Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/97

Rh And the spring's delights on the Alpine borders of Lombardy are described by her, con amore, in the promised letters:—

None of these excursions, however, were ever carried very far. For the next three months she remained almost entirely stationary at Venice, her head-quarters. She had taken apartments for herself in the interior of the city, in a little low-built house, along the narrow, green, and yet limpid canal, close to the Ponte dei Barcaroli. "There," she tells us, "alone all the afternoon, never going out except in the evening for a breath of air, working at night as well, to the song of the tame nightingales that people all Venetian balconies, I wrote André, Jacques, Mattea, and the first Lettres d'un Voyageur."

None can read the latter and suppose that the suffering of the recent parting was all on one side. The poet continued to correspond with her, and the