George Sand, in whose life nothing was commonplace, was born in Paris, “in the midst of roses, to the sound of music,” at a dance which her mother had somewhat rashly attended, on the 5th of July, 1804.  Her maiden name was Armentine Lucile Aurore Dupin, and her ancestry was of a romantic character.  She was, in fact, of royal blood, being the great-grand-daughter of the Marshal Maurice du Saxe and a Mlle. Verriere; her grandfather was M. Dupin de Francueil, the charming friend of Rousseau and Mme. d’Epinay; her father, Maurice Dupin, was a gay and brilliant soldier, who married the pretty daughter of a bird-fancier, and died early.  She was a child of the people on her mother’s side, an aristocrat on her father’s.  In 1807 she was taken by her father, who was on Murat’s staff, into Spain, from which she returned to the house of her grandmother, at Nohant in Berry.  This old lady adopted Aurore at the death of her father, in 1808.  Of her childhood George Sand has given a most picturesque account in her “Histoire de ma Vie.”  In 1817 the girl was sent to the Convent of the English Augustinians in Paris, where she passed through a state of religious mysticism.  She returned to Nohant in 1820, and soon threw off her pietism in the outdoor exercises of a wholesome country life.  Within a few months, Mme. Dupin de Francueil died at a great age, and Aurore was tempted to return to Paris.  Her relatives, however, were anxious that she should not do this, and they introduced to her the natural son of a retired colonel, the Baron Dudevant, whom, in September, 1822, she married.  She brought him to live with her at Nohant, and she bore him two sons, Maurice and Solange, and a daughter.  She quickly perceived, as her own intellectual nature developed, that her boorish husband was unsuited to her, but their early years of married life were not absolutely intolerable.  In 1831, however, she could endure him no longer, and an amicable separation was agreed upon.  She left M. Dudevant at Nohant, resigning her fortune, and proceeded to Paris, where she was hard pressed to find a living.  She endeavoured, without success, to paint the lids of cigar-boxes, and in final desperation, under the influence of Jules Sandeau—­who became her lover, and who invented the pseudonym of George Sand for her—­she turned her attention to literature.  Her earliest work was to help Sandeau in the composition of his novel, “Rose et Blanche” Her first independent novel, “Indiana,” appeared at the close of 1831, and her second, “Valentine,” two months later.  These books produced a great and immediate sensation, and she felt that she had found her vocation.  In 1833 she produced “Lebia”; in 1834 the “Lettres d’un Voyageur” and “Jacques”; in 1835 “Andre” and “Leone Leoni.”  After this her works become too numerous and were produced with too monotonous a regularity to be chronicled here.  But it should be said that “Mauprat” was written in 1836 at Nohant, while she was pleading