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A MOTOR-FLIGHT THROUGH FRANC strange memorials of a past which explains so much in the history of George Sand, even to the tempestuous face of Solange Clésinger, looking darkly across the room at her simpering unremorseful progenitors.

Our guide, a close-capped brown-and-ruddy bonne, led us next, by circuitous passages, to the most interesting corner of the house: the little theatre contrived with artless ingenuity out of what might have been a store-room or wine-cellar. One should rather say the little theatres, however, for the mistress of revels had managed to crowd two stages into the limited space at her disposal; one, to the left, an actual scène, with "life-size" scenery for real actors, the other, facing the entrance-door, the more celebrated marionette theatre, raised a few feet from the floor, with miniature proscenium arch and curtain; just such a Puppen-theatre as Wilhelm Meister described to Marianne, with a prolixity which caused that amiable but flighty young woman to fall asleep.

Between the two stages about twenty spectators might have found seats behind the front row of hard wooden benches reserved for the [ 82 ]