torture the daily _tete-a-tete_ must be. Before they had been married
two years, they were bored to death. They blamed Nohant, but the fault
was in themselves. Nohant seemed unbearable to them, simply because they
were there alone with each other. They went to Plessis, perhaps in the
hope that the remembrance of the days of their engagement might have
some effect on them. It was there, in 1824, that the famous scene of the
blow took place. They were playing at a regular children's game in the
park, and throwing sand at each other. Casimir lost his patience and
struck his wife. It was certainly impolite, but Aurore did not appear
to have been very indignant with her husband at the time. Her grievances
were quite of another kind, less tangible and much more deeply felt.

From Plessis they went to Ormesson. We do not know what took place
there, but evidently something which made a deep impression morally,
something very serious. A few years later, referring to this stay at
Ormesson, George Sand wrote to one of her friends: "You pass by a wall
and come to a house. . . . If you are allowed to enter you will find a
delightful English garden, at the bottom of which is a spring of water
hidden under a kind of grotto. It is all very stiff and uninteresting,
but it is very lonely. I spent several months there, and it was there
that I lost my health, my confidence in the future, my gaiety and my
happiness. It was there that I felt, and very deeply too, my first
approach of trouble. . . ."(3)

(3) Extract from the unpublished letters of George Sand to
Dr. Emile Regnault.

They left Ormesson for Paris, and Paris for Nohant, and after that, by
way of trying to shake off the dulness that was oppressing them, they
had recourse to the classical mode of diversion--a voyage.