off, by their own youth, but toward the days of autumn, restored
to the maternal hearth, they have added to their harps the grave
or plaintive chord on which either religion or unhappiness finds
expression. Old age is a traveler in the night time; the earth is
hidden from sight and he can see nothing but the heavens shining above
his head.

I have not seen Madame Sand dressed in men's clothes or wearing the
blouse and the iron-shod staff of the mountaineer. I have not seen her
drinking from the cup of bacchanals and smoking indolently reclining
on a sofa like a sultana,--natural or affected eccentricities which
for me could add nothing to her charms or her genius.

Is she more inspired when she causes a cloud of vapor to rise from
her mouth about her hair? Did Lelia escape from the head of her mother
through a burning mist, as Sin, according to Milton, proceeded from
the head of the glorious and guilty archangel amid a whirlpool of
smoke? I know not what passes in the sacred courts; but here below
Neamede, Phila, Lais, Gnathene, the witty Phryne, the despair of the
pencil of Apelles, and the chisel of Praxiteles, Leëna, beloved of
Harmodias, the two sisters named Aphyes, because they were small and
had large eyes, Dorica, the fillet of whose locks and embalmed robe
were consecrated in the temple of Venus,--all these enchantresses knew
only the perfumes of Arabia. It is true that Madame Sand has on her
side the authority of the Odalisques and the young Mexicans who dance
with cigars between their lips.

What effect has Madame Sand had upon me, after the few gifted women,
and many charming women whom I have known--after those daughters of
the earth, who like Madame Sand said with Sappho: "Come, Mother of