I shall endeavour to approach my subject conscientiously and with all due respect.  I shall study biography where it is indispensable for the complete understanding of works.  I shall give a sketch of the original individuals I meet on my path, portraying these only at their point of contact with the life of our authoress, and it seems to me that a gallery in which we see Sandeau, Sainte-Beuve, Musset, Michel (of Bourges), Liszt, Chopin, Lamennais, Pierre Leroux, Dumas fils, Flaubert and many, many others is an incomparable portrait gallery.  I shall not attack persons, but I shall discuss ideas and, when necessary, dispute them energetically.  We shall, I hope, during our voyage, see many perspectives open out before us.

I have, of course, made use of all the works devoted to George Sand which were of any value for my study, and among others of the two volumes published, under the name of Wladimir Karenine,(1) by a woman belonging to Russian aristocratic society.  For the period before 1840, this is the most complete work that has been written.  M. Samuel Rocheblave, a clever University professor and the man who knows more than any one about the life and works of George Sand, has been my guide and has helped me greatly with his wise advice.  Private collections of documents have also been placed at my service most generously.  I am therefore able to supply some hitherto unpublished writings.  George Sand published, in all, about a hundred volumes of novels and stories, four volumes of autobiography, and six of correspondence.  In spite of all this we are still asked for fresh documents.

     (1) Wladimir Karenine:  George Sand, Sa vie et ses
     oeuvres. 2 Vols.  Ollendorf.

It is interesting, as a preliminary study, to note the natural gifts, and the first impressions of Aurore Dupin as a child and young girl, and to see how these predetermined the woman and the writer known to us as George Sand.

Lucile-Amandine-Aurore Dupin, legitimate daughter of Maurice Dupin and of Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, was born in Paris, at 15 Rue Meslay, in the neighbourhood of the Temple, on the 1st of July, 1804.  I would call attention at once to the special phenomenon which explains the problem of her destiny:  I mean by this her heredity, or rather the radical and violent contrast of her maternal and paternal heredity.

By her father she was an aristocrat and related to the reigning houses.

Her ancestor was the King of Poland, Augustus II, the lover of the beautiful Countess Aurora von Koenigsmarck.  George Sand’s grandfather was Maurice de Saxe.  He may have been an adventurer and a condottiere, but France owes to him Fontenoy, that brilliant page of her history.  All this takes us back to the eighteenth century with its brilliant, gallant, frivolous, artistic and profligate episodes.  Maurice de Saxe adored the theatre, either for itself or for the sake