A Romantic Love Letter written by George Sand  to Dr Pietro Pagello.

This romantic love letter was written in 1834

The mild and cloudy climate from which I come has left me with gentle melancholy impressions; what passions has the generous sun that has bronzed your brow given you?

I know how to love and how to suffer, and you, what do you know of love?

The ardour of your glances, the violent clasp of your arms, I do not know whether to combat your passion or to share it. One does not love like this in my country; beside you I am no more than a pale statue that regards you with desire, with trouble, with astonishment.

*********************

George Sand (Amantine Aurore Dudevant), French writer, to Dr Pietro Pagello in the summer of 1834.
The writer had a strange life even by modern standards. For example :-
Her father, Maurice Dupin, was a distant relative of the French King Louis XVI and grandson of the Marshal General of France, Maurice, Comte de Saxe, (himself an illegitimate son of August the Strong, King of Poland and a Saxon elector).

Her mother, Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, was a commoner.

Sand was born in Paris but raised for much of her childhood by her grandmother, Marie Aurore de Saxe, Madame Dupin de Franceuil, at her grandmother’s estate, Nohant, in the French region of Berry. She later used the setting in many of her novels. It has been said that her upbringing was quite liberal. In 1822, at age 19, she married Baron Casimir Dudevant (1795–1871), illegitimate son of Baron Jean-François Dudevant.

She and Dudevant had two children: Maurice (1823–1889) and Solange (1828–1899), though it is almost certain that the daughter was fathered by a man other than Casimir. In early 1831 she left her prosaic husband and entered upon a four- or five-year period of “romantic rebellion.” The affair with Dr Pagello (to whom this Love Letter was written) was just one of many love relationships she had during that time. In 1835 she was legally separated from Dudevant and took her children with her.

George Sand died at Nohant, near Châteauroux, in France’s Indre département on 8 June 1876, at the age of 71 and was buried in the grounds of her home there. In 2004, controversial plans were suggested to move her remains to the Panthéon in Paris.