I remember looking out Toulx in Cassini’s great map[300] at the Bodleian Library.  The railway through the centre of France went in those days no farther than Vierzon.  From Vierzon to Chateauroux one travelled by an ordinary diligence, from Chateauroux to La Chatre by a humbler diligence, from La Chatre to Boussac by the humblest diligence of all.  At Boussac diligence ended, and patache[301] began.  Between Chateauroux and La Chatre, a mile or two before reaching the latter place, the road passes by the village of Nohant.  The Chateau of Nohant, in which Madame Sand lived, is a plain house by the road-side, with a walled garden.  Down in the meadows, not far off, flows the Indre, bordered by trees.  I passed Nohant without stopping, at La Chatre I dined and changed diligence, and went on by night up the valley of the Indre, the Vallee Noire, past Ste. Severe to Boussac.  At Ste. Severe the Indre is quite a small stream.  In the darkness we quitted its valley, and when day broke we were in the wilder and barer country of La Marche, with Boussac before us, and its high castle on a precipitous rock over the Little Creuse.

That day and the next I wandered through a silent country of heathy and ferny landes,[302] a region of granite boulders, holly, and broom, of copsewood and great chestnut trees; a region of broad light, and fresh breezes and wide horizons.  I visited the Pierres Jaunatres. I stood at sunset on the platform of Toulx Ste. Croix, by the scrawled and almost effaced stone lions,—­a relic, it is said, of the English rule,—­and gazed on the blue mountains of Auvergne filling the distance, and southeastward of them, in a still further and fainter distance, on what seemed to be the mountains over Le Puy and the high valley of the Loire.

From Boussac I addressed to Madame Sand the sort of letter of which she must in her lifetime have had scores, a letter conveying to her, in bad French, the homage of a youthful and enthusiastic foreigner who had read her works with delight.  She received the infliction good-naturedly, for on my return to La Chatre I found a message left at the inn by a servant from Nohant that Madame Sand would be glad to see me if I called.  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, as well I might, considering how I had got there; 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 [303] so familiar to us from her books, and Chopin[304] 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 outdoor dress for the