With the publication of _Indiana_, George Sand's renown was established. In a letter to Monsieur Duvernet, written July 6, 1832, she says: "The success of _Indiana_ makes me feel nervous. I never looked for anything like it; but hoped that I might labor without attracting notice, or deserving attention. But the Fates have willed otherwise. It is my part to justify the unmerited favor shown to me." While the authorship of this book was an enigma to many critics, the public seized on the work with avidity. Its success was beyond all cavil. People recognized in it a master hand tracing a new path in romance-writing. We are forbidden by George Sand to consider the book as a romance history of herself, for she always protested against her works being interpreted as autobiographical; still, we might almost say that _Indiana_ came into the world ready-made. Its conception at least was, as it were, the burden of her musings in the quiet hours at Nohant. Her ideal was formed of a loving, tender woman, a woman with a heart that beat only for chaste and profound love, love controlling all, pure in itself, and believing all else to be pure. Unquestionably, the work was the spontaneous outburst of the long-indulged dreams of the disappointed woman. All the accessories to her central idea were not far to seek, and her marvellous imaginative power and poetic fancy sufficed to clothe her ideas with an artistic mantle that would obscure the individuality. Of course, Colonel Delmare is not Maurice Dudevant. Nor is Ralph found in the life about her: he is the creature of her idea. With the success of _Indiana_, George Sand found publishers seeking her work, both the _Revue de Paris_ and the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ engaging her services. The irritation of compulsion to work was now largely removed; even in the early part of February, 1832, she writes to her mother: "I can now take it quietly, without worrying myself. If I sometimes work by night, it is simply because I cannot leave a thing half finished." On her return to Paris in April of the same year, she was accompanied by her little daughter, Solange, who was then between three and four years old, and the mother's letters to her son tell of the doings of his little sister, and show how good is the distraction thus afforded to the mother. The visits to the Luxembourg, the Jardin des Plantes, the circus, all the little talk that could please and comfort her boy, the fond mother pours out in child-like, easy prattle that bespeaks her entire sympathy with her children.