The Story of an Estrangement
There was a great deal of sickness in Paris. Grzymala had just passed
seventeen days without sleeping; Delacroix, more ill than ever, dragged
himself nevertheless to the Luxembourg. Chopin too, tried to put people
off the scent, as he had done all those past years. But at length he
was forced to admit that he had not the courage to leave his own hearth
for an instant. New Year’s Day, 1847, arrived. He sent George the
customary bonbons, and his best wishes, and, smothered in coats, had
himself driven to the Hôtel Lambert, to his friends the Czartoryskis.
At Nohant, they kept up the semblance of happiness. Pantomime raged.
Scenery was brushed up, costumes were made. This united family
played out its comedy also. But suddenly the luggage was packed for
a return to Paris early in January, leaving Solange’s fiancé, M. des
Préaulx, stranded. And hardly had they been settled a month in the
Square d’Orléans when everything was unsettled again by the entrance
on the scene of a new actor: the sculptor Clésinger. He was a man of
thirty-three, violent, full-blooded, enthusiastic, who had just made
a name in the exhibitions and achieved fame at the first stroke. He
had asked to do a bust of Mme. Sand, came to call, saw Solange and was
lost. She was almost as quickly inflamed. The projected marriage with
M. des Préaulx was postponed in spite of the misgivings of George,
who had gathered decidedly vexing information about the sculptor.
“A hot-tempered and disorderly gentleman, a one-time dragoon, now a
great sculptor everywhere conducting himself as though he were in the
café of the regiment, or in the studio,” said Arsène Houssaye. All
decisions were postponed. The novelist took her daughter back to Nohant
immediately after the first days of Holy Week, at the beginning of
April.
Chopin at once had a very decided opinion about these events. First;
regret to see the Berry union fall through, as it seemed to him a very
sweet and proper one. Then, an instinctive dislike made him hostile to
the “stone tailor,” as he called Clésinger. He wrote to his people:
“Sol is not to be married yet. By the time they had all come to Paris
to sign the contract, she no longer wanted it. I am sorry, and I pity
the young man, who is very honest and very much in love; but it is
better that it should have happened before the marriage than after.
They say it is postponed till later on, but I know what that means.”
George, for her part, confided her difficulties to a friend: “Within
six weeks she has broken off a love affair she had hardly felt, and
she has accepted another on which she is ardently set. She was engaged
to one when she drove him off and became engaged to another. It’s odd,
it’s above all bold; but still, it is her right, and fortune smiles
on her. She substitutes for a gentle and modest marriage a brilliant
and burning one. She has it all her own way, and is taking me to Paris
at the end of April.... Work and emotion take up all my days and all
my nights.... This wedding must take place suddenly, as though by
surprise. Also it is a _deep_ secret I am confiding to you, and one
that even Maurice does not know. (He is in Holland.”)
Above all, Chopin was not to know anything,—Chopin, who was now refused
all intimate participation in the family affairs. George really knew
she had met her master this time, in his fierce Clésinger who boasted
that he would attain his ends at any cost. He appeared suddenly at La
Châtre, he repeatedly met Solange in the woods, he demanded a definite
answer. Naturally she said yes, since she loved him. George was forced
to give in, despite her apprehensions, her terror. On the 16th of
April, she called her son to the rescue because she was afraid, she
needed to be reassured. She added at the end of the letter: “Not a word
of all this to Chopin; it does not concern him, and when the Rubicon is
crossed, _ifs_ and _buts_ do only harm.”
When the Rubicon is crossed.... One more time! How many times had she
crossed it during her life, this old hand at ruptures? And yet she
pretended not to see that this was the critical point of her long
liaison. The marriage of Solange, this fact, indeed, entirely outside
of her own love-life, had become the plank to which the hand of the
pianist still clung, and she kicked it away with her heel.
Chopin heard whispered gossip about the affair, but he said nothing,
he questioned no one. He waited for a renewal of confidence. If all
the mystery astonished him, if he even guessed at the deliberate and
childish side of the now obvious rupture of his friendship, he made no
sign. As always, it was his health that paid for his muzzled pangs. He
was taken gravely ill. But it was no longer George who nursed him; it
was Princess Marceline Czartoryska. She sent a bulletin of his health
to Nohant. “One more trouble added to all the rest,” replied George on
May 7th. “Is he really seriously ill? Write to me, I count on you to
tell me the truth and to nurse him.” Yet on that very day she wrote in
her _Journal_ with a calmer pen: “Here I am at the age of forty-three
with a constitution of iron, streaked with painful indispositions,
which give me, however, _only a few hours of spleen, dissipated the
next day.... To-day my soul is well, and my body also._” Was it that
day that she was sincere, or the next, the 8th of May, when she said
to Mlle. de Rozières: “I am sick with worry and am having an attack
of giddiness while writing to you. I cannot leave my family at such
a moment, when I have not even Maurice to save the proprieties and
protect his sister from wicked insinuations. I suffer a great deal, I
assure you. Write to me, I beg. Tell Chopin whatever you think best
about me. Yet I dare not to write him, I am afraid of disturbing him,
I am afraid that Solange’s marriage displeases him greatly and that he
has a disagreeable shock each time I speak to him about it. Yet I could
not make a mystery of it to him and I have had to act as I have done. I
cannot make Chopin the head and counsellor of the family; my children
would not accept him, and the dignity of my life would be lost.”
Had it been a question of dignity it would have been better to have
thought of that earlier. Had it been a question of sparing Chopin’s
health, then it was too late for that, too. She did not even perceive
the contradictions in her letter. The poor great artist remained firm
in his determined silence, and desperately proud.
Yet George had just published her _Lucrezia Floriani_, already the
funeral march of her love. But Chopin continued to see in it nothing
but “beautiful characters of women and men, great naturalness and
poetry.” This would force her to confess differently, to explain
herself further. For there was always in her this impetuous need of
justification which drove her, at the decisive moments of the beginning
or of the end of a love affair, to acknowledge the forces that
motivated her. To whom should she, this time, fling the comments of her
sick brain, and expose the fatigue of a body which thenceforth would be
able to demand but the briefest of gratifications? Eight years before
she had written to Count Grzymala to show of what she was capable, and
that a heart like hers could pass through the most diverse phases of
passion. If the whole horizon of love had been traversed, it seemed
right, even useful, to call a halt at the threshold of the oncoming
night. So she took a sheet of paper and wrote to the same confidant—he
of the first and of the final hour—the following lines:
“_12th May, 1847._
“Thank you, my dear friend, for your good letters. I knew in a
vague and uncertain way that he was ill twenty-four hours before
the letter from the good Princess. Thank that angel also for me.
How I suffered during those twenty-four hours it is impossible to
tell you. Whatever had happened I was in such a position that I
could not have budged.
“Anyway, once again he is saved, but how dark the future is for me
in that quarter!
“I do not yet know if my daughter is to be married here in a week,
or at Paris in a fortnight. In any case, I shall be in Paris for
a few days at the end of the month, and if Chopin can be moved I
shall bring him back here. My friend, I am as happy as can be over
the marriage of my daughter, as she is transported with love and
joy, and as Clésinger seems to deserve it, loves her passionately,
and will give her the life she wants. But in any case, one suffers
a great deal in making such a decision.
“I feel that Chopin must for his part have suffered also at not
knowing, at not understanding, and at not being able to advise
anything; but it is impossible to take his advice on the real
affairs of life into consideration. He has never seen facts
truly, nor understood human nature on a single point; his soul is
all poetry and music, and he cannot bear what is different from
himself. Besides, his influence in my family affairs would mean for
me the loss of all dignity and of all love for and from my children.
“Talk to him and try to make him understand in a general way that
he should refrain from thinking about them. If I tell him that
Clésinger (whom he does not like), deserves our affection, he
will only hate him the more, and will bring on himself Solange’s
hatred. This is all very difficult and delicate, and I know of
no way of calming and restoring a sick soul who is irritated by
efforts to heal him. The evil that consumes this poor being, both
morally and physically, has been killing me for a long time, and I
see him go away without ever having been able to do him any good,
since it is the anxious, jealous and suspicious affection he has
for me that is the principal cause of his sadness. For seven years
I have lived like a virgin with him and with others; I have grown
old before my time, without effort or sacrifice even, so tired was
I of passions and so irremediably disillusioned. If any woman on
earth should have inspired him with the most absolute confidence,
it was I, and he never understood that; and I know that many people
are accusing me, some with having exhausted by the violence of my
senses, others with having made him desperate with my outbursts. I
believe you know the truth. He complains of me that I have killed
him by privation, while I was certain that I should kill him if
I acted otherwise. See how I stand in this dismal friendship, in
which I have made myself his slave whenever I could without showing
an impossible and culpable preference for him over my children,
in which the respect that I had to inspire in my children and in
my friends has been so delicate and so important to preserve. I
have achieved in this respect prodigies of patience of which I did
not believe myself capable, I, who had not the nature of a saint
like the Princess. I have attained to martyrdom; but Heaven is
inexorable against me, as though I had great crimes to expiate,
because in the midst of all these efforts and sacrifices, he whom I
love with an absolutely chaste and maternal love is dying a victim
of the mad attachment he bears for me.
“God grant, in His Goodness, that, at least, my children be
happy, that is to say, good, generous, and at peace with their
consciences; because I do not believe in happiness in this world,
and the law of Heaven is so strict in this regard that it is almost
an impious revolt to dream of not suffering from all external
things. The only strength in which we can take refuge is in the
wish to fulfil our duty.
“Remember me to our Anna, and tell her what is in the bottom of
my heart, then burn my letter. I am sending you one for that dear
Gutmann, whose address I do not know. Do not give it to him in the
presence of Chopin, who does not yet know that I have been told of
his sickness, and who does not want me to know it. His worthy and
generous heart has always a thousand exquisite delicacies side by
side with the cruel aberrations that are killing him. Ah! If Anna
could but talk to him one day, and probe into his heart to heal it!
But he closes it hermetically against his best friends. Good-bye,
my dear, I love you. Remember that I shall always have courage and
perseverance and devotion, in spite of my suffering, and that I do
not complain. Solange embraces you.
“George.”
What contradictions again, and how this time each phrase rings false!
The only truths that shine out here in spite of the author are the
twitchings of her will in the affair of her daughter, and her decision
to be finished with Chopin. She is, once more, in the pangs of
delivery, and a woman when a prey to that ill sticks at nothing. It was
in spite of her also—and perhaps because there is in love affairs as in
those of art, a sort of symmetry, a secret equilibrium—that this last
association had opened almost nine years earlier and is closed to-day
on a letter to the same man. These nearly nine years lie completely
between these two missives, of which the one expressed the initial
desire to unite two opposite souls by forcing nature; the other, to
jilt the ill-assorted partner—“all poetry and music”—for whom the
practical part of existence and the realities of the flesh remain the
true grounds of illusion. It is vain to try to comment further on so
perfectly intelligible a conflict. I am trying to be just in giving
neither right nor wrong to either of the two persons concerned. Each
brought his own contribution to the establishment, and, as it usually
happens, the one who had eaten his first took from the other that in
which he was more rich. George was bound to remain the stronger because
she had nothing left to give. Chopin was bound to founder because his
very wealth had ruined him.
* * * * *
On the 20th of May, Solange was married in haste, almost by stealth,
at Nohant. M. Dudevant was present at this curious wedding, where
his daughter did not even sign her name on the register, but the
pseudonym of her mother. The latter, having strained a muscle, had
to be carried to the church. “Never was a wedding less gay,” she
said. Evil presentiments were in the air. There followed yet another
engagement,—that of Augustine, Maurice’s friend, whom the young man
wanted to marry to his friend Théodore Rousseau, the painter. Then
certain strange events occurred. The engagement of Augustine was
abruptly broken off on some absurd pretext. In reality this was the
revenge of Solange. Out of her hate for her cousin and bitterness
against her brother, she informed Rousseau of the relationship she
assigned to them. They separated. George was outraged and complained
with bitterness. Then the Clésinger couple, two months married,
returned to Nohant and raised the mask, and there took place between
George and her son on the one side, and the sculptor and his wife on
the other, scenes of unprecedented violence.
“We have been nearly cutting each other’s throats here,” wrote the
unfortunate Sand to Mlle. de Rozières. “My son-in-law raised a hammer
against Maurice, and would perhaps have killed him if I had not thrown
myself between them, striking my son-in-law in the face, and receiving
a blow of his fist in the chest. If the priest, who was present, and
friends and a servant, had not interfered by main force, Maurice, who
was armed with a pistol, would have killed him on the spot. Solange
fanned the flame with cold ferocity, having caused these deplorable
furies by backstairs gossip, lies, unimaginable slanders, without
having had here from Maurice or from anybody whatever the slightest
shadow of teasing or the hint of a wrong. This diabolic couple left
yesterday evening, riddled with debt, triumphant in their insolence,
and leaving a scandal in the country-side that they can never live
down. Lastly, I was confined to my house for three days by the blow of
a murderer. I do not want ever to see them again, never again shall
they put foot in my house. They have gone too far. My God! I have done
nothing to deserve such a daughter.
“It was quite necessary for me to write part of this to Chopin; I was
afraid he might arrive in the middle of a catastrophe, and that he
would die of pain and shock. Do not tell him how far things went; they
are to be kept from him if possible. Do not tell him I wrote to you
and if M. and Mme. Clésinger do not boast of their behaviour, keep it
secret for my sake....
“I have a favour to ask of you, my child. That is to take complete
charge of the keys of my apartment, as soon as Chopin has left (if he
has not already), and not to let Clésinger, or his wife, or anyone
connected with them set foot in it. They are supreme robbers and with
prodigious coolness they would leave me without a bed. They carried off
everything from here, down to the counterpanes and candlesticks....”
It is most important to note two things. In this first letter to Mlle.
de Rozières, Sand supposes that Chopin has already left the Square
d’Orléans, or is on the point of so doing. We shall see why later on.
In the second letter—which I shall reprint below—notice the date: _July
the twenty-fifth_. These points will serve to shed a certain light on
a situation that is at first glance obscure, but which becomes clear
enough if these two landmarks are kept in sight.
“Nohant, _25 July._
“My friend, I am worried, frightened. I have had no news of Chopin
for several days, for I don’t know how many days because in the
trouble that is crushing me I cannot keep count of the time. But it
seems too long a time. He was about to leave and suddenly he does
not arrive, he does not write. Did he start? Has he been stopped,
ill somewhere? If he were seriously ill, wouldn’t you have written
me when you saw his state of illness prolonged? I myself, should
already have left if it had not been for my fear of passing him,
and for the horror I have of going to Paris and exposing myself to
the hate of her whom you think so good, so kind to me....
“Sometimes I think, to reassure myself, that Chopin loves her much
more than he does me, looks sourly at me and takes her part.
“I would rather that a hundred times than know him to be ill.
Tell me quite frankly how matters stand. If Solange’s frightful
maliciousness, if her incredible lies sway him,—so be it! Nothing
matters to me if he only gets well.”
Chopin had already suffered too much, renounced too much to come to
heel again and let himself be recaptured by the cries of this despoiled
mother, this hardened mistress. He did not want her pity. He did not
even give her his. Solange came to him. She had little difficulty in
convincing him that she was right, his distrust and suspicions had so
crystallized. Did not all the darkness in which they tried to keep
him hide still other breaches of faith, other riddances? His long
docility had turned at one bound into bitter disgust. “The cypresses
also have their caprices,” he said. It was his only complaint. He wrote
to George, but neither his letter, nor the one he received in reply
has been preserved. The lovers who had given each other eight years
of their lives could not consent to preserve in their archives the
bulletin of their supreme defeat. On the other hand, if we do not know
the terms in which they drew up the act of dissociation, we do know
their echo.
To Delacroix alone Chopin showed the letter of farewell he had
received. “I must admit that it is atrocious,” this friend wrote in
his _Journal_ under the date of _July the twentieth_. “Cruel passions,
long-suppressed impatience come to the surface; and as a contrast which
would be laughable if the subject were not so sad, the author from time
to time takes the place of the woman and spreads herself in tirades
that seem borrowed from a novel or a philosophical homily.”
If I have underlined the date, July the twenty-fifth, above, where
George complains of having been abandoned, it is to make the fact stand
out more clearly that already, five days before, on the twentieth,
Delacroix in his diary signals the existence of the letter of rupture,
which he describes as _atrocious_. So the astonishment of George may be
called astonishing. Note well her duplicity. There can be no doubt that
she foresaw its effect too well to suppose for an instant that Chopin
would come running to Nohant. Rather she counted on his moving out. Yet
she still wanted to play a part, to pose as the victim. Though she had
decided on the break, she feared the fame and the friends of Chopin,
who, later on, might search out the truth in the name of history. So in
her third letter to Mlle. de Rozières she wrote thus:
_(No date.)_
“... Sick to death, I was about to go and see why no one wrote to
me. Finally, I received by the morning post a letter from Chopin.
I see that, as usual, I have been duped by my stupid heart, and
that while I passed six sleepless nights torturing myself about his
health, he was engaged in talking and thinking ill of me with the
Clésingers. Very well. His letter has a ridiculous dignity and the
sermons of this good _pater familias_ shall serve as lessons to me.
A man warned is worth two. From now on I shall be perfectly easy in
that regard.
“There are many points about the affair that I can guess, and I
know what my daughter is capable of in the way of calumny. I know
what the poor brain of Chopin is capable of in the way of prejudice
and credulity.... But my eyes are open at last! and I shall
conduct myself accordingly; I will no longer allow ingratitude
and perversity to pasture on my flesh and blood. From now on I
shall remain here, peaceful and entrenched at Nohant, far from
the bloodthirsty enemies that are after me. I shall know how to
guard the gate of my fortress against the scoundrels and madmen. I
know that meanwhile they will be tearing me to pieces with their
slanders. Well and good! When they have glutted their hatred of me,
they will devour each other.
“... I think it _magnificent_ of Chopin to see, associate with, and
approve Clésinger, who _struck_ me, because I tore from his hands
a hammer he had raised against Maurice. Chopin, whom all the world
told me was my most faithful and most devoted friend! Marvellous!
My child, life is a bitter irony, and those who have the folly to
love and believe must close their careers with a lugubrious laugh
and a despairing sob, as I hope will soon be my lot. I believe
in God and in the immortality of my soul. The more I suffer in
this world, the more I believe. I shall quit this transitory life
with a profound disgust, to enter into life eternal with a great
confidence....”
She took up her pen a fourth time, on August the 14th:
“I am more seriously ill than they think. Thank God for it. I have
had enough of life, and I am packing up with great joy. I do not
ask you for news of Solange; I have it indirectly. As for Chopin,
I hear nothing further of him, and I beg you to tell me truthfully
how he is; no more. The rest does not in the least interest me and
I have no reason to miss his affection.”
There is a strong dose of the “_mélo_” that Chopin thought so hateful
in several passages of these documents, and the evident desire to
extract all possible pathos. But without doubt certain authentic
accents are to be found as well. It is probable that she herself would
not recognize them any too clearly. George Sand had suffered from
this rupture of which she was the cause, the agent and the victim. If
the same cries are no longer to be heard as in the Venetian days, it
is because thirteen years had passed since the de Musset experience.
But perhaps I am making her part seem too easy. For what are years to
passionate hearts? No, growing old is a poor reason. The only true one
is that this woman no longer tears anything living from her soul. If
she has not yet arrived at the time of the great cold, of which we have
already spoken, at least she has come to that of the first serenities.
A favourable epoch for her literature. She took advantage of it so well
that she chose it precisely for _L’Histoire de ma Vie_, the best of her
books.
As for Chopin, to complain was not in his nature. Even in these mortal
weeks all his pain had a beautiful discretion. As before, as always,
it rose and fell within himself. No blame passed his lips. To Louis
Viardot (the husband of the singer), who questioned him, he replied
simply: “Solange’s marriage is a great misfortune for her, for her
family, for her friends. Daughter and mother have been deceived, and
the mistake has been realized too late. But why blame only one for this
mistake that was shared by both? The daughter wished, demanded, an
ill-assorted marriage; but the mother, in consenting, has she not part
of the blame? With her great mind and her great experience, should she
not have enlightened a girl who was impelled by spite even more than by
love? If she had any illusion, we must not be without pity for an error
that is shared. And I, pitying them both from the depths of my soul,
I am trying to bring some consolation to the only one of them I am
permitted to see.”
He wanted to inform his sister about these happenings, but could not
at first manage to do it. To write certain words is sometimes so great
a cruelty to oneself! At last, after having burned several sheets of
paper, he succeeded in giving the essentials in his Christmas letter.
“_25 December, 1847._
“Beloved children,
“I did not reply to you immediately because I have been so horribly
busy. I am sending you, by the usual channel, some New Year
pictures.... I spent Christmas Eve in the most prosaic way, but I
thought of you all. All my best wishes to you, as always....
“Sol is with her father, in Gascony. She saw her mother on the way.
She went to Nohant with the Duvernets, but her mother received
her coldly and told her that if she would leave her husband she
might return to Nohant. Sol saw her nuptial room turned into a
theatre, her boudoir into a wardrobe for the actors, and she wrote
me that her mother spoke only of money matters. Her brother was
playing with his dog and all he found to say to her was: ‘Will you
have something to eat?’ The mother now seems more angry with her
son-in-law than with her daughter, though in her famous letter
she wrote to me that her son-in-law was not bad, that it was her
daughter who made him so. One might think she had wanted to rid
herself at one sweep of her daughter and of me, because we were in
the way. She will continue to correspond with her daughter; thus
her maternal heart, which cannot completely do without news of her
child, will be appeased for a moment and her conscience lulled
to sleep. She will think herself in the right, and will proclaim
me her enemy, for taking the part of the son-in-law she cannot
tolerate, simply because he married her daughter, while I really
opposed the marriage as much as I could. Singular creature, with
all her intelligence! A frenzy seizes her, and she spoils her life,
she spoils her daughter’s life. It will end badly with her son,
too, I predict and am certain. To excuse herself, she would like
to pick holes in those who wish her well, who believe in her, who
have never insulted her, and whom she cannot bear near her because
they are the mirror of her conscience. That is why she has not
written me a single word; that is why she is not coming to Paris
this winter; that is also why she has not said a single word to
her daughter. I do not regret having helped her to bear the eight
most difficult years of her life, those in which her daughter was
growing up, those in which she was bringing up her son; I do not
regret all that I have suffered; but I do regret that her daughter,
that perfectly tended plant, sheltered from so many storms, should
have been broken at her mother’s hands by an imprudence and a
laxity that one might pass over in a woman of twenty years, but not
in a woman of forty.
“That which has been and no longer is will not be written in the
annals. When, later on, she delves into her past, Mme. Sand will be
able to find in her soul only a happy memory of me. For the moment
she is in the strangest paroxysm of maternity, playing the rôle
of a juster and a more perfect mother than she really is, and it
is a fever for which there is no remedy, especially when it takes
possession of an excitable imagination that is easily carried away.
“... A new novel by Mme. Sand is appearing in the _Débats_, a novel
in the manner of the Berry novels, like _La Mare Au Diable_, and it
begins admirably. It is called _François Le Champi_.... There is
talk also of her _Mémoires_; but in a letter to Mme. Marliani, Mme.
Sand wrote that this would be rather the thoughts she has had up
until now on art, letters, etc.... and not what is generally meant
by memoirs. Indeed, it is too early for that, because dear Mme.
Sand will have many more adventures in her life before she grows
old; many beautiful things will still happen to her, and ugly ones
too...”
The irony is hardly malicious, and “the enemy” who would “tear her to
pieces” is very gentle. Indeed one must admire the way the artist holds
his temper in hand. The same day he wrote to Solange:
“... How the story of your two visits to Nohant saddened me!
Still, the first step is taken. You have shown heart, and this
was followed by a certain _rapprochement_, since you have been
begged to write. Time will do the rest. You know you must not take
everything that is said at face value. If they no longer want
to know a _stranger like me_, for instance, that cannot be the
lot of your husband, because he belongs to the family... I feel
suffocated, have headaches, and beg you to excuse my erasures and
my French...”
This was in January, 1848. February. Soon it would be ten months since
George and Frederick had separated. But Chopin did not get well. Quite
the contrary. His broken tenderness had not only killed his heart, it
had dried up the one source of his consolation, music. Since 1847, the
_bad year_, as he called it, Chopin composed nothing more.
“She has not written me another word, nor I to her,” he confided again
to his sister on the 10th of February. “She has instructed the landlord
to let her Paris apartment.... She plays comedies in the country, in
her daughter’s wedding-chamber; she forgets herself, acts as wildly
as only she can, and will not rouse herself until her heart hurts too
much, a heart that is at present overpowered by the head. I make a
cross above it. God protect her, if she cannot discern the true value
of flattery! Besides, it may be to me alone that the others seem
flatterers, while her happiness really lies in that direction and I do
not perceive it. For some time her friends and neighbours have been
able to make nothing of what has been going on down there of late, but
they are probably used to it already. Anyway, no one could ever follow
the caprices of such a soul. Eight years of a half-steady life were too
much. God permitted them to be the years when the children were growing
up, and if it had not been for me I do not know how long ago they would
have been with their father and no longer with her. And Maurice will
run off at the first opportunity to his father. But perhaps these are
the conditions of her existence, of her talent as a writer, of her
happiness? Don’t let it bother you,—it is already so far away! Time is
a great healer. Up till now, I have not got over it; that is why I have
not written to you. Everything I begin I burn the next moment. And I
should have so much to write to you! It is better to write nothing at
all.”
They saw each other again one last time, on the fourth of March, 1848,
quite by accident. Chopin was leaving Mme. Marliani’s as Mme. Sand was
going in. She pressed his trembling and icy hand. Chopin asked her if
she had recently had news of her daughter.
“A week ago,” she replied.
“Not yesterday, or the day before?”
“No.”
“Then I inform you that you are a grandmother. Solange has a little
girl, and I am very happy to be the first to give you the news.”
Then he bowed and went down the stairs. At the bottom he had a pang of
remorse, and wanted to go back. He had forgotten to add that Solange
and the child were doing well. He begged a friend who was with him to
give Mme. Sand this additional information, because going up steps had
become a frightfully painful business. George came back immediately.
She wanted further talk, and asked for news about himself. He replied
that he was well, and left. “There were mischievous meddlers between
us,” she said later in telling of this minute in the _Histoire de ma
Vie_.
As for Chopin, he reported this fortuitous encounter with her mother to
Mme. Clésinger, and added, “She seemed to be in good health. I am sure
that the triumph of the Republican idea makes her happy....”
Eight days before, in fact, the Revolution had burst. It must have been
singularly displeasing to _Prince Karol_. He wrote again to Solange:
“The birth of your child gave me more joy, you may well believe, than
the birth of the Republic.”