Page:The Galaxy (New York, Sheldon & Co.) Volume 24 (1877).djvu/51

 GEORGE SAND.

the eulogies and dissertations called forth by the death of the great writer who shared with Victor Hugo the honor of literary preeminence in France, quite the most valuable was the short notice published in the "Journal des Debats," by M. Taine. In this notice the apostle of the "milieu" and the "moment" very justly remarked that George Sand is an exceptionally good case for the study of the pedigree of a genius—for ascertaining the part of prior generations in forming one of those minds which shed back upon them the light of glory. What renders Mme. Sand so available an example of the operation of heredity is the fact that the process went on very publicly, as one may say; that her ancestors were people of qualities at once very strongly marked and very abundantly recorded. The record has been kept in a measure by George Sand herself. When she was fifty years old she wrote her memoirs, and in this prolix and imperfect but extremely entertaining work a large space is devoted to the heroine's parents and grandparents.

It was a very picturesque pedigree—quite an ideal pedigree for a romancer. Mme. Sand's great-grandfather was the Marshal Maurice de Saxe, one of the very few generals in the service of Louis XV. who tasted frequently of victory. Maurice de Saxe was a royal bastard, the 'son of Augustus II., surnamed the Strong,; Elector of Saxony and King of Po land, and of a brilliant mistress, Aurore de Königsmark. The victories of the Marechal de Saxe were not confined to the battlefield; one of his conquests was an agreeable actress, much before the Parisian public. This lady became the mother of Mme. Sand's grandmother, who was honorably brought up and married at a very early age to the Count de Horn. The Count de Horn shortly died, and his widow, after an interval, accepted the hand of M. Dupin de Francueil, a celebrity and a very old man. M. Dupin was one of the brilliant figures in Paris society during the period immediately preceding the Revolution. He had a large fortune, and he too was a conqueror. A sufficiently elaborate portrait of him may be found in that interesting if disagreeable book, the "Memoires" of Mme. d'Epinay. This clever lady had been one of his spoils of victory. Old enough to be his wife's grandfather, he survived his marriage but a few years, and died with all his illusions intact, on the eve of the Revolution, leaving to Mme. Dupin an only son. His wife outweathered the tempest, which, however, swept away her fortune; though she was able to buy a small property in the country—the rustic Château de Nohant, which George Sand has so often introduced into her writings. Here she settled herself with her son, a boy of charming promise, who was in due time drawn into the ranks of Napoleon's conquering legions. Young Dupin became an ardent Bonapartist and an accomplished soldier. He won rapid promotion. In one of the so-called "glorious" Italian campaigns he met a young girl who had followed the army from Paris, from a personal interest in one of its officers; and falling very honestly in love with her, he presently married her, to the extreme chagrin of his mother. This young girl, the daughter of a bird-catcher, and, as George Sand calls her, an "enfant du vieux pavé de Paris," became the mother of the great writer. She was a child of the people and a passionate democrat, and in the person of her daughter we see the confluence of a plebeian stream with a strain no less (in spite of its irregularity)