Under this decision, she gave
up the estate of Nohant to M. Dudevant, who, becoming weary of its
management, returned it to her, by a later compromise, in exchange for
other property, and the home of her childhood now shelters her declining
years.
For the history draws near its close; more travels, more novels, more
successes, more sorrows, much fond talk of her friends, many of whom
death has endeared to her, a shadowy sketch of her seven years' intimacy
with Chopin, a sob over the untimely grave of her married daughter, and
the wonderful book is ended. Surely, it tells its own moral; and we,
who have woven into short measure the tissue of its relations, need not
appear either as the apologist of a very exceptional woman, or as the
vindicator of laws inevitable and universal, the mischief of whose
violation no human knowledge can justly fathom. The world knows that the
life before us is no example for women to follow; but it also knows,
we think, that she who led it was on the whole an earnest and sincere
person, of ardent imagination and large heart, loving the good as well
as the beautiful, even if often mistaken in both,--and above all, honest
in her errors and their acknowledgment. Gross injustice has, no doubt,
been done her.
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