career, made her way to Paris. Success came quickly. Entering
into a literary partnership with her masculine friend, Jules
Sandeau, the chief fruit of their joint enterprise was "Rose
et Blanche." This was followed by her independent novel,
"Indiana," a story that brought her the enthusiastic praises
of the reading public, and the warm friendship of the most
distinguished personages in French literary society. A few
years later her relations with the poet Alfred De Musset
provided the matter for what is now an historic episode. Her
literary output was enormous, consisting of a hundred or more
volumes of novels and stories, four volumes of autobiography,
and six of correspondence. Yet everything that she wrote is
marked by that richness, delicacy and power of style and of
thought which constitutes her genius. "Consuelo," which
appeared in 1844, is typical of all these in its sparkling
dialogue, flowing narrative, and vivid description. George
Sand died on June 7, 1876.


_I.--In Venice_


Little Consuelo, at the age of fourteen, was the best of all the pupils
of the Maestro Porpora, a famous Italian composer, of the eighteenth
century.

At that time in Venice a certain number of children received a musical
education at the expense of the state, and it was Porpora, the great
musician--then a soured and disappointed man--who trained the voices of
the girls. They were not equally poor, these young ladies, and among