His only recommendation was a
decent degree of suitableness in outward circumstances. For the true
wants of her nature he had neither fitness nor sympathy; but she did not
know herself then,--she was not yet George Sand. From the stand-point of
her later development, her marriage would seem to us a low one; but we
must remember that she started only from the plane, and not the highest
plane, of French society, in which a marriage of some sort is the
first necessity of a woman's life, and not the crowning point of her
experience. To compensate the rigor of such a requisition, a French
marriage, though civilly indissoluble, has yet a hundred modifications
which remove it far from the Puritan ideal which we of the Protestant
faith cherish. Hence the French novel, whose strained sentiment and
deeply logical immorality have wakened strange echoes among us of the
stricter rule and graver usage.
Without passion, then, or tender affection on either side, but with a
tolerable harmony of views for the moment, and after long and causeless
opposition on the part of Aurore's mother, this marriage took place.
Aurore was but eighteen; her bridegroom was of suitable age. With dreams
of a peaceful family existence, and looking forward to maternity as the
great joy and office of the coming years, she brought her husband to
Nohant, whose inheritance had been settled by contract upon the children
of this marriage.
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