Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/152

142 sympathy so easily accorded to their weaker fellow-creatures nowhere ready for them. The exclamation wrung from one of the characters in a later work of Madame Sand's may be but a faithful echo of the cry of her own nature in some moment of mental torment. "Let me be weak; I have been seeming to be strong for so long a time!"

Chopin, though the study of his genius had freshly inspired her own and greatly extended her comprehension of musical art, was a being to whom the burden of his own life was too painful to allow him to lighten the troubles of another; a partial invalid, a prey to nervous irritation, he was dependent on her to soothe and cheer him at the best of times, and to be nurse and secretary besides when he was prostrated by illness or despondency. One is loth to call selfish a nature so attractive in its refinement, so unhappy in its over-susceptibility. But it is obvious that such a one might easily become a trial to those he loved. With all its vigour her nervous system could not escape the exhaustion and disturbance that attend on incessant brain-work. "Those who have nothing to do," she remarks, "when they see artists produce with facility, are ready to wonder at how few hours, how few instants, these can reserve for themselves. For such do not know how these gymnastics of the imagination, if they do not affect your health, yet leave an excitation of your nerves, an obsession of mental pictures, a