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Show I "VAMPS" WHO MADE HISTORY g $ By JAMES C. YOUNG. ( by McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) THE UGLIEST SIREN ON RECORD. io HE has the face of a horse," said O Carlyle; yet he had loved her, along with many other notables of the art world who gathered In Paris during the first half of the last century. cen-tury. No one could deny that George Sand was ugly, nor that she was one of the most brilliant women authors of all time. George Sand's lovers were as numerous numer-ous as her books. Despite her homeliness, home-liness, she had the burning eyes of genius and beautiful black hair. Soon after her first success she became be-came infatuated with Prosper Meri-roee, Meri-roee, the author of "Carmen," and a lion of the salons. But on the ninth day she dismissed him. "You are too cynical for my ideal," she told him. Then came young Alfred de Musset, the poet, who had just gained fame. She carried him off to Italy, but there fell in love with a doctor.. De Musset returned to Paris. George Sand followed fol-lowed him, heartbroken but accompanied accom-panied by the doctor. She beseched the poet to forget the past. He would not heed her appeals. Then the doctor went back to Italy. In desperation, George Sand cut off her beautiful black hair and sent It to de Musset as a token of complete surrender. Still he would not relent. In-, anger she wrote a book attacking the poet, and j he replied with another. Paris laughed. Swinburne summed up the matter thus-ly thus-ly : "De Musset was w rong ; but George did not behave as a gentleman should." Balzac. Liszt, Dumas and many oth- j or famous men worshipped at George Sand's feet then passed on. At last came Frederic Chopin, the musician. He was a delicate wreck of a man. She restored hiai to something almost like health by the very force of her i love and vitality. He repaid her with I the worship of a true artist's soul. But even George Sand could not hold hack -Hie course of nature. Chopin grew w&rse. She tired of the musi- : cian at last, and left him. Dying, he sent for her. but she did not go. "Ah," he said, "she had promised that I should die in nobody's arms but hers." And he called for her until the last, although a haJf dozen of the first women wom-en of Paris stood beside his couch. Paris looked coldly at George Sand, and decided that after all she had a vampire's heart. |