At the very moment of mounting my horse I turned and saw behind me this
dear woman, blushing, embarrassed, and casting on me a lingering look,
expressive of fear, interest, love."
This fatal look, as the experienced will readily conceive, did the
business. The young soldier dreamed only of a love affair like twenty
others which had made the pastime of his oft-changing quarters; but this
"dear woman," Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, daughter of an old
bird-fancier, was destined to become his wife, and the mother of his
daughter, Aurore Dupin, whom the world knows as George Sand. The
circumstances of her youth had been untoward. She was at this period
already the mother of one child, born out of marriage, and seems to have
been making the campaign of Italy under the so-called protection of some
rich man, whose name is not given us. This protection she hastened to
leave, following thenceforward with devotion the precarious fortunes
of the young soldier, and gaining her own subsistence, until their
marriage, by the toil of the needle, to which she had been bred. Of
course, Maurice's confidences to his mother under this head soon cease.
An amour with a person in Victoire's position could be admitted; but
a serious, solid affection, leading to marriage, this would break his
mother's heart, and indeed not without reason.
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