"The Roman Campagna, which has been so much vaunted, is certainly singularly immense, but it is so bare, flat and deserted, so monotonous and sad, miles and miles of meadow-land in every direction, that the little brain one has left, after seeing the city, is almost overpowered by it all."
This journey inspired her with one of the weakest of her novels, La Daniella. It is the diary of a painter named Jean Valreg, who married a laundry-girl. In 1861, after an illness, she went to Tamaris, in the south of France. This name is the title of one of her novels. She does not care for this place either. She considers that there is too much wind, too much dust, and that there are too many olive-trees in the south of France.
I am convinced that at an earlier time in her life she would, have been won over by the fascination of Rome. She had comprehended the charm of Venice so admirably. At an earlier date, too, she would not have been indifferent to the beauties of Provence, as she had delighted in meridional Nature when in Majorca.
The years were over, though, for her to enjoy the variety of outside shows with all their phantasmagoria. A time comes in life, and it had already come for her, when we discover that Nature, which has seemed so varied, is the same everywhere, that we have quite near us all that we have been so far away to seek, a little of this earth, a little water and a little sky. We find, too, that we have neither the time nor the inclination to go away in search of all this when our hours are counted and we feel the end near. The essential thing then is to reserve for ourselves a little space for our meditations, between the agitations of life and that moment which alone decides everything for us.
X
THE GENIUS OF THE WRITER
CORRESPONDENCE WITH FLAUBERT—LAST NOVELS
With that maternal instinct which was so strong within her, George Sand could not do without having a child to scold, direct and take to task. The one to whom she was to devote the last ten years of her life, who needed her beneficent affection more than any of those she had adopted, was a kind of giant with hair turned back from his forehead and a thick moustache like a Norman of the heroic ages. He was just such a man as we can imagine the pirates in Duc Rollo's boats. This descendant of the Vikings had been born in times of peace, and his sole occupation was to endeavour to form harmonious phrases by avoiding assonances.
I do not think there have been two individuals more different from each other than George Sand and Gustave Flaubert. He was an artist, and she in many respects was bourgeoise. He saw all things at their worst; she saw them better than they were. Flaubert wrote to her in surprise as follows: "In spite of your large sphinx eyes, you have seen the world through gold colour."