He was very much like all men. . . . That is the most faithful portrait
that can be traced of Casimir at this epoch. He had not as yet the vices
which developed in him later on. He had nothing to distinguish him from
the average man. He was selfish, without being disagreeable, rather
idle, rather incapable, rather vain and rather foolish. He was just
an ordinary man. The wife he had married, though, was not an ordinary
woman. That was their misfortune. As Emile Faguet has very wittily put
it, "Monsieur Dudevant, about whom she complained so much, seems to have
had no other fault than that of being merely an ordinary man, which, of
course, is unendurable to a superior woman. The situation was perhaps
equally unendurable for the man." This is quite right, for Casimir was
very soon considerably disconcerted. He was incapable of understanding
her psychology, and, as it seemed impossible to him that a woman was
not his inferior, he came to the logical conclusion that his wife was
"idiotic." This was precisely his expression, and at every opportunity
he endeavoured to crush her by his own superiority. All this seems to
throw some light on his character and also on the situation. Here was
a man who had married the future George Sand, and he complained, in all
good faith, that his wife was "idiotic"!

Certainly, on comparing the _Correspondance_ with the _Histoire de ma
vie_, the difference of tone is most striking. The letters in
which Baronne Dudevant tells, day by day, of her home life are too
enthusiastic for the letters of an unhappy wife. There are receptions at
Nohant, lively dinners, singing and dancing. All this is, at any rate,
the surface, but gradually the misunderstandings are more pronounced,
and the gulf widens.

There may have been a misunderstanding at the very beginning of their