Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/104

94 reconciliation—for the existing partial estrangement had been discovered to be more unbearable than all besides—led to stormy scenes and violent discord, and resulted before very long in mutual avoidance, which was to be final. It is said that forgiveness is the property of the injured, and it should be remembered that whenever De Musset's name is mentioned by George Sand it is with the admiring respect of one to whom his genius made that name sacred, and who refused to the end of his life to use the easy weapon offered her by his notorious frailties for vindicating herself at his expense. And, however pernicious the much-talked of effect on De Musset's mind, it is but fair to the poet to recollect that it is no less true of him than of George Sand that his best work, that with which his fame has come chiefly to associate itself, was accomplished after this painful experience.

Into her own mental state—possibly at this time the least enviable of the two—we get some glimpses in the Lettres d'un Voyageur of the autumn 1834, and winter 1834–35. Here, again, we should be content with gathering a general impression, and not ingenuously read literal facts in all the self-accusations and recorded experiences of the voyageur—a semi-fictitious personage whose improvisations were, after all, only a fresh exercise which George Sand had invented for her imagination—taking herself and reality for a starting-point merely, a suggestive theme.