It is now necessary that the reader should be made acquainted with Madame Dudevant, better known by her literary name, George Sand, whose coming on the scene has already been announced in the preceding chapter.  The character of this lady is so much a matter of controversy, and a correct estimate of it so essential for the right understanding of the important part she plays in the remaining portion of Chopin’s life, that this long chapter—­an intermezzo, a biography in a biography—­will not be regarded as out of place or too lengthy.  If I begin far off, as it were before the beginning, I do so because the pedigree has in this case a peculiar significance.

The mother of George Sand’s father was the daughter of the Marschal de Saxe (Count Maurice of Saxony, natural son of August the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and the Countess Maria Aurora von Konigsmark) and the dame de l’opera, Mdlle. de Verrieres, whose real name was Madame de la Riviere, nee Marie Rinteau.  This daughter, Marie Aurore, married at the age of fifteen Comte de Home, a natural son of Louis XV., who died soon after; and fifteen years later she condescended to accept the hand of M. Dupin de Francueil, receveur general, who, although of an old and well-connected family, did not belong to the high nobility.  The curious may read about Mdlle. de Verrieres in the “Memoires” of Marmontel, who was one of her many lovers, and about M. Dupin, his father, mother-in-law, first wife &c., in Rousseau’s “Confessions,” where, however, he is always called De Francueil.  Notwithstanding the disparity of age, the husband being twice as old as his wife, the marriage of M. Dupin and the Comtesse de Home proved to be a very happy one.  They had one child, a son, Maurice Francois Elisabeth Dupin.  He entered the army in 1798, and two years later, in the course of the Italian campaign, became first lieutenant and then aide-de-camp to General Dupont.

In Italy and about the same time Maurice Dupin saw and fell in love with Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, the daughter of a Paris bird-seller, who had been a supernumerary at some small theatre, and whose youth, as George Sand delicately expresses it, “had by the force of circumstances been exposed to the most frightful hazards.”  Sacrificing all the advantages she was then enjoying, she followed Maurice Dupin to France.  From this liaison sprang several children, all of whom, however, except one, died very young.  A month before the birth of her in whom our interest centres, Maurice Dupin married Sophie Delaborde.  The marriage was a civil one and contracted without the knowledge of his mother, who was opposed to this union less on account of Sophie’s plebeian origin than of her doubtful antecedents.