though, in the form of fifty letters written by George Sand to Dr. Emile
Regnault, then a medical student and the intimate friend and confidant
of Jules Sandeau, who kept nothing back from him. His son, Dr. Paul
Regnault, has kindly allowed me to see this correspondence and to
reproduce some fragments of it. It is extremely curious, by turn lyrical
and playful, full of effusions, ideas, plans of work, impressions of
nature, and confidences about her love affairs. Taken altogether it
reflects, as nearly as possible, the state of the young woman's mind at
this time.

The first letter is dated April, 1831. George Sand had left Paris for
Nohant, and is anxiously wondering how her poor Jules has passed this
wretched day, and how he will go back to the room from which she had
torn herself with such difficulty that morning. In her letter she gives
utterance to the gratitude she owes to the young man who has reconciled
her once more to life. "My soul," she says, "eager itself for
affection, needed to inspire this in a heart capable of understanding
me thoroughly, with all my faults and qualities. A fervent soul was
necessary for loving me in the way that I could love, and for consoling
me after all the ingratitude which had made my earlier life so desolate.
And although I am now old, I have found a heart as young as my own, a
lifelong affection which nothing can discourage and which grows stronger
every day. Jules has taught me to care once more for this existence,
of which I was so weary, and which I only endured for the sake of my
children. I was disgusted beforehand with the future, but it now seems
more beautiful to me, full as it appears to me of him, of his work, his
success, and of his upright, modest conduct. . . . Oh, if you only knew
how I love him! . . . ."(14)

(14) This quotation and those that follow are borrowed from