Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/218

208 her hand, if not her heart, on another, is an exhibition of feminine inconsequence which no amount of previous misconduct on the part other lover, Laurent, can justify. Further Therèse is self-deceived in supposing her passion to have died out with her esteem. She breaks with the culprit, and engages her word to a worthier man. But enough remains over of the past to prevent her from keeping the promise she ought never to have made. When she sacrifices her unselfish friend to return to the lover who has made her miserable, she is sincere, but not heroic. She is too weak to shake off the influence of the fatal infatuation and shut out Laurent from her life, nor yet can she accept her heart's choice for better or worse, even when experience has left her little to learn with regard to Laurent. Clearly both friend and lover, out of a novel, would feel wronged. Therèse's excuse lies in the extremely trying character of her companion, whose vagaries may be supposed to have driven her beside herself at times, just as her airs of superiority and mute reproach may have driven him not a little mad. Those who wish to know in what spirit Madame Sand met the attacks upon her provoked by this book, will find her reply in a very few words at the conclusion of her preface to Jean de la Roche, published the same year.

Most readers of Elle et Lui have been so preoccupied with the question of the rights and wrongs of the originals in their behaviour to each other, so inclined