DOI Artikel:
James, Henry: She and He: recent documents
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25498#0034
30 She and He : recent Documents
from being. This, we surmise, was the case with most of her
lovers, and the verity that makes the idea of her liaison with
M^rimee, who was one, sound almost like a union against nature.
She repeats to her correspondent, on grounds admirably stated,
the injunction that he is to give himself up, to let himself go, to
take his chance. That he took it we all know—he followed her
advice only too well. It is indeed not long before his manner of
doing so draws from her a cry of distress. “ Ta conduite est
deplorable, impossible. Mon Dieu, a quelle vie vais-je te laisser ?
l’ivresse, le vin, les filles, et encore et toujours ! ” But apprehen-
sions were now too late ; they would have been too late at the
very earliest stage of this celebrated connection.
Ill
The great difficulty was that, though they were sublime, the
couple were not serious. But, on the other hand, if, on a lady’s
part, in such a relation, the want of sincerity or of constancy is a
grave reproach, the matter is a good deal modified when the lady,
as I have mentioned, happens to be—I won’t go so far exactly as
to say a gentleman. That George Sand just fell short of this
character was the greatest difficulty of all; because if a woman, in
a love-affair, may be—for all she is to gain or to lose—what she
likes, there is only one thing that, to carry it off with any degree
of credit, a man may be. Madame Sand forgot this on the day
she published Elle et Lui ; she forgot it again, more gravely, when
she bequeathed to the great snickering public these present shreds
and relics of unutterably delicate things. The aberration connects
itself with the strange lapses of still other occasions—notably with
the extraordinary absence of scruples with which, in the delightful
Histoire
from being. This, we surmise, was the case with most of her
lovers, and the verity that makes the idea of her liaison with
M^rimee, who was one, sound almost like a union against nature.
She repeats to her correspondent, on grounds admirably stated,
the injunction that he is to give himself up, to let himself go, to
take his chance. That he took it we all know—he followed her
advice only too well. It is indeed not long before his manner of
doing so draws from her a cry of distress. “ Ta conduite est
deplorable, impossible. Mon Dieu, a quelle vie vais-je te laisser ?
l’ivresse, le vin, les filles, et encore et toujours ! ” But apprehen-
sions were now too late ; they would have been too late at the
very earliest stage of this celebrated connection.
Ill
The great difficulty was that, though they were sublime, the
couple were not serious. But, on the other hand, if, on a lady’s
part, in such a relation, the want of sincerity or of constancy is a
grave reproach, the matter is a good deal modified when the lady,
as I have mentioned, happens to be—I won’t go so far exactly as
to say a gentleman. That George Sand just fell short of this
character was the greatest difficulty of all; because if a woman, in
a love-affair, may be—for all she is to gain or to lose—what she
likes, there is only one thing that, to carry it off with any degree
of credit, a man may be. Madame Sand forgot this on the day
she published Elle et Lui ; she forgot it again, more gravely, when
she bequeathed to the great snickering public these present shreds
and relics of unutterably delicate things. The aberration connects
itself with the strange lapses of still other occasions—notably with
the extraordinary absence of scruples with which, in the delightful
Histoire