We will let him give his own account of the origin of this new relation.

"You know that I was in love in Milan. You guessed it, because I did not
tell you of it. At times I fancied myself beloved in return, and then I
saw, or thought I saw, that I was not. I wished to divert my thoughts; I
went away, desiring to think no more of it.

"This charming woman is here, and we have hardly spoken to each other.
We scarcely exchanged a look. I felt a little vexation, though that is
scarcely in my nature. She was proud towards me, although her heart is
tender and passionate. This morning, during breakfast, we heard distant
cannon. The General ordered me to mount at once, and go to see what it
was. I rise, take the staircase in two bounds, and run to the stable.
At the very moment of mounting my horse I turned and saw behind me this
dear woman, blushing, embarrassed, and casting on me a lingering look,
expressive of fear, interest, love."

This fatal look, as the experienced will readily conceive, did the
business. The young soldier dreamed only of a love affair like twenty
others which had made the pastime of his oft-changing quarters; but this
"dear woman," Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, daughter of an old
bird-fancier, was destined to become his wife, and the mother of his
daughter, Aurore Dupin, whom the world knows as George Sand. The
circumstances of her youth had been untoward. She was at this period
already the mother of one child, born out of marriage, and seems to have
been making the campaign of Italy under the so-called protection of some
rich man, whose name is not given us. This protection she hastened to
leave, following thenceforward with devotion the precarious fortunes
of the young soldier, and gaining her own subsistence, until their
marriage, by the toil of the needle, to which she had been bred. Of