The work is less dull since Madame George Sand has reached
the really interesting periods of her life; but how fatiguing the first
part of it was! What stuff she thrust into it! What particulars relating
to her family and her mother, which were, to say the least of it,
useless!"
"Why, my dear fellow," replied Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, with a knowing
look, "don't you know the secret?"
"What secret?"
"Ah! you have not yet shaken off provincial dust! Madame George Sand,
with that carelessness one almost always finds in great artists, sent to
Monsieur Emile de Girardin that enormous packet of four-and-twenty
volumes, at the same time authorizing him to retrench at least one-third
of the manuscript, if he thought fit. But Madame de Girardin (who is
extremely astute) thought, that, if the work were published without the
numerous dull chapters of the first part, it would command too brilliant
a success; and Her Most Gracious Majesty determined that the whole
four-and-twenty volumes should appear without the omission of a single
line,--which is all the more noble, grand, and generous, as we pay a
high price for the 'copy,' and it has curtailed our subscription-list a
good deal.
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