As hope fled, Chopin broke down and cried piteously.
"She promised I should die in no arms but hers!" he sobbed over and over.
And that night he died--no less than seven different women claiming later to have taken his recreant sweetheart's place at his deathbed.
George Sand was conscience-stricken. She wrote and proclaimed long and more or less plausible reasons to account for her failure to go to Chopin. But no one who really knew her was convinced of her excuses' truth. And so ended one more of her heart stories.
De Musset, by the way refused to admit her to his rooms when he himself lay dying--a grisly joke that Paris appreciated.
Back to her work, as once before, George Sand fled for forgetfulness. And her fame grew. She was the most prolific woman writer, by the way, in literature's history; writing, in all, twenty plays and more than one hundred novels.
An Englishman (name buried) courted her at about this time. Still miserable over Chopin's death--and far more so over the way people were talking about her treatment of him--she was decidedly waspish to the trans-Channel admirer. Seeking to win her interest, in a literary discussion, he opened one conversation by inquiring:
"Madame Dudevant, what is your favorite novel?"
"'Olympia,'" she answered, without a second of hesitance.
"'Olympia?'" the Englishman repeated, vainly ransacking his memory. "I don't think I recall any book of that name."
"Of course you don't," she snapped. "I haven't written it yet."
And perhaps--or perhaps not--his British brain some day unraveled the meaning of cryptic retort.
For her infidelities George Sand felt no compunction. She wrote frankly concerning them:
I have never imposed constancy upon myself. When I have felt that love is dead, I have said so without shame or remorse, and have obeyed Providence that was leading me elsewhere.
By her marriage with Dudevant, she had had a son and a daughter. The daughter, Solange, inherited much of her mother's lawlessness, with none of the latter's inspiration. And now George Sand was to see how her own nature worked in another of the same blood.
She arranged a splendid marriage for Solange, a marriage with a man of rank and money. And on the very eve of the wedding Solange proceeded to elope with a poor sculptor, Clesinger by name.