"My poor Eugène!" she began; "I am afraid I have got sad news for you."
"Oh, indeed," said Delacroix, without interrupting his work, and just giving her one of his cordial smiles in guise of welcome.
"Yes, my dear friend, I have carefully consulted my own heart, and the upshot is, I am grieved to tell you, that I feel I cannot and could never love you."
Delacroix kept on painting. "Is that a fact?" he said.
"Yes, and I ask you once more to pardon me, and to give me credit for my candour—my poor Delacroix."
Delacroix did not budge from his easel.
"You are angry with me, are you not? You will never forgive me?"
"Certainly I will. Only I want you to keep quiet for ten minutes; I have got a bit of sky there which has caused me a good deal of trouble, it is just coming right. Go and sit down or else take a little walk, and come back in ten minutes."
Of course, George Sand did not return; and equally, of course, did not tell the story to any one, but somehow it leaked out. Perhaps Jenny Leguillou had overheard the scene—she was quite capable of listening behind a screen or door—and reporting it. Delacroix himself, when "chaffed" about it, never denied it. There was no need for him to do so, because theoretically it redounded to the lady's honour; had she not rejected his advances?
I have noted it here to prove that the poetry of Delacroix n'allait pas se faufiler dans les jupons, because, though we would not take it for granted that where George Sand failed others would have succeeded, it is nevertheless an authenticated fact that only one other man among the many on whom she tried her wiles remained proof against them. That man was Prosper Mérimée, the author of "Colomba" and "Carmen," the friend of Panizzi. "Quand je fais un roman, je choisis mon sujet; je ne veux pas que l'on me découpe pour en faire un. Madame Sand ne met pas ses amants dans son cœur, elle les mets dans ses livres; et elle le fait si diablement vite qu'on n'a pas le temps de la devancer." Mérimée was right, each of George Sand's earlier books had been written with the heart's blood of one of the victims of her insatiable passions—for I should not like to prostitute the word "love" to her liaisons; and I am glad to think that Eugène Delacroix was spared that ordeal. It would have killed him; and the painter of "Sardanapale" was more precious to his own art than to hers, which, with all due deference to eminent critics, left an unpleasant sensation to those who were fortunate enough to be free from incipient hysteria.