The Dream Lover: A Novel of George Sand

by Elizabeth Berg

  She leaned her head in closer, and lowered her voice. “Look how people are staring at me here. Look at the way my fans throw flowers at my feet with every performance I give. You and I met because of the brilliant letter you sent, praising not only my talent but the soul you saw inside my person. I have the admiration of thousands, and cannot garner so much as a civil word from my own flesh and blood.”

  “Young women can be like that sometimes,” I said, thinking of the way my own daughter could wound me.

  “Gabrielle went to Spain to get married,” Marie said.

  I put down my cup and looked over at her, surprised.

  “Yes, she went and she tried to get married, but she could not do it there, either, without my permission. And so I gave it.” She shrugged, but she was tearful, and I saw for the first time the darkness beneath her eyes.

  “You must endeavor to stop thinking about it, Marie. There is nothing you can do. You must get some rest.”

  “Rest! I never rest. I cannot rest. My art is a great stimulant that only makes me need more stimulation. I am perpetually half satisfied. And I have feelings of pain, I have frightful memories that never let up, and I struggle with great difficulty to overcome them. How can rest figure in here?

  “Anyway, to tell the truth, if I rest, I get bored. Or, more precisely, I experience boredom without cause. If I knew the cause, I could find the cure.

  “I tell myself that what I call boredom is lack of a certain kind of passion. Yet I fear finding that passion too much to look for it; I fear it would overwhelm me. Ah, George, I wish I were like you!”

  “I would never wish that on you,” I said, laughing. “But, Marie, we are more alike than you know. I too have been ‘bored’ like you, and not just lately but all my life. Since I was born! And—”

  “Only you control it! You approach it as a pragmatist, saying, ‘Well, if that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is.’ And you write to find truth and justice and happiness! You are as noble as Joan of Arc!

  “But enough of sadness. Enough, I will speak of it no more! Let us be happy. Tell me, George, are you wearing something new yet again? Show me!”

  I rose and then stood back a bit to show her my double-breasted, green-striped tailcoat and yellow silk brocade waistcoat, with its lively pattern of leaves and red berries. Also new were my goffered shirt, with its low cravat, and my stirrup pants, which had leather straps. I had been hoping she would notice; I had bought these clothes for her as much as for myself.

  She rested her chin in her hands and gazed up at me, and I stood like a dandy on display for a moment longer.

  When I sat down, she said, “Tell me, George. Do you wish you’d been born a man?”

  I thought for a moment, then said, “In my youth, I wished that. I very much admired my father and I wanted to be just like him. And I was always very interested in the games and adventures of boys, most of which took place in the out-of-doors, where I always wanted to be. But now I find I don’t wish to be either man or woman. I wish to be myself. Why should men serve as judge and jury, deciding for us what can and cannot be done, what is our due? Why should they decide in advance of our deciding for ourselves what is best for us; why should they decide what is us?”

  “But then you do wish to be a man!”

  “Perhaps I wish to be a woman with a man’s privileges.”

  “I must ask you something more intriguing. Do you love women as a man does?”

  The noise of the café fell away; all the world fell away. I answered carefully and as truly as I knew how, looking directly into her eyes. “When I love, Marie, it is because of a person’s heart and mind and soul, none of which has a sex. It is not the body that attracts me; it is the spirit that dwells within. Once I love the spirit, I come to love the body, even as, if I come upon my beloved’s gloves, I love them. Is it the gloves I love? Of course not. It is that they belong to the person who has captured my heart.”

  She was quiet for a moment, staring into my eyes. Then she said, “Let us walk out. We shall walk arm in arm, and you must tell me everything you see and feel. We shall walk forever, to the end of the earth, and then we shall walk back and have supper in my dressing room. I shall have brought to us every good thing we desire, escargots to pastries, and many bottles of champagne, and we shall charge it all to Vigny as punishment for him having become so dull. And when we are full, we shall eat more, until we are made breathless. And then we shall go out and eat the night. What a tonic you are for me, George; you bring my blood to life; you excite me to the soles of my feet; I thank God for the day I met you!”

  “I thank God for that day as well.” I lifted a finger to signal the waiter, who bounded forth with the enthusiasm of a puppy, that he might stand once more at the side of Marie Dorval.

  After a few weeks, I learned that Marie’s son-in-law, Fontaney, had died, followed soon afterward by his wife, Marie’s Gabrielle, who had caught consumption from him.

  September 1821

  NOHANT

  The fall I was seventeen, my grandmother seemed for a short time to come back to her old self. I felt sure that many people were privately offering thanks that their prayers had wrought a miracle. Friends came to call, and my grandmother conducted herself with her former charm and intelligence. She ate and slept better. She was no longer confused. But in fact she was still dying, and she knew it. She spoke to me about my guardianship, saying that she wanted to add a clause to her will that would put me in the care of my cousin René de Villeneuve and his wife. “You love your mother very much, I know,” she said. “But you do not see her for what she is. I would like you to live with your father’s family, but I shan’t force you. I would like your approval.”

  By December, my grandmother no longer got out of bed and rarely spoke. One day after I had left her bedside, Deschartres answered my unasked question, saying, “It could go on for a long time.” But on Christmas night, at the age of seventy-five, she died peacefully. Her maid, Julie, tears rolling down her face, attended to my grandmother’s last toilette, washing her and then putting on her lace bonnet and her rings. I offered my prayer book and crucifix from the convent for her to be buried with. When she was ready, she looked so calm and beautiful, I could not be sad. I saw that she had passed over in great peace, and it was only given to me to wonder where she had gone. I sat by her bed for a long time, late into the night, reviewing my life with her, hoping that she had felt my love for her despite our differences of opinion.

  March 1833

  PARIS

  The spring I was twenty-eight was a time of great unhappiness and frustration in my life. It was work on my novel Lélia that sustained me, as did the friendship of Marie Dorval. She had become my truest confidante. One evening, I was reading to her from my pages, and she stopped me after this line: “How shall I free myself from this marble envelope which grips me round the knees, and holds me as totally imprisoned as a corpse by the tomb?” When Marie heard that, she put her hand on my arm to stop me from going on. I looked up to see tears in her eyes. “Ah, George. A woman who denies love. It is you whom you write about. It is you, a powerful woman powerless to get what you most need. You seem to have no idea how to achieve it. And yet you have one of your own characters say of Lélia that she is not a complete human being. You have him say that where love is absent, there can be no woman. This is you speaking of yourself!”

  “It is a story,” I said.

  “It is you,” she insisted.

  I changed the subject. It was painful for me to address what I perceived as a fatal flaw in myself: I did not know how to account for the way my passion sputtered and stalled, for the way what I had felt for Jules had deteriorated into something resembling the feelings of a mother for a child.

  Perhaps a week later, dizzy from many hours of writing, I felt I needed a night out. I sent a note to Marie, asking to see her current play. When she received my message, she responded immediately by sending me a ticket to that evening’s performan
ce, and she included with it a note of her own: “I shall be gratified to have in the audience one who loves me as you do! Come to see me afterward. I die until then.”

  After the performance, I sat in her dressing room, waiting for her. She burst in the door practically vibrating, as usual.

  “George! How happy I am to see you!” She kissed me, a brief touch to my lips, and then began changing out of her clothes. She no longer hid herself behind the screen, as she had the first time I’d visited her here.

  Once wrapped in her dressing gown, she lay on the chaise and crossed her delicate ankles one over the other, folding her arms behind her head. She was a perfect subject for a painter, and I wished then that I were one. I wished I could command her to hold the pose, so that I could examine at length every part of her.

  “Now, then,” she said. “What have you heard from Mérimée? You must tell me everything; don’t leave a single detail out!”

  “How do you know about Mérimée?”

  She didn’t bother dignifying such a stupid question with an answer. No doubt all of Paris knew.

  Prosper Mérimée, an esteemed playwright and novelist, was a friend of Sainte-Beuve’s, and it was at his urging that I had finally agreed to let Mérimée come to visit me. I had found excuses to put him off many times, pleading illness or my husband unexpectedly making an appearance. Finally he’d sent me an exasperated note that said:

  I should be much obliged if you would tell me if you are now recovered, and whether your husband sometimes goes out alone; in short, whether there is any chance of my seeing you without making a nuisance of myself.

  And so I saw him. He came to the Opéra with me and Solange, and when she fell asleep there, he carried her home. I found his intellect powerful, and I luxuriated in his strong and calm nature. I saw that he was a cynic with a sometimes careless manner, and that he felt contempt for many of the things I loved—when I described for him the plot of Lélia, he laughed! But beneath that exterior, I was sure, was a heart capable of great tenderness. We saw each other again, and that night, as we walked arm in arm along the Seine, I told him, “I want you to know that I have come to care for you, and I offer my love in friendship. I hope you feel the same.” He stopped walking and put his hands on my shoulders, turning me to face him. “Hear me, George. There is only one way for a man to love a woman, and that is in bed. Any talk of anything else—a meeting of the minds, a soulful bonding—is rubbish. Poetic rubbish, perhaps, but rubbish nonetheless. Don’t be such a child. Let the right man come to you and you will see you are no Lélia. The right man will inflame your senses and your heart and thrill your body.”

  “And I suppose that you are that ‘right man.’ ”

  “Shall we find out?”

  Now it was my turn to laugh.

  I told all this to Marie, and she sat up at the edge of the chaise in excitement. “But you must receive him!”

  I laughed.

  “George, you must! This may very well be exactly what you need. It is all but a gift from God, a sign of compassionate intervention. Don’t you see? You have spent all your time with pale poets or with mindless brutes. Here is a man who can offer you an intellect and a body that knows how to please a woman. He has quite a reputation for…shall we say…technical excellence.”

  “So I have heard.”

  “Well, what harm can it do to audition him? Truly, what harm, George? He obviously is very fond of you. He challenges you intellectually. He makes you laugh. He appreciates your great mind. Let him show you what else is up his sleeve.”

  “I doubt it is up his sleeve,” I said. “Unless he is particularly well endowed.”

  She smiled. “Champagne?”

  “Yes.”

  “First promise me you will receive him.”

  I sighed. “I promise.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “And then you must immediately report to me all that transpires.”

  I nodded, and she handed me my glass of champagne. I drank it down. Perhaps I could prove to myself that I was not Lélia after all.

  —

  I INVITED MÉRIMÉE TO DINE with me. When he arrived, he found me with my black hair wound into jeweled Spanish netting. I was dressed in a yellow silk wrapper and red slippers, and I was smoking a pipe. I wanted not to look or be anything like his other conquests.

  We ate a light supper, and then, putting down my wineglass, I said, “Shall we?”

  He followed me to the bedroom, and I could feel my heart racing. He sat in the armchair in the corner while the maid and I made ready the bed. My mouth was dry and growing drier, and there was an odd heaviness to my limbs.

  Bed prepared, maid dismissed, I looked over at Mérimée, sitting calmly, staring directly at me. I felt nothing but unease. In my mind, I listed his various attributes: He was a handsome man. He could speak Greek, Spanish, Russian, and English. His Carmen was the basis for Bizet’s opera. His shoes were made of finest leather….

  Moments passed that felt like days. I could not think of how I should proceed. I knew nothing more about being the coquette than I ever had. And so I tried to assume the brazenness of the woman I most admired: Marie Dorval. Leaving the lamp blazing, I moved to stand directly before Mérimée and removed my clothes. I was amused to see that this seemed to alarm him. His eyes widened, and his usual sardonic smile disappeared.

  Naked before him, I crossed my arms. “Well?”

  He rose without speaking, moved to the side of the bed, and began to take off his clothes. He kept his face turned from me, but I could see that he was blushing. He quickly got under the covers and then nodded at me. I moved slowly, deliberately across the room to climb into bed beside him.

  After I lay down, he kissed me, and I kept still, waiting for him to do more. He kissed me again and then, exasperated, pulled my arms up to encircle his neck. I felt as though some dance instructor had positioned our limbs. In a manner reminiscent of times I had spent in bed with Casimir, I made a mighty effort to hold back laughter.

  He moved to my breasts, and while he amused himself there, I stared up at the ceiling, waiting for his legendary skill to transport me.

  No such thing happened. I felt his flaccid member against my thigh. Finally, he lifted himself to stare down at me and said, “Is it possible that you could help?”

  I had no idea what he meant. Finally he got out of bed, dressed quickly, and, without a word, started toward the bedroom door.

  “But…where are you going?”

  I began to weep, embarrassing myself. I had been false to myself, I had attempted to be someone I was not; and this was the result.

  He shook his head. “This has been a fiasco. You behave like a young girl when you have none of her charms; and you put on the arrogance of a marquise without her elegance.” With that, he marched out of the room and then out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

  I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I sent over a note asking for another chance; I asked him to come and see me at nine o’clock. He did not come.

  —

  “MY DEAR, MY DEAR, what a catastrophe, I am so sorry for you!” Marie said.

  It was two days later; she had come to my apartment and I had told her the whole story. I was weeping, nearly hysterical. “I had such hope. I thought he might come to love me, and if he came to love me, I would be saved from this ennui, from this pain. Ah, Marie, I must tell you, I no longer relish the freedom I demanded. It is only another kind of jail. I am full of regret. I have made decisions that have changed so many lives for the worse, and I cannot take them back. I cannot do anything but suffer. Last night, I longed to throw myself in the Seine and be done with it. It was only the thought of Maurice and Solange that stopped me.”

  “This will pass,” Marie said. “All things do.”

  I suppose it might have passed, except that Marie told her lover, Vigny, about what had happened. Then, to make matters even worse, she told her nei
ghbor Alexandre Dumas, gossip extraordinaire, who, with great glee, exaggerated what had happened, saying that I had made fun of Mérimée for being unable to “raise the flag” but that in any case there wasn’t much of a flag to unfurl. I thought that for a man like Mérimée to catch wind of this would seal my fate in terms of ever having another opportunity to be his lover. We could not even be friends any longer.

  Marie came to my door in tears, begging to be forgiven, saying she never expected such repercussions—though she should have, knowing Dumas. She said that she meant, in relaying the story to both Dumas and Vigny, to obtain for me some measure of sympathy, to cast Mérimée in an unfavorable light. But of course no such thing had happened. I was seen as the groveling fool, begging someone who had rejected me to come back. Mérimée was seen as the man who had been wrongly slandered.

  Now Marie fell to her knees, saying, “Forgive me, please forgive me,” and I knelt beside her and embraced her. With great weariness and an abiding affection that had not changed, I told her I did forgive her.

  After she left, I sat still before the fire, recalling an incident from my childhood.

  Madame de Pardaillan was a friend of my grandmother’s, and when I was a very young girl, she was in the habit of calling me “poor little one.” I always wondered why. One day when I was alone with her, I worked up the courage to ask her. She drew me close and, her voice quivering with great feeling, said, “Always be kind and comport yourself well, my child, for that will be your only happiness in life.”

  “You mean that I will otherwise be unhappy?”

  “Yes,” she said, “everyone has times of sorrow, but you will have more than most. And also you will have much to forgive.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it will happen that you will have to forgive the only source of happiness you will know.”