Part 34 (2/2)

Whether or not Mo's relations with Sainte-Beuve justified the latter even in thinking such thoughts as these, one need not inquire too er be the friend of the man who almost openly boasted that he had dishonored hio and Sainte-Beuve Their inti more serious than this Sainte-Beuve had in fact succeeded in leaving a taint upon the nao did not repudiate her h-spirited, sensitive soul like Hugo's could never forget that in the world's eye she was coether as before; but now the poet felt hie-bond

It may perhaps be doubted whether he would in any case have remained faithful all his life He was, as Mr HW Wack well says, ”a man of powerful sensations, physically as well as o pursued every opportunity for neork, new sensations, fresh eer foray as his great nature craved His range in all things-mental, physical, and spiritual-was so far beyond the ordinary that the gage of average cannot be applied to him The cavil of the moralist did not disturb hiht have broken through the bonds of marital fidelity, even had Sainte-Beuve never written his abnormal poems; but certainly these poems hastened a result which er turned wholly to the dark-haired, dark-eyed Adele as su up for him the whole of womanhood A veil was drawn, as it were, from before his eyes, and he looked on other women and found theo's play ”Lucrece Borgia” had been accepted for production, that a lady called one o's house in the Place Royale She was then between twenty and thirty years of age, slight of figure, winso, and one who knew the arts which appeal to enue The na-card was ”Mme Drouet”; and by this naifted actress Theophile Gautier, whose cult was the worshi+p of physical beauty, wrote in almost lyric prose of her seductive charm

At nineteen, after she had been cast upon the world, dowered with that terrible combination, poverty and beauty, she had lived openly with a sculptor named Pradier This has a certain importance in the history of French art Pradier had received a co-the statue which stands to-day in the Place de la Concorde, and which patriotic French and half bury in i was French, but which to-day is Gerreat prizes taken in the war of 1870

Five years before her o, Pradier had rather brutally severed his connection with her, and she had accepted the protection of a Russian nobleman At this time she was known by her real nae, she assumed the appellation by which she was thereafter known, that of Juliette Drouet

Her visit to Hugo was for the purpose of asking hi play The dra, but unfortunately all the major characters had been provided for, and he was able to offer her only thedeference hich she accepted the offered part attracted Hugo's attention Such aeain; and he did so, tihly captivated by her

She knew her value, and as yet was by no means infatuated with hi on in her profession-siht to bear upon him the arts at her command, her beauty and her sympathy, and, last of all, her passionate abandono was overwheled to see that her debts were paid He secured her other engageh she was less successful as an actress after she knew him There came, for a time, a short break in their relations; for, partly out of need, she returned to her Russian nobleo underwent for a second tireat disillusionment Nevertheless, he was not too proud to return to her and to beg her not to be unfaithful anyhis future faave her promise, and she kept it until her death, nearly half a century later

Perhaps because she had deceived hio never completely lost his prudence in his association with her He was by no means lavish with money, and he installed her in a rather siave her an allowance that was relatively sh later he provided for her aht all his confidences, to her he entrusted all his interests She became to him, thenceforth, e; for she was his friend, and, as he said, his inspiration

The fact of their intih Paris It was known even to M the affair of Sainte-Beuve, or knowing how difficult it is to check the will of a n, and even received Juliette Drouet in her own house and visited her in turn When the poet's sons grew up to manhood, they, too, spent many hours with their father in the little salon of the forlo-Saxon iveson Hugo's manner of life

In 1851, when Napoleon III seized upon the governer of arrest, she assisted hied passport, across the Belgian frontier During his long exile in Guernsey she lived in the sao died in 1868, having known for thirty-three years that she was only second in her husband's thoughts Was she doing penance, or was shethe inevitable? In any case, her position was h she uttered no conant picture of her just before her death has been given by the pen of a visitor in Guernsey He hadenoroblets of red wine at dinner, and he had also watched hi and splashi+ng about in a bath-tub on the top of his house, in view of all the town One evening he called and found only M on a couch, and was evidently suffering great pain Surprised, he asked where were her husband and her sons

”Oh,” she replied, ”they've all gone to M and enjoy the here”

One ponders over this sad scene with conflicting thoughts Was there really any truth in the story at which Sainte-Beuve o was more than punished The other woo's wife; and hence perhaps it was right that she should suffer less Suffer she did; for after her devotion to Hugo had becoue with a girl who is spoken of as ”Claire” The knowledge of it caused her infinite anguish, but it all ca after the death of Mo She died only a short tinificent obsequies which an ee, Juliette Drouet became very white and very wan; yet she never quite lost the charo

The story has many aspects One may see in it a retribution, or one arded sienius

THE STORY OF GEORGE SAND

To the student of fey there is no more curious and coifted French writer best known to the world as George Sand

To analyze this wo, difficult task She wrote voluminously, with a fluid rather than a fluent pen She scandalized her contemporaries by her theories, and by the way in which she applied them in her novels Her fiction made her, in the history of French literature, second only to Victor Hugo She e and erated beyond the li men and women, whose instincts and desires she understands, and whom she makes us see precisely as if ere ade Sand puzzles us most by peculiarities which it is difficult for us to reconcile She seemed to have no sense of chastity whatever; yet, on the other hand, she was not grossly sensual She possessed the ree, and liked better to be a ht For she did seek men's love, frankly and shamelessly, only to tire of it In many cases she seems to have been swayed by vanity, and by a love of conquest, rather than by passion She had also a spiritual, iinative side to her nature, and she could be a far better coiven to this strange genius at birth was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin The circumstances of her ancestry and birth were quite unusual Her father was a lieutenant in the French arhter of Marshal Saxe, as hi of Poland and of the bewitching Countess of Konigsth of character, eroticise, and recklessness

Her father co suddenly a Parisian of the lower classes, a bird-fancier nahter, as born in 1804, used afterward to boast that on one side she was sprung frohter of the people, able, therefore, to understand the sentiments of the aristocracy and of the children of the soil, or even of the gutter

She was fond of telling, also, of the omen which attended on her birth Her father and mother were at a country dance in the house of a fellow officer of Dupin's Suddenly Mht of this, and the dance went on In less than an hour, Dupin was called aside and told that his wife had just given birth to a child It was the child's aunt who brought the neith the joyous co the roses and to the sound of music”

This was at the time of the Napoleonic wars Lieutenant Dupin was on the staff of Prince Murat, and little Aurore, as she was called, at the age of three accompanied the army, as did her , veteran regieants nursed her and petted her Even the prince took notice of her; and to please hireen uniform of a hussar