The winter of 1832 finds George Sand again in Paris, where she is comfortably settled; she finds herself bothered with visitors, but out of the clutches of poverty. In her apartments, she seeks her pleasure in her work and the society of her little Solange, of whom she writes at this time: "She brings me more happiness than all the rest." In a letter to her son's tutor, written December 20, 1832, she says: "I am making lots of money; I am receiving propositions from all quarters. The Revue de Paris and the Revue des Deux Mondes are fighting for my work. I finally bound myself to the latter." La Marquise had just been published, the novel having been received with great favor. Thus, within two years from the time she came to Paris to seek liberty of action and thought, wounded in her faith and affection, and her hopes entirely shattered of realizing any joy in her husband's society, George Sand had overthrown all obstacles in the path before her, and had become a distinguished personality in the world of letters.
In her next work, Lélia, written in 1833, the author's riotous imagination produced a poem—for such it is—which was regarded as another manifestation of the wide range of her faculties. The book, however, is now regarded as important chiefly from the fact that George Sand confessedly pictures herself more closely therein than in any other of her works. She writes to Monsieur François Rollinat: "This book will enable you to know the depth of my soul, and also that of your own." Again she says later, in 1836, in a letter to Mademoiselle de Chantepie: "Lélia ... contains more of my inmost self than any other book." Again, writing in 1842, she says: "Lélia is not offered as an example to be followed, but as a martyr who may arouse thoughts in his judges and executioners, those who pronounce the law, and those who execute it.... I have never preached a doctrine; I do not feel that I am intelligent enough to do so."
It was after the publication of Lélia that George Sand first became personally acquainted with Alfred de Musset, then a young man of twenty-three, but already of established fame as a dramatist and poet. That this acquaintance should have rapidly matured into a close friendship is not surprising. On her part, George Sand felt that she had encountered a soul that understood her own, while De Musset was equally enchanted with her. Before the year 1833 had closed, the two attached friends had started for Italy, full of the hope of continued mutual happiness. It is unnecessary here to trace the history of their friendship in detail; it is certain that the mental sufferings and the unsatisfied heart-cravings of George Sand had rendered her morbid. Her letters to friends, written before her journey to Italy, show that she realized too well the hollowness of society to lean upon it for guidance, or even distraction. She says, writing in July: "Of the things I hate or contemn, society is the least." To her, therefore, the companionship of De Musset must have seemed as refreshing as rain to a parched land. In speaking of the separation that followed in April, 1834, when De Musset, still very weak from a sickness, left Venice for Paris, accompanied by a Venetian physician, she writes: "We have parted, perhaps only for a few months; perhaps for ever. Only God knows what will become of my poor head and heart. I feel that I possess strength enough to live, toil, and endure." The story of this painful effort of genius to lead and ennoble genius is told with much interest in Elle et Lui (She and He), which appeared more than twenty-five years later.
The Italian journey was of immense influence on the future literary labors of the novelist. While in Venice, she worked hard in order to pay off the debt due to her publishers for the money advanced for the journey. Here she wrote André, Jacques, Mattea, and the first Lettres d'un Voyageur. Here she toiled while suffering from disappointment and consumed with longing to be with her children again. Of these works, Jacques presents her ideal of a true, loving man; whose passion is deep and exalted, whose soul faints at the prospect of faithlessness; whose self-devotion leads to abandonment of every right, even to self-destruction by suicide in order to shield the beloved woman from the disgrace of an unlawful joy and the consequences of a dishonored happiness. Of the other tales mentioned, it may be said that André offers a style quite distinct from all the author's previous works. The burden of the tale still is love, but love in a weak and docile nature, which yields to its elevating influence, only to be crushed. The early Lettres d'un Voyageur have a charm that none of the later ones possess; they tell of the journeys in the Alps and in the vicinity of the Tyrol; of the author's lonely musings in Venice; of the sorrow that weighed on her heart.
In August, George Sand was once more back in Paris, making her arrangements to visit Nohant again, which she reached before the close of the month. In describing her journey through Switzerland, she relates that she had walked three hundred and fifty leagues; yet, with all the change of scene and novelty of surroundings, a deep melancholy settled in her heart. She writes to Monsieur Boucoiran on August 31, 1834, from Nohant: "I felt that I had come to bid adieu to my birthplace, to all the memories of my youth and childhood; for you must have perceived and divined that life is hereafter hateful, even impossible, for me, and that I have seriously made up my mind to end it before long." Again, in the same letter: "I am very desirous of having a long chat with you, and of confiding to you the fulfilment of my last and sacred wishes." But the presence of friends of sympathetic natures and the care of her children served to dissipate the cloud that had settled on her mind; as she says shortly after, she was "cured, ... because, having become accustomed and resigned to my sorrows, my judgment is no longer led astray by my grief."
Affairs at Nohant for some time after her return from Italy must have added greatly to her unusual mental disturbance; she continued to reside alternately at Paris and Nohant, in accordance with the agreement made in 1830, but the arrangement was becoming irksome. Monsieur Dudevant's management of the estate that his wife had relinquished to him was anything but satisfactory, and, moreover, with the growth of her children, George Sand became increasingly anxious as to their control and care. The complete rupture between herself and De Musset, which was attended with very painful and stormy incidents, augmented her anxiety and grief during the winter of 1834-1835.
By this time, George Sand's fame had surrounded her with a large circle of friends, which included the most eminent men of the day; among them were the leaders of the various schools that contended for the mastery in matters of social progress. To them the eloquent author appeared as a much-to-be-desired ally; their theories would enjoy greater popularity if they could be presented in the entertaining and passionate language and clothed with the poetic imagery of the highly talented author of Indiana and Valentine. In the spring of the year 1835, she became acquainted with Monsieur de Lamennais whose freedom of thought and humanitarian Christianity were well suited to George Sand's predilections, and secured the approval of her intelligence, which had rebelled against the bigoted teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Hence, for a time, her genius was directed by the philosophy of this eminent teacher, and she wrote for his journal, Le Monde, an unfinished series styled Lettres à Marcie. It is not surprising that George Sand's enthusiasm should have been aroused by the liberal doctrines set forth by this liberal-minded advocate of religious and social progress. Her natural generosity, the whole experience of her life, led her to espouse his views with the fervor of a devotee; and it seems certain from her letters that her troubled mind was soothed by the righteous and humane principles which she conceived the new movement to embody. She says in her letter to Monsieur Adolphe Guéroult, dated May 6, 1835: "You are in error if you consider me more fretful now than in the past. Just the reverse, I am less so. Great men and great thoughts are constantly before me." The same correspondent appears to have taken George Sand mildly to task for her custom of appearing in men's clothes; and it may not be uninteresting to quote from her reply, as the best indication of her position as to this question. She writes: "It is better that you should not trouble yourself concerning my garments. It is a very small matter what kind of costume I wear in my study, and my friends will, I trust, respect me equally whether I wear a vest or a shift. I never appear out of doors in men's clothes without taking a stick with me; so do not feel alarmed. My fancy for wearing a frock-coat occasionally, and under certain circumstances, will not accomplish a revolution in my life."
About the same time, she made the acquaintance of the advocate Michel, of Bourges, whose advanced views on politics, enunciated so eloquently, had acquired for him great renown. A third person also subjected her generous instincts to his philosophical teachings—Pierre Leroux, whose acquaintance she made at this period. George Sand's emotional nature was easily captivated by the eloquent pleadings and close reasonings of these men. She spoke from her heart; she says of herself: "I easily relapse into a wholly sentimental and poetical existence without doctrines and systems." The influence of these leaders is found stamped on the novels of this period, as well as in the Lettres d'un Voyageur.
It is clear that at this time the relations of the husband and the wife were undergoing a strain that threatened an early further change. In May, 1835, Monsieur Dudevant prepared and signed an agreement which was forwarded to his wife for her signature, but which she returned torn up. Explaining this incident, she writes to Monsieur Duteil, of La Châtre: "I also perceive that grief and bad feeling on his part would attend the division of our home and means.... I therefore return to you the agreements that he signed; moreover, I return them torn up, so that he may have only the trouble of burning them, in case he should in the least degree regret the arrangement prepared and set out by himself." This matter dragged on until the fall, and it is not difficult to realize how much the situation in which George Sand was placed grieved and chafed her. Some evidence is found in her own words, written in June, 1835: "Our society is still completely hostile to those who run counter to its institutions and prejudices, and women who realize the need of freedom, but are not yet ripe for it, are wanting both in strength and power to maintain the combat against an entire society which has, to say the least, decreed for them abandonment and misery."
Her chief anxiety in this domestic misfortune was as to her children's welfare and control. She was jealous of their affection for her. Her letters to her son at this period are full of the tender solicitude she feels; she puts before him a high standard for his life's guidance, and strives to inculcate unselfish love as a consoling virtue. She betrays her anxiety lest her children should be separated from her. Finally, in the autumn of 1835, she applied to the courts for a legal decision that should give her the definite and valid settlement which Monsieur Dudevant had previously voluntarily agreed to, but had since avoided. George Sand proposed to pay her husband a yearly income of three thousand eight hundred francs, which, in addition to the small remnant of the income from his own fortune, would make a total revenue of five thousand francs. She was to undertake the charge of her children's education, and to have possession of Nohant. Even in this crisis, the wife's respect for the father of her children is in clear evidence. She writes to her mother in October: "If my husband will be amenable to propriety and duty, neither of my children will love one of their parents at the expense of the other." This suit was delayed, and a final issue was not obtained till the middle of 1836, a decision rendered in February in her favor, by default, having been appealed against. During this period of unrest, George Sand actually contemplated, in case she failed, running away to America with her children.