By the side of Virginia, at the foot of the bamboos near the church of Pamplemousses, Paul was laid to rest.  Close at hand the two mothers were buried.  No marble is raised over their humble graves, no inscriptions record their virtues, but in the hearts of those who loved them, they have left a memory that time can never efface.

With these words the old man, tears flowing from his eyes, arose and went away.

* * * * *

GEORGE SAND

Consuelo

The life of the great French novelist, George Sand, is as romantic as any of the characters in her novels.  She was born at Paris in July, 1804, her real name being Armandine Lucile Aurore Dupin.  At eighteen she married the son of a colonel and baron of the empire, by name Dudevant, but after nine years she separated from her husband, and, bent upon a literary career, made her way to Paris.  Success came quickly.  Entering into a literary partnership with her masculine friend, Jules Sandeau, the chief fruit of their joint enterprise was “Rose et Blanche.”  This was followed by her independent novel, “Indiana,” a story that brought her the enthusiastic praises of the reading public, and the warm friendship of the most distinguished personages in French literary society.  A few years later her relations with the poet Alfred De Musset provided the matter for what is now an historic episode.  Her literary output was enormous, consisting of a hundred or more volumes of novels and stories, four volumes of autobiography, and six of correspondence.  Yet everything that she wrote is marked by that richness, delicacy and power of style and of thought which constitutes her genius.  “Consuelo,” which appeared in 1844, is typical of all these in its sparkling dialogue, flowing narrative, and vivid description.  George Sand died on June 7, 1876.

I.—­In Venice

Little Consuelo, at the age of fourteen, was the best of all the pupils of the Maestro Porpora, a famous Italian composer, of the eighteenth century.

At that time in Venice a certain number of children received a musical education at the expense of the state, and it was Porpora, the great musician—­then a soured and disappointed man—­who trained the voices of the girls.  They were not equally poor, these young ladies, and among them were the daughters of needy artists, whose wandering existence did not permit them a long stay in Venice.  Of such parentage was little Consuelo, born in Spain, and arriving in Italy by the strange routes of Bohemians.  Not that Gonsuelo was really a gipsy.  She was of good Spanish blood, and had a calmness of mind and manner quite foreign to the wandering races.  A rare and happy temperament was hers, and, in spite of poverty and orphanhood—­for her mother, who brought her to Venice, was dead—­Consuelo worked on with Porpora, finding the labour an enjoyment, and overcoming the difficulties of her art as if by some invisible instinct.