Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/57

Rh had secured for him the care and services o£ M. Boucoiran, whom she thoroughly trusted.

Her husband was to allow her £120 a year out of her fortune, and on condition that the allowance should not be exceeded, he left her at liberty to get on as she chose, abstaining from further interference.

It seems obvious that this compromise, whilst postponing, could only render more inevitable a future separation on less amicable terms, though neither appears to have realised it at the time. Madame Dudevant can have had no motive to blind her in the matter beyond her desire, in detaching herself from her present position, not to disconnect her life from that of her children. The freedom she demanded it was probably too late to deny. Those about her, her husband and M. Châtiron who, with his family, was temporarily domesticated at Nohant, and who so far supported her as to offer her the loan of rooms held by him in Paris, for the first part of her stay, thought her resolution but a caprice. And viewed by the light of her subsequent success it is hard now to realise the boldness of an undertaking whose consequences, had it failed, must have been humiliating and disastrous. She had no practical knowledge of the world, had received no artistic training, and enjoyed none of the advantages of intellectual society. But she had extraordinary courage, spirit, and energy, springing no doubt from a latent sense of extraordinary powers, almost matured, though as yet