asked me a few kind questions about myself and my plans, gathered a flower or two and gave them to me, shook hands heartily at the gate, and I saw her no more. MATTHEW ARNOLD: _George Sand_. ‘Mixed Essays,’ etc. New York; Macmillan & Co. 1883. * * * * * [Sidenote: Margaret Fuller’s account of her in 1847.] [Sidenote: Appearance.]