Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/66

56 required to give way was certainly complete enough. The beginning of July found her back at work in the capital. On the Quai St. Michel—a portion of the Seine embankment facing the towers of Notre Dame the Sainte Chapelle, and other picturesque monuments of ancient Paris—she had now definitely installed herself in modest lodgings on a fifth story. Accepted and treated as a comrade by a little knot of fellow literati and colleagues on the Figaro, two of whom—Jules Sandeau and Félix Pyat—were from Berry, like herself; and with Delatouche, also a Berrichon, for their head-master, she served thus singularly her brief apprenticeship to literature and experience;—sharing with the rest both their studies and their relaxations, dining with them at cheap restaurants, frequenting clubs, studios, and theatres of every degree; the youthful effervescence of her student-friends venting itself in such collegians' pranks as parading deserted quarters of the town by moonlight, in the small hours, chaunting lugubrious strains to astonish the shopkeepers. The only great celebrity whose acquaintance she had made was Balzac, himself the prince of eccentrics. Although he did not encourage Madame Dudevant's literary ambition, he showed himself kindly disposed towards her and her young friends, and she gives some amusing instances that came under her notice of his oddities. Thus once after a little Bohemian dinner at his lodgings in