(9) Unpublished letters of Dr. Emile Regnault.

She loved the Paris sky, so strange-looking, so rich in colouring, so variable.(10)

     (10) Ibid.

She became unjust with regard to Berry.  “As for that part of the world which I used to love so dearly and where I used to dream my dreams,” she wrote, “I was there at the age of fifteen, when I was very foolish, and at the age of seventeen, when I was dreamy and disturbed in my mind.  It has lost its charm for me now."(11)

     (11) Ibid.

She loved it again later on, certainly, but just at this time she was over-excited with the joy of her newly-found liberty.  It was that really which made her so joyful and which intoxicated her.  “I do not want society, excitement, theatres, or dress; what I want is freedom,” she wrote to her mother.  In another letter she says:  “I am absolutely independent.  I go to La Chatre, to Rome.  I start out at ten o’clock or at midnight.  I please myself entirely in all this."(12)

     (12) Correspondance:  To her mother, May 31, 1831.

She was free, and she fancied she was happy.  Her happiness at that epoch meant Jules Sandeau.

In a letter, written in the humoristic style in which she delighted, she gives us portraits of some of her comrades of that time.  She tells us of Duvernet, of Alphonse Fleury, surnamed “the Gaulois,” and of Sandeau.

“Oh, fair-haired Charles!” she writes, “young man of melancholy thoughts, with a character as gloomy as a stormy day. . . .  And you, gigantic Fleury, with your immense hands and your alarming beard. . . .  And you, dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of fragrant savannahs!"(13)

     (13) Correspondance:  December 1, 1830.

The “dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of fragrant savannahs,” was to be Baronne Dudevant’s Latin Quarter liaison.  Her biographers usually pass over this liaison quickly, as information about it was not forthcoming.  Important documents exist, though, in the form of fifty letters written by George Sand to Dr. Emile Regnault, then a medical student and the intimate friend and confidant of Jules Sandeau, who kept nothing back from him.  His son, Dr. Paul Regnault, has kindly allowed me to see this correspondence and to reproduce some fragments of it.  It is extremely curious, by turn lyrical and playful, full of effusions, ideas, plans of work, impressions of nature, and confidences about her love affairs.  Taken altogether it reflects, as nearly as possible, the state of the young woman’s mind at this time.