Biography of George Sand | Page 7

second consequence was to increase her sensitiveness. Each time that
she left her mother, the separation was heartrending. When she was
absent from her, she suffered on account of this absence, and still more
because she fancied that she would be forgotten. She loved her mother,
just as she was, and the idea that any one was hostile or despised her
caused the child much silent suffering. It was as though she had an

ever-open wound.
Another consequence, and by no means the least important one, was to
determine in a certain sense the immense power of sympathy within her.
For a long time she only felt a sort of awe, when with her reserved and
ceremonious grandmother. She felt nearer to her mother, as there was
no need to be on ceremony with her. She took a dislike to all those who
represented authority, rules and the tyranny of custom. She considered
her mother and herself as oppressed individuals. A love for the people
sprang up in the heart of the daughter of Sophie-Victoire. She belonged
to them through her mother, and she was drawn to them now through
the humiliations she underwent. In this little enemy of reverences and
of society people, we see the dawn of that instinct which, later on, was
to cause her to revolt openly. George Sand was quite right in saying,
later on, that it was of no use seeking any intellectual reason as the
explanation of her social preferences. Everything in her was due to
sentiment. Her socialism was entirely the outcome of her suffering and
torments as a child.
Things had to come to a crisis, and the crisis was atrocious. George
Sand gives an account of the tragic scene in her Histoire de ma vie. Her
grandmother had already had one attack of paralysis. She was anxious
about Aurore's future, and wished to keep her from the influence of her
mother. She therefore decided to employ violent means to this end. She
sent for the child to her bedside, and, almost beside herself, in a
choking voice, she revealed to her all that she ought to have concealed.
She told her of Sophie-Victoire's past, she uttered the fatal word and
spoke of the child's mother as a lost woman. With Aurore's extreme
sensitiveness, it was horrible to receive such confidences at the age of
thirteen. Thirty years later, George Sand describes the anguish of the
terrible minute. "It was a nightmare," she says. "I felt choked, and it
was as though every word would kill me. The perspiration came out on
my face. I wanted to interrupt her, to get up and rush away. I did not
want to hear the frightful accusation. I could not move, though; I
seemed to be nailed on my knees, and my head seemed to be bowed
down by that voice that I heard above me, a voice which seemed to
wither me like a storm wind."

It seems extraordinary that a woman, who was in reality so
kind-hearted and so wise, should have allowed herself to be carried
away like this. Passion has these sudden and unexpected outbursts, and
we see here a most significant proof of the atmosphere of passion in
which the child had lived, and which gradually insinuated itself within
her.
Under these circumstances, Aurore's departure for the convent was a
deliverance. Until just recently, there has always been a convent in
vogue in France in which it has been considered necessary for girls in
good society to be educated. In 1817, the Couvent des Anglaises was in
vogue, the very convent which had served as a prison for the mother
and grandmother of Aurore. The three years she spent there in that "big
feminine family, where every one was as kind as God," she considered
the most peaceful and happy time of her life. The pages she devotes to
them in her Histoire de ma vie have all the freshness of an oasis. She
describes most lovingly this little world, apart, exclusive and
self-sufficing, in which life was so intense.
The house consisted of a number of constructions, and was situated in
the neighbourhood given up to convents. There were courtyards and
gardens enough to make it seem like a small village. There was also a
labyrinth of passages above and underground, just as in one of Anne
Radcliffe's novels. There were old walls overgrown with vine and
jasmine. The cock could be heard at midnight, just as in the heart of the
country, and there was a bell with a silvery tone like a woman's voice.
From her little cell, Aurore looked over the tops of the great chestnut
trees on to Paris, so that the air so necessary for the lungs of a child
accustomed to wanderings in the