“I cannot express the pleasure my boots gave me.  I would gladly have slept with them on.  With these little iron-shod heels, I stood firm on the pavement.  I flew from one end of Paris to the other.  I could have made the circuit of the world, thus attired.  Besides, my clothes did not fear spoiling.  I ran about in all weathers, I came back at all hours, I went to the pit of every theatre.  No one paid me any attention, or suspected my disguise.  Besides that, I wore it with ease; the entire want of coquetry in my costume and physiognomy disarmed all suspicion.  I was too ill-dressed, and my manner was too simple, to attract or fix attention.  Women know little how to disguise themselves, even upon the stage.  They are unwilling to sacrifice the slenderness of their waists, the smallness of their feet, the prettiness of their movements, the brilliancy of their eyes; and it is by all these, nevertheless, it is especially by the look, that they might avoid easy detection.  There is a way of gliding in everywhere without causing any one to turn round, and of speaking in a low, unmodulated tone which does not sound like a flute in the ears which may hear you.  For the rest, in order not to be remarked as a man, you must already have the habit of not making yourself remarked as a woman.”

This travesty, our heroine tells us, was of short duration;—­it answered the convenience of some months of poverty and obscurity.  Its traditions did not pass away so soon;—­ten years later, her son, in his beardless adolescence, was often taken for her, and sometimes amused himself by indulging the error in those who accosted him.  But in the greatly changed circumstances in which she soon found herself, the disguise became useless and unavailing.  Its economy was no longer needed, and the face of its wearer was soon too well known to be concealed by hat or coat-collar.

We would not be understood as relaxing in any degree the rigor of repudiation which such an act deserved.  Yet it is imaginable, even to an undepraved mind, that a woman might sometimes like to be on the other side of the fence, to view the mad bull of publicity in its own pasture, and feel that it cannot gore her.  Poor George! running about in the little boots, and wearing a great ugly coat and woollen choker,—­it was not through vanity that you did this.  Strange sights you must have seen in Paris!—­none, perhaps, stranger than yourself!  The would-be nun of the English convent walking the streets in male attire, and even, as you tell us, with your hands in your pockets!  Yet when little Solange came to live with you, as we understand, you put on your weeds of weakness again;—­your little daughter made you once more a woman!

For she was George Sand now.  Aurore Dupin was civilly dead, Aurore Dudevant was uncivilly effaced.  She had taken half a name from Jules Sandeau,—­she had wrought the glory of that name herself.  Yes, a glory, say what you will.  Elizabeth Browning’s hands were not too pure to soothe that forehead, chiding while they soothed; and these hands, not illustrious as hers, shall soil themselves with no mud flung at a sister’s crowned head.