Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/201

Rh under a ban, and whose very name they held in devout abhorrence. She inherited from her father a taste for acting, which she transmitted to her children. We have seen her, during her literary novitiate in Paris, a studious observer at all theatres, from the classic boards of the Français, down to the lowliest of popular stages, the Funambules, where reigned at that time a real artist in pantomime, Débureau. His Pierrot, a sort of modified Pulcinello, was renowned, and attracted more fastidious critics to his audience than the Paris artisans whose idol he was. Since then Madame Sand had numbered among her personal friends such leading dramatic celebrities as Madame Dorval, Bocage, and Pauline Garcia. "I like actors," she says playfully, "which has scandalised some austere people. I have also been found fault with for liking the peasantry. Among these I have passed my life, and as I found them so have I described them. As these, in the light of the sun, give us our daily bread for our bodies, so those, by gaslight, give us our daily bread of fiction, so needful to the wearied spirit, troubled by realities." Peasants and players seem to be the types of humanity farthest removed from each other, and it is worthy of remark that George Sand was equally successful in her presentation of both.

Her preference for originality and spontaneity before all other qualities in a dramatic artist, was characteristic of herself, though not of her nation. Thus it was that