the herdsmen talked together, assembled round their fire, she listened to their wonderful stories.  These credulous country children had “seen with their own eyes” Georgeon, the evil spirit of the Black Valley.  They had also seen will-o’-the-wisps, ghosts, the “white greyhound” and the “Big Beast”!  In the evenings, she sat up listening to the stories told by the hemp-weaver.  Her fresh young soul was thus impregnated at an early age with the poetry of the country.  And it was all the poetry of the country, that which comes from things, such as the freshness of the air and the perfume of the flowers, but also that which is to be found in the simplicity of sentiments and in that candour and surprise face to face with those sights of Nature which have remained the same and have been just as incomprehensible ever since the beginning of the world.

The antagonism of the two mothers increased, though.  We will not go into detail with regard to the various episodes, but will only consider the consequences.

The first consequence was that the intelligence of the child became more keen through this duality.  Placed as she was, in these two different worlds, between two persons with minds so unlike, and, obliged as she was to go from one to the other, she learnt to understand and appreciate them both, contrasts though they were.  She had soon reckoned each of them up, and she saw their weaknesses, their faults, their merits and their advantages.

A second consequence was to increase her sensitiveness.  Each time that she left her mother, the separation was heartrending.  When she was absent from her, she suffered on account of this absence, and still more because she fancied that she would be forgotten.  She loved her mother, just as she was, and the idea that any one was hostile or despised her caused the child much silent suffering.  It was as though she had an ever-open wound.

Another consequence, and by no means the least important one, was to determine in a certain sense the immense power of sympathy within her.  For a long time she only felt a sort of awe, when with her reserved and ceremonious grandmother.  She felt nearer to her mother, as there was no need to be on ceremony with her.  She took a dislike to all those who represented authority, rules and the tyranny of custom.  She considered her mother and herself as oppressed individuals.  A love for the people sprang up in the heart of the daughter of Sophie-Victoire.  She belonged to them through her mother, and she was drawn to them now through the humiliations she underwent.  In this little enemy of reverences and of society people, we see the dawn of that instinct which, later on, was to cause her to revolt openly.  George Sand was quite right in saying, later on, that it was of no use seeking any intellectual reason as the explanation of her social preferences.  Everything in her was due to sentiment.  Her socialism was entirely the outcome of her suffering and torments as a child.