One of her companions in this sort of hand-to-mouth journalism was a young student and writer named Jules Sandeau, a man seven years younger than his comrade.  He was at that time as indigent as she, and their hardships, shared in common, brought them very close together.  He was clever, boyish, and sensitive, and it was not long before he had fallen at her feet and kissed her knees, begging that she would requite the love he felt for her.  According to herself, she resisted him for six months, and then at last she yielded.  The two made their home together, and for a while were wonderfully happy.  Their work and their diversions they enjoyed in common, and now for the first time she experienced emotions which in all probability she had never known before.

Probably not very much importance is to be given to the earlier flirtations of George Sand, though she herself never tried to stop the mouth of scandal.  Even before she left her husband, she was credited with having four lovers; but all she said, when the report was brought to her, was this:  “Four lovers are none too many for one with such lively passions as mine.”

This very frankness makes it likely that she enjoyed shocking her prim neighbors at Nohant.  But if she only played at love-making then, she now gave herself up to it with entire abandonment, intoxicated, fascinated, satisfied.  She herself wrote: 

How I wish I could impart to you this sense of the intensity and joyousness of life that I have in my veins.  To live!  How sweet it is, and how good, in spite of annoyances, husbands, debts, relations, scandal-mongers, sufferings, and irritations!  To live!  It is intoxicating!  To love, and to be loved!  It is happiness!  It is heaven!

In collaboration with Jules Sandeau, she wrote a novel called Rose et Blanche.  The two lovers were uncertain what name to place upon the title-page, but finally they hit upon the pseudonym of Jules Sand.  The book succeeded; but thereafter each of them wrote separately, Jules Sandeau using his own name, and Mme. Dudevant styling herself George Sand, a name by which she was to be illustrious ever after.

As a novelist, she had found her real vocation.  She was not yet well known, but she was on the verge of fame.  As soon as she had written Indiana and Valentine, George Sand had secured a place in the world of letters.  The magazine which still exists as the Revue des Deux Mondes gave her a retaining fee of four thousand francs a year, and many other publications begged her to write serial stories for them.

The vein which ran through all her stories was new and piquant.  As was said of her: 

In George Sand, whenever a lady wishes to change her lover, God is always there to make the transfer easy.

In other words, she preached free love in the name of religion.  This was not a new doctrine with her.  After the first break with her husband, she had made up her mind about certain matters, and wrote: