with him than she ceased to accord with her own instincts.  Whatever they undertook, wherever they went, that sadness “without aim and name” would from time to time come over her.  Thinking that the decline of her religiousness was the cause of her lowness of spirits, she took counsel with her old confessor, the Jesuit Abbe de Premord, and even passed, with her husband’s consent, some days in the retirement of the English convent.  After staying during the spring of 1825 at Nohant, M. and Madame Dudevant set out for the south of France on July 5, the twenty-first anniversary of the latter’s birthday.  In what George Sand calls the “History of my Life,” she inserted some excerpts from a diary kept by her at this time, which throw much light on the relation that existed between wife and husband.  If only we could be sure that it is not like so much in the book the outcome of her powerful imagination!  Besides repeated complaints about her husband’s ill-humour and frequent absences, we meet with the following ominous reflections on marriage:—­

   Marriage is beautiful for lovers and useful for saints.

   Besides saints and lovers there are a great many ordinary
   minds and placid hearts that do not know love and cannot
   attain to sanctity.

Marriage is the supreme aim of love.  When love has left it, or never entered it, sacrifice remains.  This is very well for those who understand sacrifice.  The latter presupposes a measure of heart and a degree of intelligence which are not frequently to be met with.

For sacrifice there are compensations which the vulgar mind can appreciate.  The approbation of the world, the routine sweetness of custom, a feeble, tranquil, and sensible devotion that is not bent on rapturous exaltation, or money, that is to say baubles, dress, luxury—­in short, a thousand little things which make one forget that one is deprived of happiness.

The following extracts give us some glimpses which enable us to realise the situation:—­

I left rather sad. * said hard things to me, having been told by a Madame *** that I was wrong in making excursions without my husband.  I do not think that this is the case, seeing that my husband goes first, and I go where he intends to go.

My husband is one of the most intrepid of men.  He goes everywhere, and I follow him.  He turns round and rebukes me.  He says that I affect singularity.  I’ll be hanged if I think of it.  I turn round, and I see Zoe following me.  I tell her that she affects singularity.  My husband is angry because Zoe laughs.

...We quickly leave the guides and the caravan behind us.  We ride over the most fantastic roads at a gallop.  Zoe is mad with courage.  This intoxicates me, and I at once am her equal.

In addition to the above, we must read a remark suggested by certain entries in the diary:—­