George Sand

Was George Sand's heart a cage of gold, or was it a fragrant garden?
And those birds adorned with every color, that greeted it and fled from it, only to return to it and flee again —
did they know that to stay in it was captivity, and that in its flowers lay snares and the drawing of blood?
That or this: enough for her heart that there sheltered in it whoever sheltered — for the host boasts of his guest,
as the body boasts of the spirit's coming upon it.

*

And the conquering de Musset went strutting through Paris from victory to victory, with love
and poetry and youth to plead for him.
And when he met her, he began to whisper with Caesar: I came, and I saw — then he starts up: ...and I conquered.
And what happened, happened.

*

He said to her: I aspire to nothing but your friendship. — Maurois says: the man who speaks
so to his woman friend today will pour out love to her tomorrow...
And she gave him her friendship — and oh, how she gave it!
She became to him a friend and a keeper of secrets; she became a sister who is tender, a mother who pampers,
a mistress who gives as though she were taking, a confidante who calls forth smiles and calls forth tears.
And after all, if the friendship of man and woman is not like this, what is it?

*

And the bird fled from the cage of gold, but it kept yearning for it. And the cage took in another guest, yet it too kept yearning for the first.
... Love — how much obscurity there is in it! Who will tell me: which was the true love —
a bird that sees love as freedom, openness, and release, or a cage that sees it as sole possession, jealousy, and a jealous grudging from which there is no escape?