clearly I had realized the pain and pity of having to break a sacred
bond, the more profoundly I felt that where marriage is wanting, is
in certain elements of happiness and justice of too lofty a nature to
appeal to our actual society. Nay, more; society strives to take from
the sanctity of the institution by treating it as a contract of material
interests, attacking it on all sides at once, by the spirit of its
manners, by its prejudices, by its hypocritical incredulity.

While writing a novel as an occupation and distraction for my mind, I
conceived the idea of portraying an exclusive and undying love, before,
during, and after marriage. Thus I drew the hero of my book proclaiming,
at the age of eighty, his fidelity to the one woman he had ever loved.

The ideal of love is assuredly eternal fidelity. Moral and religious
laws have aimed at consecrating this ideal. Material facts obscure it.
Civil laws are so framed as to make it impossible or illusory. Here,
however, is not the place to prove this. Nor has _Mauprat_ been burdened
with a proof of the theory; only, the sentiment by which I was specially
penetrated at the time of writing it is embodied in the words of
_Mauprat_ towards the end of the book: "She was the only woman I loved
in all my life; none other ever won a glance from me, or knew the
pressure of my hand."

GEORGE SAND.

June 5, 1857.



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