the unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault.

"When I first knew him I was disillusioned about everything, and I no
longer believed in those things which make us happy. He has warmed my
frozen heart and restored the life that was dying within me." She then
recalls their first meeting. It was in the country, at Coudray,
near Nohant. She fell in love with her dear Sandeau, thanks to his
youthfulness, his timidity and his awkwardness. He was just twenty, in
1831. On approaching the bench where she was awaiting him, "he concealed
himself in a neighbouring avenue--and I could see his hat and stick
on the bench," she writes. "Everything, even to the little red ribbon
threaded in the lining of his grey hat, thrilled me with joy. . . ."

It is difficult to say why, but everything connected with this young
Jules seems absurd. Later on we get the following statement: "Until the
day when I told him that I loved him, I had never acknowledged as much
to myself. I felt that I did, but I would not own it even to my own
heart. Jules therefore learnt it at the same time as I did myself."

People at La Chatre took the young man for her lover. The idea of
finding him again in Paris was probably one of her reasons for wishing
to establish herself there. Then came her life, as she describes it
herself, "in the little room looking on to the quay. I can see Jules
now in a shabby, dirty-looking artist's frock-coat, with his cravat
underneath him and his shirt open at the throat, stretched out over
three chairs, stamping with his feet or breaking the tongs in the heat
of the discussion. The Gaulois used to sit in a corner weaving great
plots, and you would be seated on a table."

All this must certainly have been charming. The room was too small,