“This charming woman is here, and we have hardly spoken to each other.  We scarcely exchanged a look.  I felt a little vexation, though that is scarcely in my nature.  She was proud towards me, although her heart is tender and passionate.  This morning, during breakfast, we heard distant cannon.  The General ordered me to mount at once, and go to see what it was.  I rise, take the staircase in two bounds, and run to the stable.  At the very moment of mounting my horse I turned and saw behind me this dear woman, blushing, embarrassed, and casting on me a lingering look, expressive of fear, interest, love.”

This fatal look, as the experienced will readily conceive, did the business.  The young soldier dreamed only of a love affair like twenty others which had made the pastime of his oft-changing quarters; but this “dear woman,” Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, daughter of an old bird-fancier, was destined to become his wife, and the mother of his daughter, Aurore Dupin, whom the world knows as George Sand.  The circumstances of her youth had been untoward.  She was at this period already the mother of one child, born out of marriage, and seems to have been making the campaign of Italy under the so-called protection of some rich man, whose name is not given us.  This protection she hastened to leave, following thenceforward with devotion the precarious fortunes of the young soldier, and gaining her own subsistence, until their marriage, by the toil of the needle, to which she had been bred.  Of course, Maurice’s confidences to his mother under this head soon cease.  An amour with a person in Victoire’s position could be admitted; but a serious, solid affection, leading to marriage, this would break his mother’s heart, and indeed not without reason.  The reader must remember that this is a chapter out of French society, on which account we suppress all hysterical comment upon a state of things universally received and acknowledged therein.  Maurice’s trivial, and we should say, unprincipled pursuit of Victoire would be considered perfectly legitimate in the sphere which made the world to him.  The sequel, perhaps, would not have been considered differently here and there; for, however we may recognize the sacredness of true affection, a marriage so unequal and with such sinister antecedents would be regarded in all society with little approbation, or hope of good.  His mother soon grew alarmed, as various symptoms of an enduring and carefully concealed attachment became evident to her keen observation.  In the years that followed, she left no means untried to break off this dangerous connection;—­her remonstrances were by turns tender and violent,—­her reasonings, no doubt, in great part just; but Maurice defended the woman of his choice from all accusations, from every annoyance, on the ground of her devoted and honorable attachment to him.  After four years of continued trouble and irresolution, in which, George tells us, he had again and again made the endeavor to sacrifice Victoire to his mother’s happiness, and after the birth of several children, who soon ceased to live, he wedded her by civil rite.  The birth of his daughter soon followed.  “And thus it was,” says George, “that I was born legitimate.”