"Our eyes met. I shall never forget her look at that moment. The doorway made a frame for her figure. She is large, but well formed. She was dressed in a robe of dark violet silk, with a black mantle on her shoulders, her beautiful hair dressed with the greatest taste, her whole appearance and attitude, in its simple and lady-like dignity, presenting an almost ludicrous contrast to the vulgar caricature idea of George Sand. Her face is a very little like the portraits, but much finer. The upper part of the forehead[192] and eyes are beautiful, the lower strong and masculine, expressive of a hardy temperament and strong passions, but not in the least coarse, the complexion olive, and the air of the whole head Spanish." This striking apparition was further commended in Margaret's eyes by "the expression of goodness, nobleness, and power" that characterized the countenance of the great French-woman.
Madame Sand said, "C'est vous," and offered her hand to Margaret, who, taking it, answered, "Il me fait du bien de vous voir" ("It does me good to see you"). They went into the study. Madame Sand spoke of Margaret's letter as charmante, and the two ladies then talked on for hours, as if they had always known each other. Madame Sand had at that moment a work in the press, and was hurried for copy, and beset by friends and visitors. She kept all these at a distance, saying to Margaret: "It is better to throw things aside, and seize the present moment." Margaret gives this résumé of the interview: "We did not talk at all of personal or private matters. I saw, as one sees in her writings, the want of an independent, interior life, but I did not feel it as a fault. I heartily enjoyed the sense of so rich, so prolific, so ardent a genius. I liked the woman in her, too, very much; I never liked a woman better."[193]
To complete the portrait, Margaret mentions the cigarette, which her new friend did not relinquish during the interview. The impression received as to character did not materially differ from that already made by her writings. In seeing her, Margaret was not led to believe that all her mistakes were chargeable upon the unsettled condition of modern society. Yet she felt not the less convinced of the generosity and nobleness of her nature. "There may have been something of the Bacchante in her life," says Margaret, some reverting to the wild ecstasies of heathen nature-worship, "but she was never coarse, never gross."
Margaret saw Madame Sand a second time, surrounded by her friends, and with her daughter, who was then on the eve of her marriage with the sculptor Clésinger. In this entourage she had "the position of an intellectual woman and good friend; the same as my own," says Margaret, "in the circle of my acquaintance as distinguished from my intimates."
Beneath the same roof Margaret found Chopin, "always ill, and as frail as a snow-drop, but an exquisite genius. He played to me, and I liked his talking scarcely less." The Polish poet, Mickiewicz, said to her, "Chopin gives us the Ariel view of the universe."[194]
Margaret had done her best while in London to see what the English stage had to offer. The result had greatly disappointed her. In France she found the theatre living, and found also a public which would not have tolerated "one touch of that stage-strut and vulgar bombast of tone which the English actor fancies indispensable to scenic illusion."
In Paris she says that she saw, for the first time, "something represented in a style uniformly good." Besides this general excellence, which is still aimed at in the best theatres of the Continent, the Parisian stage had then a star of the first magnitude, whose splendor was without an equal, and whose setting brought no successor. In the supreme domain of tragic art, Rachel then reigned, an undisputed queen. Like George Sand, her brilliant front was obscured by the cloud of doubt which rested upon her private character,—a matter of which even the most dissolute age will take note, after its fashion. And yet the charmed barrier of the footlights surrounded her with a flame of mystery. Whatever was known or surmised of her elsewhere, within those limits she appeared as the living impersonation of beauty, grace, and power. For Rachel had, at this time, no public sorrow. How it might fare with her and her lovers little concerned the crowds who gathered nightly, drawn[195] by the lightnings of her eye, the melodious thunder of her voice. Ten years later, a new favorite, her rival but not her equal, came to win the heart of her Paris from her. Then Rachel, grieved and angry, knew the vanity of all human dependence. She crossed the ocean, and gave the New World a new delight. But in spite of its laurels and applause, she sickened (Margaret had said she could not live long), and fled far, far eastward, to hear in ancient Egypt the death-psalms of her people. With a smile, the last change of that expressive countenance, its lovely light expired.
Of the woman, Margaret says nothing. Of the artist, she says that she found her worthy of Greece, and fit to be made immortal in its marble. She did not, it is true, find in her the most tender pathos, nor yet the sublime of sweetness:—
"Her range, even in high tragedy, is limited. Her noblest aspect is when sometimes she expresses truth in some severe shape, and rises, simple and austere, above the mixed elements around her." Had Margaret seen her in "Les Horaces"? One would think so.
"On the dark side, she is very great in hatred and revenge. I admired her more in Phèdre than in any other part in which I saw her. The guilty love inspired by the hatred of a[196] goddess was expressed with a force and terrible naturalness that almost suffocated the beholder."