Dark and olive-complexioned Lelia! [writes Liszt] thou hast walked in solitary places, sombre as Lara, distracted as Manfred, rebellious as Cain, but more fierce [farouche], more pitiless, more inconsolable than they, because thou hast found among the hearts of men none feminine enough to love thee as they have been loved, to pay to thy virile charms the tribute of a confiding and blind submission, of a silent and ardent devotion, to suffer his allegiance to be protected by thy Amazonian strength!

The enthusiasm with which the Poles of her acquaintance spoke of their countrywomen, and the amorous suavity, fulness of feeling, and spotless nobleness which she admired in the Polish composer’s inspirations, seem to have made her anticipate, even before meeting Chopin, that she would find in him her ideal lover, one whose love takes the form of worship.  To quote Liszt’s words:  “She believed that there, free from all dependence, secure against all inferiority, her role would rise to the fairy-like power of some being at once the superior and the friend of man.  “Were it not unreasonable to regard spontaneous utterances—­ expressions of passing moods and fancies, perhaps mere flights of rhetoric—­as well-considered expositions of stable principles, one might be tempted to ask:  Had George Sand found in Chopin the man who was “bold or vile enough” to accept her “hard and clear” conditions? [Footnote:  See extract from one of her letters in the preceding chapter, Vol.  I., p. 334.]

While the ordinary position of man and woman was entirely reversed in this alliance, the qualities which characterised them can nevertheless hardly ever have been more nearly diametrically opposed.  Chopin was weak and undecided; George Sand strong and energetic.  The former shrank from inquiry and controversy; the latter threw herself eagerly into them. [Footnote:  George Sand talks much of the indolence of her temperament:  we may admit this fact, but must not overlook another one—­namely, that she was in possession of an immense fund of energy, and was always ready to draw upon it whenever speech or action served her purpose or fancy.] The one was a strict observer of the laws of propriety and an almost exclusive frequenter of fashionable society; the other, on the contrary, had an unmitigated scorn for the so-called proprieties and so-called good society.  Chopin’s manners exhibited a studied refinement, and no woman could be more particular in the matter of dress than he was.  It is characteristic of the man that he was so discerning a judge of the elegance and perfection of a female toilette as to be able to tell at a glance whether a dress had been made in a first-class establishment or in an inferior one.  The great composer is said to have had an unlimited admiration for a well-made and well-carried (bien porte) dress.  Now what a totally different picture presents itself when we turn to George Sand, who says of herself, in speaking of her girlhood, that although never boorish or importunate, she was always brusque in her movements and natural in her manners, and had a horror of gloves and profound bows.  Her fondness for male garments is as characteristic as Chopin’s connoisseurship of the female toilette; it did not end with her student life, for she donned them again in 1836 when travelling in Switzerland.