Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/45

Rh formed whilst on this visit was one that decided her future.

M. Casimir Dudevant was a young man on terms of intimacy with her hosts, the Duplessis family. From the first he was struck by Mdlle. Dupin, who on his further acquaintance was not otherwise than pleased with him. The sequel, before long, came in an offer of marriage on his part, which she accepted with the approval of her friends.

He was seven-and-twenty, had served in the army, and studied for the law; but had expectations which promised an independence. His father. Colonel Dudevant, a landed proprietor in Gascony, whose marriage had proved childless, had acknowledged Casimir, though illegitimate, and made him his heir. It was reckoned not a brilliant parti for the châtelaine of Nohant, but a perfectly eligible one. It was not a mariage de convenance; the young people had chosen freely. Still less was it a love match. Romantic sentiment—counted out of place in such arrangements by the society they belonged to—seems not to have been dreamed of on either side. But they had arranged it for themselves, which to Aurore would naturally seem, as indeed it was, an improvement on the usual mode of procedure, according to which the burden of choice would have rested with her guardians. It was a mariage de raison founded, as she and he believed, on mutual friendliness; in reality on a total and fatal ignorance of each other's