“And those who would not be drowned, who struggled, who were thrown back on to the bank, they recovered their footing, they became like other people, through contact with the earth, and especially with the common sense of humble folk. How often have I not become myself again in the midst of peasants! How often has not Nohant cured me of and saved me from Paris!”
For George Sand, as for Joan of Arc four centuries ago, as for Anatole France to-day, the most adorable, the most salutary, the most indispensable of all human sentiments is pity. Looking back from the vantage point of old age on the mad, passionate adventures of her youth, Mme. Sand saw herself ever swayed from the bottom of her heart by une grand pitié. It was often that pity which caused her to quarrel with her lovers. She loved them as a mother loves her child. But they demanded from her the love of a mistress.
“Quand je m’examine,” she said to Juliette, “je vois que les deux seules passions de ma vie ont été la maternité et l’amitié.”[155]
After numerous delays and postponements Mme. Sand, accompanied by her son Maurice and her friend Planet, at length, in February 1868, arrived at Bruyères. The date of the visit had been so frequently changed that Juliette and Alice had begun to fear that it might never take place at all. “Cold outside, comfort within, and especially the happiness of living surrounded by one’s family,” writes Mme. Sand to a friend in Paris,[156] “have delayed my journey.” But on the 22nd of February she was able to write to a friend at Toulon from “Golfe Juan, Villa Bruyères.” “We are very comfortably installed, very much spoilt, very energetic, very happy. The day after to-morrow we are going to Nice, Monaco and Mentone. We shall be away three or four days. Consequently you must try not to let your business bring you here before the end of the week. Friday, for example, we are always at home. For on that day Mme. Lambert receives. But if you come on another day you must let us know; for we generally spend the whole day out of doors, and sometimes go a considerable distance.”[157]
In picnics, in visits to Monte Carlo and other scenes of gaiety, in sailing in La Petite Fadette, the yacht which had been Edmond Adam’s New Year’s gift to his affianced bride, the time passed very pleasantly. George Sand was a fervent geologist and botanist. “Give me a piece of stone,” she would say, “and I will tell you the kind of flora it will produce.” By such means and without visiting the country she is said to have given a background to some of her novels. On one of their picnics Mme. Sand suggested that they should found a new Abbey of Thelema, in which Juliette was to be housekeeper and caterer. And she could not have made a better choice, as will testify all who have tasted of Mme. Adam’s hospitality.
The fortnight which Mme. Sand passed on the Golfe Juan was for Juliette one of the happiest in that happy year, 1868, the year of her marriage with Edmond Adam. Bruyères was a home of delight to those who enjoyed its charming hospitality and had the good fortune to stay there. La Villa du Bon Repos some of them christened it, and later it was known as “the Adam’s earthly Paradise.” During the February of 1868 it was the gayest house on the Riviera.
Mme. Sand was a delightful person to entertain, so simple, so contented, so entirely occupied with other people, never permitting her hosts to perceive in her the slightest suggestion of care, anxiety, or fatigue. Perfectly regular and orderly in her manner of life, every day she made her first appearance at the twelve-o’clock lunch, and from that hour until ten her friends had her to themselves. At ten in the evening she bade them good-night and retired to her room to work, frequently until the small hours of the morning. Juliette, whose room was beneath Mme. Sand’s and who also went to bed late, used to hear her moving about. Her cigarettes and a glass of water were all she required for her long vigils.
Maurice Sand, her son, himself a gifted writer, one of the wittiest and gayest of companions, the inventor and manager of the celebrated marionette theatre at Nohant, entertained the company with his jokes—no one could long be serious in his presence.
Mme. Sand’s friend Planet had been brought up to laugh at Nohant (élevé à rire), for Mme. Sand believed in mirth as the most effectual of sanitives. La gaieté est la meilleure hygiène de l’esprit. “Consequently,” writes Juliette, “I assure you we are not sad.”[158]
George Sand used to say that she was never sure of her friends until she had stayed with them and lived some days of their life. Her visit to Bruyères drew more closely the cords of her intimacy with Juliette, and sealed their friendship.