Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/157

Rh period of her life, the year 1837. Of her cordiality and kindliness to those who approached her in a right spirit of sincerity and simplicity, many have spoken. For English readers we cannot do better than quote Mr. Mathew Arnold's interesting account, given in the Fortnightly, 1877, of his visit to her in August 1846. Desirous of seeing the green lanes of Berry, the rocky heaths of Bourbonnais, the descriptions of which in Valentine and Jeanne had charmed him so strongly, the traveller chose a route that brought him to within a few miles of her home:—"I addressed to Madame Sand," he tells us, "the sort of letter of which she must in her lifetime have had scores—a letter conveying to her, in bad French, the youthful and enthusiastic homage of a foreigner who had read her works with delight." She responded by inviting him to call at Nohant. He came and joined a breakfast-party that included Madame Sand and her son and daughter, Chopin, and other friends—Mr. Arnold being placed next to the hostess. He says of her:—

During the eight years of successful literary activity, lying between Madame Sand's return from Majorca and the Revolution of February 1848, the profits of her work