Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/150

140, and was an admirable mimic. When a boy it had been said of him that he was born to be a great actor. His capacity for facial expression was something extraordinary; he often amused his friends by imitations of fellow-musicians, reproducing their manner and gestures to the life; so well as actually on more than one occasion to take in the spectator.

Madame Sand thus gives account of the even tenor of her way, in a letter of September 1845:—

Sometimes these little outings would originate a novel, as with the Meunier d'Angibault, which she ascribes to "a walk, a discovery, a day of leisure, an hour of idleness." On a ramble with her children she came upon what she calls "a nook in a wild paradise"; a mill, whose owner had allowed everything to grow around the sluices that chose to spring up, briar and