Note 251 — Chapter X

Thus Rachilde (Mme. Vallette) writes that as a young girl her dreams were so vivid that 'I would often ask myself if I had not an existence in two forms: my waking personality and my dreaming personality. Sometimes I was deceived and imagined that my real life was dreams.' She instinctively began to write at the age of twelve, and it was by completing her dreams that she became a novelist (Chabaneix, Le Subconscient, p. 49). George Sand's early day-dreams, of which she gives so interesting an account (Histoire de ma Vie, part III. ch. viii), developed around the central figure of Corambé, first seen in a real dream. Corambé was, at the same time, a divine being, to whom she erected an altar. So that of the child it may be said, as Lucretius said of primitive man, that the gods first appear in dreams.