In 1846, when I was writing this novel in Nohan, I remember that I had just defended the separation of husband and wife.I had previously wrestled with the evils of marriage, and by not expressing my views adequately I might have been thought to have underestimated the nature of marriage; yet the moral principles of marriage seemed to me to be just fine. ①The original text is so, it should be 1836.In fact, this novel was written by George Sand from the summer of 1835 to the spring of 1837, and it was published in "Two Worlds Magazine" from April to June 1837, and it was published as a booklet in the same year.

Misfortune is in some sense a good thing for the thinking man.The more I understand how hard and painful it is to break off a marriage, the more I feel that what is missing in marriage is an element of fairness and happiness that is too much to ask of our present society.Society, on the contrary, endeavors to demean this sacred institution, and compares it to a contract of material advantage, which, by the spirit of custom, by prejudice, by false suspicion, besieges simultaneously from all sides. Just when I was writing a novel in order to find something to do and amuse myself, I had the idea of ​​describing a kind of dedicated and eternal love during and after marriage.I have therefore asked the hero of this work, at the advanced age of eighty, to declare his devotion to the only woman he loves.

The ideal of love must be fidelity.The creeds of morality and religion attempt to sacrifice this ideal; the affairs of the world disturb it; the enactments of civil laws often prevent it from being realised, or bring it to naught; but this is not the place for argument.It didn't become cumbersome because of blind arguments; it's just that when I was writing this novel, I attributed my particularly deep feelings to this sentence said by Maupra at the end of the book: "She is what I have been all my life. The only woman I love; no other woman has ever caught my eye or felt my embrace."

George Sand June 5, 1857