"Let us all try to be saints, and if we succeed we will know all
the more how difficult a thing it is, and what indulgence is owed
to those who are not yet saints. Then we shall acknowledge that
there is something to be modified, either in law or opinion; for
the aim of society should be to render perfection accessible to
all, and man is very feeble when he struggles alone against the mad
torrent of custom and of ideas."
A very wise, saying truly, written out of her own experience. Sad, too,
as is much of her later writing, though there is not in it the
passionate despair of her earlier work.
She lived to be seventy-two years old, and had known and experienced
many phases of life,--the tumultuous passions and the wild revolt of
youth, the cooler and more self-contained life of middle age, and the
sombre color of a rather hopeless old age. Even in age she had her
pleasures, however. She delighted in her grandchildren, in books, in
pictures, in nature, and in work. Her unwearied pen moved until the
last, and did not lose its cunning. There was much of the old strength
and power to the last. But she had ceased to desire to destroy; she
sought at last to build up.
Here are two descriptions of her as she appeared to different observers,
in youth and in later life. Heine, who saw with the eye of an artist and
wrote with the pen of a critic, described her in youth:--
"George Sand, the greatest of French writers, is a woman of
remarkable beauty. Like the genius revealed in her writings, her
countenance may rather be called beautiful than fascinating. The
face of George Sand has precisely the character of Grecian
regularity. The cut of her features has not exactly the severity of
antique models; her face is softened by modern sentiment, which
veils it with sadness. Her forehead is not high, and her rich and
luxuriant brown hair falls from either side of her head upon her
shoulders. Her eyes are not brilliant; has their fire gone out
under frequent tears, or only in her writings? George Sand's eyes
are soft and tranquil. Her nose is neither aquiline, nor spiritual,
nor pugged; it is a straight and ordinary nose. Around her mouth
habitually plays a smile of kindness and benevolence, but not very
bewitching: her inferior lip protrudes a little, and seems to
reveal a fatigue of the senses. Her chin is finely formed. Her
shoulders are magnificent; also her hands, her arms, her feet,
which are very small. George Sand is beautiful like the Venus of
Milo."