I am living here like a hermit. My apartment is so nice and warm; it is so light and quiet that I never care to leave it. But, on the other hand, I am all day long bothered with visitors, who are not all very entertaining. It is one of the drawbacks of my calling, and I am obliged to put up with them; but in the evening I shut myself up with my pen and ink, Solange, my piano, and my fire. In their midst I spend some very pleasant hours. The only sounds I hear are the notes of a harp, proceeding I know not whence, and the plashing of a jet of water which plays in the garden under my windows. It is most poetic. Do not laugh about it.... I must tell you that I am coining money. I receive proposals from all directions. I shall sell my next novel for 4,000 francs.
George Sand: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, December, 1832, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’
In Venice after De-Musset’s departure.
She had taken apartments for herself in the interior of the city, in a little, low-built house, along the narrow, green, and yet limpid canal, close to the Ponte dei Barcaroli. “There,” she tells us, “alone all the afternoon, never going out except in the evening for a breath of air, working at night as well, to the song of the tame nightingales that people all Venetian balconies, I wrote Andre, Jacques, Mattea, and the first Lettres d’ un Voyageur.”
Bertha Thomas: ‘George Sand.’
At LaChatre.
As regards my suit, I am still in statu quo. My husband has appealed against the decision of the court. I am still at La Châtre, staying with some friends, who spoil me like a child five years old. I live in a suburb composed of terraces, built on a rocky slope; below is an admirably pretty valley. A garden of four square yards, full of roses, and a terrace just spacious enough to move in, do duty for a drawing-room, a study and a gallery. My bedroom is large enough; it is furnished with a bed adorned with curtains of red cotton stuff—a regular peasant’s bed, hard and flat, two straw-bottomed chairs, and a deal table. My window opens six feet above the terrace. Through the hedging of the orchard I come and go at night, without having to open any door, and thus to disturb anybody, whenever inclined for a stroll in my four square yards of flowers. I sometimes go alone for a ride at dusk. I return home at midnight. My cloak, my bark hat, and the melancholy trot of my steed, cause the people to take me in the dark for a peddler or for a farmer’s boy.
George Sand: Letter to the Countess d’ Agoult, May, 1836, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’