George Sand and Her French Style 13 



finally comes, it falls fiat on his tired ear like an assertion of the 

 obvious. 



Perhaps this faultiness, behind which lies always her too ready 

 fluency, may be explained, or at least illustrated, by her manner 

 of work. It is well known nowadays, when the personal habits 

 of authors are more studied than their books, that she wrote at 

 night for certain fixed hours with the regularity of a day-laborer. 

 "She works every night from one to four, and then sets to work 

 again during the day for a couple of hours — and ... it 

 makes no difiference if she's disturbed. . . . Imagine that 

 you have a faucet open in the house; some one comes in, you 

 close it. . . . That's the way with Mme. Sand."^ The story 

 goes of her that if she happened to finish the novel on which 

 she was employed an, hour or even less before her time was up 

 for the night, she would calmly set the manuscript away, the 

 ink still damp on the page, and placidly begin another, compos- 

 ing rapidly as she went until the clock released her.^ Whether 

 rightly or wrongly one misses something here — the fond linger- 

 ing over the old work, the patient review and minute revision, 

 the reluctance to part with the child of the brain which makes 

 every iinis to the author a lover's parting and which is so char- 

 actersitic of the French writers of the century. 



It is another story that is told of Flaubert : ^ 



"When he read to his friends the tale entitled, L/n Cceur sim- 

 ple, several remarks and criticisms were passed on a passage of 

 ten lines, in which the old maid ends by confounding her parrot 

 with the Holy Ghost. The idea seemed too subtle for the mind 

 of a peasant. Flaubert listened, reflected, recognized the justice 

 of the observation — but was seized with agony. 'You're right,' 

 he said, 'only — I should have to alter my phrase.' 



"That very evening, however, he set to work. He spent the 

 night in changing ten words ; he blackened and canceled twenty 

 sheets of paper, and finally left things as they were, unable to 

 construct another phrase whose harmony would satisfy him. 



"In the beginning of the same tale the final w^ord of a para- 



^Journal des Goucourt, March 30, 1862. 



^Ibid., Sept. 14, 1863. 



'Maupassant's Etude. 



211 



