The Dream Lover Read Online Free Page B

about the neighborhood uprisings in Paris that took place during the July Revolution. There was a great deal of hatred for Charles X, and young resisters armed with not much more than paving bricks had attempted to force the king’s abdication. I had worried about my mother and other relatives living in Paris, of course; but I had also worried about those young laborers I had never met yet fully sympathized with: factory workers and students who put their lives on the line for their beliefs. They were not alone in reviling the Bourbon Restoration; Charles X was maligned not only by the poorest people on the street but also by the wealthiest in their well-appointed mansions.
    On July 26, in the midst of a heat wave, workers who had been barred from the factories took to the streets. More than forty journalists from eleven newspapers signed protests against Charles X, and for seventy-two hours there was bloody and chaotic fighting, which left six hundred dead and two hundred wounded. The next month saw the abdication of Charles X; and then Louis-Philippe,whose nickname was “Citizen King,” came back to Paris from London, where he had been in exile.
    The ones who brought this news to us at Nohant were a group of young men, students who lived now in Paris but were originally from our Berry district. They returned home now and then, and when they did, they often gathered or stayed at our house. I welcomed them because they caught us up on the news, but also because they were stimulating company, a welcome relief from the usual tedium my husband, Casimir, and I fell into when we were by ourselves.
    One day, I went to the nearby Château du Coudray to visit my friends Charles Duvernet and Alphonse Fleury, whom we called “the Gaul.” With them was a man seven years my junior whom I had not met before, a nineteen-year-old recent law graduate from La Châtre named Jules Sandeau. He had an endearingly shy demeanor. I asked if he went hunting with my friends, and he flushed, answering, “I’m afraid I don’t care for loud noises. The truth is, I’m a lazy sort of romantic dreamer whose greatest pleasure is to read and to make up my own stories.”
    I found him very handsome. He had a pink-and-white complexion and thick, curly blond hair. His build was rather slight, the kind I preferred, and his confession that he was a “romantic dreamer” did nothing but make me more interested in him.
    I told him I had been talking with my other friends about the recent revolution in Paris and had asked them if a new republic had been declared. They hadn’t been sure, and I asked if Jules knew. He did not. I mounted my horse to set off for La Châtre in search of news. Before I rode off, however, I invited Jules to come to dinner at my house the next day and told him to bring the others.
    At that dinner, I read a letter to my guests that I had just received from my children’s tutor, who was now in Paris. There had indeed been a new republic declared.
    Soon afterward, my husband, Casimir, joined the National Guard. I worried about this, I told Jules and my other friends whenI saw them a few days later. I worried about my husband and my mother and my aunt Lucie, who had had a job associated with the previous regime.
    Jules shrugged. “When the blood is on fire, there is no room for reason. The citizens will defend themselves.” Later, though, we took a walk by the river, and his approach was more gentle. “I know they will be safe,” he told me.
    “How do you know?” It was getting dark outside; I could hardly see his face.
    “Because I want them to be. For you.” He looked about, then moved closer to me and offered his arm. “We should go back.”
    I didn’t want to go back. Suddenly, I wanted to stay out all night with this young man. My attraction to him had grown stronger in the days since we’d met. He knew literature and politics and history. Though he had studied law, he wanted to become a writer, as did I, and we spent