the children of Madame Sand [who, by the way, were a man of twenty-three and a woman of eighteen] said to him [Chopin], pointing to the novel: "M. Chopin, do you know that you are meant by the Prince Karol?"…In spite of all this the invalid, and therefore less passionate, artist bore with the most painful feeling the mortification caused him by the novel…At the beginning of the year 1847 George Sand brought about by a violent scene, the innocent cause of which was her daughter, a complete rupture. To the unjust reproaches which she made to him, he merely replied: "I shall immediately leave your house, and wish henceforth no longer to be regarded by you as living." These words were very welcome to her; she made no objections, and the very same day the artist left for ever the house of Madame Sand. But the excitement and the mental distress connected with it threw him once more on the sick- bed, and for a long time people seriously feared that he would soon exchange it for a coffin.
George Sand's view of the Lucrezia Floriani incident must be given in full. In Ma Vie she writes as follows:—
It has been pretended that in one of my romances I have painted his [Chopin's] character with a great exactness of analysis. People were mistaken, because they thought they recognised some of his traits; and, proceeding by this system, too convenient to be sure, Liszt himself, in a Life of Chopin, a little exuberant as regards style, but nevertheless full of very good things and very beautiful pages, has gone astray in good faith. I have traced in Prince Karol the character of a man determined in his nature, exclusive in his sentiments, exclusive in his exigencies.
Chopin was not such. Nature does not design like art, however realistic it may be. She has caprices, inconsequences, probably not real, but very mysterious. Art only rectifies these inconsequences because it is too limited to reproduce them.
Chopin was a resume of these magnificent inconsequences which God alone can allow Himself to create, and which have their particular logic. He was modest on principle, gentle by habit, but he was imperious by instinct and full of a legitimate pride which was unconscious of itself. Hence sufferings which he did not reason and which did not fix themselves on a determined object.
Moreover, Prince Karol is not an artist. He is a dreamer, and nothing more; having no genius, he has not the rights of genius. He is, therefore, a personage more true than amiable, and the portrait is so little that of a great artist that Chopin, in reading the manuscript every day on my writing- desk, had not the slightest inclination to deceive himself, he who, nevertheless, was so suspicious.
And yet afterwards, by reaction, he imagined, I am told, that this was the case. Enemies (I had such about him who call themselves his friends; as if embittering a suffering heart was not murder, enemies made him believe that this romance was a revelation of his character. At that time his memory was, no doubt, enfeebled: he had forgotten the book, why did he not reread it!
This history is so little ours! It was the very reverse of it There were between us neither the same raptures [enivrements] nor the same sufferings. Our history had nothing of a romance; its foundation was too simple and too serious for us ever to have had occasion for a quarrel with each other, a propos of each other.
The arguments advanced by George Sand are anything but convincing; in fact, her defence is extremely weak. She does not even tell us that she did not make use of Chopin as a model. That she drew a caricature and not a portrait will hardly be accepted as an excuse, nay, is sure to be regarded as the very head and front of her offending. But George Sand had extraordinarily naive notions on this subject, notions which are not likely to be shared by many, at least not by many outside the fraternities of novelists and dramatists. Having mentioned, in speaking of her grand-uncle the Abbe de Beaumont, that she thought of him when sketching the portrait of a certain canon in Consuelo, and that she had very much exaggerated the resemblance to meet the requirements of the romance, she remarks that portraits traced in this way are no longer portraits, and that those who feel offended on recognising themselves do an injustice both to the author and themselves. "Caricature or idealisation," she writes, "it is no longer the original model, and this model has little judgment if it thinks it recognises itself, if it becomes angry or vain on seeing what art or imagination has been able to make of it." This is turning the tables with a vengeance; and if impudence can silence the voice of truth and humanity, George Sand has gained her case. In her account of the Lucrezia Floriani incident George Sand proceeds as usual when she is attacked and does not find it more convenient simply to declare that she will not condescend to defend herself—namely, she envelops the whole matter in a mist of beautiful words and sentiments out of which issues—and this is the only clearly-distinguishable thing—her own saintly self in celestial radiance. But notwithstanding all her arguments and explanations there remains the fact that Liszt and thousands of others, I one of them, read Lucrezia Floriani and were not a moment in doubt that Chopin was the prototype of Prince Karol. We will not charge George Sand with the atrocity of writing the novel for the purpose of getting rid of Chopin; but we cannot absolve her from the sin of being regardless of the pain she would inflict on one who once was dear to her, and who still loved her ardently. Even Miss Thomas, [FOOTNOTE: In George Sand, a volume of the "Eminent Women Series.">[ who generally takes George Sand at her own valuation, and in this case too tries to excuse her, admits that in Lucrezia Floriani there was enough of reality interwoven to make the world hasten to identify or confound Chopin with Prince Karol, that Chopin, the most sensitive of mortals, could not but be pained by the inferences which would be drawn, that "perhaps if only as a genius he had the right to be spared such an infliction," and that, therefore, "one must wish it could have appeared in this light to Madame Sand." This is a mild way of expressing disapproval of conduct that shows, to say the least, an inhuman callousness to the susceptibilities of a fellow-being. And to speak of the irresistible prompting of genius in connection with one who had her faculties so well under her control is downright mockery. It would, however, be foolish to expect considerateness for others in one who needlessly detailed and proclaimed to the world not only the little foibles but also the drunkenness and consequent idiocy and madness of a brother whose family was still living. Her practice was, indeed, so much at variance with her profession that it is preposterous rather to accept than to doubt her words. George Sand was certainly not the self-sacrificing woman she pretended to be; for her sacrifices never outlasted her inclinations, they were, indeed, nothing else than an abandonment to her desires. And these desires were the directors of her reason, which, aided by an exuberant imagination, was never at a loss to justify any act, be it ever so cruel and abject. In short, the chief characteristic of George Sand's moral constitution was her incapacity of regarding anything she did otherwise than as right. What I have said is fully borne out by her Ma Vie and the "Correspondance," which, of course, can be more easily and safely examined than her deeds and spoken words.
And now we will continue our investigations of the causes and circumstances of the rupture. First I shall quote some passages from letters written by George Sand, between which will be inserted a note from Chopin to her. If the reader does not see at once what several of these quotations have to do with the matter under discussion, he will do so before long.