I have some French acquaintance, and begin to take pleasure in them, now that we can hold intercourse more easily.  Among others, a Madame Pauline Roland I find an interesting woman.  She is an intimate friend of Beranger and of Pierre Leroux.

We occupy a charming suite of apartments, Hotel Rougement, Boulevard Poissoniere.  It is a new hotel, and has not the arched gateways and gloomy court-yard of the old mansions.  My room, though small, is very pretty, with the thick, flowered carpet and marble slabs; the French clock, with Cupid, of course, over the fireplace, in which burns a bright little wood fire; the canopy bedstead, and inevitable large mirror; the curtains, too, are thick and rich, the closet, &c., excellent, the attendance good.  But for all this, one pays dear.  We do not find that one can live pleasantly at Paris for little money; and we prefer to economize by a briefer stay, if at all.

TO E.H.

Paris, Jan. 18, 1847, and Naples, March 17, 1847.—­You wished to hear of George Sand, or, as they say in Paris, “Madame Sand.”  I find that all we had heard of her was true in the outline; I had supposed it might be exaggerated.  She had every reason to leave her husband,—­a stupid, brutal man, who insulted and neglected her.  He afterwards gave up their child to her for a sum of money.  But the love for which she left him lasted not well, and she has had a series of lovers, and I am told has one now, with whom she lives on the footing of combined means, independent friendship!  But she takes rank in society like a man, for the weight of her thoughts, and has just given her daughter in marriage.  Her son is a grown-up young man, an artist.  Many women visit her, and esteem it an honor.  Even an American here, and with the feelings of our country on such subjects, Mrs. ——­, thinks of her with high esteem.  She has broken with La Mennais, of whom she was once a disciple.

I observed to Dr. Francois, who is an intimate of hers, and loves and admires her, that it did not seem a good sign that she breaks with her friends.  He said it was not so with her early friends; that she has chosen to buy a chateau in the region where she passed her childhood, and that the people there love and have always loved her dearly.  She is now at the chateau, and, I begin to fear, will not come to town before I go.  Since I came, I have read two charming stories recently written by her.  Another longer one she has just sold to La Presse for fifteen thousand francs.  She does not receive nearly as much for her writings as Balzac, Dumas, or Sue.  She has a much greater influence than they, but a less circulation.

She stays at the chateau, because the poor people there were suffering so much, and she could help them.  She has subscribed twenty thousand francs for their relief, in the scarcity of the winter.  It is a great deal to earn by one’s pen:  a novel of several volumes sold for only fifteen thousand francs, as I mentioned before. * * *