pride which prevents us from adapting ourselves to the conditions of universal life, an abuse of self-analysis which opens up our wounds again and makes them bleed, the wild imagination which presents to our eyes the deceptive mirage of Promised Lands from which we are ever exiles.  Lelia personifies, in her turn, the “mal du siecle.”  Stenio reproaches her with only singing grief and doubt.  “How many, times,” he says, “have you appeared to me as typical of the indescribable suffering in which mankind is plunged by the spirit of inquiry!  With your beauty and your sadness, your world-weariness and your scepticism, do you not personify the excess of grief produced by the abuse of thought?” He then adds:  “There is a great deal of pride in this grief, Lelia!” It was undoubtedly a malady, for Lelia had no reason to complain of life any more than her brothers in despair.  It is simply that the general conditions of life which all people have to accept seem painful to them.  When we are well the play of our muscles is a joy to us, but when we are ill we feel the very weight of the atmosphere, and our eyes are hurt by the pleasant daylight.

When Lelia appeared George Sand’s old friends were stupefied.  “What, in Heaven’s name, is this?” wrote Jules Neraud, the Malgache. “Where have you been in search of this?  Why have you written such a book?  Where has it sprung from, and what is it for? . . .  This woman is a fantastical creature.  She is not at all like you.  You are lively and can dance a jig; you can appreciate butterflies and you do not despise puns.  You sew and can make jam very well."(18)

     (18) Histoire de ma vie.

It certainly was not her portrait.  She was healthy and believed in life, in the goodness of things and in the future of humanity, just as Victor Hugo and Dumas pere, those other forces of Nature, did, at about the same time.  A soul foreign to her own had entered into her, and it was the romantic soul.  With the magnificent power of receptivity which she possessed, George Sand welcomed all the winds which came to her from the four quarters of romanticism.  She sent them back with unheard-of fulness, sonorous depth and wealth of orchestration.  From that time forth a woman’s voice could be heard, added to all the masculine voices which railed against life, and the woman’s voice dominated them all!

In George Sand’s psychological evolution, Lelia is just this:  the beginning of the invasion of her soul by romanticism.  It was a borrowed individuality, undoubtedly, but it was not something to be put on and off at will like a mask.  It adhered to the skin.  It was all very fine for George Sand to say to Sainte-Beuve:  “Do not confuse the man himself with the suffering. . . .  And do not believe in all my satanical airs. . . .  This is simply a style that I have taken on, I assure you. . . .”

Sainte-Beuve had every reason to be alarmed, and the confessor was quite right in his surmises.  The crisis of romanticism had commenced.  It was to take an acute form and to reach its paroxysm during the Venice escapade.  It is from this point of view that we will study the famous episode, which has already been studied by so many other writers.