stay at Geneva was gay and animated. The _Piffoels_ (George Sand and her
children) and the _Fellows_ (Liszt and his pupil, Hermann Cohen) enjoyed
scandalizing the whole hotel by their Bohemian ways. They went for an
excursion to the frozen lake. At Lausanne Liszt played the organ. On
returning to Paris the friends did not want to separate. In October,
1836, George Sand took up her abode on the first floor of the Hotel de
France, in the Rue Laffitte, and Liszt and the Corntesse d'Agoult took
a room on the floor above. The trio shared, a drawing-room between
them, but in reality it became more the Comtesse d'Agoult's _salon_ than
George Sand's. Lamennais, Henri Heine, Mickiewicz, Michel of Bourges
and Charles Didier were among their visitors, and we are told that this
_salon_, improvised in a hotel was "a reunion of the _elite_, over which
the Comtesse d'Agoult presided with exquisite grace." She was a true
society woman, a veritable mistress of her home, one of those who could
transform a room in a hotel, a travelling carriage, or even a prison
into that exquisite thing, so dear to French polite society of yore--a
_salon_.

Among the _habitues_ of Madame d'Agoult's _salon_ was Chopin. This is
a new chapter in George Sand's life, and a little later on we shall be
able to consider, as a whole, the importance of this intercourse with
great artists as regards her intellectual development.

Before finishing our study of this epoch in her life, we must notice how
much George Sand's talent had developed and blossomed out. _Mauprat_ was
published in 1837, and is undoubtedly the first of her _chefs-d'oeuvre_.
In her uninterrupted literary production, which continued regularly in
spite of and through all the storms of her private life, there is much
that is strange and second-rate and much that is excellent. _Jacques_
is an extraordinary piece of work. It was written at Venice when she was