36040	----	GEORGE SAND. BY JUSTIN M'CARTHY. _Reprinted from "The Galaxy" for May, 1870._ We are all of us probably inclined, now and then, to waste a little time in vaguely speculating on what might have happened if this or that particular event had not given a special direction to the career of some great man or woman. If there had been an inch of difference in the size of Cleopatra's nose; if Hannibal had not lingered at Capua; if Cromwell had carried out his idea of emigration; if Napoleon Bonaparte had taken service under the Turk,--and so on through all the old familiar illustrations dear to the minor essayist and the debating society. I have sometimes felt tempted thus to lose myself in speculating on what might have happened if the woman whom all the world knows as George Sand had been happily married in her youth to the husband of her choice. Would she ever have taken to literature at all? Would she, loving as she does, and as Frenchwomen so rarely do, the changing face of inanimate nature,--the fields, the flowers and the brooks,--have lived a peaceful and obscure life in some happy country place, and been content with home, and family, and love, and never thought of fame? Or if, thus happily married, she still had allowed her genius to find an expression in literature, would she have written books with no passionate purpose in them,--books which might have seemed like those of a good Miss Mulock made perfect,--books which Podsnap might have read with approval, and put without a scruple into the hands of that modest young person, his daughter? Certainly one cannot but think that a different kind of early life would have given a quite different complexion to the literary individuality of George Sand. Bulwer Lytton, in one of his novels, insists that true genius is always quite independent of the individual sufferings or joys of its possessor, and describes some inspired youth in the novel as sitting down, while sorrow is in his heart, and hunger gnawing at his vitals, to throw off a sparkling and gladsome little fairy tale. Now this is undoubtedly true, in general, of any high order of genius; but there are at least some great and striking exceptions. Rousseau and Byron are, in modern days, remarkable illustrations of genius, admittedly of a very high rank, governed and guided almost wholly by the individual fortunes of the men themselves. So, too, must we speak of the genius of George Sand. Not Rousseau, not even Byron, was in this sense more egotistic than the woman who broke the chains of her ill-assorted marriage with a crash that made its echoes heard at last in every civilized country in the world. Just as people are constantly quoting _nous avons changé tout cela_ who never read a page of Molière, or _pour encourager les autres_ without even being aware that there is a story of Voltaire's called "Candide," so there have been thousands of passionate protests uttered in America and Europe, for the last twenty years, by people who never saw a volume of George Sand, and yet are only echoing her sentiments and even repeating her words. In a former number of _The Galaxy_, I expressed casually the opinion that George Sand is probably the most influential writer of our day. I am still, and deliberately, of the same opinion. It must be remembered that very few English or American authors have any wide or deep influence over peoples who do not speak English. Even of the very greatest authors this is true. Compare, for example, the literary dominion of Shakespeare with that of Cervantes. All nations who read Shakespeare read Cervantes: in Stratford-upon-Avon itself Don Quixote is probably as familiar a figure in people's minds as Falstaff; but Shakespeare is little known indeed to the vast majority of readers in the country of Cervantes, in the land of Dante, or in that of Racine and Victor Hugo. In something of the same way we may compare the influence of George Sand with that of even the greatest living authors of England and America. What influence has Charles Dickens or George Eliot outside the range of the English tongue? But George Sand's genius has been felt as a power in every country of the world where people read any manner of books. It has been felt almost as Rousseau's once was felt; it has aroused anger, terror, pity, or wild and rapturous excitement and admiration; it has rallied around it every instinct in man or woman which is revolutionary; it has ranged against it all that is conservative. It is not so much a literary influence as a great disorganizing force, riving the rocks of custom, resolving into their original elements the social combination which tradition and convention would declare to be indissoluble. I am not now speaking merely of the sentiments which George Sand does or did entertain on the subject of marriage. Divested of all startling effects and thrilling dramatic illustrations, these sentiments probably amounted to nothing more dreadful than the belief that an unwedded union between two people who love and are true to each other is less immoral than the legal marriage of two uncongenial creatures who do not love and probably are not true to each other. But the grand, revolutionary idea which George Sand announced was that of the social independence and equality of woman,--the principle that woman is not made for man in any other sense than as man is made for woman. For the first time in the history of the world woman spoke out for herself with a voice as powerful as that of man. For the first time in the history of the world woman spoke out as woman, not as the servant, the satellite, the pupil, the plaything, or the goddess of man. Now, I intend at present to write of George Sand rather as an individual, or an influence, than as the author of certain works of fiction. Criticism would now be superfluously bestowed on the literary merits and peculiarities of the great woman whose astonishing intellectual activity has never ceased to produce, during the last thirty years, works which take already a classical place in French literature. If any reputation of our day may be looked upon as established, we may thus regard the reputation of George Sand. She is, beyond comparison, the greatest living novelist of France. She has won this position by the most legitimate application of the gifts of an artist. With all her marvellous fecundity, she has hardly ever given to the world any work which does not seem, at least, to have been the subject of the most elaborate and patient care. The greatest temptation which tries a story-teller is perhaps the temptation to rely on the attractiveness of story-telling, and to pay little or no attention to style. Walter Scott's prose, for example, if regarded as mere prose, is rambling, irregular, and almost worthless. Dickens's prose is as bad a model for imitation as a musical performance which is out of tune. Of course, I need hardly say that attention to style is almost as characteristic of French authors in general, as the lack of it is characteristic of English authors; but, even in France, the prose of George Sand stands out conspicuous for its wonderful expressiveness and force, its almost perfect beauty. Then, of all modern French authors,--I might, perhaps, say of all modern novelists of any country,--George Sand has added to fiction, has annexed from the worlds of reality and of imagination the greatest number of original characters,--of what Emerson calls new organic creations. Moreover, George Sand is, after Rousseau, the one only great French author who has looked directly and lovingly into the face of Nature, and learned the secrets which skies and waters, fields and lanes, can teach to the heart that loves them. Gifts such as these have won her the almost unrivalled place which she holds in living literature; and she has conquered at last even the public opinion which once detested and proscribed her. I could therefore hope to add nothing to what has been already said by criticism in regard to her merits as a novelist. Indeed, I think it probable that the majority of readers in this country know more of George Sand through the interpretation of the critics than through the pages of her books. And in her case criticism is so nearly unanimous as to her literary merits, that I may safely assume the public in general to have in their minds a just recognition of her position as a novelist. My object is rather to say something about the place which George Sand has taken as a social revolutionist, about the influence she has so long exercised over the world, and about the woman herself. For she is assuredly the greatest champion of woman's rights, in one sense, that the world has ever seen; and she is, on the other hand, the one woman out of all the world who has been most commonly pointed to as the appalling example to scare doubtful and fluttering womanhood back into its sheepfold of submissiveness and conventionality. There is hardly a woman's heart anywhere in the civilized world which has not felt the vibration of George Sand's thrilling voice. Women who never saw one of her books,--nay, who never heard even her _nom de plume_, have been stirred by emotions of doubt or fear, or repining or ambition, which they never would have known but for George Sand, and perhaps but for George Sand's uncongenial marriage. For, indeed, there is not now, and has not been for twenty years, I venture to think, a single "revolutionary" idea, as slow and steady-going people would call it, afloat anywhere in Europe or America, on the subject of woman's relations to man, society, and destiny, which is not due immediately to the influence of George Sand, and to the influence of George Sand's unhappy marriage upon George Sand herself. The world has of late years grown used to this extraordinary woman, and has lost much of the wonder and terror with which it once regarded her. I can quite remember,--younger people than I can remember,--the time when all good and proper personages in England regarded the authoress of "Indiana" as a sort of feminine fiend, endowed with a hideous power for the destruction of souls, and an inextinguishable thirst for the slaughter of virtuous beliefs. I fancy a good deal of this sentiment was due to the fearful reports wafted across the seas, that this terrible woman had not merely repudiated the marriage bond, but had actually put off the garments sacred to womanhood. That George Sand appeared in men's clothes was an outrage upon consecrated proprieties far more astonishing than any theoretical onslaught upon old opinions could be. Reformers, indeed, should always, if they are wise in their generation, have a care of the proprieties. Many worthy people can listen with comparative fortitude when sacred and eternal truths are assailed, who are stricken with horror when the ark of propriety is never so lightly touched. George Sand's pantaloons were, therefore, regarded as the most appalling illustration of George Sand's wickedness. I well remember what excitement, scandal, and horror were created in the provincial town where I lived, some twenty years ago, when the editor of a local Panjandrum (to borrow Mr. Trollope's word) insulted the feelings and the morals of his constituents and subscribers by polluting his pages with a translation from one of George Sand's shorter novels. Ah me! the little novel might, so far as morality was concerned, have been written every word by Miss Phelps, or the authoress of the "Heir of Redcliff"; it had not a word, from beginning to end, which might not have been read out to a Sunday-school of girls; the translation was made by a woman of the purest soul, and, in her own locality, of the highest name; and yet how virtue did shriek out against the publication! The editor persevered in the publishing of the novel, spurred on to boldness by some of his very young and therefore fearless coadjutors, who thought it delightful to confront public opinion, and liked the notion of the stars in their courses fighting against Sisera, and Sisera not being dismayed. That charming, tender, touching little story! I would submit it to-day cheerfully to the verdict of a jury of matrons, confident that it would be declared a fit and proper publication. But at that time it was enough that the story bore the odious name of George Sand; public opinion condemned it, and sent the magazine which ventured to translate it to an early and dishonored grave. I remember reading, about that time, a short notice of George Sand by an English authoress of some talent and culture, in which the Frenchwoman's novels were described as so abominably filthy that even the denizens of the Paris brothels were ashamed to be caught reading them. Now, this declaration was made all in good faith, in the simple good faith of that class of persons who will pass wholesale and emphatic judgment upon works of which they have never read a single page. For I need hardly tell any intelligent person of to-day that, whatever may be said of George Sand's doctrines, she is no more open to the charge of indelicacy than the authoress of "Romola." I cannot, myself, remember any passage in George Sand's novels which can be called indelicate; and, indeed, her severest and most hostile critics are fond of saying, not without a certain justice, that one of the worst characteristics of her works is the delicacy and beauty of her style, which thus commends to pure and innocent minds certain doctrines that, broadly stated, would repel and shock them. Were I one of George Sand's inveterate opponents, this, or something like it, is the ground I would take up. I would say: "The welfare of the human family demands that a marriage, legally made, shall never be questioned or undone. Marriage is not a union depending on love or congeniality, or any such condition. It is just as sacred when made for money, or for ambition, or for lust of the flesh, or for any other purpose, however ignoble and base, as when contracted in the spirit of the purest mutual love. Here is a woman of great power and daring genius, who says that the essential condition of marriage is love and natural fitness; that a legal union of man and woman without this is no marriage at all, but a detestable and disgusting sin. Now, the more delicately, modestly, plausibly she can put this revolutionary and pernicious doctrine, the more dangerous she becomes, and the more earnestly we ought to denounce her." This was, in fact, what a great many persons did say; and the protest was at least consistent and logical. But horror is an emotion which cannot long live on the old fuel, and even the world of English Philistinism soon ceased to regard George Sand as a mere monster. Any one now taking up "Indiana," for example, would perhaps find it not quite easy to understand how the book produced such an effect. Our novel-writing women of to-day commonly feed us on more fiery stuff than this. Not to speak of such accomplished artists in impurity as the lady who calls herself Ouida, and one or two others of the same school, we have young women, only just promoted from pantalettes, who can throw you off such glowing chapters of passion and young desire as would make the rhapsodies of "Indiana" seem very feeble milk-and-water brewage by comparison. Indeed, except for some of the descriptions in the opening chapters, I fail to see any extraordinary merit in "Indiana"; and toward the end it seems to me to grow verbose, weak, and tiresome. "Leone Leoni" opens with one of the finest dramatic outbursts of emotion known to the literature of modern fiction; but it soon wanders away into discursive weakness, and only just toward the close brightens up into a burst of lurid splendor. It is not those which I may call the questionable novels of George Sand,--the novels which were believed to illustrate in naked and appalling simplicity her doctrines and her life,--that will bear up her fame through succeeding generations. If every one of the novels which thus in their time drew down the thunders of Society's denunciation were to be swept into the wallet wherein Time, according to Shakespeare, carries scraps for oblivion, George Sand would still remain where she now is,--at the head of the French fiction of her day. It is true, as Goethe says, that "miracle-working pictures are rarely works of art." The books which make the hair of the respectable public stand on end are not often the works by which the fame of the author is preserved for posterity. It is a curious fact that, at the early time to which I have been alluding, little or nothing was known in England (or, I presume, in America) of the real life of Aurora Amandine Dupin, who had been pleased to call herself George Sand. People knew, or had heard, that she had separated from her husband, that she had written novels which depreciated the sanctity of legal marriage, and that she sometimes wore male costume in the streets. This was enough. In England, at least, we were ready to infer any enormity regarding a woman who was unsound on the legal marriage question, and who did not wear petticoats. What would have been said had people then commonly known half the stories which were circulated in Paris,--half the extravagances into which a passionate soul, and the stimulus of sudden emancipation from restraint, had hurried the authoress of "Indiana" and "Lucrezia Floriani"? For it must be owned that the life of that woman was, in its earlier years, a strange and wild phenomenon, hardly to be comprehended, perhaps, by American or English natures. I have heard George Sand bitterly arraigned even by persons who protested that they were at one with her as regards the early sentiments which used to excite such odium. I have heard her described by such as a sort of Lamia of literature and passion,--a creature who could seize some noble, generous, youthful heart, drain it of its love, its aspirations, its profoundest emotions, and then fling it, squeezed and lifeless, away. I have heard it declared that George Sand made "copy" of the fierce and passionate loves which she knew so well how to awaken and to foster; that she distilled the life-blood of youth to obtain the mixture out of which she derived her inspiration. The charge so commonly (I think unjustly) made against Goethe, that he played with the girlish love of Bettina and of others in order to obtain a subject for literary dissection, is vehemently and deliberately urged in an aggravated form,--in many aggravated forms,--against George Sand. Where, such accusers ask, is that young poet, endowed with a lyrical genius rare indeed in the France of later days,--that young poet whose imagination was at once so daring and so subtle,--who might have been Béranger and Heine in one, and have risen to an atmosphere in which neither Béranger nor Heine ever floated? Where is he, and what evil influence was it which sapped the strength of his nature, corrupted his genius, and prepared for him a premature and shameful grave? Where is that young musician, whose pure, tender, and lofty strains sound sweetly and sadly in the ears, as the very hymn and music of the Might-Have-Been,--where is he now, and what was the seductive power which made a plaything of him and then flung him away? Here and there some man of stronger mould is pointed out as one who was at the first conquered, and then deceived and trifled with, but who ordered his stout heart to bear, and rose superior to the hour, and lived to retrieve his nature and make himself a name of respect; but the others, of more sensitive and perhaps finer organizations, are only the more to be pitied because they were so terribly in earnest. Seldom, even in the literary history of modern France, has there been a more strange and shocking episode than the publication by George Sand of the little book called "Elle et Lui," and the rejoinder to it by Paul de Musset, called "Lui et Elle." I can hardly be accused of straying into the regions of private scandal when I speak of two books which had a wide circulation, are still being read, and may be had, I presume, in any New York book-store where French literature is sold. The former of the two books, "She and He," was a story, or something which purported to be a story, by George Sand, telling of two ill-assorted beings whom fate had thrown together for awhile, and of whom the woman was all tenderness, love, patience, the man all egotism, selfishness, sensuousness, and eccentricity. The point of the whole business was to show how sublimely the woman suffered, and how wantonly the man flung happiness away. Had it been merely a piece of fiction, it must have been regarded by any healthy mind as a morbid, unwholesome, disagreeable production,--a sin of the highest æsthetic kind against true art, which must always, even in its pathos and its tragedy, leave on the mind exalted and delightful impressions. But every one in Paris at once hailed the story as a chapter of autobiography, as the author's vindication of one episode in her own career,--a vindication at the expense of a man who had gone down, ruined and lost, to an early grave. Therefore the brother of the dead man flung into literature a little book called "He and She," in which a story, substantially the same in its outlines, is so told as exactly to reverse the conditions under which the verdict of public opinion was sought. Very curious indeed was the manner in which the same substance of facts was made to present the two principal figures with complexions and characters so strangely altered. In the woman's book the woman was made the patient, loving, suffering victim; in the man's reply this same woman was depicted as the most utterly selfish and depraved creature the human imagination could conceive. Even if one had no other means whatever of forming an estimate of the character of George Sand, it would be hardly possible to accept as her likeness the hideous picture sketched by Paul de Musset. No woman, I am glad to believe, ever existed in real life so utterly selfish, base, and wicked as his bitter pen has drawn. I must say that the thing is very cleverly done. The picture is at least consistent with itself. As a character in romance it might be pronounced original, bold, brilliant, and, in an artistic sense, quite natural. There is something thoroughly French in the easy and delicate force of the final touch with which de Musset dismisses his hideous subject. Having sketched this woman in tints that seem to flame across the eyes of the reader,--having described with wonderful realism and power her affectation, her deceit, her reckless caprices, her base and cruel coquetries, her devouring wantonness, her soul-destroying arts, her unutterable selfishness and egotism,--having, to use a vulgar phrase, "turned her inside out," and told her story backwards,--the author calmly explains that the hero of the narrative in his dying hour called his brother to his bedside, and enjoined him, if occasion should ever arise, if the partner of his sin should ever calumniate him in his grave, to vindicate his memory, and avenge the treason practised upon him. "Of course," adds the narrator, "the brother made the promise,--and I have since heard that he has kept his word." I can hardly hope to convey to the reader any adequate idea of the effect produced on the mind by these few simple words of compressed, whispered hatred and triumph, closing a philippic, or a revelation, or a libel of such extraordinary bitterness and ferocity. The whole episode is, I believe and earnestly hope, without precedent or imitation in literary controversy. Never, that I know of, has a living woman been publicly exhibited to the world in a portraiture so hideous as that which Paul de Musset drew of George Sand. Never, that I know of, has any woman gone so near to deserving and justifying such a measure of retaliation. For if it be assumed,--and I suppose it never has been disputed,--that in writing "Elle et Lui" George Sand meant to describe herself and Alfred de Musset, it is hard to conceive of any sin against taste and feeling,--against art and morals,--more flagrant than such a publication. The practice, to which French writers are so much addicted, of making "copy" of the private lives, characters, and relationships of themselves and their friends, seems to me in all cases utterly detestable. Lamartine's sins of this kind were grievous and glaring; but were they red as scarlet, they would seem whiter than snow when compared with the lurid monstrosity of George Sand's assault on the memory of the dead poet who was once her favorite. The whole affair, indeed, is so unlike anything which could occur in America or in England, that we can hardly find any canons by which to try it, or any standard of punishment by which to regulate its censure. I allude to it now because it is the only substantial evidence I know of which does fairly seem to justify the worst of the accusations brought against George Sand; and I do not think it right, when writing for grown men and women, who are supposed to have sense and judgment, to affect not to know that such accusations are made, or to pretend to think that it would be proper not to allude to them. They have been put forward, replied to, urged again, made the theme of all manner of controversy in scores of French and in some English publications. Pray let it be distinctly understood that I am not entering into any criticism of the morality of any part of George Sand's private life. With that we have nothing here to do. I am now dealing with the question, fairly belonging to public controversy, whether the great artist did not deliberately deal with human hearts as the painter of old is said to have done with a purchased slave,--inflicting torture in order the better to learn how to depict the struggles and contortions of mortal agony. In answer to such a question I can only point to "Lucrezia Floriani" and to "Elle et Lui," and say that unless the universal opinion of qualified critics be wrong, these books, and others too, owe their piquancy and their dramatic force to the anatomization of dead passions and discarded lovers. We have all laughed over the pedantic surgeon in Molière's "Malade Imaginaire", who invites his _fiancée_, as a delightful treat, to see him dissect the body of a woman. I am afraid that George Sand did sometimes invite an admiring public to an exhibition yet more ghastly and revolting,--the dissection of the heart of a dead lover. But, in truth, we shall never judge George Sand and her writings at all, if we insist on criticising them from any point of view set up by the proprieties or even the moralities of Old England or New England. When the passionate young woman,--in whose veins ran the wild blood of Marshal Saxe,--found herself surrendered by legality and prescription to a marriage bond against which her soul revolted, society seemed for her to have resolved itself into its original elements. Its conventionalities and traditions contained nothing which she held herself bound to respect. The world was not her friend, nor the world's law. By one great decisive step she sundered herself forever from the bonds of what we call "society". She had shaken the dust of convention from her feet; the world was all before her where to choose. No creature on earth is so absolutely free as the Frenchwoman who has broken with society: There, then, stood this daring young woman, on the threshold of a new, fresh, and illimitable world; a young woman gifted with genius such as our later years have rarely seen, and blessed or cursed with a nature so strangely uniting the most characteristic qualities of man and woman, as to be in itself quite unparalleled and unique. Just think of it,--try to think of it! Society and the world had no longer any laws which she recognized. Nothing was sacred; nothing was settled. She had to evolve from her own heart and brain her own law of life. What wonder if she made some sad mistakes? Nay, is it not rather a theme for wonder and admiration that she did somehow come right at last? I know of no one who seems to me to have been open at once to the temptations of woman's nature and man's nature, except this George Sand. Her soul,--her brain,--her style may be described, from one point of view, as exuberantly and splendidly feminine; yet no other woman has ever shown the same power of understanding, and entering into the nature of a man. If Balzac is the only man who has ever thoroughly mastered the mysteries of a woman's heart, George Sand is the only woman, so far as I know, who has ever shown that she could feel as a man can feel. I have read stray passages in her novels which I would confidently submit to the criticism of any intelligent men unacquainted with the text, convinced that they would declare that only a man could have thus analyzed the emotions of manhood. I have in my mind, just now especially, a passage in the novel "Piccinino" which, were the authorship unknown, would, I am satisfied, secure the decision of a jury of literary experts that the author must be a man. Now this gift of entire appreciation of the feelings of a different sex or race is, I take it, one of the rarest and highest dramatic qualities. Especially is it difficult for a woman, as our social life goes, to enter into the feelings of a man. While men and women alike admit the accuracy of certain pictures of women drawn by such artists as Cervantes, Molière, Balzac, and Thackeray, there are few women,--indeed, perhaps there are no women but one,--by whom a man has been so painted as to challenge and compel the recognition and acknowledgment of men. In "The Galaxy", some months ago, I wrote of a great Englishwoman, the authoress of "Romola", and I expressed my conviction that on the whole she is entitled to higher rank, as a novelist, than even the authoress of "Consuelo". Many, very many men and women, for whose judgment I have the highest respect, differed from me in this opinion. I still hold it, nevertheless; but I freely admit that George Eliot has nothing like the dramatic insight which enables George Sand to enter into the feelings and experiences of a man. I go so far as to say that, having some knowledge of the literature of fiction in most countries, I am not aware of the existence of any woman but this one, who could draw a real, living, straggling, passion-tortured man. All other novelists of George Sand's sex,--even including Charlotte Brontë,--draw only what I may call "women's men". If ever the two natures could be united in one form,--if ever a single human being could have the soul of man and the soul of woman at once,--George Sand might be described as that physical and psychological phenomenon. Now the point to which I wish to direct attention, is the peculiarity of the temptation to which a nature such as this was necessarily exposed at every turn when, free of all restraint and a rebel against all conventionality, it confronted the world and the world's law, and stood up, itself alone, against the domination of custom and the majesty of tradition. I claim, then, that when we have taken all these considerations into account, we are bound to admit that Aurora Dudevant deserves the generous recognition of the world for the use which she made of her splendid gifts. Her influence on French literature has been, on the whole, a purifying and strengthening power. The cynicism, the recklessness, the wanton, licentious disregard of any manner of principle, the debasing parade of disbelief in any higher purpose or nobler restraint, which are the shame and curse of modern French fiction, find no sanction in the pages of George Sand. I remember no passage in her works which gives the slightest encouragement to the "nothing new, and nothing true, and it don't signify" code of ethics which has been so much in fashion of late years. I find nothing in George Sand which does not do homage to the existence of a principle and a law in everything. This daring woman, who broke with society so early and so conspicuously, has always insisted, through every illustration, character, and catastrophe in her books, that the one only reality, the one only thing that can endure, is the rule of right and of virtue. Nor has she ever, that I can recollect, fallen into the enfeebling and sentimental theory so commonly expressed in the works of Victor Hugo, that the vague abstraction society is always to bear the blame of the faults committed by the individual man or woman. Of all persons in the world, Aurora Dudevant might be supposed most likely to adopt this easy and complacent theory as her guiding principle. She had every excuse, every reason for endeavoring to preach up the doctrine that our errors are society's and our virtues our own. But I am not aware that she ever taught any lesson save the lesson that men and women must endeavor to be heroes and heroines for themselves, heroes and heroines though all the world else were craven, and weak, and selfish, and unprincipled. Even that wretched and lamentable "Elle et Lui" affair, utterly inexcusable as it is when we read between the lines its secret history, has, at least, the merit of being an earnest and powerful protest against the egotistical and debasing indulgence of moral weaknesses and eccentricities which mean and vulgar minds are apt to regard as the privilege of genius. "Stand upon your own ground; be your own ruler; look to yourself, not to your stars, for your failure or success; always make your standard a lofty ideal, and try persistently to reach it, though all the temptations of earth, and all the power of darkness strive against you"--this, and nothing else, if I have read her books rightly, is the moral taught by George Sand. She may be wrong in her principle sometimes, but, at least, she always has a principle. She has a profound and generous faith in the possibilities of human nature; in the capacity of man's heart for purity, self-sacrifice, and self-redemption. Indeed, so far is she from holding counsel with wilful weakness or sin, that I think she sometimes falls into the noble error of painting her heroes as too glorious in their triumph over temptation, in their subjugation of every passion and interest to the dictates of duty and of honor. Take, for instance, that extraordinary book which has just been given to the American public in Miss Virginia Vaughan's excellent translation, "Mauprat". If I understand that magnificent romance at all, its purport is to prove that no human nature is ever plunged into temptation beyond its own strength to resist, provided that it really wills resistance; that no character is irretrievable, no error inexpiable, where there is sincere resolve to expiate, and longing desire to retrieve. Take, again, that exquisite little story, "La Dernière Aldini"; I do not know where one could find a finer illustration of the entire sacrifice of man's natural impulse, passion, interest, to what might almost be called an abstract idea of honor and principle. I have never read this little story without wondering how many men one ever has known who, placed in the same situation as that of Nello, the hero, would have done the same thing; and yet so simply and naturally are the characters wrought out, and the incidents described, that the idea of pompous, dramatic self-sacrifice never enters the mind of the reader, and it seems to him that Nello could not do otherwise than as he is doing. I speak of these two stories particularly, because in both of them there is a good deal of the world and the flesh; that is, both are stories of strong human passion and temptation. Many of George Sand's novels, the shorter ones especially, are as absolutely pure in moral tone, as entirely free from even a taint or suggestion of impurity, as they are perfect in style. Now, if we cannot help knowing that much of this great woman's life was far from being irreproachable, are we not bound to give her all the fuller credit, because her genius, at least, kept so far the whiteness of its soul? Revolutions are not to be made with rose-water; you cannot have omelettes without breaking of eggs. I am afraid that great social revolutionists are not often creatures of the most pure and perfect nature. It is not to patient Griselda you must look for any protest against even the uttermost tyranny of social conventions. One thing I think may, at least, be admitted as part of George Sand's vindication,--that the marriage system in France is the most debased and debasing institution existing in civilized society, now that the buying and selling of slaves has ceased to be a tolerated system. I hold that the most ardent advocates of the irrevocable endurance of the marriage bond are bound, by their very principles, to admit that, in protesting against the so-called marriage system of France, George Sand stood on the side of purity and right. Assuredly, she often went into extravagances in the other direction. It seems to be the fate of all French reformers to rush suddenly to extremes; and we must remember that George Sand was not a Bristol Quakeress, or a Boston transcendentalist, but a passionate Frenchwoman, the descendant of one of the maddest votaries of love and war who ever stormed across the stage of European history. Regarding George Sand, then, as an influence in literature, and on society, I claim for her at least four great and special merits: First, she insisted on calling public attention to the true principle of marriage; that is to say, she put the question as it had not been put before. Of course, the fundamental principle she would have enforced is always being urged more or less feebly, more or less sincerely; but she made it her own question, and illuminated it by the fervid, fierce rays of her genius and her passion. Secondly, her works are an exposition of the tremendous reality of the feelings which people who call themselves practical are apt to regard with indifference or contempt as mere sentiments. In the long run, the passions decide the life-question one way or the other. They are the tide which, as you know or do not know how to use it, will either turn your mill and float your boat, or drown your fields and sweep away your dwellings. Life and society receive no impulse and no direction from the influences out of which the novels of Dickens, or even of Thackeray, are made up. These are but pleasant or tender toying with the playthings and puppets of existence. George Sand constrains us to look at the realities through the medium of her fiction. Thirdly, she insists that man can and shall make his own career; not whine to the stars, and rail out against the powers above, when he has weakly or wantonly marred his own destiny. Fourthly,--and this ought not to be considered her least service to the literature of her country,--she has tried to teach people to look at Nature with their own eyes, and to invite the true love of her to flow into their hearts. The great service which Ruskin, with all his eccentricities and extravagances, has rendered to English-speaking peoples by teaching them to use their own eyes when they look at clouds, and waters, and grasses, and hills, George Sand has rendered to France. I hold that these are virtues and services which ought to outweigh even very grave personal and artistic errors. We often hear that this or that great poet or romancist has painted men as they are; this other as they ought to be. I think George Sand paints men as they are, and also not merely as they ought to be, but as they can be. The sum of the lesson taught by her books is one of confidence in man's possibilities, and hope in his steady progress. At the same time she is entirely practical in her faith and her aspirations. She never expects that the trees are to grow up into the heavens, that men and women are to be other than men and women. She does not want them to be other; she finds the springs and sources of their social regeneration in the fact that they are just what they are, to begin with. I am afraid some of the ladies who seem to base their scheme of woman's emancipation and equality on the assumption that, by some development of time or process of schooling, a condition of things is to be brought about where difference of sex is no longer to be a disturbing power, will find small comfort or encouragement in the writings of George Sand. She deals in realities altogether; the realities of life, even when they are such as to shallow minds may seem mere sentiments and ecstacies; the realities of society, of suffering, of passion, of inanimate nature. There is in her nothing unmeaning, nothing untrue; there is in her much error, doubtless, but no sham. I believe George Sand is growing into a quiet and beautiful old age. After a life of storm and stress, a life which, metaphorically at least, was "worn by war and passion", her closing years seem likely to be gilded with the calm glory of an autumnal sunset. One is glad to think of her thus happy and peaceful, accepting so tranquilly the reality of old age, still laboring with her unwearied pen, still delighting in books, and landscapes, and friends, and work. The world can well afford to forget as soon as possible her literary and other errors. Of the vast mass of romances, stories, plays, sketches, criticisms, pamphlets, political articles, even, it is said, ministerial manifestoes of republican days, which she poured out, only a few comparatively will perhaps be always treasured by posterity; but these will be enough to secure her a classic place. And she will not be remembered by her writings alone. Hers is probably the most powerful individuality displayed by any modern Frenchwoman. The influence of Madame Roland was but a glittering unreality, that of Madame de Staël only a boudoir and coterie success, when compared with the power exercised over literature, human feeling, and social law, by the energy, the courage, the genius, even the very errors and extravagances of George Sand. 
28209	----	[Illustration: _FAMOUS WOMEN_] GEORGE SAND. BY BERTHA THOMAS. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1883. _Copyright, 1883_, BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. PREFATORY NOTE. The authentic materials available for an account of the life of George Sand, although lately increased by the publication of a large part of her correspondence, are still incomplete. Her memoirs by her own hand, dealing fully with her early life alone, remain unsupplemented by any entire and detailed biography, for which, indeed, the time seems hardly yet come. Hence one among many obvious difficulties in the way of this attempt to prepare for English readers a brief sketch that shall at least indicate all the more salient features of a life of singularly varied aspect. Much, though of interest in itself, must here be omitted, as beyond the scope of the present study. There are points again into which, as touching persons still living or quite recently deceased, it would be premature to enter. But none seem of such importance as to forbid the endeavor, by a careful review of those facts in the life of George Sand which most justly represent her character as a whole, and were the determining influences on her career and on her work, to arrive at truth and completeness of general outline, the utmost it is possible to hope to accomplish in this little volume. BERTHA THOMAS. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. EARLY YEARS CHAPTER II. GIRLHOOD AND MARRIED LIFE CHAPTER III. DÉBUT IN LITERATURE CHAPTER IV. LÉLIA--ITALIAN JOURNEY CHAPTER V. MENTAL DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER VI. SOLITUDE, SOCIETY AND SOCIALISM CHAPTER VII. CONSUELO--HOME LIFE AT NOHANT 149 CHAPTER VIII. NOVELIST AND POLITICIAN 170 CHAPTER IX. PASTORAL TALES CHAPTER X. PLAYS AND LATER NOVELS CHAPTER XI. ARTIST AND MORALIST CHAPTER XII. LATER YEARS GEORGE SAND. CHAPTER I. EARLY YEARS. In naming George Sand we name something more exceptional than even a great genius. Her rise to eminence in the literature of her century, is, if not without a parallel, yet absolutely without a precedent, in the annals of women of modern times. The origin of much that is distinctive in the story of her life may be traced in the curious story of her lineage. George Sand was of mixed national descent, and in her veins ran the blood of heroes and of kings. The noble and the artist, the _bourgeoisie_ and the people, all had their representatives among their immediate ancestors. Her grandmother, the guardian of her girlhood, was the child of Maurice, Marshal Saxe, that favorite figure in history and romance, himself son of the famous Augustus II., Elector of Saxony, and King of Poland, and the Swedish Countess Aurora von Königsmark. The Marshal's daughter Aurore, though like her father of illegitimate birth--her mother, who was connected with the stage, passed by her professional name of Mlle. Verrieres--obtained after the Marshal's death the acknowledgment and protection of his relatives in high places, notably of his niece, the Dauphin of France, grand-daughter of Augustus of Poland, and mother of the three kings--Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., and Charles X. Carefully educated at St. Cyr, Mlle. de Saxe was married, when little more than a child, to the Count de Horn, who was also of partly royal but irregular origin. He very shortly afterward fell in a duel. His widow, at thirty, became the wife of M. Dupin de Franceuil, an old gentleman of good provincial family and some fortune. Maurice, their only child, was the father of George Sand. Madame Dupin (the suffix de Franceuil was afterwards dropped by her husband) appears to have inherited none of the adventurous and erratic tendencies of her progenitors. Aristocratic in her sympathies, philosophic in her intellect, and strictly decorous in her conduct, throughout the whole of her long and checkered life she was regarded with respect. Left a widow again, ten years after her second marriage, she concentrated her hopes and affections on her handsome and amiable son Maurice. Though fondly attached to her, he was yet to be the cause of her heaviest sorrows, by his more than hazardous marriage, and by his premature and tragical fate. His strongest natural leanings seem to have been towards art in general, music and the drama in particular, and of his facile, buoyant, artist temperament there is ample evidence; but the political conditions of France under the Directory in 1798 left him no choice but to enter the army, where he served under Dupont, winning his commission on the field of Marengo in 1800. It was during this Italian campaign that the young officer met with the woman who, four years later, became his wife, and the mother of his illustrious child. Mademoiselle Sophie Victorie Delaborde, was, emphatically speaking, a daughter of the people. Her father had been a poor bird-seller at Paris, where she herself had worked as a milliner. Left unprotected at a very early age, thoroughly uneducated and undisciplined, gifted with considerable beauty, and thrown on the world at a time when the very foundations of society seemed to be collapsing, she had been exposed to extreme dangers, and without any of the ordinary safeguards against them. That she proved herself not undeserving of the serious attachment with which she inspired Maurice Dupin, her least favorable judges were afterwards forced to admit; though, at the time this infatuation of the lieutenant of six-and-twenty for one four years his senior, and of the humblest extraction, and whose life hitherto had not been blameless, was naturally regarded as utterly disastrous by his elders. The devoted pair were married secretly at Paris in 1804; and on the 5th of July in the same year--the last of the French Republic and the first of the Empire--their daughter entered the world, receiving the name of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore. The discovery of the _mésalliance_ she had been dreading for some time, and which her son had not dared to confess to her, was a heavy blow to old Madame Dupin. However, she schooled herself to forgive what was irrevocable, and to acknowledge this most unwelcome daughter-in-law, the infant Aurore helping unconsciously to effect the reconciliation. But for more than three years M. Dupin's mother and his wife scarcely ever met. Madame Dupin _mère_ was living in a retired part of the country, in the very centre of France, on the little property of Nohant, which she had bought with what the Revolution had left her out of her late husband's fortune. Maurice, now Captain Dupin and _aide-de-camp_ to Murat, resided, when not on service, in Paris, where he had settled with his wife and child. The union, strange though it may seem, continued to be a happy one. Besides a strong attachment there existed a real conformity of disposition between the two. The mother of George Sand was also, in her way, a remarkable woman. She has been described by her daughter as "a great artist lost for want of development"; showing a wonderful dexterity in whatever she put her hand to, no matter if practiced in it or not. "She tried everything, and always succeeded"--sewing, drawing, tuning the piano--"she would have made shoes, locks, furniture, had it been necessary." But her tastes were simple and domestic. Though married out of her rank, she was entirely without any vain ambition to push herself into fashionable society, the constraint of which, moreover, she could not bear. "She was a woman for the fire-side, or for quick, merry walks and drives. But in the house or out of doors, what she wanted was intimacy and confidence, complete sincerity in her relations with those around her, absolute liberty in her habits and the disposal of her time. She always led a retired life, more anxious to keep aloof from tiresome acquaintance than to seek such as might be advantageous. That was just the foundation of my father's character; and in this respect never was there a better-assorted couple. They could never be happy except in their own little _ménage_. Everywhere out of it they had to stifle their melancholy yawns, and they have transmitted to me that secret shyness which has always made the gay world intolerable, and home a necessity to me." In a modest _bourgeois_ habitation in the Rue Meslay, afterwards transferred to the Rue Grange-Batelière, Aurore Dupin's infancy passed tranquilly away, under the wing of her warmly affectionate mother who, though utterly illiterate, showed intuitive tact and skill in fostering the child's intelligence. "Mine," says her daughter, "made no resistance; but was never beforehand with anything, and might have been very much behindhand if left to itself." Aurore was not four years old when adventures began for her in earnest. In the spring of 1808, her father was at Madrid, in attendance upon Murat; and Madame Maurice Dupin, becoming impatient of prolonged separation from her husband, started off with her little girl to join him. The hazards and hardships of the expedition, long mountain drives and wild scenery, strange fare and strange sights, could not fail vividly to impress the child, whose imagination from her cradle was extraordinarily active. Her mother ere this had discovered that Aurore, then little more than a baby, and pent up within four chairs to keep her out of harm's way, would make herself perfectly happy, plucking at the basket-work and babbling endless fairy tales to herself, confused and diluted versions of the first fictions narrated to her. A picturesque line in a nursery song was enough to bring before her a world of charming wonders; the figures, birds, and flowers on a Sèvres china candelabrum would call up enchanting landscapes; and the sound of a flageolet played from some distant attic start a train of melodious fancies and throw her into musical raptures. Her daily experiences, after reaching Madrid with her mother, continued to be novel and exciting in the extreme. The palace of the Prince de la Paix, where Murat and his suite had their quarters, was to her the realization of the wonder-land of Perrault and d'Aulnoy; Murat, the veritable Prince Fanfarinet. She was presented to him in a fancy court-dress, devised for the occasion by her mother, an exact imitation of her father's uniform in miniature, with spurs, sword, and boots, all complete. The Prince was amused by the jest, and took a fancy to the child, calling her his little _aide-de-camp_. After a residence of several weeks in this abode, whose splendor was alloyed by not a little discomfort and squalor, the return-journey had to be accomplished in the height of summer, amid every sort of risk; past reeking battle-fields, camps, sacked and half-burnt villages and beleaguered cities. Captain Dupin succeeded, however, in escorting his family safely back into France again, the party halting to recruit awhile under his mother's roof. Nohant, a spot that has become as famous through its associations as Abbotsford, lies about three miles from the little town of La Châtre, in the department of the Indre, part of the old province of Berry. The manor is a plain gray house with steep mansard roofs, of the time of Louis XVI. It stands just apart from the road, shaded by trees, beside a pleasure ground of no vast extent, but with its large flower-garden and little wood allowed to spread at nature's bidding, quite in the English style. Behind the house cluster a score of cottages of the scattered hamlet of Nohant; in the centre rises the smallest of churches, with a tiny cemetery hedged around and adjoining the wall of the manor garden. At this country home the tired travellers gladly alighted; but they had barely a few weeks in which to recover from the fatigues of their Spanish campaign, when a terrible calamity overwhelmed the household. Maurice Dupin, riding home one night from La Châtre, was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot. The story of Aurore Dupin's individual life opens at once with the death of her father--a loss she was still too young to comprehend, but for which she was soon to suffer through the strange, the anomalous position, in which it was to place her. Maurice Dupin's patrician mother and her plebeian daughter-in-law, bereft thus violently of him who had been the only possible link between them, found themselves hopelessly, actively, and increasingly at variance. Their tempers clashed, their natures were antipathetic, their views contradictory, their positions irreconcilable. Aurore was not only thrust into an atmosphere of strife, but condemned to the apple of discord. She was to grow up between two hostile camps, each claiming her obedience and affection. The beginning was smooth, and the sadness which alone kept the peace was not allowed to weigh on the child. She ran wild in the garden, the country air and country life strengthening a naturally strong constitution; and her intelligence, though also allowed much freedom in its development, was not neglected. A preceptor was on the spot in the person of the fourth inmate of Nohant, an old pedagogue, Deschartres by name, formerly her father's tutor, who had remained in Madame Dupin's service as "intendant." The serio-comic figure of this personage, so graphically drawn by George Sand herself in the memoirs of her early life, will never be forgotten by any reader of those reminiscences. Pedant, she says, was written in every line of his countenance and every movement that he made. He was possessed of some varied learning, much narrow prejudice, and a violent, crotchety temper, but had proved during the troubles of the Revolution his sincere and disinterested devotion to the family he served, and Aurore and "the great man," as she afterwards nicknamed her old tutor, were always good friends. Before she was four years old she could read quite well; but she remarks that it was only after learning to write that what she read began to take a definite meaning for her. The fairy-tales perused but half intelligently before were re-read with a new delight. She learnt grammar with Deschartres, and from her grandmother took her first lessons in music, an art of which she became passionately fond; and it always remained for her a favourite source of enjoyment, though she never acquired much proficiency as a musical performer. The educational doctrines of Rousseau had then brought into fashion a _régime_ of open-air exercise and freedom for the young, such as we commonly associate with English, rather than French, child-life; and Aurore's early years--when domestic hostilities and nursery tyrannies, from which, like most sensitive children, she suffered inordinately, were suspended--were passed in the careless, healthy fashion approved in this country. A girl of her own age, but of lower degree, was taken into the house to share her studies and pastimes. Little Ursule was to become, in later years, the faithful servant of her present companion, who had then become lady of the manor, and who never lost sight of this humble friend. Aurore had also a boy playmate in a _protégé_ of her grandmother's, five years her senior, who patronised and persecuted her by turns, in his true fraternal fashion. This boy, Hippolyte, the son of a woman of low station, was in fact Aurore's half-brother, adopted from his birth and brought up by Madame Dupin the elder, whose indulgence, where her son was concerned, was infinite. With these, and the children of the farm-tenants and rural proprietors around, Aurore did not want for companions. But the moment soon arrived when the painful family dispute of which she was the object, was to become the cause of more distress to the child than to her elders. There were reasons which stood in the way of Madame Maurice Dupin's fixing her residence permanently under her mother-in-law's roof. But the mind of the latter was set on obtaining the guardianship of her grand-daughter, the natural heir to her property, and on thus assuring to her social and educational privileges of a superior order. The child's heart declared unreservedly for her mother, whose passionate fondness she returned with the added tenderness of a deeper nature, and all attempts to estrange the two had only drawn them closer together. But the pecuniary resources of Maurice Dupin's widow were of the smallest, and the advantages offered to her little girl by the proposed arrangement so material, that the older lady gained her point in the end. Madame Maurice settled in Paris. Aurore grew up her grandmother's ward, with Nohant for her home; a home she was to keep, knowing no other, till the end of her life. The separation was brought about very gradually to the child. The first few winters were spent in Paris, where her grandmother had an establishment. Then she could pass whole days with her mother, who, in turn, spent summers at Nohant, and Aurore for years was buoyed up by the hope that a permanent reunion would still be brought about. But meantime domestic jealousy and strife, inflamed by the unprincipled meddling of servants, raged more fiercely than ever, and could not but be a source of more than ordinary childish misery to their innocent object. It was but slowly that she became attached to her grandmother, whose undemonstrative temper, formal habits and condescending airs were little calculated to win over her young affections, or fire her with gratitude for the anxiety displayed by this guardian to form her manners and cultivate her intellect. Nay, the result was rather to implant in her a premature dislike and distrust for conventional ideals. From the standard of culture and propriety, from the temptations of social rank and wealth held up for her preference, she instinctively turned to the simple, unrestrained affection of the despised mother, and the greater freedom and expansion enjoyed in such company. In vain did disdainful lady's-maids try to taunt her into precocious worldly wisdom, asking if she could really want to go and eat beans in a little garret. Such a condition, naturally, she began to regard as the equivalent of a noble and glorious existence! Meantime, throughout all these alternations of content and distress, Nohant and its surroundings were perforce becoming dear to her, as only the home of our childhood can ever become. The scenery and characteristics of that region are familiar to all readers of the works of George Sand; a quiet region of narrow, winding, shady lanes, where you may wander long between the tall hedges without meeting a living creature but the wild birds that start from the honey-suckle and hawthorn, and the frogs croaking among the sedges; a region of soft-flowing rivers with curlew-haunted reed beds, and fields where quails cluck in the furrows; the fertile plain studded with clumps of ash and alder, and a rare farm-habitation standing amid orchards and hemp-fields, or a rarer hamlet of a dozen cottages grouped together. The country is flat, and, viewed from the rail or high road, unimpressive. But those fruitful fields have a placid beauty, and it needs but to penetrate the sequestered lanes and explore the thicket-bound courses of the streams, to meet with plenty of those pleasant solitudes after a poet's own heart, whose gift is to seize and perpetuate transient effects, and to open the eyes of duller minds to charms that might pass unnoticed. In this sense only can George Sand be said to have idealized for us the landscapes she loved. The thoughtful, poetic side of her temperament showed itself early, leading her to seek long intervals of solitude, when she would bury herself in books or dreams, to satisfy the cravings of her intellect and imagination. On the other hand, her vigorous physical organization kept alive her taste for active amusements and merry companionship. So the child-squire romped on equal terms with the little rustics of Nohant, sharing their village sports and the occupations of the seasons as they came round: hay-making and gleaning in summer; in winter weaving bird-nets to spread in the snowy fields for the wholesale capture of larks; anon listening with mixed terror and delight to the picturesque legends told by the hemp-beaters, as they sat at their work out of doors on September moonlight evenings--to all the traditional ghost-stories of the "Black Valley," as she fancifully christened the country round about. Tales were these of fantastic animals and goblins, the _grand'-bête_ and the _levrette blanche_, Georgeon, that imp of mischief, night apparitions of witches and charmers of wolves, singing Druidical stones and mysterious portents--a whole fairy mythology, then firmly believed in by the superstitious peasantry. As a signal contrast to this way of life came for a time the annual visits to Paris--suspended after she was ten years old. There liberty ended, and the girl was transported into a novel and most uncongenial sphere. Her grandmother's friends and relatives were mostly old people, who clung to antiquated modes and customs; and distinguished though such circles might be, the youngest member only found out that they were intolerably dull. The wrinkled countesses with their elaborate toilettes and ceremonious manners, the _abbés_ with their fashionable tittle-tattle and their innumerable snuff-boxes, the long dinners, the accomplishment-lessons, notably those in dancing and deportment, were repugnant to the soul of the little hoyden. She made amends to herself by observing these new scenes and characters narrowly, with the acute natural perception that was one of her leading gifts. From this artificial atmosphere of constraint, it was inevitable that she should welcome hours of escape into her mother's unpretending domestic circle; and already at ten years old she had pronounced the lot of a scullery-maid enviable, compared to that of an old _marquise_. Nevertheless the fact of her having, at an age when impressions are strongest, and most lasting, mixed freely and on equal terms with the upper classes of society, was a point in her education not without its favorable action on her afterwards as a novelist. Despite her firm republican sympathies, emphatic disdain for mere rank and wealth, and her small mercy for the foibles of the fashionable world, she can enter into its spirit, paint its allurements without exaggeration, and indicate its shortcomings with none of that asperity of the outsider which always suggests some unconscious envy lurking behind the scorn. The despised accomplishment-lessons, in themselves tending only to so much agreeable dabbling, proved useful to her indirectly by creating new interests, and as an intellectual stimulus. There seems to have been little or no method about her early education. The study of her own language was neglected, and the time spent less profitably, she considered in acquiring a smattering of Latin with Deschartres. She took to some studies with avidity, while others remained wholly distasteful to her. For mere head-work she cared little. Arithmetic she detested; versification, no less. Her imagination rebelled against the restrictions of form. Nowhere, perhaps, except in the free-fantasia style of the novel, could this great prose-poet have found the right field in which to do justice to her powers. The dry _technique_ in music was a stumbling-block of which she was impatient. History and literature she enjoyed in whatever they offered that was romantic, heroic, or poetically suggestive. In her Nohant surroundings there was nothing to check, and much to stimulate, this dominant, imaginative faculty. Her youthful attempts at original composition she quickly discarded in disgust; but it seemed almost a law of her mind that whatever was possessing it she must instinctively weave into a romance. Thus in writing her history-epitome she must improve on the original, when too dry, by exercising her fancy in the description of places and personages. The actual political events of that period were of the most exciting character; Napoleon's Russian campaign, abdication, retreat to Elba, the Hundred Days, Waterloo, the Restoration, following each other in swift succession. Old Madame Dupin was an anti-Bonapartist, but Aurore had caught from her mother something of the popular infatuation for the emperor, and her fancy would create him over again, as he might have been had his energies been properly directed. Her day-dreams were often so vivid as to effect her senses with all the force of realities. Such a visionary life might have been most dangerous and mentally enervating had her organization been less robust, and the tendency to reverie not been matched by lively external perception and plentiful physical activity. As it was, if at one moment she was in a cloud-land of her own, or poring over the stories of the Iliad, the classic mythologies, or Tasso's _Gerusalemme_, the next would see her scouring the fields with Ursule and Hippolyte, playing practical jokes on the tutor, and extemporizing wild out-of-door games and dances with her village companions. Of serious religious education she received none at all. Here, again, the authorities were divided. Her mother was pious in a primitive way, though holding aloof from priestly influences. The grandmother, a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Voltaire, had renounced the Catholic creed, and was what was then called a Deist. But beyond discouraging a belief in miraculous agencies she preserved a neutrality with her ward on the subject, and Aurore was left free to drift as her nature should decide. Instinctively she felt more drawn toward her mother's unreasoning, emotional faith than toward a system of philosophic, critical inquiry. But on both sides what was offered her to worship was too indefinite to satisfy her strong religious instincts. Once more she filled in the blank with her imagination, which was forthwith called upon to picture a being who should represent all perfections, human and divine; something that her heart could love, as well as her intelligence approve. This ideal figure, for whom she devised the name _Corambé_, was to combine all the spiritual qualities of the Christian ideal with the earthly grace and beauty of the mythological deities of Greece. For very many years she cherished this fantasy, finding there the scope she sought for her aspirations after superhuman excellence. It is hardly too much to say that the Christianity which had been expressly left out in her teaching she invented for herself. She erected a woodland altar in the recesses of a thicket to this imaginary object of her adoration, and it is a characteristic trait that the sacrifices she chose to offer there were the release of birds and butterflies that had been taken prisoners--as a symbolical oblation most welcome to a divinity whose essential attributes were infinite mercy and love. It will be remembered that a somewhat similar anecdote is related of the youthful Goethe. Aurore, as the years went on, had grown sincerely fond of Madame Dupin; but her mother still held the foremost place in her heart, and she had never ceased to cherish the belief that if they two could live together she would be perfectly happy. The discovery of this deeply irritated her grandmother, who at length was provoked to intimate to the girl something of the real motive for insisting on this separation--namely, that her mother's antecedents were such as, in the eyes of Aurore's well-wishers, rendered it desirable to establish the daughter's existence apart from that of her parent. Sooner or later such a revelation must have been made; but made as it was, thus precipitately, in a moment of jealous anger, the chief result was of necessity to cause a painful and dangerous shock to the sensitive young mind. It brought about an unnatural discord in her moral nature, forbidden all at once to respect what she had loved most, and must continue to love, in spite of all. On the injurious effects of the over-agitation to which she was subjected in her childhood she has laid much stress in her remarkable work, "The Story of My Life." Much of this book, written when she was between forty and fifty, reads like a romance; and had a certain amount of retrospective imagination entered into the treatment of these reminiscences it would not be surprising. The tendency to impart poetical color and significance to whatever was capable of taking it was her mastering impulse, and may sometimes have led her to lose the distinction between fancy and reality, especially as by her own confession her memory was never her strong point. But she had an excellent memory for impressions, and no reader whose own recollections of childhood have not grown faint, but will feel the profound truth of the spirit of the narrative, which is of a kind that occasional exaggerations in the letter cannot depreciate in value as a psychological history. For an account of her early life it must always remain the most important source. Aurore was now thirteen, and though she had read a good deal of miscellaneous literature her instruction had been mostly of a desultory sort; she was behindhand in the accomplishments deemed desirable for young ladies; and her country manners, on the score of etiquette, left something to be desired. To school, therefore, it was decided that she must go; and her grandmother selected that held by the nuns of the "English convent" at Paris, as the most fashionable institution of the kind. This _Convent des Anglaises_ was a British community, first established in the French capital in Cromwell's time. It has now been removed, and its site, the Rue St. Victor, has undergone complete transformation. In 1817, however, it was in high repute among conventual educational establishments. To this retreat Aurore was consigned and there spent more than two years, an untroubled time she has spoken of as in many respects the happiest of her life. There is certainly nothing more delightful in her memoirs than the vivid picture there drawn of the convent-school interior, drawn without flattery or malice, and with sympathy and animation. The nunnery was an extensive building of rambling construction--with parts disused and dilapidated--quite a little settlement, counting some 150 inmates, nuns, pupils and teachers; with cells and dormitories, long corridors, chapels, kitchens, distillery, spiral staircases and mysterious nooks and corners; a large garden planted with chestnut trees, a kitchen garden, and a little cemetery without gravestones, over-grown with evergreens and flowers. The sisters were all English, Irish, or Scotch, but the majority of the pupils and the secular mistresses were French. Of the nuns the ex-scholar speaks with respect and affection, but their religious exercises left them but the smaller share of their time and attention to devote to the pupils. The girls almost without exception were of high social rank, the _bourgeois_ element as yet having scarcely penetrated this exclusive seminary. Aurore formed warm friendships with many of her school-fellows, and seems to have been decidedly popular with the authorities as well, in spite of the high spirits which amid congenial company found vent in harmless mischief and a sort of organized playful insubordination. The school had two parties: the _sages_ or good girls, and the _diables_, their opposites. Among the latter Aurore conscientiously enrolled herself and became a leader in their escapades, acquiring the sobriquet of "Madcap." These outbreaks led to nothing more heinous than playing off tricks on a tyrannical mistress, or making raids on the forbidden ground of the kitchen garden. But the charm that held together the confraternity of _diables_ was a grand, long-cherished design, to which their best energy and ingenuity were devoted--a secret, heroic-sounding enterprise, set forth as "the deliverance of the victim." A tradition existed among them that a captive was kept languishing miserably in some remote cell, and they had set themselves the task of discovering and liberating this hapless wretch. It is needless to say that prisoner and dungeon existed in their girlishly romantic brains alone, but easy to see how such a legend might possess itself of their imaginations, and to what bewitching exploits it might invite firm believers. The supervision was not so very strict but that a _diable_ of spirit might sometimes play truant from the class-room unnoticed. The truants would then start on an exciting journey of discovery through the tortuous passages, exploring the darkest recesses of the more deserted portions of the convent; now penetrating into the vaults, now adventuring on the roofs, regardless of peril to life or limb. This sublimely ridiculous undertaking, half-sport, half-earnest, so fascinated Aurore as to become the most important occupation of her mind! The teaching provided for the young ladies appears to have been of the customary superficial order--of everything a little; a little music, a little drawing, a little Italian. With English she had the opportunity of becoming really conversant, as it was the language commonly spoken in the convent, where also she could not fail to acquire some insight into the English character. This she has treated more fairly than England for long was to treat her. Few of her gifted literary countrymen have done such justice to the sterling good qualities of our nation. Even when, in delineating the Briton, she caricatures those peculiarities with which he is accredited abroad, her blunders seem due to incomplete knowledge rather than to any inability to comprehend the spirit of a people with whom, indeed, she had many points of sympathy. She could penetrate that coldness and constraint of manner so repelling to French natures, and has said of us, with unconventional truth, that our character is in reality more vehement than theirs; but with less mastery over our emotions themselves, we have more mastery over the expression of our emotions. Among her chosen school-comrades were several English girls, but on leaving the convent their paths separated, and in her after life she had but rare opportunities for renewing these early friendships. Some eighteen months had elapsed in this fashion when Aurore began to tire of _diablerie_. The victim remained undiscoverable. The store of practical jokes was exhausted. Her restless spirit, pent up within those convent walls, was thirsting for a new experience,--something to fill her heart and life. It came in the dawn of a religious enthusiasm--different from her mystical dream of _Corambé_, which however poetical was out of harmony with the spirit and ritual of a Catholic convent. But monastic life had its poetical aspects also; and through these it was that its significance first successfully appealed to her. An evening in the chapel, a Titian picture representing Christ on the Mount of Olives, a passage chanced upon in the "Lives of the Saints," brought impressions that awoke in her a new fervor, and inaugurated a period of ardent Catholicism. All vagueness was gone from her devotional aspirations, which now acquired a direct personal import. The change brought a revolution in her general behavior. She was understood to have been "converted." "Madcap" was now nicknamed "Sainte Aurore" by her profane school-fellows, and she formed the serious desire and intention of becoming a nun. The sisters, a practical-minded community, behaved with great good sense and discretion. Without distressing the youthful proselyte by casting doubts on her "vocation," they reminded her that the consideration was a distant one, as for years to come her first duty would be to her relatives, who would never sanction her present determination. Her confessor, the Abbé Prémord, a Jesuit and man of the world, was likewise kindly discouraging; and perceiving that her zeal was leading her to morbid self-accusation and asceticism of mood, he shrewdly enjoined upon her as a penance to take part in the sports and pastimes with the rest as heretofore, much to her dismay. But she soon found her liking for these return, and with it her health of mind. Unshaken still in her private belief that she would take the veil in due time, she was content to wait, and in the interval to be a useful and agreeable member of society. No more insubordination, no more mischievous freaks, yet "Sainte Aurore" remained the life and soul of all recreations recognized by authority, which even included little theatrical performances now and then. She had become more regular in her studies since her mind had taken a serious turn, but her heart was less in them than ever. Considering this, and the deficiencies in the system of instruction itself, it is hardly surprising that when, in the spring of 1820, her grandmother fearing that the monastic idea was taking hold of Aurore in good earnest decided to remove her from the _Couvent des Anglaises_, she knew little more than when first she had entered it. CHAPTER II. GIRLHOOD AND MARRIED LIFE. Aurore Dupin was now fifteen, and so far, though somewhat peculiarly situated, she and her life had presented no very extraordinary features, nor promise of the same. Her energies had flowed into a variety of channels, and manifestly clever and accustomed to take the lead though she might be, no one, least of all herself, seems to have thought of regarding her as a wonder. The Lady Superior of the _Couvent des Anglaises_, who called her "Still Waters," had perhaps an inkling of something more than met the eye, existent in this pupil. But a dozen years were yet to elapse before the moment came when she was to start life afresh for herself, on a footing of independence and literary enterprise, and by her first published attempts raise her name at once above the names of the mass of her fellow-creatures. Old Madame Dupin, warned by failing health that her end was not far off, would gladly have first assured a husband's protection for her ward, whom she had now succeeded in really dissociating from her natural guardian. The girl's bringing-up, and an almost complete separation for the last five years, had made a gap--in habits of mind and feeling--such as could hardly be quite bridged over, between her mother and herself. But though beginning to be sadly aware of this and of the increasing violence and asperities of poor Madame Maurice Dupin's temper, which made peace under one roof with her a matter of difficulty, Aurore hung back from the notion of marriage, and clearly was much too young to be urged into taking so serious a step. So to Nohant she returned from the convent in the spring of 1820. There she continued to strike that judicious compromise between temporal and spiritual duties and pleasures enjoined on her by her clerical adviser. Still bent on choosing a monastic life, when free to choose for herself, she was reconciled in the meantime to take things as they came, and to make herself happy and add to the happiness of her grandmother in the ordinary way. So we find her enjoying the visit of one of her school friends, getting up little plays to amuse the elders, practicing the harp, receiving from her brother Hippolyte--now a noisy hussar--during his brief visit home, her first initiation into the arts of riding--for the future her favorite exercise--and of pistol-shooting; and last, but not least, beginning to suspect that she had learned nothing whatever while at school, and setting to work to educate herself, as best she could, by miscellaneous reading. In the spring of the following year Madame Dupin's health and mental faculties utterly broke down. But she lived on for another ten months. Aurore for the time was placed in a most exceptional position for a French girl of sixteen. She was thrown absolutely on herself and her own resources, uncontrolled and unprotected, between a helpless, half imbecile invalid, and the eccentric, dogmatic pedagogue, Deschartres. Highly susceptible to influences from without, her mind, during their sudden and complete suspension, seemed as it were invited to discover and take its own bent. Piqued by the charge of dense ignorance flung at her by her ex-tutor, and aware that there was truth in it, she would now sit up all night reading, finding her appetite for the secular knowledge she used to despise grow by what it fed upon. The phase of religious exaltation she had recently passed through still gave the tone to her mind, and it was with the works of famous philosophers, metaphysicians, and Christian mystics that she began her studies. Comparing the "Imitation of Christ" with Châteaubriand's "Spirit of Christianity," and struck here and elsewhere with the wide discrepancies and contradictions of opinion manifest between great minds ranging themselves under one theological banner, she was led on to speculations that alarmed her conscience, and she appealed to her spiritual director, the Abbé Prémord, for advice, fearing lest her faith might be endangered if she read more. He encouraged her to persevere, telling her in no wise to deny herself these intellectual enjoyments. But her rigid Catholicism was doomed from that hour. Hers was that order of mind which can never give ostensible adhesion to a creed whilst morally unconvinced; never accept that refuge of the weak from the torment of doubt, in abdicating the functions of reason and conscience, shifting the onus of responsibility on to others, and agreeing to believe, as it were, by proxy. She had plunged fearlessly and headlong into Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Mably, Leibnitz, Bossuet, Pascal, Montaigne, Montesquieu; beginning to call many things in question, and, through the darkness and confusion into which she was sometimes thrown, trying honestly and sincerely to feel her way to some more glorious faith and light. In the convent she had been familiarized with Romanism under its most attractive aspects. The moral refinement, the mystery, the seclusion, and picturesque beauties of that abode had a poetic charm that had carried her irresistibly away. But, confronted with the system in its practical working, she was staggered by many of its features. In the country churches around her she saw the peasantry encouraged in their grossest superstitions, and the ritual, carelessly hurried through, degenerate often into mere mockery. The practice of confession, moreover--her ultimate condemnation of which, as an institution whose results for good are scanty, its dangers excessive, will be endorsed by most persons in this country--and the Church's denial of the right of salvation to all outside its pale, revolted her; and she caught at the teaching of those who claimed liberty of conscience. "Reading Leibnitz," she observes, "I became a Protestant without knowing it." That purer and more liberal Christianity she dreamed of had, she discovered, been the ideal of many great men. The step brought her face to face with fresh and grave problems of which, she truly observes, the solutions were beyond her years, and beyond that era. There came to her rare moments of celestial calm and concord, but she owed them to other and indirect sources of inspiration. The study of philosophy, indeed, was not much more congenial to her at sixteen than arithmetic had been at six. In what merely exercised memory and attention she took comparatively but languid interest. Instruction, to bring her its full profit, must be conveyed through the medium of moral emotion, but the mysterious power of feeling to stimulate intellect was with her immense. She turned now to the poets--Shakespeare, Byron, Dante, Milton, Virgil, Pope. A poet herself, she discovered that these had more power than controversialists to strengthen her religious convictions, as well as to enlarge her mind. Above all, the writings of the poet-moralist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, helped her towards resolving the question that occupied her, of her true vocation in life, now that her determination to take the veil was not a little shaken. The midnight student was by turns Amazon and sick-nurse as well. From the fatigue of long watches over her books or by the invalid's bedside, she found a better and more invigorating refreshment than sleep in solitary morning rides across country. Her fearlessness on horseback was madness in the eyes of the neighbors. Riding, then and there, was almost unheard of for ladies, a girl in a riding-habit regarded as simply a Cossack in petticoats, and Mademoiselle Dupin's delight in horse-exercise sufficed to stamp her as eccentric and strong-minded in the opinion of the country gentry and the towns-folk of La Châtre. They had heard of her studies, too, and disapproved of them as unlady-like in character. Philosophy was bad enough, but anatomy, which she had been encouraged to take up by Deschartres, himself a proficient in medical science, was worse--sacrilegious, for a person understood to be professedly of a devotional turn of mind. She went game-shooting with the old tutor; he had a mania for the sport, which she humored though she did not share. But when quails were the object, she owns to have enjoyed her part in the chase, which was to crouch in the furrows among the green corn, imitating the cry of the birds to entice them within gunshot of the sportsman. Lastly, finding in the feminine costume-fashions of that period a dire impediment to out-door enterprise of the sort, in a region of no roads, or bad roads, of rivers perpetually in flood, turning the lanes into water-courses for three-fourths of the year, of miry fields and marshy heaths, she procured for herself a suit of boy's clothes, donning blouse and gaiters now and then without compunction for these rough country walks and rambles. Here, indeed, was more than enough to raise a hue-and-cry at La Châtre, a small provincial town, probably neither better nor worse than the rest of its class, a class never yet noted for charity or liberality of judgment. The strangest stories began to be circulated concerning her, stories for the most part so false and absurd as to inspire her with a sweeping contempt for public opinion. By a very common phenomenon, she was to incur throughout her life far more censure through freaks, audacious as breaches of custom, but intrinsically harmless, nor likely to set the fashion to others, than is often reserved for errors of a graver nature. The conditions of ordinary middle-class society are designed, like ready-made clothes, to fit the vast majority of human beings, who live under them without serious inconvenience. For the future George Sand to confine her activities within the very narrow restrictions laid down by the social code of La Châtre was, it must be owned, hardly to be expected. It was perhaps premature to throw down the gauntlet at sixteen, but her inexperience and isolation were complete. The grandmother in her dotage was no counsellor at all. Deschartres, an oddity himself, cared for none of these things. Those best acquainted with her at La Châtre, families the heads of which had known her father well and whose younger members had fraternized with her from childhood upwards, liked her none the less for her unusual proceedings, and defended her stoutly against her detractors. "You are losing your best friend," said her dying grandmother to her when the end came, in December, 1821. Aurore was, indeed, placed in a difficult and painful situation. She had inherited all the property of the deceased, who, in her will, expressed her desire that her own nearest relations by her marriage with M. Dupin, a family of the name of de Villeneuve, well-off and highly connected, should succeed her as guardians to her ward. But it was impossible to dispute the claims of Madame Maurice Dupin to the care of her own daughter if she chose to assert them, which she quickly did, bearing off the girl with her to Paris--Nohant being left under the stewardship of Deschartres--and by her unconciliatory behavior further alienating the other side of the family from whom Aurore, through no fault of her own, was virtually estranged at the moment when she stood most in need of a friend. Twenty years later they came forward to claim kinship and friendship again: it was then with George Sand, the illustrious writer, become one of the immortals. Thus her lot was cast for her in her mother's home and plebeian circle of acquaintance. So much the worse, it was supposed, for her prospects, social and matrimonial. This did not distress her, but none the less was the time that followed an unhappy one. The mother whom she had idolized, and of whom she always remained excessively fond, appears to have been something of a termagant in her later years. The heavy troubles of her life had aggravated one of those irascible and uncontrollable tempers that can only be soothed by superior violence. Aurore, saddened, gentle, and submissive, only exasperated her. Her fitful affection and fitful rages combined to make her daughter's life miserable, and to incline the girl unconsciously to look over-favorably on any recognized mode of escape that should present itself. A long visit to the country-house of some friends near Melun, was hailed as a real relief by both. Here there were young people, and plenty of cheerful society. Aurore became like one of the family, and her mother was persuaded to allow her to prolong her stay indefinitely. Among the new acquaintance she formed whilst on this visit was one that decided her future. M. Casimir Dudevant was a young man on terms of intimacy with her hosts, the Duplessis family. From the first he was struck by Mlle. Dupin, who on his further acquaintance was not otherwise than pleased with him. The sequel, before long, came in an offer of marriage on his part, which she accepted with the approval of her friends. He was seven-and-twenty, had served in the army, and studied for the law; but had expectations which promised an independence. His father, Colonel Dudevant, a landed proprietor in Gascony, whose marriage had proved childless, had acknowledged Casimir, though illegitimate, and made him his heir. It was reckoned not a brilliant _parti_ for the _châtelaine_ of Nohant, but a perfectly eligible one. It was not a _mariage de convenance_; the young people had chosen freely. Still less was it a love match. Romantic sentiment--counted out of place in such arrangements by the society they belonged to--seems not to have been dreamed of on either side. But they had arranged it for themselves, which to Aurore would naturally seem, as indeed it was, an improvement on the usual mode of procedure, according to which the burden of choice would have rested with her guardians. It was a _mariage de raison_ founded, as she and he believed, on mutual friendliness; in reality on a total and fatal ignorance of each other's characters, and probably, on Aurore's side, of her own as well. She was only just eighteen, and had a wretched home. The match was sanctioned by their parents, respectively. In September, 1822, Aurore Dupin became Madame Dudevant, and shortly afterwards she and her husband established themselves at Nohant, there to settle down to quiet country life. If tranquillity did not bring all the happiness that was expected, it was at least unbroken by such positive trials as those to come, and whatever was lacking to Madame Dudevant's felicity she forgot for a while in her joy over the birth of her son Maurice, in the summer of 1823--a son for whom more than ordinary treasures of maternal affection were in store, and who, when his childhood was past, was to become and remain until the time of her death a sure consolation and compensation to her for the troubles of her life. The first two years after her marriage were spent almost without interruption in the still monotony of Nohant. "We live here as quietly as possible," she writes to her mother in June, 1825, "seeing very few people, and occupying ourselves with rural cares." That absolute dependence on each other's society that might have had its charm for a really well-assorted couple was, however, not calculated to prolong any illusions that might exist as to the perfect harmony of their dispositions. Already in the summer of 1824 the Dudevants had sought a change from seclusion in a long visit to their friends the Duplessis, after which they rented a villa in the environs of Paris for a short while. The spring found them back at Nohant, and the summer of 1825 was marked by a tour to the Pyrenees, undertaken in concert with some old school-fellows of Aurore's, two sisters, who with their father were starting for Cauterets. The pleasure of girlish friendships renewed gave double charm to the trip, and her delight in the mountain scenery knew no bounds. "I am in such a state of enthusiasm about the Pyrenees," she writes to her mother, "that I shall dream and talk of nothing but mountains and torrents, caves and precipices, all the rest of my life." She joined eagerly in every excursion on foot and horseback, but even moderate feats of mountaineering, such as are now expected of the quietest English lady-tourists by their husbands and brothers, were then deemed startlingly eccentric, and got her into fresh trouble on this head. Her letters and the fragments of her journal kept during this time, and in which she tried to commit to paper her impressions, whilst fresh and vivid, of the Pyrenees, show the same peculiar descriptive power that distinguished her novels--that art of seizing grand general effects together with picturesque detail, and depicting them in a simple and straightforward manner, in which she was an adept. It must be added that the diffuseness which characterizes her fiction, also pervades her correspondence. Neither can be adequately represented by extracts. Her composition is like a gossamer web, that must be shown in its entirety, as to split it up is to destroy it. The ensuing winter and spring were passed agreeably in visits with her husband to his family at Nérac, Gascony, and to friends in the neighborhood. In the summer of 1826 their wanderings ended. Once more they settled down at Nohant, where Madame Dudevant, except for a few brief absences on visits to friends, or to health resorts in the vicinity, remained stationary for the next four years, during which her after-destiny was unalterably shaping itself. It is perfectly idle to speculate on what might have happened had her lot in marriage turned out a fortunate one, or had she married for love, or had the moral character of the partner of her life preserved any solid claim on her respect, since the contrary was unhappily the case. Their situation, no doubt, was anomalous. In the young girl of barely eighteen, country-bred and intellectually immature, whom M. Dudevant had chosen to marry, who could have discerned one of the greatest poetical geniuses and most powerful minds of the century? Some commiseration might _à priori_ be felt for the petty squire's son who had taken the hand of the pretty country-heiress, promising himself, no doubt, a comfortable jog-trot existence in the ordinary groove, to discover in after years that he was mated with the most remarkable woman that had made herself heard of in the literary world since Sappho! But he remained fatally blind to the nature of the development that was taking place under his eyes, preserving to the last the serenest contempt for his wife's intelligence. Her large mind and enthusiastic temperament sought in vain for moral sympathy from a narrow common spirit, and in proportion as her faculties unfolded, increasing disparity between them brought increasing estrangement. Such a strong artist-nature may require for its expansion an amount of freedom not easily compatible with domestic happiness. But of real domestic happiness she never had a fair chance, and for a time the will to make the best of her lot as it was cast appears not to have been wanting. The Dudevants, after their return home in 1826, began to mix more freely in such society as La Châtre and the environs afforded, and at certain seasons there was no lack of provincial gayeties. Aurore Dudevant all her life long was quite indifferent to what she has summarily dismissed as "the silly vanities of finery"--"_Souffrir pour être belle_" was what from her girlhood she declined to do. Regard for the brightness of her eyes, her complexion, the whiteness of her hands, the shape of her foot, never made her sacrifice her midnight study, her walks in the sunshine, or her good country sabots for the rough lanes of Berry. "To live under glass, in order not to get tanned, or chapped, or faded before the time, is what I have always found impossible," she for her part has acknowledged. And she cared very moderately for general society. She writes to her mother in spring, 1826: "It is not the thing of all others that reposes, or even that amuses me best; still there are obligations in this life, which one must take as they come." She was not yet two-and-twenty, and carnival-tide with its social "obligations" in the form of balls and receptions was not unwelcome. They snatched her away from her increasing depression. She writes of these diversions to her mother in a lively strain, describing how one ball was kept up till nine o'clock the next day, how every Sunday morning the _curé_ preaches against dancing, but in the evening the dance goes on in despite of him--how this cross _curé_ is not their own parish _curé_ of St. Chartier,--a very old friend and a "character" who, when Madame Dudevant was five-and-thirty, used to say of her, "Aurore is a child I have always been fond of." "As for him, if only he were sixty years younger," she adds, "I would undertake to make him dance himself if I set about it." Then follows an amusing sketch of a rustic bridal, the double marriage of two members of the Nohant establishment: The wedding-feast came off in our coach-houses--there was dinner in one, dancing in the other. The splendor was such as you may imagine; three tallow candle-ends by way of illumination, lots of home-made wine for refreshment; the orchestra consisting of a bagpipe and a hurdy-gurdy, the noisiest and, therefore, the best appreciated in the country side. We invited some friends over from La Châtre, and made fools of ourselves in a hundred thousand ways; as, for instance, dressing up as peasants in the evening and disguising ourselves so well as not to recognize each other. Madame Duplessis was charming in a red petticoat; Ursule, in a blue blouse and a big hat was a most comical fellow; Casimir, got up as a beggar, had some halfpence given him in all good faith; Stephane, whom I think you know, as a spruce peasant, made believe to have been drinking, stumbled against our _sous-prèfet_ and accosted him--he is a nice fellow, and was just going to depart when all of a sudden he recognized us. Well, it was a most farcical evening, and would have amused you I will engage. Perhaps you, too, would have been tempted to put on the country-cap, and I will answer for it that there would not have been a pair of black eyes to compete with yours. In other letters written in a vein of charming good humor, her facility and spirit are shown in her treatment of trivial incidents, or sketches of local characters, as this, for example, of an ancient female servant in her employ: The strangest old woman in the world--active, industrious, clean and faithful, but an unimaginable grumbler. She grumbles by day, and I think by night, when asleep. She grumbles whilst making the butter, she grumbles when feeding the poultry, she grumbles even at her meals. She grumbles at other people, and when she is alone she grumbles at herself. I never meet her without asking her how her grumbling is getting on, and she grumbles away more than ever. And elsewhere she has her fling at the little squabbles and absurdities of provincial society, the "sets" and petty distinctions, giving a humorous relation of the collapse of her well-meaning efforts, in conjunction with friends at the _sous-prèfecture_, to do away with some of these caste prejudices, of the horror and indignation created in the oligarchy of La Châtre by the apparition of an inoffensive music-master and his wife at the _sous-prèfet's_ reception, horror so great that on the next occasion, the _salon_ of the official was unfurnished with guests, except for the said music-master and the Dudevants themselves. She wrote a poetical skit to commemorate the incident, which created great amusement among her friends. In the autumn, 1828, her daughter Solange was born. The care of her two children, to whom she was devoted, occupied her seriously. Maurice's education was beginning, a fresh inducement to her to study that she might be better able to superintend his instruction. His least indisposition put her into a fever of anxiety. Her own health during all these years had repeatedly given cause for alarm. Symptoms of chest-disease showed themselves, but afterwards disappeared, her constitutional vigor triumphing in the end over complaints which seem to a great extent to have been of a nervous order. Meantime her domestic horizon was becoming overcast at many points. Her brother, Hippolyte Chatiron, now married, came with his family to settle in the neighborhood, and spent some time at Nohant. He had fallen into the fatal habit of drinking, in which he was joined by M. Dudevant to the degradation of his habits and, it would be charitable to suppose, to the confusion of his intelligence. This grave ill came to make an open break in the household calm, hitherto undisturbed on the surface. Low company and its brutalizing influences were tending to bring about a state of things to which the most patient of wives might find it hard to submit. A rôle of complete self-effacement was not one it was in her power long to sustain, and the utter moral solitude into which she was thrown consolidated those forces inclining her to the extreme of self-assertion. For together with trials without came the growing sense of superiority, the _ennui_ and unrest springing from mental faculties with insufficient outlet, and moreover, denied the very shadow of appreciation at home, where she saw the claim to her deference and allegiance co-exist with a repudiation she resented of all idea of the reciprocity of such engagements. She had voluntarily handed over the management of her property--the revenue of which was hardly proportionate to the necessary expenses and required careful economy--to her husband, an arrangement which left her, even for pocket money, dependent on him. She now set herself to devise some means of adding to her resources by private industry. The more ambitious project of securing by her own exertions a separate maintenance for herself and her children would at this time have seemed chimerical, but it haunted her as a dream long before it took definite shape. It was not in literature that she first fancied she saw her way to earning an independent income. She had begun to make amateur essays in novel-writing, but was as dissatisfied with them as with the compositions of her childhood, and with a religious novelette she had produced whilst in the convent, and speedily committed to the flames. Again, alluding to her attempts, in 1825, at descriptions of the Pyrenees, she says: "I was not capable then of satisfying myself by what I wrote, for I finished nothing, and did not even acquire a taste for writing." But she had dabbled in painting, and remained fond of it. "The finest of the arts," she calls it, writing to her mother in 1830, "and the most pleasant, as a life-occupation, whether taken up for a profession, or for amusement merely. If I had real talent, I should consider such a lot the finest in the world." But neither did the decoration of fans and snuff-boxes nor the production of little water-color likenesses of her children and friends, beyond which her art did not go, promise anything brilliant in the way of remuneration. In her circle of friends at La Châtre--old family friends who had known her all her life--were those who had recognized and admired her superior ability. Here, too, she met more than one young spirit with literary aspirations, and one, at least, M. Jules Sandeau, who was afterwards to achieve distinguished literary success. The desire to go and do likewise came and took hold of her, together with the conviction of her capability to make her mark. However discontented with her essays in novel-writing hitherto, she began to be conscious she was on the right track. The Revolution of July, 1830, had just been successfully accomplished, and new hopes and ambitions for the world in general, and their own country in particular, lent a stimulus to the intellectual activity of the youth of France--a movement too strong not to make itself felt, even in Berry. The state of things at Nohant for the last two years had, as we have seen, been tending rather to stifle than to keep alive any hesitation or compunction Madame Dudevant might have felt at breaking openly from her present condition. In a letter, dated October, 1830, to her son's private tutor, M. Boucoiran, who had then been a year under their roof in that capacity, she remarks, significantly: You often wonder at my mobility of temper, my flexible character. What would become of me without this power of self-distraction? You know all in my life, and you ought to understand that but for that happy turn of mind which makes me quickly forget a sorrow, I should be disagreeable and perpetually withdrawn into myself, useless to others, insensible to their affection. The distance between herself and her husband had, indeed, been widening until now the sole real link between them was their joint love for the children. No pretence of mutual affection existed any longer. Madame Dudevant's feeling seems to have been of indifference merely; M. Dudevant's of dislike, mingled, probably, with a little fear. It appears that he committed to paper his sentiments on the subject, and that this document, ostensibly intended by him not to be opened till after his death, was found and perused by his wife. It was the provocation thus occasioned her, and the certainty thus acquired of her husband's aversion to her society, that brought matters to a climax; so, at least, she asserted in the heat of the moment. But nothing, we imagine, could long have deferred her next step, strange and venturesome though it was. Violent in acting on a determination when taken, after the manner, as she observes, of those whose determinations are slow in forming, she declared her intentions to her husband, and obtained his consent to her plan. According to this singular arrangement she was to be permitted to spend every alternate three months in Paris, where she proposed to try her fortune with her pen. She looked forward to having her little girl to be there with her as soon as she was comfortably settled, supposing the experiment to succeed. For half the year she would continue to reside, as hitherto, at Nohant, so as not to be long separated from her son, who was old enough to miss her, and to part from whom, on any terms, cost her dear. But he was to be sent to school in two years, and for the meantime she had secured for him the care and services of M. Boucoiran, whom she thoroughly trusted. Her husband was to allow her £120 a year out of her fortune, and on condition that the allowance should not be exceeded, he left her at liberty to get on as she chose, abstaining from further interference. It seems obvious that this compromise, whilst postponing, could only render more inevitable a future separation on less amicable terms, though neither appear to have realized it at the time. Madame Dudevant can have had no motive to blind her in the matter beyond her desire, in detaching herself from her present position, not to disconnect her life from that of her children. The freedom she demanded it was probably too late to deny. Those about her, her husband and M. Chatiron, who, with his family, was temporarily domesticated at Nohant, and who so far supported her as to offer her the loan of rooms held by him in Paris, for the first part of her stay, thought her resolution but a caprice. And viewed by the light of her subsequent success it is hard now to realize the boldness of an undertaking whose consequences, had it failed, must have been humiliating and disastrous. She had no practical knowledge of the world, had received no artistic training, and enjoyed none of the advantages of intellectual society. But she had extraordinary courage, spirit, and energy, springing no doubt from a latent sense of extraordinary powers, almost matured, though as yet but half-manifest. So much she knew of herself, and states modestly: "I had discovered that I could write quickly, easily, and for long at a time without fatigue; that my ideas, torpid in my brain, woke up and linked themselves together deductively in the flow of the pen; that in my life of seclusion, I had observed a good deal, and understood pretty well the characters I had chanced to come across, and that, consequently, I knew human nature well enough to describe it." A most moderate estimate, in which, however, she had yet to convince people that she was not self-deceived. CHAPTER III. DÉBUT IN LITERATURE. In the first days of January 1831, the Rubicon was passed. The step, though momentous in any case to Madame Dudevant, was one whose ultimate consequences were by none less anticipated than by herself, when to town she came, still undecided whether her future destiny were to decorate screens and tea-caddies, or to write books, but resolved to give the literary career a trial. For actual subsistence she had her small fixed allowance from home; for credentials she was furnished with an introduction or two to literary men from her friends in the country who had some appreciation, more or less vague, of her intellectual powers. Though courageous and determined, she was far from self-confident; she asked herself if she might not be mistaking a mere fancy for a faculty, and her first step was to seek the opinion of some experienced authority as to her talent and chances. M. de Kératry, a popular novelist, to whom she was recommended, spoke his mind to her without restraint. It was to the crushing effect that a woman ought not to write at all. Her sex, Madame Dudevant was informed, can have no proper place in literature whatsoever. M. Delatouche, proprietor of the _Figaro_, poet and novelist besides, and cousin of her old and intimate friends the Duvernets, of La Châtre, was a shade more encouraging, even so far committing himself as to own that, if she would not let herself be disgusted by the struggles of a beginner, there might be a distant possibility for her of making some sixty pounds a year by her pen. Such specimens of her fiction as she submitted to him he condemned without appeal, but he encouraged her to persevere in trying to improve upon them, and advised her well in advising her to avoid imitation of any school or master, and fearlessly to follow her own bent. Meantime he took her on to the staff of his paper, then in its infancy and comparative obscurity. Journalism however was the department of literature least suited to her capabilities, and her fellow-contributors, though so much less highly gifted than Madame Dudevant, excelled her easily in the manufacture of leaders and paragraphs to order. To produce an article of a given length, on a given subject, within a given time, was for her the severest of ordeals; here her exuberant facility itself was against her. She would exhaust the space allotted to her, and find herself obliged to break off just at the point when she felt herself "beginning to begin." But she justly valued this apprenticeship as a professional experience, bringing her into direct relations with the literary world she was entering as a perfect stranger. Once able to devote herself entirely to composition and to live for her work, she found her calling begin to assert itself despotically. In a letter to a friend, M. Duteil, at La Châtre, dated about six weeks after her arrival in Paris, she writes:-- If I had foreseen half the difficulties that I find, I should not have undertaken this enterprise. Well, the more I encounter the more I am resolved to proceed. Still, I shall soon be returning home again, perhaps without having succeeded in launching my boat, but with hopes of doing better another time, and with plans of working harder than ever. Three weeks later we find her writing to her son's tutor, M. Boucoiran, in the same strain:-- I am more than ever determined to follow the literary career. In spite of the disagreeables I often meet with, in spite of days of sloth and fatigue that come and interrupt my work, in spite of the more than humble life I lead here, I feel that henceforth my existence is filled. I have an object, a task, better say it at once, a passion. The profession of a writer is a violent one, and so to speak, indestructible. Once let it take possession of your wretched head, you cannot stop. I have not been successful; my work was thought too unreal by those whom I asked for advice. But still she persisted, providing, as best she could, "copy" for the _Figaro_, at seven francs a column, and trying the experiment of literary collaboration, working at fictions and magazine articles, the joint productions of herself and her friend and fellow-student, Jules Sandeau, who wrote for the _Revue de Paris_. It was under his name that these compositions appeared, Madam Dudevant, in these first trial-attempts, being undesirous to bring hers before the public. "I have no time to write home," she pleads, petitioning M. Boucoiran for news from the country, "but I like getting letters from Nohant, it rests my heart and my head." And alluding to her approaching temporary return thither, in accordance with the terms of her agreement with M. Dudevant, she writes to M. Charles Duvernet:-- I long to get back to Berry, for I love my children more than all besides, and, but for the hopes of becoming one day more useful to them with the scribe's pen than with the housekeeper's needle, I should not leave them for so long. But in spite of innumerable obstacles I mean to take the first steps in this thorny career. In her case it was really the first step only that cost dear; whilst against the annoyances with which, as a new comer, she had to contend, there was ample compensation to set in the novel interests of the intellectual, political, and artistic world stirring around her. Country life and peasant life she had had the opportunity of studying from her youth up; of middle-class society she had sufficient experience; she counted relatives and friends among the _noblesse_, and had moved in those charmed circles; but the republic of art and letters, to which by nature and inclination she emphatically belonged, was a land of promise first opened up to her now. She was eager and impatient to deprovincialize herself. In the art galleries of the Louvre, at the theatre and the opera, in the daily interchange of ideas on all kinds of topics with her little circle of intelligent acquaintance, her mind grew richer by a thousand new impressions and enjoyments, and rapidly took fresh strength together with fresh knowledge. The heavy practical obstacles that interfere with such self-education on the part of one of her sex were seriously aggravated in her case by her narrow income. How she surmounted them is well known; assuming on occasion a disguise which, imposing on all but the initiated, enabled her everywhere to pass for a collegian of sixteen, and thus to go out on foot in all weathers, at all hours, alone if necessary, unmolested and unobserved, in theatre or restaurant, boulevard or reading-room. In defense of her adoption of this strange measure, she pleads energetically the perishable nature of feminine attire in her day,--a day before double-soles or ulsters formed part of a lady's wardrobe,--its incompatibility with the incessant going to and fro which her busy life required, the exclusion of her sex from the best part of a Paris theatre, and so forth; the ineffable superiority of a costume which, economy and comfort apart, secured her equal independence with her men competitors in the race, and identical advantages as to the rapid extension of her field of observation. The practice, though never carried on by her to such an extent as very commonly asserted, was one to which she did not hesitate to resort now and then in later years, as a mere measure of convenience--a measure the world will only tolerate in the Rosalinds and Violas of the stage. The career of George Sand was, like her nature, entirely exceptional, and any attempt to judge it in any other light lands us in hopeless moral contradictions. She had extraordinary incentives to prompt her to extraordinary actions, which may be condemned or excused, but which there could be no greater mistake than to impute to ordinary vulgar motives. It must also be remembered that fifty years ago, the female art student had no recognized existence. She was shut out from that modicum of freedom and of practical advantages it were arbitrary to deny, and which may now be enjoyed by any earnest art aspirant in almost any great city. However unjustifiable the proceeding resorted to for a time by George Sand and Rosa Bonheur may be held to be, it cannot possibly be said they had no motive for it but a fantastic one. Writing to her mother from Nohant, whither she had returned in April for a length of time as agreed, Madam Dudevant speaks out characteristically in defense of her love of independence:-- I am far from having that love of pleasure, that need of amusement with which you credit me. Society, sights, finery, are not what I want,--you only are under this mistake about me,--it is liberty. To be all alone in the street and able to say to myself, I shall dine at four or at seven, according to my good pleasure; I shall go to the Tuileries by way of the Luxembourg instead of going by the Champs Elysées; this is what amuses me far more than silly compliments and stiff drawing-room assemblies. Such audacious self-emancipation, she was well aware, must estrange her from her friends of her own sex in the upper circles of Parisian society, and she anticipated this by making no attempt to renew such connections. For the moment she thought only of taking the shortest, and, as she judged, the only way for a "torpid country wife," like herself, to acquire the freedom of action and the enlightenment she needed. Those most nearly related to her offered no opposition. It was otherwise with her mother-in-law, the _baronne_ Dudevant, with whom she had a passage-of-arms at the outset on the subject of her literary campaign, here disapproved _in toto_. "Is it true," enquired this lady, "that it is your intention to _print books_?" "Yes, madame." "Well, I call that an odd notion!" "Yes, madame." "That is all very good and very fine, but I hope you are not going to put the name that I bear on the _covers of printed books_?" "Oh, certaintly not, madame, there is no danger." The liberty to which other considerations were required to give way was certainly complete enough. The beginning of July found her back at work in the capital. On the Quai St. Michel--a portion of the Seine embankment facing the towers of Notre Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, and other picturesque monuments of ancient Paris--she had now definitely installed herself in modest lodgings on the fifth story. Accepted and treated as a comrade by a little knot of fellow _literati_ and colleagues on the _Figaro_, two of whom--Jules Sandeau and Félix Pyat--were from Berry, like herself; and with Delatouche, also a Berrichon, for their head-master, she served thus singularly her brief apprenticeship to literature and experience;--sharing with the rest both their studies and their relaxations, dining with them at cheap restaurants, frequenting clubs, studios, and theatres of every degree; the youthful effervescence of her student-friends venting itself in such collegians' pranks as parading deserted quarters of the town by moonlight, in the small hours, chanting lugubrious strains to astonish the shopkeepers. The only great celebrity whose acquaintance she had made was Balzac, himself the prince of eccentrics. Although he did not encourage Madame Dudevant's literary ambition, he showed himself kindly disposed towards her and her young friends, and she gives some amusing instances that came under her notice of his oddities. Thus, once after a little Bohemian dinner at his lodgings in the Rue Cassini, he insisted on putting on a new and magnificent dressing-gown, of which he was exceedingly vain, to display to his guests, of whom Madame Dudevant was one; and not satisfied therewith, must needs go forth, thus accoutred, to light them on their walk home. All the way he continued to hold forth to them about four Arab horses, which he had not got yet, but meant to get soon, and of which, though he never got them at all, he firmly believed himself to have been possessed for some time. "He would have escorted us thus," says Madame Dudevant, "from one extremity of Paris to another, if we had let him." Twice again before the end of the year, faithful to her original intentions, we find her returning to her place as mistress of the house at Nohant, occupying herself with her children, and working at the novel _Indiana_, which was to create her reputation the following year. Meanwhile, a novelette, _La Prima Donna_, the outcome of the literary collaboration with Jules Sandeau, had found its way into a magazine, the _Revue de Paris_; and was followed by a longer work of fiction, of the same double authorship, entitled _Rose et Blanche_, published under Sandeau's _nom de plume_ of Jules Sand. This literary partnership was not to last long, and to-day the novel will be found omitted in the list of the respective works of its authors. Its perusal will hardly repay the curious. The powerful genius of Madame Dudevant, the elegant talent of the author of _Mlle. de la Seiglière_, are mostly conspicuous by their absence in _Rose et Blanche_, or _La Comédienne et la Réligieuse_, an imitative attempt, and not a happy one, in the style of fiction then in vogue. Madame Dudevant had stepped into the literary world at the moment of the most ardent activity of the Romantic movement. The new school was on the point of achieving its earliest signal triumphs. Victor Hugo's first poems had just been followed by the dramas _Hernani_ and _Marion Delorme_. Dumas' _Antony_ was drawing crowded and enthusiastic houses. A few months before the publication of _Rose et Blanche_ appeared _Notre Dame de Paris_. The passion for innovation which had seized on all the younger school of writers was leading many astray. The strange freaks of Hugo's genius had, to quote Madame Dudevant's own expression, excited a "ferocious appetite" for whatever was most outrageous, and set taste, precedent, and probability most flatly at defiance. From those aberrations into which the great master's imitators had been betrayed Madame Dudevant's fine art-instincts were calculated to preserve her; but she had not yet learned to trust to them implicitly. _Rose et Blanche_, though containing many clever passages--waifs and strays of shrewd observation, description and character analysis,--is in the main ill-conceived, ill-constructed, and unreal. The two authors have sacrificed their individualities in a mistaken effort to follow the fashion's lead, resulting in a most ineffective compound of tameness and sensationalism. Amazing adventures are undergone by each heroine before she is one-and-twenty. Angels of innocence, they are doomed to have their existences crushed out by the heartless conduct of man, Blanche expiring of dismay almost as soon as she is led from the altar, Rose burying herself and her despair in a convent. The then favorite heroes of romance were of the French Byronic type--young men of fortune who have exhausted life before they are five-and-twenty, whose minds are darkened by haunting memories of some terrific crime, but who are none the less capable of all the virtues and great elevation of sentiment on occasion. None of these requisitions are left unfulfilled by the unamiable hero of _Rose et Blanche_, a work which did little to advance the fortunes of its authors, and whose intrinsic merits offer little warrant for dragging it out of the oblivion into which it has been suffered to drop. To escape the influences of the literary revolution everywhere then triumphant was of course impossible. To make them serve her individual genius instead of enslaving her individuality was all Madame Dudevant needed to learn. Her friend Balzac had done this for himself, suiting his genius to the period without any sacrifice of originality. Although not yet at the height of his fame he had produced many most successful works, and Madame Dudevant, according to her own account, derived great profit from the study of his method, although with no inclination to follow in his direction. Yet he afterwards observed to her, "Our two roads lead to the same goal." _Rose et Blanche_, though little noticed by the public, brought a publisher to the door, one Ernest Dupuy, with an order for another novel by the same authors. _Indiana_ was ready-written, and came in response to the demand. But as Sandeau had had no hand whatever in this composition, the signature had of course to be varied. The publisher wishing to connect the new novel with its predecessor it was decided to alter the prefix only. She fixed on George, as representative of Berry, the land of husbandmen; and George Sand thus became pseudonym of the author of _Indiana_, a pseudonym whose origin imaginative critics have sought far afield and some have discovered in her alleged sympathy with Kotzebue's murderer, Karl Sand, and political assassination in general! Its assumption was to inaugurate a new era in her life. In the last days of April, 1832, appeared _Indiana_, by George Sand. "I took," says Madame Dudevant, in her account of the transaction, "the 1,200 francs paid me by the publisher, which to me were a little fortune, hoping he would see his money back again." She had recently returned from one of her periodical visits to Nohant, accompanied this time by her little girl, whom the progress already achieved enabled her now to take into her charge, and was living very quietly and studiously in her humble establishment on the Quai St. Michel, when she awoke to find herself famous. Her success, for which indeed there had been nothing to prepare her--neither flattery of friends, nor vain-glorious ambition within herself--was immediate and conclusive. Whatever differences of opinion might exist about the book, critics agreed in recognizing there the revelation of a new writer of extraordinary power. "One of those masters who have been gifted with the enchanter's wand and mirror," wrote Sainte-Beuve, a few months later, when he did not hesitate to compare the young author to Madame de Staël. The novel of sentimental analysis, a style in which George Sand is unsurpassed, was then a fresh and promising field. _Indiana_, without the aid of marvellous incidents, startling crimes, or iniquitous mysteries, riveted the attention of its readers as firmly as the most thrilling tales of adventure and horror. It is a "soul's tragedy," and that is all--the love-tragedy vulgarized since by repeated treatment by inferior novelists, of a romantic, sensitive, passionate, high-natured girl, hopelessly ill-mated with a somewhat tyrannical and stupid, yet not entirely ill-disposed old colonel, and exposed to the seductions of a Lovelace--the truth about whose unloveable character, in its profound and heartless egoism, first bursts upon her at the moment when, maddened by brutal insult, she is driven to claim the generous devotion he has proffered a thousand times. Side by side with the ideal of selfishness, Raymon stands in contrast with the ideally chivalrous Ralph, Indiana's despised cousin, who, loving her disinterestedly and in silence, has watched over her as a guardian-friend to the last, and does save her ultimately. The florid descriptions, the high-flown strains of emotion, which now strike as blemishes in the book, were counted beauties fifty years since; and even to-day, when reaction has brought about an extreme distaste for emotional writing, they cannot conceal the superior ability of the novelist. The sentiment, however extravagantly worded, is genuine and spontaneous, and has the true ring of passionate conviction. The characters are vividly, if somewhat closely drawn and contrasted, the scenes graphic; every page is colored by fervid imagination, and despite some violations of probability in the latter portion, out of keeping artistically with the natural character of the rest of the book, the whole has the strength of that unity and completeness of conception which is the distinguishing stamp of a genius of the first order. The _entrain_ of the style is irresistible. It was written, she tells us, _tout d'un jet_, under the force of a stimulus from within. Ceasing to counterfeit the manner of anyone, or to consult the exigencies of the book-market, she for the first time ventures to be herself responsible for the inspiration and the mode of expression adopted. The papers spoke of the new novel in high tones of praise, the public read it with avidity. The authorship, for a time, continued to perplex people. In spite of the masculine pseudonym, certain feminine qualities, niceties of perception and tenderness, were plainly recognized in the work, but the possibility that so vigorous and well-executed a composition could come from a feminine hand was one then reckoned scarcely admissible. Even among those already in the secret were sceptics who questioned the author's power to sustain her success, since nearly everybody, it is said, can produce one good novel. "The success of _Indiana_ has thrown me into dismay," writes Madame Dudevant, in July, 1832, to M. Charles Duvernet, at La Châtre. "Till now, I thought my writing was without consequence, and would not merit the slightest attention. Fate has decreed otherwise. The unmerited admiration of which I have become the object must be justified." And _Valentine_ was already in progress; and its publication, not many months after _Indiana_, to be a conclusive answer to the challenge. The season of 1832, in which George Sand made her _début_ in literature, was marked, in Paris, by public events of the most tragic character. In the spring, the cholera made its appearance, and struck panic into the city. Six people died in the house where Madame Dudevant resided, but neither she nor any of her friends were attacked. She was next to be a witness of political disturbances equally terrible. The disappointment felt by the Liberals at the results of the Revolution of 1830, and of the establishment of Louis Philippe's Government, upon which such high hopes had been founded, was already beginning to assert itself in secret agitation, and in the sanguinary street insurrections, such as that of June, 1832, sanguinarily repressed. Madame Dudevant at this time had no formulated political creed, and political subjects were those least attractive to her. But though born in the opposite camp she felt all her natural sympathies incline to the Republican side. They were further intensified by the scenes of which she was an eye-witness, and which roused a similar feeling even among anti-revolutionists. Thus Heine, in giving an account of the struggle mentioned above, and speaking of the enthusiasts who sacrificed their lives in this desperate demonstration, exclaims: "I am, by God! no Republican. I know that if the Republicans conquer they will cut my throat, and all because I don't admire all they admire; but yet the tears came into my eyes as I trod those places still stained with their blood. I had rather I, and all my fellow-moderates, had died than those Republicans." Amid such disturbing influences it is not surprising that we find her complaining in the letter last quoted that her work makes no progress; but the lost time was made up for by redoubled industry during her summer visit to Nohant. In the autumn appeared _Valentine_. This second novel not only confirmed the triumph won by the first, but was a surer proof of the writer's calibre, as showing what she could do with simpler materials. Here, encouraged by success, she had ventured to take her stand entirely on her own ground--dispensing even with an incidental trip to the tropics, which, in _Indiana_, strikes as a misplaced concession to the prevalent craze for Oriental coloring--and to lay the scene in her own obscure province of Berry, her first descriptions of which show her rare comprehension of the poetry of landscape. Like _Indiana_, _Valentine_ is a story of the affections; like _Indiana_, it is a domestic tragedy, of which the girl-heroine is the victim of a pernicious system that makes of marriage, in the first instance, a mere commercial speculation. Indeed, the extreme painfulness of the story would render the whole too repulsive but for the charm of the setting, which relieves it not a little, and a good deal of humor in the treatment of the minor characters, notably the eighteenth century _marquise_, and the Lhéry family of peasant-_parvenus_. The personages are drawn with more finish than those in _Indiana_; the tone is more natural in its pitch. It is the work of one who finds in every-day observation, as well as in such personal emotions as come but once in a lifetime, the inspiration that smaller talents can derive from the latter alone. In both her consummate art, or rather natural gift of the art of narrative, is the mainstay of the fabric her imagination has reared. That incomparable style of hers is like some magic fairy-ring, that bears the wearer, safe and victorious, through manifold perils--perils these of prolixity, exaggeration, and disdain of careful construction. Both _Indiana_ and _Valentine_, moreover, contain scenes and passages offensive to English taste, but it is impossible fairly to criticise the fiction of a land where freer expression in speech and in print than with us is habitually recognized and practiced, from our own standpoint of literary decorum. It was not for this feature that French criticism had already begun to charge her books with dangerous tendencies (thus contributing largely to noise her fame abroad), as breathing rebellion against the laws of present society; charges which, so far as _Indiana_ and _Valentine_ are concerned, had, as is now generally admitted, but little foundation. Each is the story of an unhappy marriage, but there is no attempt whatever to throw contempt on existing institutions, or to propound any theory, unless it be the idea--no heresy or novelty in England at least--that marriage, concluded without love on either side, is fraught with special dangers to the wife, whose happiness is bound up with her affections. It was the bold and uncompromising manner in which this plain fact was brought forward, the energy of the protest against a real social abuse, which moved some critics to sound a war-cry for which, as yet, no just warrant had been given. Besides these two novels, containing full proof of her genius, if not of its highest employment, there appeared, late in 1832, that remarkable novelette, _La Marquise_, revealing fresh qualities of subtle penetration and clear analysis. The flexibility of her imagination, the variety in her modes of its application, form an essential characteristic of her work. Not by any single novel, nor, indeed by half-a-dozen taken at random, can she be adequately represented. When in the winter of 1832 Madame Sand returned with her little girl to Paris after spending the autumn, as usual, at Nohant, it was to rather more comfortable quarters, on the Quai Malplaquet. The rapid sale of her books was placing her in comparatively easy circumstances, and giving fresh spur to her activity. But her situation was transforming itself fast; the freedom of obscurity was lost to her for ever from the day when the unknown personage, George Sand, became the object of general curiosity--of curiosity redoubled in Paris by the rumors current there of her exceptional position, eccentric habits, and interesting personality. The celebrated portrait of her by Eugène Delacroix was painted in the year 1833. It is a three-quarter view, and represents her wearing her _quasi_ masculine _redingote_, with broad _revers_ and loosely knotted silk neck-tie. Of somewhat later date is a highly interesting drawing by Calamatta, well-known by engravings; but of George Sand in her first youth no likeness unfortunately has been left to the world. She has been most diversely described by her different contemporaries. But that at this time she possessed real beauty is perfectly evident; for all that she denies it herself, and that, unlike most women, and nearly all French women, she scorned to enhance it by an elaborated toilette. Heine, though he never professed himself one of her personal adorers, compares the beauty of her head to that of the Venus of Milo, saying, "It bears the stamp of ideality, and recalls the noblest remaining examples of Greek art." Her figure was somewhat too short, but her hands and feet were very small and beautifully shaped. His acquaintance with her dates from the early years of her literary triumphs, and his description is in harmony with Calamatta's presentation. She had dark curling hair, a beauty in itself, falling in profusion to her shoulders, well-formed features, pale olive-tinted complexion, the countenance expressive, the eyes dark and very fine, not sparkling, but mild and full of feeling. The face reminds us of the character of "Still Waters," attributed to the Aurore Dupin of fifteen by the Lady Superior of the English convent. Her voice was soft and muffled, and the simplicity of her manner has been remarked on by those who sought her acquaintance, as a particular charm. Yet, like all reserved natures, she often failed to attract strangers at a first meeting. In general conversation she disappointed people, by not shining. Men and women, immeasurably her inferiors, surpassed her in ready wit and brilliant repartee. Her taciturnity in society has been somewhat ungenerously laid to a _parti pris_. She was one, it is said, who took all and gave nothing. That she was intentionally chary of her passing thoughts and impressions to those around her, is, however, sufficiently disproved by her letters. Here she shows herself lavish of her mind to her correspondents. Conversation and composition necessitate a very different brain action, and her marvellous facility in writing seems really to have been accompanied with no corresponding readiness of speech and reply. Probably it was only, as she herself states, when she had a pen in her hand that her lethargic ideas would arise and flow in order as they should. And the need of self-expression felt by all those who have not the gift of communicating themselves fully and easily in speech or manner, a strong need in her case, from her having so much to express, was the spur that drove her to seek and find the mode of so doing in art. Her silence in company certainly did not detract from her fascination upon a closer acquaintance. Of those who fell under the spell, the more fortunate came at once to terms of friendship with her, which remained undisturbed through life. Thus, of one among this numerous brotherhood, François Rollinat, with whom she would congratulate herself on having realized the perfection of such an alliance of minds, she could write when recording their friendship, then already a quarter of a century old, that it was still young as compared with some that she counted, and that dated from her childhood. Others fell in love with her, and found her unresponsive. With some of these, jealousies and misunderstandings arose, and led to estrangements, for the most part but temporary. Yet the winner of her heart was scarcely to be envied. She was apt--she has herself thus expressed it--to see people through a prism of enthusiasm, and afterwards to recover her lucidity of judgment. Great, no doubt, was her power of self-illusion; it betrayed her into errors that have been unsparingly judged. For her power of calm and complete disillusion she was perhaps unique among women, and it is no wonder if mankind have found it hard to forgive. CHAPTER IV. LÉLIA.--ITALIAN JOURNEY. It was less than two years since she had come up to the capital, to seek her fortunes there in literature. Aurore Dudevant, hereafter to be spoken of as George Sand (for she made her adopted name more her own than that she had borne hitherto, and became George Sand for her private friends as well as for the public,) found herself raised to eminence among the eminent. And it was at an exceptionally brilliant epoch in French imaginative literature that the distinction had been won. Such a burst of talent as that which signalized the opening years of Louis Philippe's reign is unexampled in French literary history. With Hugo, Dumas, De Musset, Balzac, not to mention lesser stars, the author of _Indiana_ and _Valentine_, although a woman, was acknowledged as worthy to rank. The artist in her, a disturbing element in her inner life which had driven her out of the spiritual bondage and destitution of a petty provincial environment to secure for herself freedom and expansion, had justified the audacity of the move by a triumphant artistic success. From this time onward her artistic faculty dominated her life, often, probably, unknown to herself an invincible force of instinct she obeyed, whilst assigning, in all good faith, other motives for her course of action, and for real or apparent inconsequences, that have been constantly misrepresented and misunderstood. So sudden and abrupt a change would have turned all heads but the strongest. Publishers competed with one another to secure her next work. Buloz, proprietor of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, engaged her to write regularly for his periodical, to which, for the next ten years, she never ceased to be a regular and extensive contributor. Although the scale of remuneration was not then very high she was clearly secure, so long as she allowed nothing to interfere with her literary work, of earning a sufficient income for her own needs. She had learnt the importance of pecuniary independence, and never pretended to despise the reward of her industry. To luxury she was indifferent, but the necessity of strict economy was a burden she was impatient of; she liked to have plenty to give away, and was always excessively liberal to the poor. Her little dwelling on the Quai Malplaquet was no longer the hermitage of an anonymous writer of no account. The great in art and letters, leading critics, such as Sainte-Beuve and Gustave Planche, came eager to seek her acquaintance, and delighting to honor the obscure student of a year ago. Writing to M. Boucoiran after her return to Paris in December, 1832, she describes her altered position:-- All day long I am beset with visitors, who are not all entertaining. It is a calamity of my profession, which I am partly obliged to bear. But in the evening I shut myself up with my pens and ink, Solange, my piano, and a fire. With all these I pass some right pleasant hours. No noise but the sounds of a harp, coming I know not whence, and of the playing of a fountain under my window. This is highly poetical--pray don't make game of me! There was another side to her success. Fame brought trials and annoyances that fell with double severity on her as a woman. Her door was besieged by a troop of professional beggars, impostors, impertinent idlers, and inquisitive newsmongers. Jealousy and ill-will, inevitably attendant on sudden good fortune such as hers, busied themselves with direct calumny and insidious misrepresentation. No statement so unfounded, so wildly improbable about her, but it obtained circulation and credit. Till the end of her life she remained the centre of a cloud of myths, many, to the present day, accepted as gospel. People insisted on identifying her with the heroines of her novels. Incidents, personal descriptions, nay, whole letters extracted from these novels will be found literally transcribed into alleged biographies of herself and her friends, as her own statement of matters of fact. Now, though the spirit of her life is strongly and faithfully represented by her fiction taken as a whole, those who would read in any special novel the literal record of any of the special events of her existence cannot be too much on their guard. Whatever the material under treatment, George Sand must retouch, embellish, transform, artist-fashion, as her genius shall dictate, till often little resemblance is left between the original and the production it has done no more than suggest. Romance and reality are so fused together in these apparent outpourings of spirit that her nearest friends were at a loss how to separate them. As an actress into many a favorite part, so could she throw herself into her favorite characters; but seldom if ever will much warrant be found in actual fact for identifying these creations with their creatress. How, indeed, could so many-sided a nature as hers be truly represented in a single novel? Her rare physical and mental energies enabled her to combine a life of masculine intellectual activity with the more highly emotional life of a woman, and with vigilance in her maternal cares. Maurice was placed in the spring of 1833 at the College Henri IV., at Paris; thus she had now both son and daughter near her, and watched indefatigably over them, their childish illnesses and childish amusements, their moral and intellectual training absorbing a large share of her time and attention. Heine, a friendly visitor at her house, says:-- I have often been present for hours whilst she gave her children a lesson in French, and it is a pity that the whole of the French Academy could not have been present too, as it is quite certain that they might have derived great profit from it. Not all the distractions of fame and work, of passionate pleasure or passionate sorrow, ever relaxed her active solicitude for the present and future welfare of her two young children. "They give me the only real joys of my life," she repeats again and again. _Lélia_, begun immediately after _Valentine_ was published in the spring of 1833, and created an immense sensation. Hailed by her admirers as a sign of an accession of power, of power exerted in quite a new direction, it brought down on the writer's head a storm of hostile criticism, as a declared enemy of religion and domestic morality--enhancing her celebrity not a little. _Lélia_, a lyrical novel--an outburst of poetical philosophy in prose, stands alone among the numerous productions of George Sand. Here she takes every sort of poetical license, in a work without the restrictions of poetic form, which are the true conditions of so much latitude. "Manfred" and "Alastor" are fables not further removed from real life than is _Lélia_. The personages are like allegorical figures, emblematic of spiritual qualities on a grand scale, the scenes like the paradisiacal gardens that visited the fancy of Aurore Dupin when a child. There is no action. The interest is not in the characters and what they do, but in what they say. The declamatory style, then so popular, is one the taste for which has so completely waned that _Lélia_ will find comparatively few readers in the present day, fewer who will not find its perusal wearisome, none perhaps whose morality, however weak, will be seriously shaken by utterances ever and anon hovering on the perilous confines of the sublime and the ludicrous. _Lélia_, a female Faust or Manfred, a mysterious muse-like heroine, who one night sleeps on the heathery mountain-side, the next displays the splendor of a queen in palaces and fairy-like villas; her sorely tried and hapless lover, Sténio, the poet, who pours forth odes to his own accompaniment on the harp, and lingers the night long among Alpine precipices brooding over the abyss; Trenmor, the returned gentleman convict and Apostle of the Carbonari, whose soul has been refreshed, made young and regenerated at the galleys; and the mad Irish priest, Magnus, are impossible personages, inviting to easy ridicule, and neither wisdom nor folly from their lips is likely to beguile the ears of the present generation. It is no novel, but a poetical essay, fantastically conceived and executed with the _sans gêne_ of an improvisatore. For those who admire the genius of George Sand its interest as a psychological revelation remains unabated. Into _Lélia_, she owns, she put more of her real self than into any other of her books--of herself, that is, and her state of mind at the dawn of a period of moral disturbance and revolt. All must continue to recognize there an extraordinary exhibition of poetical power and musical style. As a work of art George Sand has herself pronounced it absurd, yet she always cherished for it a special predilection, and, as will be seen, took the trouble to rewrite it some years later, when in a happier and healthier frame of mind than that which inspired this unique and most characteristic composition. The note of despair struck in _Lélia_, the depth of bitter feeling, the capacity for mental and moral speculation and suffering it seemed to disclose, astounded many of her familiar acquaintance. "_Lélia_ is a fancy-type," so writes to the author her friend and neighbor in Berry, Jules Néraud, an ardent naturalist, whose botanical and entomological pursuits she had often shared: "it is not like you--you who are merry, dance the _bourrée_, appreciate lepidoptera, do not despise puns, who are not a bad needlewoman, and make very good preserves. Is it possible you should have thought so much, felt so much, without anyone having any idea of it?" _Lélia_ was certainly the expression of a new phase in her mind's history, a moral crisis she could not escape, which was all the more severe for her having, as she remarks, reached her thirtieth year without having opened her eyes to the realities of life. Till the time of her coming to Paris, for very dearth of outward impressions, she had lived chiefly in dreams, the life of all others most favorable to the prolongation of ignorance and credulity. The liberty and activity she had enjoyed for the last two years were fatal to Utopian theories. It was not only the bitterness that springs from disenchantment in individuals, the sense of the miserable insufficiency of human love to satisfy her spiritual aspirations producing "that widely concluding unbelief which," as her sister in greatness has said, "we call knowledge of the world, but which is really disappointment in you and in me." George Sand was one to whom scepticism was intolerable. Pessimistic doctrines were fatal to her mind's equilibrium, and private experience and outward intellectual influences were driving her to distrust all objects of her previous worship, human and divine. The moment was one when the most fundamental social and religious principles were being called in question. "Nothing in my old beliefs," she writes, "was sufficiently formulated in me, from a social point of view, to help me to struggle against this cataclysm; and in the religious and socialistic theories of the moment I did not find light enough to contend with the darkness." The poet's creed, with which her mind had hitherto rested satisfied, was shaken, and appeared to prove a false one. She was staggered by the infinity of evil, misery, and injustice, which dwellers in great cities are not allowed to forget, the problem of humanity, the eternal mystery of suffering and wrong predominant in a world on the beneficence of whose Supreme Power all her faiths were founded. Her mental revolt and suffering found vent in _Lélia_, which it was an immense relief to her to write. Characteristic as an exhibition of feeling and of mastery of language, it is not in the least typical of her fiction. Yet, but for _Lélia_, and its successor _Jacques_, it is impossible to point to a work of hers that would ever have lastingly stamped her, in the public mind, as an expounder of dangerous theories. In _Lélia_, however, which is strongly imbued with Byronic coloring, she had chosen to pose somewhat as the proud angel in rebellion; and the immediate effect of hostile criticism was to confirm her in the position taken up. Neither _Lélia_ nor _Jacques_ combined the elements of lasting popularity with those of instant success; but they roused a stir and strife which created an impression of her as a writer systematically inimical to religion and marriage--an impression almost ludicrously at variance with facts, taking her fiction as a whole, but which has only recently begun to give way, in this country, to a juster estimate of its tendencies. The morality of _Lélia_, which it is rather difficult to discuss seriously in the present day, both the personages and their environment being too preternatural for any direct application to be drawn from them, as reflecting modern society, found indiscreet champions as determined as its aggressors. Violently denounced by M. Capo de Feuillide, of the _Europe littéraire_, it was warmly defended by M. Gustave Planche, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. The war of words grew so hot between them that a challenge and encounter were the result--surely unique in the annals of duelling. The swords of the critics fortunately proved more harmless than their words. From the morbid depression that had tormented her mind and imagination, and has its literary memorial in _Lélia_, she was to find a timely, though but a temporary rescue, in the charm of a new acquaintance--the delighting society of a poetic mind of an order not inferior to her own. It was in August, 1833, at a dinner given by Buloz to the staff of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, that George Sand first made the personal acquaintance of Alfred de Musset, then in his twenty-third year, and already famous through his just published poem, _Rolla_, and his earlier dramas, _Andrea del Sarto_ and _Les Caprices de Marianne_. He rapidly became enamored of the author of _Lélia_, who for her part felt powerfully the attraction of his many admirable qualities, mutual enchantment leading them so far as to believe they could be the hero and heroine of a happy love tale. In a letter of September 21, addressed to her friend and correspondent Sainte-Beuve, whom she had made the confidant of her previous depression and strange moods of gloom, she writes of herself as lifted out of such dangers by a happiness beyond any she had imagined, restoring youth to her heart--the happiness accorded her by the poet's society and his preference for her own. De Musset, at this time, would have given the world to have been able to make her his wife. The story of their short-lived infatuation and of the swift-following mutual disenchantment,--a story which, says Sainte-Beuve, has become part of the romance of the nineteenth century,--is perhaps of less consequence here than in the life of De Musset,[A] in whom the over-sensitiveness of genius was not allied with the extraordinary healthy vitality which enabled George Sand to come out of the most terrible mental experiences unembittered, with the balance of her mind unshaken, and her powers unimpaired. Yet that he acquired an empire over her no other ever acquired there is much to indicate. It took her from France for a while, from her children, her friends--and the breaking of the spell set her at war, not only with him, but for a while with herself, with life, and her fellow creatures. In the last days of 1833, she and the author of _Rolla_ started on a journey to Italy, where George Sand spent six months, and where she has laid the scene of a number of her novels: the first and best part of _Consuelo_, _La Dernière Aldini_, _Leone_, _Leoni_, _La Daniella_, and others. The spirit of that land she has caught and reproduced perhaps more successfully than any other of the many novelists who have chosen it for a frame--of Italy as the artist's native country, that is--not the Italy of political history, nor of the Medici, but the Italy that is the second home of painters, poets, and musicians. Can anything be more enjoyable, and at the same time more vividly true, than George Sand's delineations of Venice; and, in the first of the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_, the pictures given of her wanderings on the shores of the Brenta, of Bassano, the Brenta valley, Oliero, Possagno, Asolo, a delicious land, till quite recently as little tourist-trodden as in 1834? What a contrast to the purely imaginary descriptions in _Lélia_, written before those beauties had appeared to her except in dreams! From Genoa the travellers journeyed to Pisa, Florence, and thence to Venice, where first George Sand felt herself really at home in Italy. The architecture, the simplicity of Venetian life and manners, the theatres--from the opera-houses, where Pasta and Donzelli were singing, down to the national drama of Pulchinello--the pictures, the sea, the climate, combined to make of it a place of residence so perfectly to her mind, that again and again in her letters she expresses her wish that she could bring over her children and there fix her abode. "It is the only town I can love for its own sake," she says of it. "Other cities are like prisons, which you put up with for the sake of your fellow-prisoners." This Italian journey marks a fresh stage in her artistic development, quite apart from the attendant romantic circumstances, the alleged disastrous consequences to a child of genius less wise and fortunate than herself, which has given an otherwise disproportionate notoriety to this brief episode. George Sand was no doubt fatally in error when she persuaded herself, and even succeeded in persuading the poet's anxious mother, that she had it in her to be his guardian angel, and reform him miraculously in a short space of time; and that because he had fallen in love with her she would know how to make him alter a way of life he had no abiding desire to abandon. Such a task demands a readiness not merely for self-sacrifice, but for self-suppression; and her individuality was far too pronounced to merge itself for long in ministering to another's. She never seems to have possessed the slightest moral ascendancy over him, beyond the power of wounding him very deeply by the change in her sentiments, however much he might feel himself to blame for it. The history of the separation of the lovers--of De Musset's illness, jealousy, and departure from Venice alone--is a thrice-told tale. Like the subject of "The Ring and the Book," it has been set forth, by various persons, variously interested, with correspondingly various coloring. The story, as told by George Sand in her later novel, _Elle et Lui_, is substantially the same as one related by De Musset in his _Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle_, published two years after these events, and in which, if it is to be regarded as reflecting personal idiosyncrasies in the slightest degree, the poet certainly makes himself out as the most insupportable of human companions. None the less did the publication of _Elle et Lui_, a quarter of a century later, provoke a savage retort from the deceased poet's brother, in _Lui et Elle_. Finally, in _Lui_, a third novelist, Madame Colet, presented the world with a separate version of the affair from one who imagined she could have made up to the poet for what he had lost. But it needs no deep study of human nature, or yet of these novels, to understand the impracticability of two such minds long remaining together in unity. Genius, in private life, is apt to be a torment--its foibles demanding infinite patience, forbearance, nay, affectionate blindness, in those who would minister to its happiness, and mitigate the worst results of those foibles themselves. Certainly George Sand, for a genius, was a wonderfully equable character; her "satanic" moods showed themselves chiefly in pen and ink; her nerves were very strong, the balance of her physical and mental organization was splendidly even, as one imagines Shakespeare's to have been. But the very vigor of her character, its force of self-assertion, unfitted her to be the complement to any but a very yielding nature. The direct influence a passive, merely receptive spirit would have accepted, and gratefully, was soon felt as an intolerable burden by a mind in many ways different from her own, but with the same imperious instinct of freedom, and as little capable of playing anvil to another mind for long. He rebelled against her ascendancy, but suffered from the spell. She was no Countess Guiccioli, content to adore and be adored, and exercise an indirect power for good on a capricious lover. Her logical mind, energetic and independent, grew impatient of the seeming inconsistencies of her gifted companion; and when at last she began to perceive in them the fatal conditions of those gifts themselves, only compassion survived in her, as she thought, and compassion was cold. How could De Musset, with such an excellent example of prudence, regular hours, good sense, calm self-possession, and ceaseless literary industry as hers before his eyes, not be stirred up to emulate such admirable qualities? But her reason made him unreasonable; the indefatigability of her pen irritated his nerves, and made him idle out of contradiction; her homilies provoked only fresh imprudences--as though he wanted to make proof of his independence whilst secretly feeling her dominion--a phenomenon with which highly nervous people will sympathize not a little, but which was perfectly inexplicable to George Sand. His genius was of a more delicate essence than hers; he has struck, at times, a deeper note. But his nature was frailer, his muse not so easily within call, his character as intolerant of restraint as her own, but less self-sufficing; and the morbid taint of thought then prevalent, and which her natural optimism and better balanced faculties enabled her to throw off very shortly, had entered into him ineffaceably. Whether or not she brought a fresh blight on his mind, she certaintly failed to cure it. The spring had hardly begun when De Musset was struck down by fever. George Sand, who had previously been very ill herself, nursed him through his attack with great devotion; and in six weeks' time he was restored to health, if not to happiness. Theirs was at an end, as they recognized, and agreed to part--"for a time, perhaps, or perhaps for ever," she wrote,--with their attachment broken but not destroyed. It was early in April that De Musset started on his homeward journey. George Sand saw him on his way as far as Vicenza, and ere returning to Venice, made a little excursion in the Alps, along the course of the Brenta. "I have walked as much as four-and-twenty miles a day," she writes to M. Boucoiran, "and found out that this sort of exercise is very good for me, both morally and physically. Tell Buloz I will write some letters for the _Revue_, upon my pedestrian tours. I came back into Venice with only seven centimes in my pocket, otherwise I should have gone as far as the Tyrol; but the want of baggage and money obliged me to return. In a few days I shall start again, and cross over the Alps by the gorges of the Piave." And the spring's delights on the Alpine borders of Lombardy are described by her _con amore_, in the promised letters:-- The country was not yet in its full splendor; the fields were of a faint green, verging on yellow, and the leaves only coming into bud on the trees. But here and there the almonds and peaches in flower mixed their garlands of pink and white with the dark clumps of cypress. Through the midst of this far-spreading garden the Brenta flowed swiftly and silently over her sandy bed, between two large banks of pebbles, and the rocky _débris_ which she tears out of the heart of the Alps, and with which she furrows the plains in her days of anger. A semi-circle of fertile hills, overspread with those long festoons of twisting vine that suspend themselves from all the trees in Venetia, made a near frame to the picture; and the snowy mountain-heights, sparkling in the first rays of sunshine, formed an immense second border, standing, as if cut out in silver, against the solid blue of the sky. None of these excursions, however, were ever carried very far. For the next three months she remained almost entirely stationary at Venice, her head-quarters. She had taken apartments for herself in the interior of the city, in a little low-built house, along the narrow, green, and yet limpid canal, close to the Ponte dei Barcaroli. "There," she tells us, "alone all the afternoon, never going out except in the evening for a breath of air, working at night as well, to the song of the tame nightingales that people all Venetian balconies, I wrote _André_, _Jacques_, _Mattea_, and the first _Lettres d'un Voyageur_." None can read the latter and suppose that the suffering of the recent parting was all on one side. The poet continued to correspond with her, and the consciousness of the pain she had inflicted she was clearly not sufficiently indifferent herself to support. But neither De Musset nor any other in whom, through the "prism of enthusiasm," she may have seen awhile a hero of romance, was ever a primary influence on her life. These were two. Firstly, her children, who although at a distance were seldom absent from her thoughts. Of their well-being at school and at home respectively, she was careful to keep herself informed, down to the minutest particulars, by correspondents in Paris and at Nohant, whence no opposition whatever was raised by its occupier to her prolonged absence abroad. Secondly, her art-vocation. She wrote incessantly; and independently of the pecuniary obligations to do so which she put forward, it is obvious that she had become wedded to this habit of work. "The habit has become a faculty--the faculty a need. I have thus come to working for thirteen hours at a time without making myself ill; seven or eight a day on an average, be the task done better or worse," she writes to M. Chatiron, from Venice, in March. Sometimes, as with _Leone Leoni_, she would complete a novel in a week; a few weeks later it was in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Such haste she afterward deprecated, and, like all other workers, she aspired to a year's holiday in which to devote herself to the study of the masterpieces of modern literature; but the convenient season for such suspension of her own productive activity never came. And whilst at Venice she found herself literally in want of money to leave it. Buloz had arranged with her that she should contribute thirty-two pages every six weeks to his periodical for a yearly stipend of £160. She had anticipated her salary for the expenses of her Italian journey, and must acquit herself of the arrears due before she could take wing. _Jacques_, the longest of the novels written at Venice, afforded fresh grounds to those who taxed her works with hostility to social institutions. Without entering into the vexed question of the right of the artist in search of variety to exercise his power on any theme that may invite to its display, and of the precise bearing of ethical rules on works of imagination, it is permissible to doubt that _Jacques_, however bitter the sentiments of the author at that time regarding the marriage tie, ever seriously disturbed the felicity of any domestic household in the past or present day. It is too lengthy and too melancholy to attract modern readers, who care little to revel in the luxuries of woe, so relished by those of a former age. We cannot do better than quote the judgment pronounced by Madame Sand herself, thirty years later, on this work of pure sentimentalism--generated by an epoch thrown into commotion by the passionate views of romanticism--the epoch of René, Lara, Childe Harold, Werther, types of desperate men; life weary, but by no means weary of talking. "_Jacques_," she observes, "belonged to this large family of disillusioned thinkers; they had their _raison d'être_, historical and social. He comes on the scene in the novel, already worn by deceptions; he thought to revive through his love, and he does not revive. Marriage was for him only the drop of bitterness that made the cup overflow. He killed himself to bequeath to others the happiness for which he cared not, and in which he believed not." _Jacques_, taken as a _plaidoyer_ against domestic institutions, singularly misses its aim. As critics have remarked, some of the most eloquent pages are those that treat of married bliss. Our sympathies are entirely with the wronged husband against his silly little wife. It is a kindred work to _Lélia_, and its faults are the same; but whilst dealing ostensibly with real life and possible human beings it cannot, like _Lélia_, be placed apart, and retain interest as a literary curiosity. _André_ is a very different piece of work and a little masterpiece of its kind. The author, in her preface, tells us how, whilst mechanically listening to the incessant chatter of the Venetian sempstresses in the next room to her own, she was struck by the resemblance between the mode of life and thought their talk betrayed, and that of the same class of girls at La Châtre; and how in the midst of Venice, to the sound of the rippling waters stirred by the gondolier's oar, of guitar and serenade, and within sight of the marble palaces, her thoughts flew back to the dark and dirty streets, the dilapidated houses, the wretched moss-grown roofs, the shrill concerts of the cocks, cats, and children of the little French provincial town. She dreamt also of the lovely meadows, the scented hay, the little running streams, and the floral researches she had been fond of. This tenacity of her instincts was a safeguard she may have sometimes rebelled against as a chain; it was with her an essential feature, and, despite all vagaries, gave a great unity to her life. "Venice," she writes to M. Chatiron in June, "with her marble staircases and her wonderful climate, does not make me forget anything that has been dear to me. Be sure that nothing in me dies. My life has its agitations; destiny pushes me different ways, but my heart does not repudiate the past. Old memories have a power none can ignore, and myself less than another. I love on the contrary to recall them, and we shall soon find ourselves together again in the old nest at Nohant." _André_ she considered the outcome of this feeling of nostalgia. In it she has put together the vulgar elements of inferior society in a common-place country town, and produced a poem, though one of the saddest. If the florist heroine, Genevieve, is a slightly idealized figure, the story and general character-treatment are realistic to a painful degree. There is more power of simple pathos shown here than is common in the works of George Sand. _André_ is a refreshing contrast, in its simplicity and brevity, to the inflation of _Lélia_ and _Jacques_. It was an initial essay, and a model one, in a style with better claims to enduring popularity. As the summer advanced, George Sand found herself free to depart, and started on her way back to France, famishing, as she tells us, for the sight of her children. Her grand anxiety was to reach her destination in time for the breaking-up day and distribution of prizes at the College Henri IV. "I shall be at Paris before then," she writes from Milan, to her son, "if I die on the way, and really the heat is such that one might die of it." From Milan she journeyed over the Simplon to the Rhone valley, Martigny, Chamounix, and Geneva, performing great part of the way on foot. She reached Paris in the middle of August, and a few days later started with her boy for Nohant, where Solange had spent the time during her mother's absence, and where they remained together for the holidays. Here too she was in the midst of a numerous circle of friends of both sexes, in whose staunch friendliness she found a solace of which she stood in real need. CHAPTER V. MENTAL DEVELOPMENT. The period immediately following George Sand's return from Italy in August 1834, was a time of transition, both in her outer and inner life. If undistinguished by the production of any novel calculated to create a fresh sensation, it shows no abatement of literary activity. This, as we have seen, had become to her a necessity of nature. Neither vicissitudes without nor commotions within, though they might direct or stimulate, seem to have acted as a check on the flow of her pen. During the first twelvemonth she continued to reside alternately at Nohant, whither she came with her son and daughter for their holidays--Solange being now placed in a children's school kept by some English ladies at Paris,--and her "poet's garret," as she styled her third floor _appartement_ on the Quai Malplaquet. This winter saw the ending for herself and De Musset of their hapless romance. An approach to complete reconciliation--for the existing partial estrangement had been discovered to be more unbearable than all besides--led to stormy scenes and violent discord, and resulted before very long in mutual avoidance, which was to be final. It is said that forgiveness is the property of the injured, and it should be remembered that whenever De Musset's name is mentioned by George Sand it is with the admiring respect of one to whom his genius made that name sacred, and who refused to the end of his life to use the easy weapon offered her by his notorious frailties for vindicating herself at his expense. And, however pernicious the much talked of effect on De Musset's mind, it is but fair to the poet to recollect that it is no less true of him than of George Sand that his best work, that with which his fame has come chiefly to associate itself, was accomplished after this painful experience. Into her own mental state--possibly at this time the least enviable of the two--we get some glimpses in the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_ of the autumn 1834, and winter 1834-35. Here, again, we should be content with gathering a general impression, and not ingenuously read literal facts in all the self-accusations and recorded experiences of the "_voyageur_"--a semi-fictitious personage whose improvisations were, after all, only a fresh exercise which George Sand had invented for her imagination taking herself and reality for a starting-point merely, a suggestive theme. But the despair and disgust of life, to which both these and her private letters give such uncompromising and eloquent expression, indubitably reflect her feelings at this moral crisis--the feelings of one who having openly braved the laws of society, to become henceforward a law unto herself, recognizes that she has only found her way to fresh sources of misery. Never yet had she had such grave and deep causes of individual mental torment to blacken her views of existence, and incline her to abhor it as a curse. "Your instinct will save you, bring you back to your children," wrote a friend who knew her well. But her maternal love and solicitude themselves were becoming a source of added distress and apprehension. The extraordinary arrangement she and M. Dudevant had entered into four years before with regard to each other, was clearly one impossible to last. It will be recollected that she at that time had relinquished her patrimony to those who had thought it no dishonor to continue to enjoy it; and the terms of that agreement had since been nominally undisturbed. But besides that, the control of the children remained a constant subject of dissension. M. Dudevant was beginning to get into pecuniary difficulties in the management of his wife's estate. Sometimes he contemplated resigning it to her, and retiring to Gascony, to live with his widowed stepmother on the property which at her death would revert to him. But unfortunately he could not make up his mind to this course. No sooner had he drawn up an agreement consenting to a division of property, than he seemed to regret the sacrifice; upon which she ceased to press it. Meantime Madame Dudevant, whose position at Nohant was that of a visitor merely, and becoming untenable, felt her hold on her cherished home and her children becoming more precarious day by day. Some of her friends had strongly advised her to travel for a length of time, both as offering a mortal remedy, and as a temporary escape from the practical perplexities of the moment. Her rescue, however, was to be otherwise effected, and a number of new intellectual interests that sprang up for her at this time all tended to retain her in her own country. It was in the course of this spring that she made the acquaintance of M. de Lamennais, introduced to her by their common friend, the composer, Franz Liszt. The famous author of the _Paroles d'un Croyant_ had virtually severed himself from the Church of Rome by his recent publication of this little volume, pronounced by the Pope, "small in size, immense in perversity!" The eloquence of the poet-priest, and the doctrines of the anti-Catholic and humanitarian Christianity of which he came forward as the expounder, could not fail powerfully to impress her intelligence. Here seemed the harbor of refuge her half-wrecked faiths were seeking, and what the abbé's antagonists denounced as the "diabolical gospel of social science," came to her as the teachings of an angel of light. Christianity as preached by him was a sort of realization of the ideal religion of Aurore Dupin--faith divorced from superstition and the doctrine of Romish infallibility. Complete identity of sentiments between herself and the abbé was out of the question. But his was the right mind coming to her mind at the right moment, and exercised a healing influence over her troubled spirits. For _Le Monde_, a journal founded by him shortly after this time, she wrote the _Lettres à Marcie_, an unfinished series, treating of moral and spiritual problems and trials. Finally, the position M. de Lamennais had taken up as the apostle of the people further enlisted her sympathies in his cause, which made religious one with social reform, and amalgamated the protest against moral enslavement with the liberation-schemes then fermenting in young and generous minds all over Europe. The belief in the possibility of their speedy realization was then wide-spread--a conviction that, as Heine puts it, some grand recipe for freedom and equality, invented, well drawn up, and inserted in the _Moniteur_, was all that was needed to secure those benefits for the world at large. If George Sand, led afterwards into searching for this empirical remedy for the wrongs and sufferings of the masses, believed the elixir to have been found in the establishment of popular sovereignty by universal suffrage, it was through the persuasive arguments of the leaders of the movement, with whom at this period she was first brought into personal relations. Her own unbiassed judgment, to which she reverted long years after, when she had seen these illusions perish sadly, was less sanguine in its prognostications for the immediate future, as appears in her own reflections in a letter of this time:-- What I see in the midst of the divergencies of all these reforming sects is a waste of generous sentiments and of noble thoughts, a tendency towards social amelioration, but an impossibility for the time to bring forth through the want of a head to that great body with a hundred hands, that tears itself to pieces, for not knowing what to attack. So far the struggles make only dust and noise. We have not yet come to the era that will construct new societies, and people them with perfected men. She had recently been introduced to a political and legal celebrity of his day, the famous advocate Michel, of Bourges. He was then at the height of his reputation, which, won by his eloquent and successful defense of political prisoners on various occasions, was considerable. Madame Sand had been advised to consult him professionally about her business affairs, and for this purpose went over one day with some of her Berrichon friends to see him at Bourges. But the man of law had, it appears, been reading _Lélia_, and instead of talking of business with his distinguished client, dashed at once into politics, philosophy, and social science, overpowering his listeners with the strength of his oratory. His sentiments were those of extreme radicalism, and he carried on a little private propaganda in the country around. The force of his character seems to have spent itself in oratorical effort. He could preach revolution, but not suggest reform; denounce existing abuses, but do nothing towards the remodelling of social institutions; and in after years he failed, as so many leading men in his profession have failed, to make any impression as a speaker in Parliament. The author of _Lélia_ was overwhelmed, if not all at once converted, by the tremendous rhetorical power of this singular man. She was a proselyte worth the trouble of making, and Michel was bent on drawing her more closely into active politics, with which hitherto she had occupied herself very little. He began a correspondence, writing her long epistles, the sum of which, she says, may thus be resumed:--"Your scepticism springs from personal unhappiness. Love is selfish. Extend this solicitude for a single individual to the whole human race." He certainly succeeded in inspiring her with a strong desire to share his passion for politics, his faith, his revivifying hopes of a speedy social renovation, his ambition to be one of its apostles. To Michel, under the sobriquet of "Everard," are addressed several of the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_ of the spring and summer of 1835, letters which she defines as "a rapid analysis of a rapid conversion." But Michel's work was a work of demolition only; and when his earnest disciple wanted new theories in place of the old forms so ruthlessly destroyed, he had none to offer. There were others, however, who could. She was soon to be put into communication with a number of the active workers for the republican cause throughout the country. They counted many of the best hearts and not the worst heads in France, and were naturally eager to enlist her energies on their side. Foremost, by right of the influence exercised over her awhile by his writings, was the philosopher Pierre Leroux, with whom her acquaintance dates from this same year. In spite of the wide divergence between her pre-eminently artistic spirit and a mind of the rougher stamp of this born iconoclast, he was to indoctrinate her with many new opinions. His disinterested character won her admiration; he was a practical philanthropist as well as a critical thinker, one whose life and fighting power were devoted to promoting the good of the working classes to whom he belonged, having been brought up as a printer. He was regarded as the apostle of communism, as then understood, or rather not understood--for the form under which it suggested itself to the social reformers of the period in question was entirely indefinite. Meantime the novelist's pen was far from idle. One or two pleasant glimpses she has given us into her manner of working belong to this year. In the summer the heat in her "poet's garret" becoming intolerable, she took refuge in a congenial solitude offered by the ground-floor apartments of the house, then in course of reconstruction, dismantled and untenanted. The works had been temporarily suspended, and Madame Sand took possession of the field abandoned by the builders and carpenters. The windows and doors opening into the garden had been taken away, and the place thus turned into an airy, cool retreat. Out of the apparatus of the workmen, left behind, she constructed her writing-establishment, and here, secure from interruption, denying herself to all visitors, never going out except to visit her children at their respective schools, she completed her novel with no companions but the spiders crawling over the planks, the mice running in and out of the corners, and the blackbirds hopping in from the garden; the deep sense of solitude enhanced by the roar of the city in the very heart of which she had thus voluntarily isolated herself. As an artistic experience she found it refreshing, and repeated it more than once. Soon after, a friend offered her the loan of an empty house at Bourges, a town that had been suggested to her as a desirable place of residence, should the circumstances at Nohant ever force her to abandon it entirely. As a home she saw and disapproved of Bourges, but she thoroughly enjoyed a brief retreat spent there in an absolutely deserted, vine-covered dwelling, standing in a garden enclosed by stone walls. Her meals were handed in through a wicket. A few friends came to see her in the evenings. The days, and often the nights, she passed in study and meditation, shut up in the library reading Lavater, expatiating on her impressions of his theories in a letter addressed to Franz Liszt (inserted among the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_), or strolling in the flower garden--"forgotten," she tells us, "by the whole world, and plunged into oblivion of the actualities of my own existence." Of her numerous letters of advice to her boy at school, we quote one written during this summer of 1835, when their future relations to each other were in painful uncertainty:-- Work, be strong and proud; despise the little troubles supposed to belong to your age. Reserve your strength of resistance for deeds and facts that are worth the effort. If I am here no longer, think of me who worked and suffered cheerfully. We are like each other in mind and in countenance. I know already from this day what your intellectual life will be. I fear for you many and deep sorrows. I hope for you the purest of joys. Guard within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness. Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting to yourself. Keep the hope of another life. It is there that mothers meet their sons again. Love all God's creatures. Forgive those who are ill-conditioned, resist those who are unjust, and devote yourself to those who are great through their virtue. Love me. I will teach you many, many things if we live together. If that blessing (the greatest that can befall me, the only one that makes me wish for a long life) is not to be, you must pray for me, and from the grave itself, if anything remains of me in the universe, the spirit of your mother will watch over you. In the autumn, 1835, Madame Dudevant, under legal advice, and supported by the approval of friends of both parties, determined to apply to the courts for a judicial separation from her husband, on the plea of ill-treatment. She had sufficient grounds to allege for her claim, and had then every reason to hope that her demand would not even be contested by M. Dudevant, who, on former occasions, had voluntarily signed but afterwards revoked the agreement she hereby only desired to make valid and permanent, and which, ensuring to him a certain proportion of her income, gave her Nohant for a place of habitation, and established the children under her care. Pending the issue of this suit, which, unexpectedly protracted, dragged on until the summer of the next year, she availed herself of the hospitality of a family at La Châtre, friends of old standing, and from under whose roof she awaited, as from a neutral ground, the decision of her judges. During this year she saw little of Paris, and less of Nohant, except for a brief visit which, profiting by a moment when its walls were absolutely deserted by every other human being, she paid to her house--not knowing then whether she would ever, so to speak, inhabit it again in her own right. On the result of the legal proceedings depended her future home and the best part of her happiness. Sooner than be parted from her children, she contemplated the idea, in case of the decision going against her, of escaping with them to America! Yet, in the midst of all this suspense, we find her industrious as ever, joining in the daytime in the family life of the household with which she was domesticated, helping to amuse the children among them, retiring to her room at ten at night, to work on at her desk till seven in the morning, according to her wont. A more cheerful tone begins to pervade her effusions. The clouds were slowly breaking on all sides at once, and a variety of circumstances combining to restore to her mind its natural tone--faith, hope, and charity to her heart, and harmony to her existence. She began to perceive what she was enabled afterwards more fully to acknowledge as follows:-- As to my religion, the ground of it has never varied. The forms of the past have vanished, for me as for my century, before the light of study and reflection. But the eternal doctrine of believers, of God and His goodness, the immortal soul and the hopes of another life, this is what, in myself, has been proof against all examination, all discussion, and even intervals of despairing doubt. It is significant that during these months, spent for the most part at La Châtre, we find her rewriting _Lélia_, trying, as she expressed her intention, "to transform this work of anger into a work of gentleness." _Engelwald_, a novel of some length on which she was engaged, was destined never to see the light. To the Comtesse d'Agoult, better known by her _nom de plume_ of Daniel Stern, whose acquaintance she had recently made in Paris, she writes in May, 1836:-- I am still at La Châtre, staying with my friends, who spoil me like a child of five years old. I inhabit a suburb, built in terraces against the rock. At my feet lies a wonderfully pretty valley. A garden thirty feet square and full of roses, and a terrace extensive enough for you to walk along it in ten steps, are my drawing-room, my study, and gallery. My bed-room is rather large--it is decorated with a red cotton curtained bed--a real peasant's bed, hard and flat, two straw chairs, and a white wooden table. My window is situated six feet above the terrace. By the trellised trees on the wall I can get out and in, and stroll at night among my thirty feet of flowers without having to open a door or wake anyone. Sometimes I go out riding alone, at dusk. I come in towards midnight. My cloak, my rough hat, and the melancholy trot of my nag, make me pass in the darkness for a commercial traveller, or a farm-boy. One of my grand amusements is to watch the transition from night to day; it effects itself in a thousand different manners. This revolution, apparently so uniform, has every day a character of its own. The summer that had set in was unusually hot and sultry. Writing to Madame d'Agoult, July 10, 1836, she thus describes her enjoyment of a season that allowed of some of the pleasures of primitive existence:-- I start on foot at three in the morning, fully intending to be back by eight o'clock; but I lose myself in the lanes; I forget myself on the banks of the river; I run after butterflies; and I get home at midday in a state of torrefaction impossible to describe. Another time the sight of the cooling stream is more than she can resist, and she walks into the Indre fully dressed; but a few minutes more and the sun has dried her garments, and she proceeds on her walk of ten or twelve miles--"Never a cockchafer passes but I run after it." You have no idea of all the dreams I dream during my walks in the sun. I fancy myself in the golden days of Greece. In this happy country where I live you may often go for six miles without meeting a human creature. The flocks are left by themselves in pastures well enclosed by fine hedges; so the illusion can last for some time. One of my chief amusements when I have got out to some distance, where I don't know the paths, is to fancy I am wandering over some other country with which I discover some resemblance. I recollect having strolled in the Alps, and fancied myself for hours in America. Now I picture to myself an Arcadia in Berry. Not a meadow, not a cluster of trees which, under so fine a sun, does not appear to me quite Arcadian. We give these passages because they seem to us very forcibly to portray one side, and that the strongest and most permanent, of the character of George Sand: the admixture of a child's simplicity of tastes, a poet's fondness for reverie, and that instinctive independence of habits--an instinct stronger than the restraints of custom--which her individuality seemed to demand. In the letter last quoted to Madame d'Agoult, the new ideal which was arising out of these contemplations is thus resumed:-- To throw yourself into the lap of mother nature: to take her really for mother and sister; stoically and religiously to cut off from your life what is mere gratified vanity; obstinately to resist the proud and the wicked; to make yourself humble with the unfortunate, to weep with the misery of the poor; nor desire another consolation than the putting down of the rich; to acknowledge no other God than Him who ordains justice and equality upon men; to venerate what is good, to judge severely what is only strong, to live on very little, to give away nearly all, in order to re-establish primitive equality and bring back to life again the Divine institution: that is the religion I shall proclaim in a little corner of my own, and that I aspire to preach to my twelve apostles under the lime-trees in my garden. The judgment of the court, first pronounced in February, 1836, and given in her favor by default, no opposition having been raised to her claims to the proposed partition of property by the defendant, placed her in legal possession of her house and her children. Appeal was made, however, prolonging and complicating the case, but without affecting its termination. In the war of mutual accusations thus stirred up, M. Dudevant's _rôle_ as accuser, yet objecting in the same breath to the separation, had an appearance of insincerity that could not fail to withdraw sympathy from his side, irrespective of any judgment that might be held on the conduct of the wife, whose absence and complete independence he had authorized or acquiesced in. Before the actual conclusion of the law-suit his appeal was withdrawn. As a result, the previous judgment in favor of Madame Dudevant was virtually confirmed, and the details were settled by private agreement. It is almost impossible to overrate the importance to George Sand of a conclusion that gave her back her old home of Nohant, and secured to her the permanent companionship of her children. The present pecuniary arrangement left M. Dudevant some hold over Maurice and his education, concerning which his parents had long disagreed, and which for another year remained a source of contention. The affair thus concluded, Madame Sand entered formally into possession of Nohant; and early in September she started with her two children for Switzerland, where they spent the autumn holidays in a long-contemplated visit to her friend the Comtesse d'Agoult, then at Geneva. This tour is fancifully sketched in a closing number of the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_, a volume which stands as a sort of literary memorial of two years of unsettled, precarious existence, material and spiritual--a time of trial now happily at an end. _Simon_, a tale dedicated to Madame d'Agoult, and published in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1836--a graceful story, of no high pretentions--is noticeable as marking the commencement of a decided and agreeable change in the tone of George Sand's fiction. Hitherto the predominant note struck had been most often one of melancholy, if not despair--the more hopelessly painful the subject, the more fervent, apparently, the inspiration to the writer. In _Indiana_ she had portrayed the double victim of tyranny and treachery; in _Valentine_, a helpless girl sacrificed to family ambition and social prejudice; in _Lélia_ and _Jacques_, the incurable _Weltschmerz_, heroism unvalued and wasted; in _Leone Leoni_, the infatuation of a weak-minded woman for a phenomenal scoundrel; in _André_, the wretchedness which a timid, selfish character, however amiable, may bring down on itself and on all connected with it. Henceforward she prefers themes of a pleasanter nature. In _Simon_ she paints the triumph of true and patient love over social prejudice and strong opposition. In _Mauprat_,[B] written in 1837, at Nohant, she exerts all the force of her imagination and language to bring before us vividly the gradual redemption of a noble but degraded nature, through the influence of an exclusive, passionate and indestructible affection. The natural optimism of her temperament, not her incidental misfortunes, began and continued to color her compositions. From Switzerland she returned for part of the winter to Paris. She had given up her "poet's garret," and occupied for a while a suite of rooms in the Hôtel de France, where resided also Madame d'Agoult. The _salon_ of the latter was a favorite _rendezvous_ of cosmopolitan artistic celebrities, whose general _rendezvous_ just then was Paris. A very Pantheon must have been an intimate circle that included, among others, George Sand, Daniel Stern, Heine, the Polish poet Mickiewicz, Eugène Delacroix, Meyerbeer, Liszt, Hiller, and Frédéric Chopin. The delicate health of her son forced Madame Sand to leave with him shortly for Berry, where he soon became convalescent. Later in the season, some of the same party of friends that had met in Paris met again at Nohant. It was during this summer that George Sand wrote for her child the well-known little tale, _Les Maîtres Mosaïstes_, in which the adventures of the Venetian mosaic-workers are woven into so charming a picture. "I do not know why, but it is seldom that I have written anything with so much pleasure," she tells us. "It was in the country, in summer weather, as hot as the Italian climate I had lately left. I have never seen so many birds and flowers in my garden. Liszt was playing the piano on the ground floor, and the nightingales, intoxicated with music and sunshine, were singing madly in the lilac-trees around." The party was abruptly dispersed upon the intelligence that reached Madame Sand of her mother's sudden, and, as it proved, fatal illness. She hurried to Paris, and remained with Madame Maurice Dupin during her last days. The old fond affection between them, though fitful in its manifestations on the part of the mother, had never been impaired, and the breaking of this old link with the past was very deeply felt by Madame Sand. Before returning to Nohant, she spent a few weeks at Fontainebleau with her son, from whom she never liked to separate. They passed their days in exploring the forest, then larger and wilder than now, botanizing and butterfly-hunting. At night she sat up writing, when all was quiet in the inn. Just as, whilst at Venice, her fancy flew back to the scenes and characters of French provincial life, and _André_ was the result, so here, amid the forest landscapes of her own land, her imagination rushed off to Venice and the shores of the Brenta, and produced _La Dernière Aldini_. This constant industry, which had now become her habit of life, was more of a practical necessity than ever. Nohant, as already mentioned, barely repaid the owner the expenses of keeping it up. Madame Sand, who desired to be liberal besides, to travel occasionally, to gratify little artistic fancies as they arose, must look to her literary work to furnish the means. "Sometimes," she writes from Nohant, in October, 1837, to Madame d'Agoult, then in Italy, "I am tempted to realize my capital, and come and join you; but out there I should do no work, and the galley-slave is chained up. If Buloz lets him go for a walk it is on _parole_, and _parole_ is the cannon-ball the convict drags on his foot." Nor was it for herself only that she worked in future, but for her children, the whole responsibility of providing for both of whose education she was now about definitely to take on her own shoulders. The power of interference left to M. Dudevant by the recent legal decision had been exercised in a manner leading to fresh vexatious contention, and continual alarm on Madame Sand's part lest the boy should be taken by force from her side. These skirmishes included the actual abduction of Solange from Nohant by M. Dudevant during her mother's absence at Fontainebleau; a foolish and purposeless trick, by which nothing was to be gained, except annoyance and trouble to Madame Sand, whose right to the control of her daughter had never been contested. A final settlement entered into between the parties, in 1838, placed these matters henceforward on a footing of peace, fortunately permanent. By this agreement Madame Sand received back from M. Dudevant--who had lately succeeded to his father's estate--some house property that formed part of her patrimony, and paid down to him the sum of £2,000; he ceding to her the remnant of his paternal rights; she freeing him from all charges for Maurice's education, her authority over which, in future, was recognized as complete. CHAPTER VI. SOLITUDE, SOCIETY AND SOCIALISM. The charge of both children now resting entirely in her hands, Madame Sand was enabled to fulfill her desire of permanently removing her boy, now fourteen years of age, from the college Henri IV. Not only was she opposed to the general _régime_ and educational system pursued in French public schools of this type, she felt persuaded of its special unsuitability to her son, whose tastes and temperament were artistic, like her own, and whose classical studies had been repeatedly interrupted by illness. His delicate health determined her to spend the winter of 1838-9 abroad with her family. Having heard the climate and scenery of Majorca highly praised, she selected the island for their resort; tempted herself by the prospect of a few months absolute quiet, where, with neither letters to answer, nor newspapers to read, she would enjoy some rare leisure, which she proposed to spend in studying history and teaching French to her children. Just at this time her friend and ardent admirer, Frédéric Chopin, was recovering from a chest attack, the first presage of the illness that caused his early death. The eminent pianist and composer had also been recommended to winter in the South, and greatly needed repose and change of air to recruit him from the fatigues of the Parisian season. It was arranged that the convalescent should make one of the expedition to Majorca. He joined Madame Sand and her children at Perpignan, and they embarked for Barcelona, whence the sea-voyage to the island was safely accomplished, the party reaching Palma, the capital, in magnificent November weather, and never suspecting how soon they would have cause to repent their choice of a retreat. But their practical information about the island proved lamentably insufficient. With the scenery, indeed, they were enraptured. "We found," says Madame Sand in her little volume, _Un Hiver à Majorque_, published the following year, "a green Switzerland under a Calabrian sky, with all the solemnity and stillness of the East." But though a painter's Elysium, Majorca was wanting in the commonest comforts of civilized life. Inns were non-existent, foreigners viewed and treated with suspicion. The party thought themselves fortunate in securing a villa some miles from Palma, furnished, though scantily. "The country, nature, trees, sky, sea, and mountains surpass all my dreams," she writes in the first days, "it is the promised land; and as we have succeeded in housing ourselves pretty well, we are delighted." The delight was of brief duration. That Madame Sand's manuscripts took a month to reach the editor of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_; that the piano ordered from Paris for Chopin took two months to get to Majorca, were the least among their troubles. A rainy season of exceptional severity set in, and the villa quickly became uninhabitable. It was not weatherproof. Chopin fell alarmingly ill. Good food and medical attendance were hardly to be procured for him; and finally, the villa proprietor, having heard that his tenant was suffering from consumption--an illness believed to be infectious by the Majorcans--gave the whole party notice to quit. The invalid improving somewhat, though still too weak to attempt the return journey to France, Madame Sand transported her ambulance, as she styled it, to some tolerable quarters she had already discovered in the deserted Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa--"a poetical name and a poetical abode," she writes; "an admirable landscape, grand and wild, with the sea at both ends of the horizon, formidable peaks around us, eagles pursuing their prey even down to the orange-trees in our garden, a cypress walk winding from the top of our mountain to the bottom of the gorge, torrents over-grown with myrtles, palm-trees below our feet, nothing could be more magnificent than this spot." Parts of the old monastic buildings were dilapidated; the rest were in good order, being frequented as a summer retreat by the inhabitants of Palma. Now, in December, the Chartreuse was entirely abandoned, except by a housekeeper, a sacristan and a lone monk, the last offshoot of the community--a kind of apothecary, whose stock-in-trade was limited to guimauve and dog-grass. The rooms into which the travellers moved had just been vacated by a Spanish family of political refugees departing for France. These lodgings were at least provided with doors, window-panes, and decent furniture; but the luxury of chimneys was unknown, and a stove, which had to be manufactured at an enormous price on purpose for the party, is described as "a sort of iron cauldron, that made our heads ache and dried up our throats." Continuous stormy weather having suspended steam traffic with the mainland, the visitors had no choice but to remain prisoners some two months more, during which the deluge went on with little intermission. Still, to young and romantic imaginations the island and life in the ex-monastery offered considerable charm. Madame Sand and her children were delighted with the unfamiliar vegetation, the palms, aloes, olives, almond and orange trees, the Arab architecture, and picturesque costumes. Valdemosa itself was splendidly situated among the mountains, in a stone-walled garden surrounded with cypress trees and planted with palms and olives. In the morning, Madame Sand gave lessons to the children; in the afternoon, they ran wild out of doors whilst she wrote--when the invalid musician was well enough to be left. In the evenings she and the young people went wandering by moonlight through the cloisters, exploring the monkish cells and chapels. Maurice had fortunately recovered his health completely, but poor Chopin's state, aggravated by the damp weather and privations--for the difficulties in obtaining a regular supply of provisions were immense--remained throughout their stay a constant and terrible cause of anxiety and responsibility to Madame Sand. From the islanders no sort of help or even sympathy was forthcoming, and thievish servants and extortionate traders were not the least of the annoyances with which the strangers had to contend. In a letter to François Rollinat she gives a graphic account of their misfortunes:-- It has rightly been laid down as a principle that where nature is beautiful and generous, men are bad and avaricious. We had all the trouble in the world to procure the commonest articles of food, such as the island produces in abundance; thanks to the signal dishonesty, the plundering spirit of the peasants, who made us pay for everything three times what it was worth, so that we were at their mercy under the penalty of dying of hunger. We could get no one to serve us, because we were not _Christians_ [the travellers passed for being "sold to the Devil" because they did not go to Mass], and, besides, nobody would attend on a consumptive invalid. However, for better for worse, we were established.... The place was incomparably poetical; we did not see a living soul, nothing disturbed our work; after waiting two months, and paying three hundred francs extra, Chopin had at last received his piano, and delighted the vaults of his cell with his melodies. Health and strength were visibly returning to Maurice; as for me, I worked as tutor seven hours a day: I sat up working on my own account half the night; Chopin composed masterpieces, and we hoped to put up with the remainder of our discomforts by the aid of these compensations. It was in the cells of Valdemosa that Madame Sand completed her novel of Monastic life, _Spiridion_, then publishing in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. "For heaven's sake not so much mysticism!" prayed the editor of her, now and then; and assuredly those readers for whom George Sand was simply a purveyor of passionate romances, those critics who set her down in their minds as exclusively a glorifier of mutinous emotion and the apologist of lawless love, must have been taken aback by these pages, in which she had devoted her most fervent energies to tracing the spiritual history, _peu récréatif_, as she dryly observes, of a monk who, in the days of the decadence of the monastic orders, retained earnestness and sincerity; whose mind, revolted by the hypocrisy and worldliness around him, passes through the successive stages of heresy and philosophic doubt, and to whom is finally revealed an eternal gospel, which lies at the core of his old religion, but which later growths have stifled, and which outlasts all shocks and changes, and is to generate the religion of the future. The compositions of Chopin above alluded to, include the finest of his well-known Preludes, which may easily be conceived of as suggested by the strange mingling of contrasting impressions in the Chartreuse. "Several of these Preludes," writes Madame Sand, "represent the visions that haunted him of deceased monks, the sounds of funeral chants; others are soft and melancholy; these came to him in his hours of sunshine and health, at the sound of the children's laughter beneath the window, the distant thrum of guitars and the songs of the birds under the damp foliage; at the sight of the pale little roses in bloom among the snow." The loneliness and melancholy beauty of the spot, however congenial to the romance writer or inspiring to the composer, were not the right tonics for the nerves of the over-sensitive, imaginative invalid. The care and nursing of Madame Sand made amends for much, and by her good sense she saved him from being doctored to death by local practitioners. But his fortitude, which bore up heroically against his personal danger, was not proof against the dreary influences of Valdemosa in bad weather, the fogs, the sound of the hurricane sweeping through the valley, and bringing down portions of the dilapidated building, the noise of the torrents, the cries of the scared sea-birds and the roar of the sea. The elevation of the Chartreuse made the climate peculiarly disagreeable at this season. She writes on:-- We lived in the midst of clouds, and for fifty days were unable to get down into the plains; the roads were changed to torrents, and we saw nothing more of the sun. I should have thought it all beautiful if poor Chopin could only have got on. Maurice was none the worse. The wind and the sea sung sublimely as they beat against the rocks. The vast and empty cloisters cracked over our heads. If I had been there when I wrote the portion of _Lélia_ that takes place in the convent, I should have made it finer and truer. But my poor friend's chest got worse and worse. The fine weather did not return.... A maid I had brought over from France, and who so far had resigned herself, on condition of enormous wages, to cook and do the housework, began to refuse attendance, as too hard. The moment was coming when after having wielded the broom and managed the _pot au feu_, I was ready to drop with fatigue--for besides my work as tutor, besides my literary labor, besides the continual attention necessitated by the condition of my invalid, I had rheumatism in every limb. The return of spring was hailed as offering a tardy release from their island. The steamers were running again, and the party determined to leave at all risks; for though Chopin's state was more precarious than ever, nothing could be worse for him than to remain. They departed, feeling, she admits, as though they were escaping from the tender mercies of Polynesian savages, and once safely on board a French vessel at Barcelona, they thankfully welcomed the day that restored them to comfort and civilization, and saw the end of an expedition that had turned out in most respects so disastrous a _fiasco_. They remained throughout April at Marseilles, where Chopin, in the hands of a good doctor, became convalescent. From Marseilles they made a short tour in Italy, visiting Genoa and the neighborhood, and returning to France in May, Chopin apparently on the high road to complete recovery. It was in the following year that his illness returned in a graver form, and unmistakable symptoms of consumption showed themselves. The life of a fashionable pianist in Paris, the constant excitement, late hours, and heavy strain of nervous exertion, were fatal to his future chances of preserving his health; but it was a life to which he had now become wedded, and which he never willingly left, except for his long annual visits to Nohant. Madame Sand repeatedly contemplated settling herself entirely in the country. She had no love for Paris. "Parisian life strains our nerves and kills us in the long run," she writes from Nohant to one of her correspondents. "Ah, how I hate it, that centre of light! I would never set foot in it again, if the people I like would make the same resolution." And again, speaking of her "Black Valley, so good and so stupid," she adds, "Here I am always more myself than at Paris, where I am always ill, in body and in spirit." Paris, however, afforded greater facilities for her children's education. She had a strong desire to see her son an artist, and he was already studying painting in Delacroix's studio. Also her income at this moment did not suffice to enable her to live continuously at Nohant where, she frankly confessed, she had not yet found out how to live economically, expected as she was to keep open house, regarded as grudging and unneighborly if she did not maintain her establishment on a scale to which her resources as yet were unequal. Her expenses in the country she calculated as double those in Paris, where, as she writes to M. Chatiron,-- Everyone's independence is admirable. You invite whom you like, and when you don't wish to receive anyone you let the porter know you are not at home. Yet I hate Paris in all other respects. There I grow stout, and my mind grows thin. You know how quiet and retired my life there is, and I do not understand why you tell me, as they say in the provinces, that glory keeps me there. I have no glory, I have never sought for it, and I don't care a cigarette for it. I want to breath fresh air and live in peace. I am succeeding, but you see and you know on what conditions. Her Paris residence, a few seasons later, she fixed in the Cour d'Orléans Rue St. Lazare, in a block of buildings one-third of which was occupied by herself and her family; another belonged to her friend, Madame Marliani, wife of the Spanish Consul, the third to Frédéric Chopin. With respect to Chopin's long and deep attachment to Madame Sand, and its requital, concerning which so much has been written, there can surely be no greater misstatement than to speak of her as having blighted his life. This last part of his life was indeed blighted, but by ill-health and consequent nervous irritability and suffering; but such mitigation as was possible he found for eight years in the womanly devotion and genial society of Madame Sand--real benefits to one whose strange and delicate individuality it was not easy to befriend--and which the breach that took place between them shortly before his death should not allow us to forget. "Chopin," observes Eugène Delacroix, "belongs to the small number of those whom one can both esteem and love." Madame Sand joined a sympathetic appreciation of the refinement of his nature, and an enthusiastic admiration of his genius--feelings she shared with his numberless female worshippers--to a strength of character that lent the support no other could perhaps so fully have given, or that he would accept from no other, to the fragile, nervous, suffering tone-poet. Her sentiments towards him seem to resolve themselves into a great tenderness rather than a passionate fervor--a placid affection for himself, and an adoration for his music. All the time their existences, so far from having been united, flowed in different, nay divergent channels. Chopin, the idol of Paris society, moved constantly in the aristocratic and fashionable world, from which Madame Sand lived aloof. She for her part had heavy domestic cares and anxieties that did not touch him, and with the political party which was absorbing more and more of her energies he had no sympathy whatever. Whether the cause were the false start she had made at the outset by her marriage, forbidding her the realization of a woman's ideal, the non-separation of the gift of her heart from that of her whole life, or whether that her masculine strength of intellect created for her serious public interests and occupations, beside which personal pleasures and pains are apt to become of secondary moment, certain it appears that with George Sand, as with many an eminent artist of the opposite sex, such _affaires de coeur_ were but ripples on the sea of a large and active existence. The year after her return from Majorca was marked by her first appearance before the public as a dramatic author. Although it was a line in which she afterwards obtained successes, as will be seen in a future chapter, the result of this initial effort, _Cosima_, a five-act drama, was not encouraging. It was acted at the Théâtre Français in the spring of 1840, and proved a failure. It betrays no insufficient sense of dramatic effect, nor lack of the means for producing it, but decided clumsiness in the adaptation of these means to that end. The plot and personages recall those of _Indiana_, with the important differences that the _beau rôle_ of the piece falls to the husband, and that the scene is transported back to Florence in the Middle Ages--an undoubted error, as giving to a play essentially modern and French in its complexities of sentiment and motive a strong local coloring of a past time and another people, making the whole seem unreal. It has a psychological subject which Emile Augier or Dumas _fils_ would know how to handle dramatically; but as treated by George Sand, we are perpetually being led to anticipate too much in the way of action, to have our expectations dissipated the next moment. A wet blanket of disappointment on this head dampens any other satisfaction that the merits of the play might otherwise afford. Hitherto she had continued to write regularly for the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. As her revolutionary opinions became more pronounced, they began to find utterance in her romances. Her conversion by Michel had not only been complete, but the disciple had outstripped the master. The study of the communistic theories of Pierre Leroux had familiarized her with the speculations in social science of those who at this time were devoting their attention to criticising the existing social organization, and seeking, and sometimes imagining they had found, the secret of creating a better. George Sand's strong admiration for the writings of Leroux, always praised by her in the highest terms, strikes us now as extravagant, but was shared to some extent by not a few leading men of the time, such as Sainte-Beuve and Lamartine. Her intellect had eagerly followed this bold and earnest pioneer in new-discovered worlds of thought; "I do not say it is the last word of humanity, but, so far, it is its most advanced expression," she states of his philosophy. The study of it had brought a clearness into her own views, due, probably, much more to the action of her own mind upon the novel ideas suggested than to the lucidity of a system of social science as yet undetermined in some of its main points. She writes, when looking back on this period from a long distance of time,-- After the despairs of my youth, I was governed by too many illusions. Morbid scepticism was succeeded in me by too much kindliness and ingenuousness. A thousand times over I was duped by dreams of an archangelic fusion of the opposing forces in the great strife of ideas. Her novel _Horace_, written for the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, was rejected--as subversive of law and order--by the editor, except on condition of alterations which she declined to make. After this temporary rupture with Buloz, Madame Sand's services were largely appropriated by the _Revue Indépendante_, a new journal founded in 1840 by her friends Pierre Leroux and Louis Viardot, in conjunction with whose names hers appears on the title page as leading contributor. For this periodical no theories could be too advanced, no fictitious illustrations too audacious, and to its pages accordingly was _Horace_ transferred. Among the secondary characters in this novel figure a young couple, immaculate otherwise in principle and in conduct, but who as converts to St. Simonism have dispensed with the ordinary legal sanction to their union. Perhaps a more solid objection to its insertion in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ was the picture introduced of the _émcute_ of June 1832, painted in heroic colors. Both these features, however, are purely incidental. The main interest and the real strength of the book lie in a remarkable study of character-development--that of the chief personage, Horace. It is a cleverly painted portrait of a type that reappears, with slight modifications, in all ages; a moral charlatan, who half imposes on himself, and entirely for a while on other people. A would-be hero, genius, and chivalrous lover, he has none of the genuine qualities needed for sustaining the parts. Nonchalant and inert of temperament, he is capable of nothing beyond a short course of successful affectation. The imposition breaking down at last, he sinks helplessly into the unheroic mediocrity of position and pretension for which alone he is fit. A veritable attempt at a Socialist novel is the _Compagnon du Tour de France_ written in the course of 1840, which must surely be ranked as one of the weakest of George Sand's productions. Exactly the converse of _Horace_ may be said of this book. In the former, those most repelled by the revolutionary doctrines flashing out here and there, will yet be struck and interested by the masterly piece of character-painting that makes of the novel a success. The utmost fanaticism for the ideas ventilated in the _Compagnon du Tour de France_ can reconcile no reader to the dullness and unreality of the story which make of it a failure. For her socialism itself, as set forth in her writings, dispassionate examination of what she actually inculcated, leaves but little warrant, in the state of progress now reached, for echoing the mighty outcry raised against it at the time. No doubt she thought that a complete reorganization of society on a new basis was eminently to be desired. But what she definitely advocated was, first, free education for the poor, and secondly, some fairer adjustment of the relations to each other of capital and labor. As to the first, authority has already sanctioned her opinion; the second question, if unsettled, has become a first preoccupation with statesmen and philosophers of all denominations in the present day. With regard to the complete solution of the problem, she leaves her socialist heroes, as she herself felt, in doubt and perplexity. There was something in the schemes and doctrines she conscientiously approved, irreconcilable with her artist-nature--a materialistic tendency which clashed with her poetical instincts. When the stern demagogue Michel denounced the whole tribe of artists as a corrupting influence, enervating to the courage and will of a nation, she rose up energetically in defense of the confraternity to which she was born:-- Will you tell me, pray, what you mean, with your declamations against artists? Cry out against them as much as you please, but respect art. Oh, you Vandal! I like that stern sectarian who wants to dress Taglioni in a stuff-gown and _sabots_, and set Liszt's hands to turn the machinery of a wine-press, and who yet, as he lies on the grass, finds the tears come into his eyes at the least linnet's song, and who makes a disturbance in the theatre to stop Othello from murdering Malibran! The austere citizen would suppress artists as social excrescences that absorb too much of the sap; but this gentleman is fond of vocal music, and so will spare the singers. Let us hope that painters will find one among your strong heads who appreciates painting, and won't wall up all studio windows. And as for the poets, they are your cousins; and you don't despise their forms of language and their rhythmical mechanism when you want to make an impression on the idle crowd. You will go to them to take lessons in metaphor, and how to make use of it. Unfortunately for the cause of the superiority of antiquity, whenever you go to hear Berlioz's _Funeral March_, the least that can happen to you will be to confess that this music is rather better than what they used to give us in Sparta, when we served under Lycurgus; you will think that Apollo, displeased to see us sacrificing to Pallas exclusively, has played us a trick in giving lessons to that _Babylonian_, so that by the exercise of a magnetic and disastrous power over us, he may lead our spirits astray. And she would prove to the demagogue, out of his own mouth, that everything cannot be reduced to "bread and shoes all round," as the grand desideratum. Give these to men, it will not suffice. The eloquent orator instinctively seeks besides to impart "hallowed emotions and mystic enthusiasm to those who toil and sweat--he teaches them to hope, to dream of God, to take courage and lift themselves above the sickening miseries of human conditions by the thought of a future, chimerical it may be, but strengthening and sublime." For a period, however, she was too fascinated by the new ideas to judge them, and she straightway sought in her art a means of popularizing them. "These ideas," she writes in a later preface to her socialist novel, _Le Péché de M. Antoine_, "at which, as yet but a small number of conservative spirits had taken alarm, had, as yet, only really begun to sprout in a small number of attentive, laborious minds. The government, so long as no actual form of political application was assumed, was not to be disquieted by theories, and let every man make his own, put forth his dream, and innocently construct his city of the future, by his own fire-side, in the garden of his imagination." She was aware that her readers thought her novels getting more and more tedious, in proportion as she communicated to her fictitious heroes and heroines the pre-occupations of her brain, and that she was thus stepping out of the domain of art. But she affirmed she could never help writing of whatever was absorbing her thoughts and feelings at the moment, and must take her chance of boring the public. Fortunately for _Le Péché de M. Antoine_, nature and human nature are here allowed to claim the larger share of our attention, and philosophy is a secondary feature. The scene is laid in the picturesque Marche country on the confines of Berry, a day's journey from Nohant, and we are glad to linger with her along the rocky banks of the Creuse, or among the ruined castles of Crozant and Châteaubrun. The novel contains much that is original and admirable in the drawing of characters of the most opposite classes. Finally, in _Le Meunier d'Angibault_,[C] written as was the last-mentioned work some four or five years later (1844-45), but which may be named here, as making up with _Le Compagnon du Tour de France_ the trio of "socialist" novels, the _Tendenz_ does not interfere to the detriment of the artistic plan of the book. In it the romantic elements of the remote country nook she inhabited are cleverly brought together, without departing too widely from probability. The dilapidated castle, the picturesque mill, the traditions of brigandage two generations ago, all these were realities familiar to her notice. The painting of the country and country people is masterly; and there is not a passage in the book to offend the taste of the most scrupulous reader. Nor can it be justly impugned on the ground of inculcating disturbing political principles. The personages, in their preference of poverty and obscurity to rank and wealth, may, in the judgment of some, think and conduct themselves like chimerical dreamers, but their actions, however quixotic, concern themselves alone. But, previous to either of the two novels last named, she had presented the world with a more ambitious work, whose merit was to compel universal acknowledgment--the most important, in fact, she had produced for eight years. CHAPTER VII. CONSUELO--HOME LIFE AT NOHANT. CONSUELO first appeared in the _Revue Indépendante_, 1842-43. This noble book might not be inaptly described as, --a whole which, irregular in parts, Yet left a grand impression on the mind. Its reckless proportions naturally "shocked the connoisseurs" among literary critics, especially in her own land; but nevertheless it became, and deservedly, one of her most popular productions, and did more than any other single novel she ever wrote to spread her popularity abroad. If _Indiana_, _Valentine_, and _Lélia_ had never been written to create the fame of George Sand, _Consuelo_ would have done so, and may be said to have established it over again, on a better and more lasting basis. Upon so well-known a work lengthened comment here would be superfluous. Originally intended for a novelette,--the opening chapters appear in the _Revue_ under the modest heading, _Consuelo_, _conte_,--the beginning was so successful that the author was urged to extend her plan beyond its first proposed limits. The novel is an ephemeral form of art, no doubt, but it is difficult to conceive of a stage of social and intellectual progress when the first part of _Consuelo_ will cease to be read with interest and delight. The heroine once transported from the lagunes of Venice to the frontier of Bohemia and the castle of Rudolstadt, the character of the story becomes less naturalistic; the storyteller loses herself somewhat in subterranean passages and the mazes of adventure generally. She wrote on, she acknowledges, at hap-hazard, tempted and led away by the new horizons which the artistic and historical researches her work required kept opening to her view. But the powerful contrast between the two pictures,--of bright, sunshiny, free, sensuous, careless Venetian folk-life, and of the stern gloom of the mediæval castle, where the more spiritual consolations of existence come into prominence--is singularly effective and original. So also is the charming way in which an incident in the boyhood of young Joseph Haydn is treated by her fancy, in the episode of Consuelo's flight from the castle, when he becomes her fellow-traveller, and their adventures across country are told with such zest and _entrain_, in pages where life-sketches of character, such as the good-natured, self-indulgent canon, the violent, abandoned Corilla, make us forget the wildest improbabilities of the fiction itself. The concluding portion of the book, again entirely different in frame, with its delineation of art-life in a fashionable capital, Vienna, is as true as it is brilliant. It teems with suggestive ideas on the subject of musical and dramatic art, and with excellently drawn types. The relations of professional and amateur, the contradictions and contentions to which, in a woman's nature, the rival forces of love and of an artistic vocation may give rise, have never been better portrayed in any novel. The heroine, Consuelo, is of course an ideal character: her achievements partake of the marvellous; and there are digressions in the book which are diffuse in the extreme; but nowhere is the author's imagination more attractively displayed and her style more engaging. The tone throughout is noble and pure. To look on _Consuelo_ as an agreeable story merely is to overlook the elevation of the moral standard of the book, in which much of its power resides. It marks more strongly than _Mauprat_ the change that had come over the spirit of George Sand's compositions. In the continuation, _La Comtesse de Rodolstadt_, which followed immediately in the _Revue Indépendante_, 1843, the novelist strays further and further from reality--the _terra firma_ on which her fancy improvises such charming dances. Here she only touches the ground now and then, and between whiles her imagination asks ours to accompany it on the most extraordinary flights. As a novel of adventure, it is written with unflagging spirit; and in the rites and doctrines of the _Illuminati_, an idealization of the feature of the secret sects of the last century, she found a new medium of expression for her sentiments regarding the present abuses of society and the need of thorough renovation. Secret societies, at that time, were extremely numerous and active among the Republican workers in France. Madame Sand seems thoroughly to have appreciated their dangers, and has expressly stated that she was no advocate of such sects; that though under a tyranny, such as that which oppressed Germany in the times of which she wrote, they may be a necessity, elsewhere they are an abuse if not a crime. "The custom indeed I have never regarded as applicable for good in our time and our country; I have never believed that it can bring forth anything in future but a dictatorship, and the dictatorial principle is one I have never accepted." (_Histoire de ma Vie._) But the romance of the subject was irresistibly tempting to her inventive faculty. "Tell Leroux to send me some more books on freemasonry, if he can find any," she writes to a correspondent at Paris whilst working at the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ at Nohant; "I am plunged into it over head and ears. Tell him also that he has there thrown me into an abyss of follies and absurdities, but that I am dabbling about courageously though prepared to extract nothing but nonsense." For the musical miracles which it is given to Madame Sand's heroes and heroines to perform at a trifling cost, she may well at this time have come to regard them as almost in the natural order. She had received her second, and her best musical education through the contemplation of original musical genius, of the rarest quality, among her most intimate friends, her constant guests at Paris and Nohant. The vocal and instrumental feats of Consuelo and Count Albert themselves are not more astonishing than the actual recorded achievements of Liszt, pronounced a perfect _virtuoso_ at twelve years old--and no wonder! The boy had so carried away his accompanyists, the band of the Italian opera at Paris, by his performance of the solo in an orchestral piece, that when the moment came for them to strike in, one and all forgot to do so, but remained silent, petrified with amazement. And Liszt when in the full development of his genius, had, as we have seen, been the art-comrade of George Sand; he had spent the whole of the summer season of 1837 at Nohant, transcribing Beethoven's symphonies for the piano-forte whilst she wrote her romances; she was familiar with his marvellous improvisations. In her "Trip to Chamounix" (_Lettres d'un Voyageur_, No. VI.) she has drawn a vivid picture of their extraordinary effect, describing his unrehearsed organ recital in the Cathedral of Freibourg to his little party of travelling companions. Nor was the charm of Chopin's gift less magical. The well-known anecdotes related on this subject are like so many glimpses into a musical paradise. Madame Sand has given us an amusing one herself. It is evening in her _salon_ at Paris. At the piano is Chopin; and she, her son, Eugène Delacroix, and the Polish poet Mickiewicz sit listening whilst the composer, in an inspired mood, is extemporizing in the sublimest manner to the little circle. All are in silent raptures; when the servant breaks in with the alarm--the house is on fire. They rush to the room where the flames are, and succeed after a time in extinguishing them. Then they perceive that the poet Mickiewicz is missing. On returning to the _salon_ they find him as they left him, rapt, entranced, unconscious of the stir around him, of the scare that had driven all the rest from the room. "He did not even know we had gone and left him alone. He was listening to Chopin, he had continued to hear him." Nor could the bewitched poet be brought down from the clouds that evening. He remained deaf to their banter, to Madame Sand's laughing admonition, "Next time I am with you when the house takes fire, I must begin by putting you into a safe place, for I see you would get burnt like a mere faggot, before you knew what was going on." Eugène Delacroix, one of Madame Sand's earliest and most valued friends in the artist-world, and one of the many with whom she enjoyed along and unclouded friendship, gives in his letters some agreeable pictures of life at Nohant, during his visits there in the successive summers of 1845 and 1846:-- When not assembled together with the rest for dinner, breakfast, a game of billiards, or a walk, you are in your room reading, or lounging on your sofa. Every moment there come in through the window open on the garden, "puffs of music" from Chopin, working away on one side, which mingle with the song of nightingales and the scent of the roses. He describes a quiet, monastic-like existence, simple and studious: "We have not even the distraction of neighbors and friends around. In this country everybody stays at home, to look after his oxen and his land. One would become a fossil in a very short time." The greatest event for the visitor was a village-festival--a wedding or a Saint's day--when the rustic dances went on under the tall elms to the roaring of the bagpipes. Peasant youths and peasant maids joined hands in the _bourrée_, the characteristic dance of the country; now, we fear, surviving in tradition only, but then still popular. The great artist was fired to paint a "Ste. Anne," patron-saint of Nohant, in honor of the place, but his work progressed but slowly. He writes in August, 1846:--"I am frightfully lazy, I can do nothing, I hardly read; and yet the days pass too quickly, for I must soon renounce this _vie de chanoine_, and return into the furnace of stirring ideas, good and bad. In Berry they have very few ideas, but they do just as well without." Then he adds, "Chopin has been playing Beethoven to me divinely well. That is worth all æstheticism." Little theatrical entertainments of an original kind, presided over by Madame Sand, and carried out by herself, her children, and their young friends, became in time a prominent feature of life at Nohant. She thus describes their nature and commencements:-- During the long evenings I took it into my head to devise for my family theatricals on the old Italian pattern--_commedia dell'arte_--plays in which the dialogue, itself extemporized, yet follows the outlines of a written plan, placarded behind the scenes. It is something like the charades acted in society, the development of which depends on the talent contributed by the actors. It was with these that we began, but little by little the word of the charade disappeared. We acted wild _saynètes_, afterwards comedies of plot and intrigue, finally dramas of event and emotion. All began with pantomime; and this was Chopin's invention. He sat at the piano and extemporized, whilst the young people acted scenes in dumb show and danced comic ballets. These charming improvisations turned the children's heads and made their legs nimble. He led them just as he chose, making them pass, according to his fancy, from the amusing to the severe, from burlesque to solemnity--now graceful, now impassioned. We invented all kinds of costumes, so as to play different characters in succession. No sooner did the artist see them appear than he adapted his theme and rhythm to the parts wonderfully. This would be repeated for two or three evenings; after which the _maestro_, departing for Paris, would leave us quite excited, exalted, determined not to let the spark be lost with which he had electrified us. Chopin was possessed of much dramatic talent himself, and was an admirable mimic. When a boy it had been said of him that he was born to be a great actor. His capacity for facial expressions was something extraordinary; he often amused his friends by imitations of fellow-musicians, reproducing their manner and gestures to the life; so well as actually on more than one occasion to take in the spectator. Madame Sand thus gives account of the even tenor of her way, in a letter of September, 1845:-- I have been in Paris till June, and since then am at Nohant until the winter, as usual; for henceforward my life is ruled as regularly as music paper. I have written two or three novels, one of which is just going to appear. My son is still thin and delicate, but otherwise well. He is the best being, the gentlest, most equable, industrious, simple-minded, and straightforward ever seen. Our characters, like our hearts, agree so well that we can hardly live a day apart. He is entering his twenty-third year, Solange her eighteenth. We have our ways of merriment, not noisy, but sustained, which bring our ages nearer together, and when we have been working hard all the week we allow ourselves, by way of a grand holiday, to go and eat our cake out of doors some way off, in a wood or an old ruin, with my brother, who is like a sturdy peasant, full of fun and good nature, and who dines with us every day, seeing that he lives not two miles off. Such are our grand pranks. Sometimes these little outings would originate a novel, as with the _Meunier d'Angibault_, which she ascribes to "a walk, a discovery, a day of leisure, an hour of idleness." On a ramble with her children she came upon what she calls "a nook in a wild paradise;" a mill, whose owner had allowed everything to grow around the sluices that chose to spring up, briar and alder, oaks and rushes. The stream, left to follow its devices, had forced its way through the sand and the grass in a network of little waterfalls, covered below in the summer time with thick tufts of aquatic plants. It was enough; the seed was sown and the fruit resulted. "The apple falling from the tree led Newton to the discovery of one of the grand laws of the universe.... In scientific works of genius, reflection derives the causes of things from a single fact. In art's humbler fancies, that isolated fact is dressed and completed in a dream." The picture given by Madame Sand and her guests of these years of her life is charming enough, and in certain ways seems an ideal kind of existence, amid beloved children, friends, pleasant and calm surroundings, and the sweets of successful literary activity. But if it had its bright lights, it had also its deep shadows. For every fresh pleasure and interest crowded into her existence, there entered a fresh source of anxiety and trouble. Age, in bringing her more power of endurance, had not blunted her sensibilities. As usual with the strongest natures in their hours of depression--and none so strong as to escape these--she could then look for no help except from herself. Those accustomed, like her, to shirk no responsibility, no burden, to invite others to lean on them, and to ask no support, if their fortitude gives way find the allowance, help and sympathy so easily accorded to their weaker fellow-creatures nowhere ready for them. The exclamation wrung from one of the characters in a later work of Madame Sand's, may be but a faithful echo of the cry of her own nature in some moment of mental torment. "Let me be weak; I have been seeming to be strong for so long a time!" Chopin, though the study of his genius had freshly inspired her own, and greatly extended her comprehension of musical art, was a being to whom the burden of his own life was too painful to allow him to lighten the troubles of another; a partial invalid, a prey to nervous irritation, he was dependent on her to soothe and cheer him at the best of times, and to be nurse and secretary besides when he was prostrated by illness or despondency. One is loth to call selfish a nature so attractive in its refinement, so unhappy in its over-susceptibility. But it is obvious that such a one might easily become a trial to those he loved. With all its vigor her nervous system could not escape the exhaustion and disturbance that attend on incessant brain-work. "Those who have nothing to do," she remarks, "when they see artists produce with facility, are ready to wonder at how few hours, how few instants, these can reserve for themselves. For such do not know how these gymnastics of the imagination, if they do not affect your health, yet leave an excitation of your nerves, an obsession of mental pictures, a languor of spirit, that forbid you to carry on any other kind of work." Although her constitution was even stronger than in her youth, she had for some years been subject to severe attacks of neuralgia. "Madame Sand suffers terribly from violent headaches and pain in her eyes," remarks Delacroix, in one of the letters above quoted, "which she takes upon herself to surmount as far as possible, with a great effort, so as not to distress us by what she goes through." Her habit of writing principally at night and contenting herself with the least possible allowance of repose, few could have persisted in for so long without breaking down. For many years she never took more than four hours sleep. The strain began to tell on her eye-sight at last, and already in a letter of 1842 she speaks of being temporarily compelled to suspend this practice of night-work, to her great regret, as in the daylight hours she was never secure from interruption. Only her abnormal power of activity and of bearing fatigue could have enabled her to fulfill so strenuously the responsibilities she had undertaken to her children, her private friends, and the public. The pressure of literary work was incessant, and whatever her dislike to accounts and arithmetic she is said to have fulfilled her engagements to editors and publishers with the regularity and punctuality of a notary. Her large acquaintance, relations with various classes, various projects, literary, political, and philanthropical, involved an immense amount of serious correspondence in addition to that arising from the postal persecution from which no celebrity escapes. Ladies wrote to consult her on sentimental subjects--to inquire of her, as of an oracle, whether they should bestow their heart, their hand, or both, upon their suitors; poets, to solicit her patronage and criticism. In the course of a single half-year, 153 manuscripts were sent her for perusal! She replied when it seemed fit, conscientiously and ungrudgingly; but experience had made her less expansive than formerly to those whose overtures she felt to be prompted by curiosity or some such idle motive, in the absence of any sympathy for her ways of thinking. "I am not to be caught in my words with indifferent persons," she writes to M. Charles Duvernet, describing how, when in her friend Madame Marliani's _salon_ in Paris she heard herself and her political allies or their opinions attacked, she was not to be provoked into argument or indignant denial, but went on quietly with her work of hemming pocket-handkerchiefs. "To such people one speaks through the medium of the Press. If they will not attend, no matter." Her sex, her anomalous position, her freedom of expression and action, exposed her to an extent quite exceptional, even for a public character, to the shafts of malice and slander. Accustomed to have to brave the worst from such attacks, she might and did arrive at treating them with an indifference that was not, however, in her nature, which shrank from the observation and personal criticism of the vulgar. To a young poet of promise in whose welfare she took interest, she writes, August, 1842:-- Never show my letters except to your mother, your wife, or your greatest friend. It is a shy habit, a mania I have to the last degree. The idea that I am not writing for those alone to whom I write, or for those who love them thoroughly, would freeze my heart and my hand directly. Everyone has a fault. Mine is a misanthropy in my outward habits--for all that I have no passion left in me but the love of my fellow-creatures; but with the small services that my heart and my faith can render in this world, my personality has nothing to do. Some people have grieved me very much, unconsciously, by talking and writing about me personally and my doings, even though favorably, and meaning well. Respect this malady of spirit. Madame Sand, being naturally undemonstrative, was commonly more or less tongue-tied and chilled in the presence of a stranger, and she had a frank dread of introductions and first interviews, even when the acquaintance was one she desired to make. Sometimes she asks her friends to prepare such new comers for receiving an unfavorable first impression, and to beg them not to be unduly prejudiced thereby. Such a one would find the persecution of lion-hunters intolerable, and now and then this drove her to extremities. Great must, indeed, have been the wrath of one of these irrepressibles, who, more obstinate than the rest, failing by fair means to get an introduction to George Sand, calmly pushed his way into Nohant unauthorized by anyone, whereupon her friends conspired to serve him the trick it must be owned he deserved; and which we give in the words of Madame Sand, writing to the Comtesse d'Agoult. The story is told also by Liszt in his letters:-- M. X. is ushered into my room. A respectable-looking person there receives him. She was about forty years of age, but you might give her sixty at a pinch. She had had beautiful teeth, but had got none left. All passes away! She had been rather good-looking, but was so no longer. All changes! Her figure was corpulent, and her hands were soiled. Nothing is perfect! She was clad in a gray woolen gown spotted with black, and lined with scarlet. A silk handkerchief was negligently twisted round her black hair. Her shoes were faulty, but she was thoroughly dignified. Now and then she seemed on the point of putting an _s_ or a _t_ in the wrong place, but she corrected herself gracefully, talked of her literary works, of her excellent friend M. Rollinat, of the talents of her visitor which had not failed to reach her ears, though she lived in complete retirement, overwhelmed with work. M. G. brought her a foot-stool, the children called her mamma, the servants Madame. She had a gracious smile, and much more distinguished manners than that fellow George Sand. In a word X. was happy and proud of his visit. Perched in a big chair, with beaming aspect, arm extended, speech abundant, there he stayed for a full quarter of an hour in ecstasies, and then took leave, bowing down to the ground to--Sophie! It was the maid that had thus been successfully passed off as the mistress, who with her whole household enjoyed a long and hearty laugh at the expense of the departed unbidden guest. "M. X. has gone off to Châteauroux," she concludes, "on purpose to give an account of his interview with me, and to describe me personally in all the _cafés_." This anecdote however belongs to a much earlier period of her life, the year 1837. Of her cordiality and kindliness to those who approached her in a right spirit of sincerity and simplicity, many have spoken. For English readers we cannot do better than quote Mr. Matthew Arnold's interesting account, given in the _Fortnightly_, 1877, of his visit to her in August, 1846. Desirous of seeing the green lanes of Berry, the rocky heaths of Bourbonnais, the descriptions of which in _Valentine_ and _Jeanne_ had charmed him so strongly, the traveller chose a route that brought him to within a few miles of her home:--"I addressed to Madame Sand," he tells us, "the sort of letter of which she must in her lifetime have had scores--a letter conveying to her, in bad French, the youthful and enthusiastic homage of a foreigner who had read her works with delight." She responded by inviting him to call at Nohant. He came and joined a breakfast-party that included Madame Sand and her son and daughter, Chopin, and other friends--Mr. Arnold being placed next to the hostess. He says of her:-- As she spoke, her eyes, head, bearing were all of them striking, but the main impression she made was one of simplicity, frank, cordial simplicity. After breakfast she led the way into the garden, asked me a few kind questions about myself and my plans, gathered a flower or two and gave them to me, shook hands heartily at the gate, and I saw her no more. During the eight years of successful literary activity, lying between Madame Sand's return from Majorca and the Revolution of February, 1848, the profits of her work had, after the first, enabled her freely to spend the greater part of the year at Nohant, and to provide a substantial dowry for her daughter. But the amassing of wealth suited neither her taste nor her principles. She writes to her poet-protégé M. Poncy, in September, 1845:-- We are in easy circumstances, which enables us to do away with poverty in our own neighborhood, and if we feel the sorrow of being unable to do away with that which desolates the world--a deep sorrow, especially at my age, when life has no intoxicating personality left, and one sees plainly the spectacle of society in its injustices and frightful disorder--at least we know nothing of _ennui_, of restless ambition and selfish passions. We have a sort of relative happiness, and my children enjoy it with the simplicity of their age. As for me, I only accept it in trembling, for all happiness is like a theft in this ill-regulated world of men, where you cannot enjoy your ease or your liberty, except to the detriment of your fellow-creatures--by the force of things, the law of inequality, that odious law, those odious combinations, the thought of which poisons my sweetest domestic joys and revolts me against myself at every moment. I can only find consolation in vowing to go on writing as long as I have a breath of life left in me, against the infamous maxim, "_Chacun chez soi, chacun pour soi_." Since all I can do is to make this protest, make it I shall, in every key. Her republican friends in Berry had founded in 1844 a local journal for the spread of liberal ideas--such as Lamartine at the time was supporting at Macon. Madame Sand readily contributed her services to a cause where she labored for the enlightenment of the masses on all subjects--truth, justice, religion, liberty, fraternity, duties, and rights. The government of Louis Philippe, so long as such utterances attacked no definite institution, allowed an almost illimitable freedom in expression of opinion. The result was that thought had advanced so far ahead of action that social philosophers had grown to argue as though practical obstacles had no existence--to be rudely reminded of their consequence, when brought to the front in 1848, and acting somewhat too much as if on that supposition. It is impossible not to make concerning Madame Sand, the reflection made on other foremost workers in the same cause of organic social reform--namely, that her character and her instincts were in curious opposition to her ideas. What was said by Madame d'Agoult of Louis Blanc applies with even greater force to George Sand: "The sentiment of personality was never stronger than in this opposer of individualism, communist theories had for their champion one most unfit to be absorbed into the community." For no length of time was the idea of "communism" accepted, and never was it advocated by her except in the most restricted sense. The land-hunger, or rather land-greed, of the small proprietors in her neighborhood had, it is true, given her a certain disgust for these contested possessions. But from the preference of a small child for a garden of its own however small, to another's however large, she characteristically infers the instinct of property as a law of nature it were preposterous to disallow, and furthermore she lays down as an axiom that, "in treating the communistic idea it is necessary first to distinguish what is essential in liberty and work to the complete existence of the individual, from what is collective." When forced by actual experience to point out what she holds to be the rightful application of the idea, she limits it to voluntary association; and she hoped great things from the co-operative principle, as tending to eliminate the ills of extreme inequalities in the social structure, and to preserve everything in it that is worth preserving. CHAPTER VIII. NOVELIST AND POLITICIAN. By her novels classed as "socialistic," Madame Sand had, as we have seen, incurred the public hostility of those whom her doctrines alarmed. And yet her "communist" heroes and heroines are the most pacific and inoffensive of social influences. They merely aspire to isolate themselves, and personally to practice principles and virtues of the highest order; unworldliness such as, if general, might indeed turn the earth into the desired Utopia. Nothing can be said against their example, unless that it is too good, and that there is little hope of its being widely followed. Charges of another sort, no less bitter, and though exaggerated, somewhat better founded, assailed her after the appearance in 1847 of _Lucrezia Floriani_, a novel of character-analysis entirely, but into which she was accused of having introduced an unflattering portrait of Frédéric Chopin, whose long and long-requited attachment to her entitled him to better treatment at her hands. With respect to the general question of such alleged fictitious reproductions, few novelists escape getting into trouble on this head. It has been aptly observed by Mr. Hamerton that the usual procedure of the reading public in such cases is to fix on some real personage as distinctly unlike the character in the book as possible, for the original, and then to complain of the unfaithfulness of the resemblance. Madame Sand's taste and higher art-instincts would have revolted against the practice--now unfortunately no longer confined to inferior writers--of forcing attention to a novel by making it the gibbet of well-known personalities, with little or no disguise; and Chopin himself, morbidly sensitive and fanciful though he was, read her work without perceiving in it any intention there to portray their relations to each other, which, indeed, had differed essentially from those of the personages in the romance. _Lucrezia Floriani_ is a _cantatrice_ of genius, who, whilst still young, has retired from the world, indifferent to fame, and effectually disenchanted--so she believes--with passion. Despite an experience strange and stormy, even for a member of her Bohemian profession, Lucrezia has miraculously preserved intact her native nobility of soul, and appears as a meet object of worship to a fastidious young prince on his travels, who becomes passionately enamored of her. He over-persuades Lucrezia into trusting that they will find their felicity in each other. Their happiness is of the briefest duration, owing to the unreasonable character of the prince, who leads the actress a miserable life; his love taking the form of petty tyranny and retrospective jealousy. After long years of this material and moral captivity, the heroic Lucrezia fades and dies. Not content with identifying the intolerable, though it must be owned severely-tested, Prince Karol with Chopin, imaginative writers have gone so far as to assert that the book was conceived and written from an express design on the novelist's part to bring about the breach of a link she was beginning to find irksome! Madame Sand has described how it was written--as are all such works of imagination--in response to a sort of "call"--some striking yet indefinable quality in one idea among the host always floating through the brain of the artist, that makes him instantly seize it and single it out as inviting to art-treatment. It would be preposterous to doubt her statement. But whether the inspiration ought not to have been sacrificed is another question. Her gift was her good angel and her evil angel as well, but in any case something of her despot. Here, assuredly, it ruled her ill. It is indisputable that, as she had pointed out, the sad history of the attachment of Lucrezia the actress and Karol the prince deviates too widely from that which was supposed to have originated it for just comparisons to be drawn between the two, that Karol is not a genius, and therefore has none of the rights of genius--including, we presume, the right to be a torment to those around him--that to talk of a portrait of Chopin without his genius is a contradiction in terms, that he never suspected the likeness assumed until it was insinuated to him, and so forth. But there remains this, that in the work of imagination she here presented to the public there was enough of reality interwoven to make the world hasten to identify or confound Prince Karol with Chopin. This might have been a foregone conclusion, as also that Chopin, the most sensitive of mortals, would be infinitely pained by the inferences that would be drawn. Perhaps if only as a genius, he had the right to be spared such an infliction; and one must wish it could have appeared in this light to Madame Sand. It seems as though it were impossible for the author to put himself at the point of view of the reader in such matters. The divine spark itself, that quickens certain faculties, deadens others. When Goethe, in _Werther_, dragged the private life of his intimate friends, the Kestners, into publicity, and by falsifying the character of the one and misrepresenting the conduct of the other, in obedience to the requisitions of art, exposed his beloved Charlotte and her husband to all manner of annoyances, it never seems to have entered into his head beforehand but that they would be delighted by what he had done. Nor could he get over his surprise that such petty vexations on their part should not be merged in a proud satisfaction at the literary memorial thus raised by him to their friendly intercourse! This seems incredible, and yet his sincerity leaves no room for doubt. Madame Sand's transgressions on this head, though few, have obtained great notoriety, on account of the extraordinary celebrity of two of the personages that suggested characters she has drawn. To the supposed originals, however obscure, the mortification is the same. But what often passes uncommented on when the individuals said to be traduced are unknown to fame, sets the whole world talking when one of the first musicians or poets of the century is involved; so that Madame Sand has incurred more censure than other novelists, though she has deserved it more rarely. But regret remains that for the sake of _Lucrezia Floriani_, one of the least pleasant though by no means the least powerful of her novels, she should have exposed herself to the charge of unkindness to one who had but a short while to live. Other causes had latterly been combining to lead to differences of which it would certainly be unfair to lay the whole blame on Madame Sand. The tie of personal attachment between Chopin and herself was not associated by identity of outward interests or even of cares and family affections, such as, in the case of husband and wife, make self-sacrifice possible under conditions which might otherwise be felt unbearable, and help to tide over crises of impatience or wrong. Madame Sand's children were now grown up; cross-influences could not but arise, hard to conciliate. Without accrediting Chopin with the self-absorption of Prince Karol, it is easy to see here, in a situation somewhat anomalous, elements of probable discord. It was impossible that he should any longer be a first consideration; impossible that he should not resent it. For some years his state of health had been getting worse and worse, and his nervous susceptibilities correspondingly intensified. Madame Sand betrayed some impatience at last of what she had long borne uncomplainingly, and their good understanding was broken. As was natural, the breach was the more severely felt by Chopin, but that it was of an irreparable nature, one is at liberty to doubt. He bitterly regretted what he had lost, for which not all the attentions showered on him by his well-wishers could afford compensation, as his letters attest. But outward circumstances prolonged the estrangement till it was too late. They met but once after the quarrel, and that was in company in March, 1848. Madame Sand would at once have made some approach, but Chopin did not then respond to the appeal; and the reconciliation both perhaps desired was never to take place. Political events had intervened to widen the gap between their paths. Chopin had neither part nor lot in the revolutionary movement that just then was throwing all minds and lives into a ferment, and which was completely to engross Madame Sand's energies for many months to come. It drove him away to England, and he only returned to Paris, in 1849, to die. In May, 1847, the tranquility of life at Nohant had been varied by a family event, the marriage of Madame Sand's daughter Solange with the sculptor Clésinger. The remainder of the twelvemonth was spent in the country, apparently with very little anticipation on Madame Sand's part that the breaking of the political storm, that was to draw her into its midst, was so near. The new year was to be one of serious agitations, different to any that had yet entered into her experience. Political enterprise for the time cast all purely personal interests and emotions into the background. "I have never known how to do anything by halves," she says of herself very truly; and whatever may be thought of the tendency of her political influence and the manner of its exertion, no one can tax her with sparing herself in a contest to which, moreover, she came disinterested; vanity and ambition having, in one of her sex, nothing to gain by it. But in political matters it seems hard for a poet to do right. If, like Goethe, he holds aloof in great crises, he is branded for it as a traitor and a bad patriot. The battle of Leipzig is being fought, and he sits tranquilly writing the epilogue for a play. If, like George Sand, he throws the whole weight of his enthusiastic eloquence into what he believes to be the right scale, it is ten to one that his power, which knows nothing of caution and patience, may do harm to the cause he has at heart. Madame Sand rested her hopes for a better state of things, for the redemption of France from political corruption, for the amelioration of the condition of the working classes, and reform of social institutions in general, on the advent to power of those placed at the head of affairs by the collapse of the government of Louis Philippe, a crisis long threatened, long prepared, and become inevitable. "The whole system," wrote Heine prophetically of the existing monarchy, five years before its fall, "is not worth a charge of powder, if indeed some day a charge of powder does not blow it up." February, 1848, saw the explosion, the flight of the Royal Family, and the formation of a Provisional Government, with Lamartine at its head. It is hard to realize in the present day, when we contemplate these events through the sobering light of the deplorable sequel, how immense and wide-spreading was the enthusiasm that at this particular juncture seemed to put the fervent soul of a George Sand or an Armand Barbès into the most lukewarm and timid. "More than one," writes Madame d'Agoult, "who for the last twenty years had been scoffing at every grand thought, let himself be won by the general emotion." The prevailing impression can have fallen little short of the conviction that a sort of millennium was at hand for mankind in general and the French in particular, and that all human ills would disappear because a bad government had been got rid of, and that without such scenes of blood and strife as had disfigured previous revolutions. The first task was firmly to establish a better one in its place. Madame Sand, though with a strong perception of the terrible difficulties besetting a ministry which, to quote her own words, would need, in order to acquit itself successfully, "the genius of a Napoleon and the heart of Christ," never relaxed an instant in the enforcement, both by example and exhortation, of her conviction that it was the duty of all true patriots and philanthropists to consecrate their energies to the cause of the new republic. "My heart is full and my head on fire," she writes to a fellow-worker in the same cause. "All my physical ailments, all my personal sorrows are forgotten. I live, I am strong, active, I am not more than twenty years old." The exceptional situation of the country was one in which, according to her opinion, it behooved men to be ready not only with loyalty and devotion, but with fanaticism if needed. She worked hard with her son and her local allies at the ungrateful task of revolutionizing Le Berry, which, she sighs, "is very drowsy." In March she came up to Paris and placed her services as journalist and partizan generally at the disposal of Ledru-Rollin, Minister of the Interior under the new Government. "Here am I already doing the work of a statesman," she writes from Paris to her son at Nohant, March 24. Her indefatigable energy, enabling her as it did to disdain repose, was perhaps the object of envy to the statesmen themselves. At their disgust when kept up all night by the official duties of their posts, she laughs without mercy. Night and day her pen was occupied, now drawing up circulars for the administration, now lecturing the people in political pamphlets addressed to them. To the _Bulletin de la République_, a government journal started with the laudable purpose of preserving a clear understanding between the mass of the people in the provinces and the central government, she became a leading contributor. For the festal invitation performances given to the people at the "Théâtre de la République," where Rachel sang the Marseillaise and acted in _Les Horaces_, Madame Sand wrote a little "occasional" prologue, _Le Roi Attend_, a new and democratic version of Molière's _Impromptu de Versailles_. The outline is as follows:--Molière is discovered impatient and uneasy; the King waits, and the comedians are not ready. He sinks asleep, and has a vision, in which the muse emerges out of a cloud, escorted by Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, and Beaumarchais, to each of whom are assigned a few lines--where possible, lines of their own--in praise of equality and fraternity. They vanish, and Molière awakes; his servant announces to him that the King waits--but the King this time is, of course, the people, to whom Molière now addresses his flattering speech in turn. But the fervor of heroism that fired everybody in the first days of successful revolution, that made the leaders disinterested, the masses well-behaved, reasonable, and manageable, was for the majority a flash only; and the dreamed-of social ideal, touched for a moment was to recede again into the far distance. It was Madame Sand's error, and no ignoble one, to entertain the belief that a nation could safely be trusted to the guidance of a force so variable and uncontrollable as enthusiasm, and that the principle of self-devotion could be relied upon as a motive power. The divisions, intrigues, and fatal complications that quickly arose at head-quarters confirmed her first estimation of the practical dangers ahead. She clung to her belief in the sublime virtues of the masses, and that they would prove themselves grander, finer, more generous than all the mighty and the learned ones upon earth. But each of the popular leaders in turn was pronounced by her tried and found wanting. None of the party chiefs presented the desirable combination of perfect heroism and political genius. Michel, the apostle who of old had converted her to the cause, she had long scorned as a deserter. Leroux, in the moment of action, was a nonentity. Barbès "reasons like a saint," she observes, "that is to say, very ill as regards the things of this world." Lamartine was a vain trimmer; Louis Blanc, a sectarian; Ledru-Rollin, a weathercock. "It is the characters that transgress," she complains naïvely as one after the other disappointed her. Her own shortcomings on the score of patience and prudence were, it must be owned, no less grave. Her clear-sightedness was unaccompanied by the slightest dexterity of action. Years before, in one of the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_, she had passed a criticism on herself as a political worker, the accuracy of which she made proof of when carried into the vortex. "I am by nature poetical, but not legislative, warlike, if required, but never parliamentary. By first persuading me and then giving me my orders some use may be made of me, but I am not fit for discovering or deciding anything." Such an influence, important for raising an agitation, was null for controlling and directing the forces thus set in motion. In the application of the theories she had accepted she was as weak and obscure as she was emphatic and eloquent in the preaching of them. Little help could she afford the republican leaders in dealing with the momentous question how to fulfill the immense but confused aspirations they had raised, how to show that their principles could answer the necessities of the moment. The worst, perhaps, that can be said of Madame Sand's political utterances is that they encouraged the people in their false belief--which belief she shared--that the social reforms so urgently needed could be worked rapidly by the Government, providing only it were willing. Over-boldness of expression on the part of advanced sections only increased the timidity and irresolution of action complained of in the administration. As the ranks of the Ministry split up into factions, Madame Sand attached herself to the party of Ledru-Rollin--in whom at that time she had confidence,--a party that desired to see him at the head of affairs, and that included Jules Favre, Étienne Arago, and Armand Barbès. No more zealous political partizan and agent than Madame Sand. The purpose in view was to preserve a cordial _entente_ between these trusted chiefs and the masses whose interests they represented and on whose support they relied. To this end she got together meetings of working-men at her temporary Parisian abode, addressing them in speech and in print, and seemingly blind in the heat of the struggle to the enormous danger of playing with the unmanageable, unreasoning instincts of the crowd. She still cherished the chimera dear to her imagination--the prospective vision of the French people assembling itself in large masses, and deliberately and pacifically giving expression to its wishes. Into the _Bulletin de la République_ there crept soon a tone of impatience and provocation, improper and dangerous in an official organ. The 16th number, which appeared on April 16, at a moment when the pending general elections seemed likely to be overruled by reactionaries, contained the startling declaration that if the result should thus dissatisfy the Paris people, these would manifest their will once more, by adjourning the decision of a false national representation. This sentence, which came from the pen of Madame Sand, was interpreted into a threat of intimidation from the party that would make Ledru-Rollin dictator, and created a considerable stir. There was, indeed, no call for a fresh brand of discord in the republican ranks. Almost simultaneously came popular demonstrations of a menacing character. Ledru-Rollin disavowed the offending _Bulletin_; but the growing uneasiness of the _bourgeoisie_, the unruly discontent among the workmen, the Government, embarrassed and utterly disorganized, was powerless to allay. Madame Sand began to perceive that the republic of her dreams, the "republican republic," was a forlorn hope, though still unconscious that even heavier obstacles to progress existed in the governed many than in the incapacity or personal ambition of the governing few. She writes to her son from Paris, April 17:-- I am sad, my boy. If this goes on, and in some sense there should be no more to be done, I shall return to Nohant to console myself by being with you. I shall stay and see the National Assembly, after which I think I shall find nothing more here that I can do. At the _Fête de la Fraternité_, April 20th, the spectacle of a million of souls putting aside and agreeing to forget all dissensions, all wrongs in the past and fears for the future, and uniting in a burst of joyous exultation, filled her with enthusiasm and renewed hope. But the demonstration of the 15th of May, of which she was next a spectator, besides its mischievous effect in alarming the quiet classes and exciting the agitators afresh, gave fatal evidence of the national disorganization and uncontrollable confusion everywhere prevailing, that had doomed the republic from the hour of its birth. Madame Sand, though she strenuously denied any participation or sympathy with this particular manifestation, was closely associated in the public mind with those who had aided and abetted the uprising. During the gathering of the populace, which she had witnessed, mingling unrecognized among the crowd, a female orator haranguing the mob from the lower windows of a _café_ was pointed out to her, and she was assured that it was George Sand. During the repressive measures the administration was led to take she felt uncertain whether the arrest of Barbès might not be followed by her own. Some of her friends advised her to seek safety in Italy, where at that time the partisans of liberty were more united and sanguine. She turned a deaf ear. But she was severed now from all influential connection with those in authority. Before the end of May she left for Nohant, with her hopes for the rapid regeneration of her country on the wane. "I am afraid for the future," she writes to the imprisoned Barbès, shortly after these events. "I suffer for those who do harm and allow harm to be done without understanding it.... I see nothing but ignorance and moral weakness preponderating on the face of the globe." Through the medium of the press, notably of the journal _La Vraie République_, she continued to give plain expression to her sentiments, regardless of the political enmities she might excite, and of the personal mortification to which she was exposed, even at Nohant, which with its inmates had recently become the mark for petty hostile "demonstrations." Alluding to these, she writes:-- Here in this Berry, so romantic, so gentle, so calm and good, in this land I love so tenderly, and where I have given sufficient proof to the poor and uneducated that I know my duties towards them, I myself in particular am looked upon as the enemy of the human race; and if the Republic has not kept its promises, it is I, clearly, who am the cause. The term "communist," caught up and passed from mouth to mouth, was flung at Madame Sand and her son by the peasants, whose ideas as to its significance were not a little wild. "A pack of idiots," she writes to Madame Marliani, "who threaten to come and set fire to Nohant. Brave they are not, neither morally nor physically; and when they come this way and I walk through the midst of them they take off their hats; but when they have gone by they summon courage to shout, 'Down with the communists.'" The ingratitude of many who again and again had received succor from her and hers, she might excuse on account of their ignorance, but the extent of their ignorance was an obstacle to immediate progress whose weight she had miscalculated. "I shall keep my faith," she writes to Joseph Mazzini at this crisis--"the idea, pure and bright, the eternal truth will ever remain for me in my heaven, unless I go blind. But hope is a belief in the near triumph of one's faith. I should not be sincere if I said that this state of mind had not been modified in me during these last months." The terrible insurrection of June followed, and overwhelmed her for the time. It was not only that her nature, womanly and poetical, had the greatest horror of bloodshed. The spectacle of the republicans slaughtering each other, of the evil passions stirred, the frightful anarchy, ended but at a frightful cost, the complete extinction of all hopes,--nothing left rampant but fear, rancor and distrust,--was heart-rendering to her whose heart had been thrown into the national troubles. Great was the panic in Berry, an after-clap of the disturbances in the capital. Madame Sand's position became more unpleasant than ever. She describes herself as "_blasée d outrages_--threatened perpetually by the coward hatreds and imbecile terrors of country places." But to all this she was well-nigh insensible in her despair over the public calamities oppressing her nation--the end of all long-struggling aspirations in "frightful confusion, complete moral anarchy, a morbid condition, in most which the courageous of us lost heart and wished for death. "You say that the _bourgeoisie_ prevails," she writes to Mazzini, in September, 1848, "and that thus it is quite natural that selfishness should be the order of the day. But why does the _bourgeoisie_ prevail, whilst the people is sovereign, and the principle of its sovereignty, universal suffrage, is still standing? We must open our eyes at last, and the vision of reality is horrible. The majority of the French people is blind, credulous, ignorant, ungrateful, wicked, and stupid; it is _bourgeoisie_ itself!" Under no conceivable circumstances is it likely that Madame Sand would not very soon have become disgusted with active politics, for which her temperament unfitted her in every respect. Impetuous and uncompromisingly sincere, she was predestined to burn her fingers; proud and independent, to become something of a scape-goat, charged with all the follies and errors which she repudiated, as well as with those for which she was more or less directly responsible. For some time to come she remained in comparative seclusion at Nohant. She had not ceased her propaganda, though obliged to conduct it with greater circumspection. After the horrors of civil warfare, had come the cry for order at any price, and France had declared for the rule of Louis Bonaparte. During the course of events that consolidated his power, Madame Sand withdrew more and more from the strife of political parties. She had been, and we shall find her again, inclined to hope for better things for France from its new master than time showed to be in store. Other republicans besides herself had been disposed to build high their hopes of this future "saviour of society" in his youthful days of adversity and mysterious obscurity. When in confinement at the fortress of Ham, in 1844, Louis Napoleon sent to George Sand his work on the Extinction of Pauperism. She wrote back a flattering letter in which, however, with characteristic sincerity, she is careful to remind him that the party to which she belonged could never acknowledge any sovereign but the people; that this they considered to be incompatible with the sovereignty of one man; that no miracle, no personification of popular genius in a single individual, could prove to them the right of that individual to sovereign power. Since then she had seen the people supreme, and been forced to own that they knew not what they wanted, nor whither they were going, divided in mind, ferocious in action. Among the leaders, she had seen some infatuated by the allurements of personal popularity, and the rest showing, by their inability to cope with the perplexities of administrative government, that so far philosophical speculations were of no avail in the actual solution of social problems. The result of her disenchantment was in no degree the overthrow of her political faith. A conviction was dawning on her that her social ideal was absolutely impracticable in any future that she and her friends could hope to live to see. But the belief on which she founded her social religion was one in which she never wavered; a certainty that a progress, the very idea of which now seemed chimerical, would some day appear to all as a natural thing; nay, that the stream of tendency would carry men towards this goal in spite of themselves. CHAPTER IX. PASTORAL TALES. "So you thought," wrote Madame Sand to a political friend, in 1849, "that I was drinking blood out of the skulls of aristocrats. Not I! I am reading Virgil and learning Latin." And her best propaganda, as by and by she came to own, was not that carried on in journals such as _La Vraie République_ and _La Cause du Peuple_. Through her works of imagination she has exercised an influence more powerful and universal, if indirect. Among the more than half a hundred romances of George Sand, there stands out a little group of three, belonging to the period we have now reached--the _mezzo cammin_ of her life--creations in a special style, and over which the public voice, whether of fastidious critics or general readers, in France or abroad, has been and remains unanimous in praise. In these, her pastoral tales, she hit on a new and happy vein which she was peculiarly qualified to work, combining as she did, intimate knowledge of French peasant life with sympathetic interest in her subject and lively poetic fancy. Here she affronts no prejudices, advances no startling theories, handles no subtle, treacherous social questions, and to these compositions in a perfectly original _genre_ she brought the freshness of genius which "age cannot wither," together with the strength and finish of a practiced hand. Peasants had figured as accessories in her earlier works. The rustic hermit and philosopher, Patience, and Marcasse the rat-catcher, in _Mauprat_, are note-worthy examples. In 1844 had appeared _Jeanne_, with its graceful dedication to Françoise Meillant, the unlettered peasant-girl who may have suggested the work she could not read--one of a family of rural proprietors, spoken of by Madame Sand in a letter of 1843 as a fine survival of a type already then fast vanishing--of patriarchally constituted family-life, embodying all that was grand and simple in the forms of the olden time. In _Jeanne_, Madame Sand had first ventured to make a peasant-girl the central figure of her novel, though still so far deferring to the received notions of what was essential in order to interest the "gentle" reader as to surround her simple heroine with personages of rank and education. Jeanne herself, moreover, is an exceptional and a highly idealized type--as it were a sister to Joan of Arc, not the inspired warrior-maid, but the visionary shepherdess of the Vosges. Yet the creation is sufficiently real. The author had observed how favorable was the life of solitude and constant communion with nature led by many of these country children in their scattered homesteads, to the development of remarkable and tenacious individuality. So with the strange and poetical Jeanne, too innately refined to prosper in her rough human environment, yet too fixedly simple to fare much better in more cultivated circles. She is the victim of a sort of celestial stupidity we admire and pity at once. In this study of a peasant heroine resides such charm as the book possesses, and the attempt was to lead on the author to the productions above alluded to, _La Mareau Diable_, _François le Champi_, and _La Petite Fadette_. Of this popular trio the first had been published already two years before the Revolution, in 1846; the second was appearing in the Feuilleton of the _Journal des Débats_ at the very moment of the breaking of the storm, which interrupted its publication awhile. When those tumultuous months were over, and Madame Sand, thrown out of the hurly-burly of active politics, was brought back by the course of events to Nohant, she seems to have taken up her pen very much where she had laid it down. The break in her ordinary round of work made by the excitements of active statesmanship was hardly perceptible, and in 1849 _Le Champi_ was followed by _La Petite Fadette_. _La Mare au Diable_, George Sand's first tale of exclusively peasant-life, is usually considered her masterpiece in this _genre_. It was suggested to her, she tells us, by Holbein's dismal engraving of death coming to the husbandman, an old, gaunt, ragged, over-worked representative of his tribe--grim ending to a life of cheerless poverty and toil! Here was the dark and painful side of the laborer's existence--a true picture, but not the whole truth. There was another and a bright side, which might just as allowably be represented in art as the dreary one, and which she had seen and studied. In Berry extreme poverty was the exception, and the agriculturist's life appeared as it ought to be, healthy, calm, and simple, its laboriousness compensated by the soothing influences of nature, and of strong home affections. This little gem of a work is thoroughly well-known. The ploughing-scene in the opening--ploughing as she had witnessed it sometimes in her own neighborhood, fresh, rough ground broken up for tillage, the plough drawn by four yoke of young white oxen new to their work and but half-tamed, has a simplicity and grandeur of effect not easy to parallel in modern art. The _motif_ of the tale is that you often go far to search for the good fortune that lies close to your door. Never was so homely an adage more freshly and prettily illustrated; yet how slight are the materials, how plain is the outline! Germain, the well-to-do, widowed laborer, in the course of a few miles' ride, a journey undertaken in order to present himself and his addresses to the rich widow his father desires him to woo, discovers the real life-companion he wants in the poor girl-neighbor, whom he patronizingly escorts on her way to the farm where she is hired for service. It all slowly dawns upon him, in the most natural manner, as the least incidents of the journey call out her good qualities of head and heart--her helpfulness in misadventure, forgetfulness of self, unaffected fondness for children, instinctively recognized by Germain's little boy, who, with his unconscious childish influence, is one of the prettiest features in the book. Germain, by his journey's end, has his heart so well engaged in the right quarter that he is proof against the dangerous fascinations of the coquettish widow. There is a breath of poetry over the picture, but no denaturalization of the uncultured types. Germain is honest and warm-hearted, but not bright of understanding; little Marie is wise and affectionate, but as unsentimentally-minded as the veriest realist could desire. The native caution and mercenary habit of thought of the French agricultural class are indicated by many a humorous touch in the pastorals of George Sand. Equally pleasing, though not aiming at the almost antique simplicity of the _Mare au Diable_, is the story of _François le Champi_, the foundling, saved from the demoralization to which lack of the softening influences of home and parental affection predestine such unhappy children, through the tenderness his forlorn condition inspires in a single heart--that of Madeline Blanchet, the childless wife, whose own wrongs, patiently borne, have quickened her commiseration for the wrongs of others. Her sympathy, little though it lies in her power to manifest it, he feels, and its incalculable worth to him, which is such that the gratitude of a whole life cannot do more than repay it. Part of the narrative is here put into the mouth of a peasant, and told in peasant language, or something approaching to it. Over the propriety of this proceeding, adopted also in _Les Maîtres Sonneurs_, French critics are disagreed, though for the most part they regret it. It is not for a foreigner to decide between them. One would certainly regret the absence of some of the extremely original and expressive words and turns of speech current among the rural population, forms which such a method enabled her to introduce into the narrative as well as into the dialogue. _La Petite Fadette_ is not only worthy of its predecessors but by many will be preferred to either. There is something particularly attractive in the portraits of the twin brothers--partly estranged by character, wholly united by affection,--and in the figure of Fanchon Fadet, an original in humble life, which has made this little work a general favorite wherever it is known. These prose-idylls have been called "The Georgics of France." It is curious that in a country so largely agricultural, and where nature presents more variety of picturesque aspect than perhaps in any other in Europe, the poetic side of rural life should have been so sparingly represented in her imaginative literature. French poets of nature have mostly sought their inspiration out of their own land, "In France, especially," observes Théophile Gautier, "all literary people live in town, that is in Paris the centre, know little of what is unconnected with it, and most of them cannot tell wheat from barley, potatoes from beetroot." It was a happy inspiration that prompted Madame Sand to fill in the blank, in a way all her own, and her task as we have seen was completed, revolutions notwithstanding. She owns to having then felt the attraction experienced in all time by those hard hit by public calamities, "to throw themselves back on pastoral dreams, all the more naïve and childlike for the brutality and darkness triumphant in the world of activity." Tired of "turning round and round in a false circle of argument, of accusing the governing minority, but only to be forced to acknowledge after all that they were put there by the choice of the majority," she wished to forget it all: and her poetic temperament which unfitted her for success in politics assisted her in finding consolation in nature. Moreover a district like Le Berry, singularly untouched by corruptions of the civilization, and preserving intact many old and interesting characteristics, was a field in which she might draw from reality many an attractive picture. She was as much rallied by town critics about her shepherdesses as though she had invented them. And yet she saw them every day, and they may be seen still by any wanderer in those lanes, and at every turn, Fanchons, Maries, Nanons, as she described them, tending their flock of from five to a dozen sheep, or a few geese, a goat and a donkey, all day long between the tall hedgerows, or on the common, spinning the while, or possibly dreaming. A certain refinement of cast distinguishes the type. Eugène Delacroix, in a letter describing a village festival at Nohant, remarks that if positive beauty is rare among the natives, ugliness is a thing unknown. A gentle, passive cast of countenance prevails among the women: "They are all St. Annes," as the artist expresses it. The inevitable changes brought about by steam-communication, which have as yet only begun to efface the local habits and peculiarities, must shortly complete their work. George Sand's pastoral novels will then have additional value, as graphic studies of a state of things that has passed away. It does not appear that the merit of these stories was so quickly recognized as that of _Indiana_ and _Valentine_. The author might abstract herself awhile from passing events and write idylls, but the public had probably not yet settled down into the proper state of mind for fully enjoying them. Moreover Madame Sand's antagonists in politics and social science, as though under the impression that she could not write except to advance some theory of which they disapproved, pre-supposed in these stories a set purpose of exalting the excellence of rustic as compared with polite life--of exaggerating the virtues of the poor, to throw into relief the vices of the rich. The romances themselves do not bear out such a supposition. In them the author chooses exactly the same virtues to exalt, the same vices to condemn, as in her novels of refined society. She shows us intolerance, selfishness, and tyranny of custom marring or endangering individual happiness among the working-classes, as with their superiors. There are Philistines in her thatched cottages, as well as in her marble halls. Germain, in _La Mare au Diable_, has some difficulty to discover for himself, as well as to convince his family and neighbors, that in espousing the penniless Marie he is not marrying beneath him in every sense. François le Champi is a pariah, an outcast in the estimation of the rustic world. Fanchon Fadet, by her disregard of appearances and village etiquette, scandalizes the conservative minds of farmers and millers very much as Aurore Dupin scandalized the leaders of society at La Châtre. Most prominence is given to the more pleasing characters, but the existence of brutality and cupidity among the peasant classes is nowhere kept out of sight. Her long practical acquaintance with these classes indeed was fatal to illusions on the subject. The average son of the soil was as far removed as any other living creature from her ideal of humanity, and at the very time when she penned _La Petite Fadette_ she was experiencing how far the ignorance, ill-will, and stupidity of her poorer neighbors could go. Thus she writes from Nohant to Barbès at Vincennes, November 1848: "Since May, I have shut myself up in prison in my retreat, where, though without the hardships of yours, I have more to suffer than you from sadness and dejection, ... and am less in safety." Threatened by the violence and hatred of the people, she had painfully realized that she and her party had their most obstinate enemies among those whom they wished and worked to save and defend. Her profound discouragement finds expression in many of her letters from 1849 to 1852. The more sanguine hopes of Mazzini and other of her correspondents she desires, but no longer expects, to see fulfilled. She compares the moral state of France to the Russian retreat; the soldiers in the great army of progress seized with vertigo, and seeking death in fighting with each other. To her son, who was in Paris at the time of the disturbances in May, 1849, she writes:-- Come back, I implore you. I have only you in the world, and your death would be mine. I can still be of some small use to the cause of truth, but if I were to lose you it would be all over with me. I have not got the stoicism of Barbès and Mazzini. It is true they are men, and they have no children. Besides, in my opinion it is not in fight, not by civil war, that we shall win the cause of humanity in France. We have got universal suffrage. The worse for us if we do not know how to avail ourselves of it, for that alone can lastingly emancipate us, and the only thing that would give us the right to take up arms would be an attempt on their part to take away our right to vote. During the two years preceding the _coup d'état_ of December, 1851, life at Nohant had resumed its wonted cheerfulness of aspect. Madame Sand was used to surround herself with young people and artistic people; but now, amid their light-heartedness, she had for a period to battle with an extreme inward sadness, confirmed by the fresh evidence brought by these years of the demoralization in all ranks of opinion. "Your head is not very lucid when your heart is so deeply wounded," she had remarked already, after the disasters of 1848, "and how can one help suffering mortally from the spectacle of civil war and the slaughter among the people?" To that was now added a loss of faith in the virtues of her own party, as well as of the masses. It is no wonder if she fell out of love for awhile with the ideals of romance, with her own art of fiction, and the types of heroism that were her favorite creations. But if the shadow of a morbid pessimism crept over her mind, she could view it now as a spiritual malady which she had yet the will and the strength to live down; as years before she had surmounted a similar phase of feeling induced by personal sorrow. Already, in 1847, she had begun to write her _Memoirs_, and reverting to them now, she found there work that suited her mood, as dealing with the past, more agreeable to contemplate just then than the present or the future. However, in September, 1850, we find her writing to Mazzini,--after dwelling on the present shortcomings of the people, and the mixture of pity and indignation with which they inspired her: "I turn back to fiction and produce, in art, popular types such as I see no longer; but as they ought to be and might be." She alludes to a play on which she was engaged, and continues: "The dramatic form, being new to me, has revived me a little of late; it is the only kind of work into which I have been able to throw myself for a year." The events of December, 1851, surprised her during a brief visit to Paris. Her hopes for her country had sunk so low, that she owns herself at the moment not to have regarded the _coup d'état_ as likely to prove more disastrous to the cause of progress than any other of the violent ends which threatened the existing political situation. She left the capital in the midst of the cannonade, and with her family around her at Nohant awaited the issue of the new dictatorship. The wholesale arrests that followed immediately, and filled the country with stupefaction, made havoc on all sides of her. Among the victims were comrades of her childhood, numbers of her friends and acquaintance and their relatives--as well in Berry as in the capital--many arrested solely on suspicion of hostility to the President's views, yet none the less exposed to chances of death, or captivity, or exile. The crisis drove Madame Sand once more to quit the privacy of her country life, but this time in the capacity of intercessor with the conqueror for his victims. She came up to Paris, and on January 20, 1852, addressed a letter to the President, imploring his clemency for the accused generally in an admirably eloquent appeal to his sentiments as well of justice as of generosity. The plea she so forcibly urged, that according to his own professions mere opinion was not to be prosecuted as a crime, whereas the so-called "preventive measures" had involved in one common ruin with his active opponents those who had been mere passive spectators of late events, was, of course, unanswerable. The future Emperor granted her two audiences within a week at the Elysée, in answer to her request, and he succeeded on the first occasion in convincing her that the acts of iniquity and intimidation perpetrated as by his authority were as completely in defiance of his public intentions as of his private principles. As a personal favor to herself, he readily offered her the release of any of the political prisoners that she choose to name, and promised that a general amnesty should speedily follow. She left him, reassured to some extent as to the fate in store for her country. The second interview she had solicited in order to plead the cause of one of her personal friends, condemned to transportation. The mission was a delicate one, for her client would engage himself to nothing for the future, and Madame Sand, in petitioning for his release, saw no better course open to her than as expressed by herself, frankly to denounce him to the President as his "incorrigible personal enemy." Upon this the President granted her the prisoner's full pardon at once. Madame Sand was naturally touched by this ready response of the generous impulse to which she had trusted. To those who cast doubts on the sincerity of any good sentiment in such a quarter, she very properly replied that it was not for her to be the first to discredit the generosity she had so successfully appealed to. But between her republican friends, loth to owe their deliverance to the tender mercies of Louis Napoleon, and her own desire to save their lives and liberties, and themselves and their families from ruin and despair, she found her office of mediator a most unthankful one. She persisted however in unwearying applications for justice and mercy, addressed both to the dictator directly, and through his cousin, Prince Napoleon (Jerome), between whom and herself there existed a cordial esteem. She clung as long as she could to her belief in the public virtue of the President, or Emperor as he already began to be called here and there. But the promised clemency limited itself to a number of particular cases for whom she had specially interceded. The subsequent conditions of France precluded all free emission of socialist or republican opinions, but Madame Sand desired nothing better than to send in her political resignation; and it is impossible to share the regret of some of her fellow-republicans at finding her again devoting her best energies to her art of fiction, and in November, 1853, writing to Mazzini such words of wisdom as these:-- You are surprised that I can work at literature. For my part, I thank God that he has let me preserve this faculty; for an honest and clear conscience like mine still finds, apart from all debate, a work of moralization to pursue. What should I do if I relinquish my task, humble though it be? Conspire? It is not my vocation; I should make nothing of it. Pamphlets? I have neither the wit nor the wormwood required for that. Theories? We have made too many, and have fallen to disputing, which is the grave of all truth and all strength. I am, and always have been, artist before everything else. I know that mere politicians look on artists, with great contempt, judging them by some of those mountebank-types which are a disgrace to art. But you, my friend, you well know that a real artist is as useful as the _priest_ and the _warrior_, and that when he respects what is true and what is good, he is in the right path where the divine blessing will attend him. Art belongs to all countries and to all time, and its special good is to live on when all else seems to be dying. That is why Providence delivers it from passions too personal or too general, and has given to its organization patience and persistence, an enduring sensibility, and that contemplative sense upon which rests invincible faith. Her novel, _Les Maîtres Sonneurs_, the first-fruits of the year 1853, is what most will consider a very good equivalent for party pamphlets and political diatribes. When composing _La Mare au Diable_, in 1846, Madame Sand looked forward to writing a series of such peasant tales, to be collectively entitled _Les Veillées du Chanvreur_, the hemp-beaters being, as will be recollected, the Scheherazades of each village. Their number was never to be thus augmented, but the idea is recalled by the chapter-headings of _Les Maîtres Sonneurs_, in which Étienne Despardieu, or Tiennet, the rustic narrator, tells, in the successive _veillées_ of a month, the romance of his youth. It is a work of a very different type to the rural tales that had preceded it, and should be regarded apart from them. It is longer, more complex in form and sentiment, more of an ideal composition. _Les Maîtres Sonneurs_, is a delightful pastoral, woodland fantasy, standing by itself among romances much as stands a kindred work of imagination, "As You Like It," among plays, yet thoroughly characteristic of George Sand, the nature-lover, the seer into the mysteries of human character, and the imaginative artist. The agreeable preponderates in the story, but it has its tragic features and its serious import. A picturesque and uncommon setting adds materially to its charm. Every thread tells in this delicate piece of fancy-work, and the weaver's art is indescribable. But one may note the ingenuity with which four or five interesting yet perfectly natural types are brought into a group and contrasted; improbable incidents so handled as not to strike a discordant note, the characteristics of the past introduced without ever losing hold of the links, the points of identity between past and present. The scene is the hamlet of Nohant itself; the time is a century ago, when the country, half covered with forest, was wilder, the customs rougher, the local coloring stronger than even Madame Sand in her childhood had known them. The personages belong to the rural proprietor class. The leading characters are all somewhat out of the common, but such exist in equal proportions in all classes of society, and there is ample evidence besides George Sand's of notable examples among the French peasantry. The plot and its interest lie in the development of character and the fine tracing of the manner in which the different characters are influenced by circumstances and by each other. If the beauty of rustic maidens, and of rustic songs and dance-music, as here described, seem to transcend probability, it must be remembered it is a peasant who speaks of these wonders, and as wonders they might appear to his limited experience. As a musical novel, it has the ingenious distinction of being told from the point of view of the sturdy and honest, but unartistic and non-musical Tiennet; a typical Berrichon. Madame Sand was of opinion that during the long occupation of Berry by the English the two races had blended extensively, and she would thus account for some of the heavier, more inexpansive qualities of our nation having become characteristic of this French province. More than one English reader of _Les Maîtres Sonneurs_ may have been struck by the picture there presented of peasant-folk in a state of peace and comfort, such as we do not suppose to have been common in France before the Revolution. Madame Sand has elsewhere explained how, as a fact, Nohant, and other estates in the region round about, had enjoyed some immunity from the worst abuses of the _ancien régime_. Several of these properties, as it happened, had fallen to women or minors--widows, elderly maiden ladies, who, and their agents, spared the holders and cultivators of the soil the exactions which, by right or by might, its lords were used to levy. "So the peasants," she writes, "were accustomed not to put themselves to any inconvenience; and when came the Revolution they were already so well relieved virtually from feudal bonds that they took revenge on nobody." A new _seigneur_ of Nohant, coming to take possession, and thinking to levy his utmost dues, in cash and in kind, found his rustic tenants turn a deaf ear to his summons. Ere he could insist the storm burst, but it brought no convulsion, and merely confirmed an independence already existing. _Les Maîtres Sonneurs_, whilst illustrating some of the most striking merits of George Sand, is free from the defects often laid to her charge; and although of all her pastorals it must suffer the most when rendered in any language but the original, it is much to be regretted that some good translation of this work should not put it within the reach of all English readers. CHAPTER X. PLAYS AND LATER NOVELS. There are few eminent novelists that have not tried their hands at writing for the stage; and Madame Sand had additional inducements to do so, beyond those of ambition satiated with literary success, and tempted by the charm of making fresh conquest of the public in a more direct and personal fashion. From early childhood she had shown a strong liking for the theatre. The rare performances given by travelling acting-companies at La Châtre had been her greatest delight when a girl. At the convent-school she had arranged Molière from memory for representation by herself and her school-fellows, careful so to modify the piece as to avoid all possibility of shocking the nuns. Thus the Sisters applauded _Le Malade Imaginaire_ without any suspicion that the author was one whose works, for them, were placed under a ban, and whose very name they held in devout abhorrence. She inherited from her father a taste for acting, which she transmitted to her children. We have seen her during her literary novitiate in Paris, a studious observer at all theatres, from the classic boards of the Français down to the lowest of popular stages, the Funambules, where reigned at that time a real artist in pantomime, Débureau. His Pierrot, a sort of modified Pulchinello, was renowned; and attracted more fastidious critics to his audience than the Paris artisans whose idol he was. Since then Madame Sand had numbered among her personal friends such leading dramatic celebrities as Madame Dorval, Bocage, and Pauline Garcia. "I like actors," she says playfully, "which has scandalized some austere people. I have also been found fault with for liking the peasantry. Among these I have passed my life, and as I found them, so have I described them. As these, in the light of the sun, give us our daily bread for our bodies, so those by gaslight give us our daily bread of fiction, so needful to the wearied spirit, troubled by realities." Peasants and players seem to be the types of humanity farthest removed from each other, and it is worthy of remark that George Sand was equally successful in her presentation of both. Her preference for originality and spontaneity before all other qualities in a dramatic artist was characteristic of herself, though not of her nation. Thus it was that Madame Dorval, the heroine of _Antony_ and _Marion Delorme_, won her unbounded admiration. Even in Racine she clearly preferred her to Mlle. Mars, as being a less studied actress, and one who abandoned herself more to the inspiration of the moment. The effect produced, as described by Madame Sand, will be understood by all keenly alive, like herself, to the enjoyment of dramatic art. "She" (Madame Dorval) "seemed to me to be myself, more expansive, and to express in action and emotion all that I seek to express in writing." And compared with such an art, in which conception and expression are simultaneous, her own art of words and phrases would at such moments appear to her as but a pale reflection. Bocage, the great character actor of his time, was another who likewise appealed particularly to her sympathies, as the personation, on the boards, of the protest of the romantic school against the slavery of convention and tradition. Her acquaintance with him dated from the first representation of Hugo's _Lucrèce Borgia_, February, 1833, when Bocage and the author of _Indiana_, then strangers to each other, chanced to sit side by side. In their joint enthusiasm over the play they made the beginning of a thirty years' friendship, terminated only by Bocage's death in 1862. "It was difficult not to quarrel with him," she says of this popular favorite; "he was susceptible and violent; it was impossible not to be reconciled with him quickly. He was faithful and magnanimous. He forgave you admirably for wrongs you had never done him, and it was as good and real as though the pardon had been actual and well-founded, so strong was his imagination, so complete his good faith." The assistance of Madame Dorval, added to the strength of the Comédie Française company, did not, however, save from failure Madame Sand's first drama, _Cosima_, produced, as will be remembered, in 1840. She allowed nearly a decade to elapse before again seriously competing for theatrical honors, by a second effort in a different style, and more satisfactory in its results. This, a dramatic adaptation by herself of her novel, _François le Champi_, was produced at the Odéon in the winter of 1849. Generally speaking, to make a good play out of a good novel, the playwright must begin by murdering the novel; and here, as in all George Sand's dramatic versions of her romances, we seem to miss the best part of the original. However, the curious simplicity of the piece, the rustic scenes and personages, here faithfully copied from reality, unlike the conventional village and villager of opera comique, and the pleasing sentiment that runs through the tale, were found refreshing by audiences upon whom the sensational incidents and harrowing emotions of their modern drama were already beginning to pall. The result was a little stage triumph for Madame Sand. It helped to draw to her pastoral tales the attention they deserved, but had not instantly won in all quarters. Théophile Gautier writes playfully of this piece: "The success of _François le Champi_ has given all our vaudeville writers an appetite for rusticity. Only let this go on a little, and we shall be inundated by what has humorously been called the 'ruro-drama.' Morvan hats and Berrichon head-dresses will invade the scenes, and no language be spoken but in dialect." Madame Sand was naturally encouraged to repeat the experiment. This was done in _Claudie_ (1851) and _Le Pressoir_ (1853), ruro-dramas both, and most favorably received. The first-named has a simple and pathetic story, and, as usual with Madame Sand's plays, it was strengthened at its first production by the support of some of the best acting talent in Paris--Fechter, then a rising _jeune premier_, and the veteran Bocage ably representing, respectively, youth and age. Old Berrichon airs were introduced with effect, as also such picturesque rustic festival customs as the ancient harvest-home ceremony, in which the last sheaf is brought on a wagon, gaily decked out with poppies, cornflowers and ribbons, and receives a libation of wine poured by the hand of the oldest or youngest person present. "But what the theatre can never reproduce," laments Madame Sand, "is the majesty of the frame--the mountain of sheaves solemnly approaching, drawn by three pairs of enormous oxen, the whole adorned with flowers, with fruit, and with fine little children perched upon the top of the last sheaves." Henceforward a good deal of her time and interest continued to be absorbed by these dramatic compositions. But though mostly eliciting during her lifetime a gratifying amount of public favor and applause, the best of them cannot for an instant be placed in the same high rank as her novels. For with all her wide grasp of the value of dramatic art and her exact appreciation of the strength and weakness of the acting world, her plays remain, to great expectations, uniformly disappointing. Her specialty in fiction lies in her favorite art of analyzing and putting before us, with extreme clearness, the subtlest ramifications, the most delicate intricacies of feeling and thought. A stage audience has its eyes and ears too busy to give its full attention to the finer complications of sentiment and motive; or, at least, in order to keep its interest alive and its understanding clear, an accentuation of outline is needed, which she neglects even to seek. Her assertion, that the niceties of emotion are sufficient to found a good play upon, no one now will dream of disputing. But for this an art of execution is needed of which she had not the instinct. The action is insufficient, or rather, the sense of action is not conveyed. The slightness of plot--a mere thread in most instances--requires that the thread shall at least be never allowed to drop. But she cuts or slackens it perpetually, long arguments and digressions intervening, and the dialogue, whose monotony is unrelieved by wit, nowhere compensates for the limited interest of the action. Awkward treatment is but half felt when subject and situations are dramatically strong; but plays with so airy and impalpable a basis as these need to be sustained by the utmost perfection of construction, concision and polish of dialogue. Her novel _Mauprat_ has many dramatic points, and she received a score of applications for leave to adapt it to the stage. She preferred to prepare the version herself, and it was played in the winter of 1853-4, with moderate success. But it suffers fatally from comparison with its original. An extreme instance is _Flaminio_ (1854), a protracted drama, drawn by Madame Sand from her novelette _Teverino_. This is a fantasy-piece whose audacity is redeemed, as are certain other blemishes, by the poetic suggestiveness of the figure of Madeline, the bird-charmer; whilst the picturesque sketch of Teverino, the idealized Italian bohemian, too indolent to turn his high natural gifts to any account, has proved invaluable to the race of novelists, who are not yet tired of reproducing it in large. The work is one addressed mainly to the imagination. In the play we come down from the clouds; the poetry is gone, taste is shocked, fancy uncharmed, the improbabilities become grotesque, and the whole is distorted and tedious. Madame Sand's personages are never weary of analyzing their sentiments. Her flowing style, so pleasant to read, carries us swiftly and easily through her dissertations in print, before we have time to tire of them. On the stage such colloquies soon appear lengthy and unnatural. The climax of absurdity is reached in _Flaminio_, where we find the adventurer expatiating to the man of the world on "the divinity of his essence." There is scarcely a department of theatrical literature in which Madame Sand does not appear as an aspirant. She was a worshipper of Shakespeare, acknowledging him as the king of dramatic writers. For her attempt to adapt "As You Like It" to suit the tastes of a Parisian audience, she disarms criticism by a preface in the form of a letter to M. Régnier, of the Comédie Française, prefixed to the printed play. Here she says plainly that to resolve to alter Shakespeare is to resolve to murder, and that she aims at nothing more than at giving the French public some idea of the original. In "As You Like It" the license of fancy taken is too wide for the piece to be safely represented to her countrymen, since it must jar terribly on "that French reason which," remarks Madame Sand, "we are so vain of, and which deprives us of so many originalities quite as precious as itself." The fantastic, which had so much attraction for her (possibly a result of her part German origin), is a growth that has hard work to flourish on French soil. The reader will remember the fate of Weber's _Freischütz_, outrageously hissed when first produced at Paris in its original form. Nine days later it was reproduced, having been taken to pieces and put together again by M. Castil-Blaze, and thus as _Robin des Bois_ it ran for 357 nights. The reckless imagination that distinguishes the Shakespearian comedy and does not shrink before the introduction of a lion and a serpent into the forest of Arden, and the miraculous and instantaneous conversion of the wretch Oliver into a worthy suitor for Celia, needed to be toned down for acceptance by the Parisians. But Madame Sand was less fortunate than M. Castil-Blaze. Her version, produced at the Théâtre Français, in 1856, failed to please, although supported by such actors as Delaunay, Arnold-Plessy, and Favart. Macready, who had made Madame Sand's acquaintance in 1845, when he was giving Shakespearian performances in Paris, and whom she greatly admired, dedicating to him her little theatrical romance _Le Château des Désertes_, was present at this representation and records it as a failure. But of her works for the stage, which number over a score, few like her _Comme il vous plaira_ missed making some mark at the time, the prestige of her name and the exceptionally favorable circumstances under which they were produced securing more than justice for their intrinsic merit. It was natural that she should over-estimate their value and continue to add to their number. These pieces would be carefully rehearsed on the little stage in the house at Nohant, often with the aid of leading professional actors; and there, at least, the success was unqualified. Her ingenious novel _Les Beaux Messieurs Bois Doré_, dramatized with the aid of Paul Meurice and acted in 1862, was a triumph for Madame Sand and her friend Bocage. The form and spirit of this novel seem inspired by Sir Walter Scott, and though far from perfect, it is a striking instance of the versatility of her imaginative powers. The leading character of the septuagenarian Marquis, with his many amiable virtues, and his one amiable weakness, a longing to preserve intact his youthfulness of appearance as he has really preserved his youthfulness of heart, is both natural and original, comic and half pathetic withal. The part in the play seemed made for Bocage, and his heart was set upon undertaking it. But his health was failing at the time, and the manager hesitated about giving him the rôle. "Take care, my friend," wrote Bocage to Madame Sand; "perhaps I shall die if I play the part; but if I play it not, I shall die of that, to a certainty." She insisted, and play it he did, to perfection, she tells us. "He did not act the Marquis de Bois Doré; he was the personage himself, as the author had dreamt him." It was to be his last achievement, and he knew it. "It is my end," he said one night, "but I shall die like a soldier on the field of honor." And so he did, continuing to play the rôle up till a few days before his death. More lasting success has attended Madame Sand in two of the lightest of society comedies, _Le Mariage de Victorine_ and _Le Marquis de Villemer_, which seem likely to take a permanent place in the _répertoire_ of the French stage. The first, a continuation that had suggested itself to her of Sedaine's century-old comedy, _Le Philosophe sans le savoir_, escapes the ill fate that seems to attend sequels in general. It is of the slightest materials, but holds together, and is gracefully conceived and executed. First produced at the Gymnase in 1851, it was revived during the last year of Madame Sand's life in a manner very gratifying to her, being brought out with great applause at the Comédie Française, preceded on each occasion by Sedaine's play, and the same artists appearing in both. The excellent dramatic version of her popular novel _Le Marquis de Villemer_, first acted in 1864, is free from the defects that weaken most of her stage compositions. It is said that in preparing it she accepted some hints from Alexander Dumas the younger. Whatever the cause, the result is a play where characters, composition and dialogue leave little to be desired. _L'autre_, her latest notable stage success, brings us down to 1870, when it was acted at the Gymnase, Madame Sarah Bernhardt impersonating the heroine. This not very agreeable play is derived, with material alterations, from Madame Sand's agreeable novel _La Confession d'une jeune Fille_, published in 1864. If, however, her works for the stage, which fill four volumes, added but little, in proportion to their quantity, to her permanent fame, her dramatic studies added fresh interest and variety to her experience, which brought forth excellent fruit in her novels. Actors, their art and way of life have fared notoriously badly in fiction. Such pictures have almost invariably fallen into the extreme of unreality or that of caricature, whether for want of information or want of sympathy in those who have drawn them. The subject, always attractive for Madame Sand, is one in which she is always happy. Already in the first year of her literary career her keen appreciation of the art and its higher influences had prompted her clever novelette _La Marquise_. Here she illustrates the power of the stage as a means of expression--of the truly inspired actor, though his greatness be but momentary, and his heroism a semblance, to strike a like chord in the heart of the spectator--and, in a corrupt and artificial age, to keep alive some latent faith in the ideal. Since then the stage and players had figured repeatedly in her works. Sometimes she portrays a perfected type, such as Consuelo, or Impéria in _Pierre qui roule_, but always side by side with more earthly and faulty representatives such as Corilla and Anzoleto, or Julia and Albany, in Narcisse, incarnations of the vanity and instability that are the chief dangers of the profession, drawn with unsparing realism. In _Le Château des Désertes_ we find further many admirable theories and suggestive ideas on the subject of the regeneration of the theatre. But it fared with her theatrical as with her political philosophy: she failed in its application, not because her theories were false, but for want of practical aptitude for the craft whose principles she understood so well. It is impossible here to do more than cast a rapid glance over the literary work accomplished by George Sand during the first decade of the empire. It includes more than a dozen novels, of unequal merit, but of merit for the most part very high. The _Histoire de ma Vie_ was published in 1855. It is a study of chosen passages out of her life, rather than a connected autobiography. One out of the four volumes is devoted to the story of her father's life before her birth; two more to the story of her childhood and girlhood. The fourth rather indicates than fully narrates the facts of her existence from the time of her marriage till the Revolution of 1848. It offers to her admirers invaluable glimpses into her life and mind, and is a highly interesting and characteristic composition, if a most irregular chronicle. It has given rise to two most incompatible-sounding criticisms. Some have been chiefly struck by its amazing unreserve, and denounced the over-frankness of the author in revealing herself to the public. Others complain that she keeps on a mask throughout, and never allows us to see into the recesses of her mind. Her passion for the analysis of sentiment has doubtless led her here, as in her romances, to give very free expression to truths usually better left unspoken. But her silence on many points about which her readers, whether from mere curiosity or some more honorable motive, would gladly have been informed, was then inevitable. It could not have been broken without wounding the susceptibilities of living persons, which she did right in respecting, at the cost of disappointment to an inquisitive public. In January, 1855, a terrible domestic sorrow befell her in the loss of her six-years-old grandchild, Jeanne Clésinger, to whom she was devoted. It affected her profoundly. "Is there a more mortal grief," she exclaims, "than to outlive, yourself, those who should have bloomed upon your grave?" The blow told upon her mentally and physically; she could not rally from its effects, till persuaded to seek a restorative in change of air and scene, which happily did their work. "I was ill," she says, when writing of these events to a lady correspondent, later in the same year; "my son took me away to Italy.... I have seen Rome, revisited Florence, Genoa, Frascati, Spezia, Marseilles. I have walked a great deal, been out in the sun, the rain, the wind, for whole days out of doors. This, for me, is a certain remedy, and I have come back cured." Those who care to follow the mind of George Sand on this Italian journey may safely infer from _La Daniella_, a novel written after this tour, and the scene of which is laid in Rome and the Campagna, that the author's strongest impression of the Eternal City was one of disillusion. Her hero, a Berrichon artist on his travels, confesses to a feeling of uneasiness and regret rather than of surprise and admiration. The ancient ruins, stupendous in themselves, seemed to her spoilt for effect by their situation in the center of a modern town. "Of the Rome of the past not enough exists to overwhelm me with its majesty; of the Rome of the present not enough to make me forget the first, and much too much to allow me to see her." But the Baths of Caracalla, where the picture is not set in a frame of hideous houses, awakened her native enthusiasm. "A grandiose ruin," she exclaims, "of colossal proportions; it is shut away, isolated, silent and respected. There you feel the terrific power of the Cæsars, and the opulence of a nation intoxicated with its royalty over the world." So in the Appian Way, the road of tombs, the fascination of desolation--a desolation there unbroken and undisfigured by modern buildings or otherwise--she felt to the full. But whatever came under her notice she looked on with the eye of the poet and artist, not of the archæologist, and approved or disapproved or passed over it accordingly. The beauties of nature, at Tivoli and Frascati, appealed much more surely to her sympathies. But of certain sites in the Campagna much vaunted by tourists and hand-books she remarks pertinently: "If you were to pass this village" (Marino) "on the railway within a hundred miles of Paris, you would not pay it the slightest attention." Such places had their individuality, but she upheld that there is not a corner in the universe, "however common-place it may appear, but has a character of its own, unique in this world, for any one who is disposed to feel or comprehend it." In one of her village tales a sagacious peasant professes his profound contempt for the man who cannot like the place he belongs to. Neither the grottoes and cascades of Tivoli, the cypress and ilex gardens of Frascati and Albano, nor the ruins of Tusculum, were ever so pleasant to her eyes as the poplar-fringed banks of the Indre, the corn-land sand hedgerows of Berry, and the rocky borders of the Creuse at Crozant and Argenton. She had not ceased making fresh picturesque discoveries in her own neighborhood. Of these she records an instance in her pleasant _Promenades autour d'un village_, a lively sketch of a few days' walking-tour on the banks of the Creuse, undertaken by herself and some naturalist friends in June, 1857. In studying the interesting and secluded village of Gargilesse, with its tenth-century church and crypt with ancient frescoes, its simple and independent-minded population, in following the course of a river whose natural wild beauties, equal to those of the Wye, are as yet undisfigured here by railroad or the hand of man, lingering on its banks full of summer flowers and butterflies, exploring the castles of Châteaubrun and La Prugne au Pot, George Sand is happier, more herself, more communicative than in Rome, "the museum of the universe." The years 1858 to 1861 show her to us in the fullest conservation of her powers and in the heyday of activity. The group of novels belonging to this period, the climax of what may be called her second career, is sufficiently remarkable for a novelist who was almost a sexagenarian, including _Elle et Lui_, _L'Homme de Neige_, _La Ville Noire_, _Constance Verrier_, _Le Marquis de Villemer_ and _Valvèdre_. _Elle et Lui_, in which George Sand at last broke silence in her own defense on the subject of her rupture with Alfred de Musset, first appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1859. Though many of the details are fictitious, the author here told the history of her relations with the deceased poet much too powerfully for her intention to be mistaken or to escape severe blame. That a magnanimous silence would have been the nobler course on her part towards the child of genius whose good genius she had so signally failed to be, need not be disputed. It must be remembered, however, that De Musset on his side had not refrained during his lifetime from denouncing in eloquent verse the friend he had quarreled with, and satirizing her in pungent prose. Making every possible allowance for poetical figures of speech, he had said enough to provoke her to retaliate. It is impossible to suppose that there was not another side to such a question. But Madame Sand could not defend herself without accusing her lost lover. She often proved herself a generous adversary--too generous, indeed, for her own advantage--and in this instance it was clearly not for her own sake that she deferred her apology. It is even conceivable that the poet, when in a just frame of mind, and not seeking inspiration for his _Nuit de Mai_ or _Histoire d'un Merle blanc_, would not have seen in _Elle et Lui_ a falsification of the spirit of their history. The theorizing of the outside world in such matters is of little worth; but the novel bears, conspicuously among Madame Sand's productions, the stamp of a study from real life, true in its leading features. And the conduct of the heroine, Therèse, though accounted for and eloquently defended, is by no means, as related, ideally blameless. After an attachment so strong as to induce a seriously-minded person, such as she is represented, to throw aside for it all other considerations, the hastiness with which, on discovering her mistake, she entertains the idea of bestowing her hand, if not her heart, on another, is an exhibition of feminine inconsequence which no amount of previous misconduct on the part of her lover, Laurent, can justify. Further, Therèse is self-deceived in supposing her passion to have died out with her esteem. She breaks with the culprit and engages her word to a worthier man. But enough remains over of the past to prevent her from keeping the promise she ought never to have made. When she sacrifices her unselfish friend to return to the lover who has made her miserable, she is sincere, but not heroic. She is too weak to shake off the influence of the fatal infatuation and shut out Laurent from her life, nor yet can she accept her heart's choice for better or worse, even when experience has left her little to learn with regard to Laurent. Clearly both friend and lover, out of a novel, would feel wronged. Therèse's excuse lies in the extremely trying character of her companion, whose vagaries may be supposed to have driven her beside herself at times, just as her airs of superiority and mute reproach may have driven him not a little mad. Those who wish to know in what spirit Madame Sand met the attacks upon her provoked by this book, will find her reply in a very few words at the conclusion of her preface to _Jean de la Roche_, published the same year. Most readers of _Elle et Lui_ have been so preoccupied with the question of the rights and wrongs of the originals in their behavior to each other, so inclined to judge of the book according to its supposed accuracy or inaccuracy as a matter of history, that its force, as a study of the attraction that so often leads two exceptional but hopeless, irreconcilable spirits to seek in each other a refuge from the isolation in which their superiority places them, has been somewhat overlooked. Laurent, whether a true portrait or not, is only too true to nature; excessive in his admirable powers and in his despicable weakness. Therèse is an equally faithful picture of a woman not quite up to the level of her own principles, which are so high that any lapse from them on her part brings down more disasters on herself and on others than the misdemeanors of avowedly unscrupulous persons. Within a few months of _Elle et Lui_ had appeared _L'Homme de Neige_,[D] a work of totally different but equally characteristic cast. The author's imagination had still all its old zest and activity, and readers for whom fancy has any charm will find this Scandinavian romance thoroughly enjoyable. The subject of the marionette theater, here introduced with such brilliant and ingenious effect, she had studied both historically and practically. She and her son found it so fascinating that, years before this time, a miniature stage had been constructed by the latter at Nohant, over which he presided, and which they and their friends found an endless source of amusement. Madame Sand wrote little dramas expressly for such representations, and would sit up all night, making dresses for the puppets. In an agreeable little article she has devoted to the subject, she describes how from the crudest beginnings they succeeded in elaborating their art to a high pitch; the _répertoire_ of their lilliputian theater including more than twenty plays, their "company" over a hundred marionettes. To the next year, 1860, belong the pleasant tale of artisan life, _La Ville Noire_, and the well-known and popular _Marquis de Villemer_, notable as a decided success in a _genre_ seldom adopted by her, that of the purely society novel. Already Madame Sand had outlived the period of which she was so brilliant a representative. After the Romantic movement had spent its force, a reaction had set in that was influencing the younger school of writers, and that has continued to give the direction to successful talent until the present day. Of the so-called "realism," Madame Sand said that it was nothing new. She saw there merely another form of the same revolt of nature against affectation and convention which had prompted the Romantic movement, whose disciples had now become guilty of affectation in their turn. _Madame Bovary_ she pronounced with truth to be but concentrated Balzac. She was ready to perceive and do justice to the great ability of the author, as to original genius in any school; thus of Tourguénief she speaks with enthusiasm: "Realist to see all, poet to beautify all, great heart to pity and understand all." But she deplored the increasing tendency among artists to give the preference among realities to the ugliest and the most painful. Her personal leanings avowedly were towards the other extreme; but she was too large-minded not to recognize that truth in one form or another must always be the prime object of the artist's search. The manner of its presentation will vary with the age. Let the realists, if they like, go on proclaiming that all is prose, and the idealists that all is poesy. The last will have their rainy days, the first their days of sunshine. In all arts the victory remains with a privileged few, who go their own ways; and the discussions of the "schools" will pass away like old fashions. On the generation of writers that George Sand saw growing up, any opinion pronounced must be premature. But with regard to herself, it should now be possible to regard her work in a true perspective. As with Byron, Dickens, and other popular celebrities, a phase of infinite enthusiasm for her writings was duly succeeded by a phase of determined depreciation. The public opinion that survives when blind friendship and blind enmity have done their worst is likely to be the judgment of posterity. CHAPTER XI. ARTIST AND MORALIST. On what, in the future, will the fame of George Sand mainly rest? According to some critics, on her gifts of fertile invention and fluent narration alone, which make her novels attractive in spite of the chimerical theories, social, political and religious, everywhere interwoven. According to other judges again, her fictions transcend and are likely to outlive other fictions by virtue of certain eternal philosophic verities which they persistently set forth, and which give them a serious interest the changes in novel-fashions cannot effect. The conclusion seems inevitable that whilst the artistic strength of George Sand's writings is sufficient to command readers among those most out of harmony with her views, to minds in sympathy with her own these romances, because they express and enforce with earnestness, sincerity and fire, the sentiments of a poetic soul, a generous heart, and an immense intelligence, on subjects of consequence to humanity, have a higher value than can attach to skillful development of plot and intrigue, mere display of literary cleverness, or of the storings of minute observation. Her opinions themselves have been widely misapprehended, perhaps because her personality--or rather that imaginary personage, the George Sand of the myths--has caused a confusion in people's minds between her ideal standard and her individual success in keeping up to it. We would not ignore the importance of personal example in one so famous as herself. We may pass by eccentricities not inviting to imitation; for if any of her sex ever thought to raise themselves any nearer to the level of George Sand by smoking or wearing men's clothes, such puerility does not call for notice. Still, the influence she strenuously exerted for good as a writer for the public would have worked more clearly had she never seemed to swerve from the high principles she expressed, or been led away by the disturbing forces of a nature calm only on the surface. Nothing is more baffling than the incomplete revelations of a very complex order of mind, with its many-sided sympathies and its apparent contradictions. The self-justification she puts forward for her errors is sometimes sophistical, but not for that insincere. She is not trying to make us her dupes; she is the dupe herself of her dangerous eloquence. But her moral worth so infinitely outweighed the alloy as to leave but little call, or even warrant, for dwelling on the latter. "If I come back to you," said her old literary patron Delatouche, into whose disfavor she had fallen awhile, when he came years after to ask for the restitution of the friendship he had slighted, "it is that I cannot help myself, and your qualities surpass your defects." To pass from herself to her books, no one has made more frank, clear and unchanging confession of their heart's faith or their head's principles. Her creed was that which has been, and ever will be in some guise, the creed of minds of a certain order. She did not invent it. Poets, moralists, theologians, have proclaimed it before her and after her. She found for it a fresh mode of expression, one answering to the needs of the age to which she belonged. It is in the union of rare artistic genius with an almost as rare and remarkable power of enthusiasm for moral and spiritual truth that lies her distinguishing strength. Most of her novels--all her best novels--share this characteristic of seeming to be prompted by the double and equal inspiration of an artistic and a moral purpose. Wherever one of these preponderates greatly, or is wanting altogether, the novel falls below her usual standard. For in several qualities reckoned important her work is open to criticism. "Plan, or the want of it," she acknowledges, with a sort of complacency, "has always been my weak point." Thus whilst in many of her compositions, especially the shorter novels, the construction leaves little to be desired, _Consuelo_ is only one among many instances in which all ordinary rules of symmetry and proportion are set at naught. Sometimes the leading idea assumed naturally and easily a perfect form; if simple, as in _André_ and her pastorals, it usually did so; but if complex, she troubled herself little over the task of symmetrical arrangement. M. Maxime Du Camp reports that she said to him: "When I begin a novel I have no plan; it arranges itself whilst I write, and becomes what it may." This fault shocks less in England, where genius is apt to rebel against the restrictions of form, and such irregularity has been consecrated, so to speak, by the masterpieces of the greatest among our imaginative writers. And even the more precise criticism of her countrymen has owned that this carelessness works by no means entirely to her disadvantage. In fictions more faultless as literary compositions the reader, whilst struck with admiration for the art with which the whole is put together, is apt to lose something of the illusion--the impression of nature and conviction. The faults of no writer can be more truly defined as the _défauts de ses qualités_ than those of George Sand. Shorn of her spontaneity, she would indeed be shorn of her strength. We are carried along by the pleasant, easy stream of her musical eloquence, as by an orator who knows so well how to draw our attention that we forget to find him too long. Her stories may be read rapidly, but to be enjoyed should be read through. Dipped into and their parts taken without reference to the whole, they can afford comparatively but little pleasure. In translation no novelist loses more than George Sand,--who has so much to lose! The qualities sacrificed, though almost intangible, are essential to the force of her charm. The cement is taken away and the fabric coheres imperfectly; and whilst the beauties of her manner are blurred, its blemishes appear increased; the lengthiness, over-emphasis of expression, questionable taste of certain passages, become more marked. Although nevertheless many of her tales remain pleasant reading, they suffer as much as translated poetry, and only a very inadequate impression of her art as a novelist can be arrived at from any rendering of it in a foreign tongue. Her dialogue has neither brilliancy nor variety. Her characters characterize themselves by the sentiments they express; their manner of expression is somewhat uniform--it is the manner of George Sand; and although pleasant humor and good-natured fun abound in her pages, these owe none of their attractions to witty sayings, being curiously bare of a _bon mot_ or an epigram. But we find there the rarer merits of a poetic imagination, a vast comprehension of nature, admirable insight into human character and power of clear analysis; a whole science of sentiment and art of narrative, and a charm of narrative style that soothes the nerves like music. She has given us a long gallery of portraits of extraordinary variety. It is true that her creations for the most part affect us rather as masterly portraits than as living, walking men and women. This is probably owing to the above-noted sameness of style of dialogue, and the absence generally of the dramatic quality in her novels. On the other hand they are extremely picturesque, in the highest sense, abounding in scenes and figures which, without inviting to the direct illustration they are too vivid to need, are full of suggestions to the artist. The description in _Teverino_ of Madeleine, the bird-charmer, kneeling at prayer in the rude mountain chapel, or outside on the rocks, exercising her natural magic over her feathered friends; in _Jeanne_, of the shepherd-girl discovered asleep on the Druidical stones; the noon-day rest of the rustic fishing-party in _Valentine_--Benedict seated on the felled ash-tree that bridges the stream, Athenaïs gathering field-flowers on the banks, Louise flinging leaves into the current, Valentine reclining dreamily among the tall river-reeds,--are a few examples taken at random, which it would be easy to multiply _ad infinitum_. Any classification of her works in order of time that professes to show a progressive change of style, a period of super-excellence or of distinct decadence, seems to us somewhat fanciful. From _Indiana_ and its immediate successors, denounced by so many as fraught with peril to the morals of her nation, down to _Nanon_ (1872), which might certainly carry off the prize of virtue in a competition in any country, George Sand can never be said to have entirely abandoned one "manner" for another, or for any length of time to have risen above or sunk below a certain level of excellence. _André_, extolled by her latest critics as "a delicious eclogue of the fields," was contemporary with the bombastic, false Byronism of _Jacques_; the feeble narrative of _La Mare au Diable_ with the passion-introspection of _Lucrezia Floriani_. The ever-popular _Consuelo_ immediately succeeded the feeble _Compagnon du Tour de France_. _La Marquise_, written in the first year of her literary life, shows a power of projection out of herself, and of delicate analysis, hardly to be surpassed; but _Francia_, of forty years' later date, is an equally perfect study. From the time of _Indiana_ onwards she continued to produce at the rate of about two novels a year; and at intervals, rare intervals, the product was a failure. But we shall find her when approaching seventy still writing on, without a trace of the weakness of old age. The charge of "unreality" so commonly brought against her novels it may be well briefly to examine. Such little fantasy-pieces in Hoffmann's manner as _Le Château des Désertes_, _Teverino_, and others, making no pretense to be exact studies of nature, cannot fairly be censured on this head. Like fairy tales they have a place of their own in art. One of the prettiest of these is _Les Dames Vertes_, in which the fable seems to lead us over the borders of the supernatural; but the secret of the mystification, well kept till the last, is itself so pleasing and original that the reader has no disappointing sense as of having had a hoax played upon his imagination. In character drawing no one can, on occasion, be a more uncompromising realist than George Sand. André, Horace, Laurent in _Elle et Lui_, Pauline, Corilla, Alida in _Valvèdre_, might be cited as examples. But her theory was unquestionably not the theory which guides the modern school of novel writers. She wrote, she states explicitly, for those "who desire to find in a novel a sort of ideal life." She made this her aim, but without depreciation of the widely different aims of other authors. "You paint mankind as they are," she said to Balzac; "I, as they ought to be, or might become. You write the comedy of humanity. I should like to write the eclogue, the poem, the romance of humanity." She has been taxed with flattering nature and human nature because her love of beauty--defined by her as the highest expression of truth--dictated her choice of subjects. An artist who paints roses paints from reality as entirely as he who paints mud. Her principle was to choose among realities those which seemed best worth painting. The amount of idealization in her peasant sketches was naturally over-estimated by those who, never having studied the class, could not conceive of a peasant except conventionally, as a drunken boor. The very just portrait of Cecilia Boccaferri, the conscientious but obscure artist in _Le Château des Désertes_, might seem over-flattered to such as imagine that all opera-singers must be persons of riotous living. The types she prefers to present, if exceptional, are not impossible or non-existent. An absolutely faultless heroine, such as Consuelo, she seldom attempts to bring before us; an ideal hero; never. Further, even when the idealism is greatest the essence is true. Her most fanciful conceptions, most improbable combinations, seem more natural than do every-day scenes and characters treated by inferior artists. This is only partly due to the inimitable little touches of nature that renew the impression of reality at every page. Her imagination modified her material, but only in order the more vividly to illustrate truths positive and everlasting. So did Shakespeare when he drew Prospero and Miranda, Caliban and Ariel. Art, as regarded by George Sand, is a search for ideal truth rather than a study of positive reality. This principle determined the spirit of her romances. She was the highest in her _genre_; let the world decide which _genre_ is the highest. When, after the publication of _Indiana_, _Valentine_, _Lélia_ and _Jacques_, the moral tendency of her works was so sharply attacked, it was contended on her behalf by some friendly critics that art and social morality have no necessary connection--a line of defense she would have been the last to take up for herself. In the present day her judges complain rather of her incessant moralizing, and on the whole with more reason. She indignantly denied that her novels had the evil tendencies imputed to them. Certainly the supposition of the antagonistic spirit of her writings to Christianity and marriage vanishes in proportion to the reader's acquaintance with her works. But against certain doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church which she believed to be pernicious in their influence, she from the first declared war, and by her frank audacity made bitter enemies. M. Renan relates that when he was a boy of fifteen his ecclesiastical superiors showed him George Sand, emblematically portrayed for the admonition of the youth under their care, as a woman in black trampling on a cross! Now, it is not merely that her own faith was eminently Christian in character, and that the Christian ideal seemed to her the most perfect that has yet presented itself to the mind of man; but if unable to accept for herself the doctrine of revelation as commonly interpreted, she is utterly without the aggressiveness of spirit, the petty flippancy, that often betray the intellectual bigot under the banner of free thought. She was too large-minded to incline to ridicule the serious convictions of earnest seekers for truth, and she respected all sincerity of belief--all faith that produced beneficence in action. The alleged hostility of her romances to marriage resumes itself into a declared hostility to the conventional French system of match-making. Much that she was condemned for venturing to put forward we should simply take for granted in England, where--whichever system work the best in practice--to the strictest Philistine's ideas of propriety there is nothing unbecoming in a love-match. The aim and end of true love in her stories is always marriage, whether it be the simple attachment of Germain, the field-laborer, for the rustic maiden of his choice, the romantic predilection of the rich young widow in _Pierre qui roule_ for the handsome actor Laurence, or the worship of Count Albert for the _cantatrice_ Consuelo. Her ideal of marriage was, no doubt, a high one, "the indissoluble attachment of two hearts fired with a like love;" a love "great, noble, beautiful, voluntary, eternal." Among French novelists she should rather be noted for the extremely small proportion of her numerous romances that have domestic infelicity for a theme. Her remark that their real offense was that they were a great deal too moral for some of their critics, hit home, inasmuch as in her attack on the ordinary marriage system of France she struck directly at the fashionable immorality which is its direct result, and which she saw, both in life and in literature, pass free of censure. It is the selfish intriguer who meets with least mercy in her pages, and who is there held up, not only to dislike, but to ridicule. Persons perplexed by the fact that particular novels of hers which, judged by certain theories, ought to be morally hurtful, do yet produce a very different effect, have accounted for it in different ways. One explains it by saying that if there is poison on one page there is always the antidote on the next. Another observes that a certain morality of misfortune is never absent from her fictions. In other words, she nowhere presents us with the spectacle of real happiness reaped at the expense of a violation of conscience. And in the rare cases where the purpose of the novel seems questionable, she defeats her own end. For truth always preponderates over error in her conceptions, and the result is a moral effect. The want of delicacy that not unfrequently disfigures her pages and offends us, offends also as an artistic fault. As a fact it is taste rather than conscience that she is thus apt to shock. For the almost passing coarseness of expression or thought is nothing more than the overflow, the negligent frankness of a rich and active but healthy nature, not the deliberate obliquity of a corrupt fancy or perverted mind. Such unreserve, unfortunately, has too commonly been the transgression of writers of superabundant energy. But her sins are against outward decorum rather than against the principles upon which the rules of decorum are based. No one was better capable of appreciating and indicating with fine touches, delicacy and niceties of taste and feeling in others. Her sympathy with such sensitiveness is a corrective that should render harmless what might vitiate taste if that qualification were absent. And her stories, though including a very few instances where the subject chosen seems to most English minds too repulsive to admit of possible redemption, and the frequent incidental introduction of situations and frank discussion of topics inadmissible in English fiction of that period--an honorable distinction it seems in some danger of losing in the present--can hardly be censured from the French standpoint, as fair critics now admit. It is inconceivable that a public could be demoralized by _Indiana_ and _Valentine_, at a time when no subject seemed wicked and morbid enough to satisfy popular taste. The art of George Sand in the main was sound and healthy, and in flat opposition to the excesses both of the ultra-romantic and ultra-realist schools. Clear-sighted critics, perceiving that the impression produced by her works is not one to induce men and women to defy the laws of their country, nor likely to undermine their religious faith, have gone more to the heart of the matter. The dangerous tendency is more insidious, they say, and more general. Virtue, and not vice, is made attractive in her books; but it is an easy virtue, attained without self-conquest. All her characters, good and bad, act alike from impulse. Those who seek virtue seek pleasure in so doing, and her philosophy of life seems to be that people should do as they like. The morality she commends to our sympathy and admiration is a morality of instinct and emotion, not of reason and principle. Self-renunciation, immolation of desire in obedience to accepted precept, is ignored. Sentiment is supreme. Duty, as a motive power, is set aside. George Sand, who as a writer from first to last appeared as a crusader against the evil, injustice and vice that darken the world, did undoubtedly choose rather to speak out of her heart to our hearts, than out of her head to our heads, and considered moreover that such was the more effectual way. Her idea of virtue lay not in the curbing of evil instincts, but in their conversion or modification by the evoking of good impulses, that "guiding and intensifying of our emotions by a new ideal" which has been called the great work of Christianity. It is not--or not in the first place--that people should do as they like, but that they should like to do right; and further, that human nature in that ideal life the sentiment of which pervades her works, and in which she saw "no other than the normal life as we are called to know it," does not desire what is hurtful to it. The goodness that consists in doing right or refraining from doing wrong reluctantly, or in obedience to prescribed rules, or from mechanical habit, had for her no life or charm. The object to be striven for should be nothing less than the "perfect harmony of inward desire and outward obligation." Virtue should be chosen, though we seem to sacrifice happiness; but that the two are in the beginning identical, that, as expressed by Mr. Herbert Spencer, "whether perfection of nature, virtuousness of action, or rectitude of motive, be assigned as the proper aim, the definition of perfection, virtue, rectitude, brings us down to happiness experienced in some form, at some time, by some person as the fundamental idea," is a philosophic truth of which a large _aperçu_ is observable in the works of George Sand. Self-sacrifice should spring from direct desire, altruism be spontaneous--a need--becoming a second and better nature; not won by painful effort, but through the larger development of the principle of sympathy. Strong in her own immense power of sympathy, she applied herself to the task of awakening and extending such sympathies in others. This she does by the creation of agreeable, interesting and noble types, such as may put us out of conceit with what is mean and base. Goodness, as understood and portrayed by her, must recommend itself not only to the judgment but to the heart. She worked to popularize high sentiments, and to give shape and reality to vague ideas of human excellence. Her idea of virtue as a motive, not a restraint, not the controlling of low and evil desires, but the precluding of all temptations to yield to these, by the calling out of stronger, higher desires, so far from being a low one, is indeed the very noblest; yet not on that account a chimera to those who hold, like her, to the conviction that "what now characterizes the exceptionally high may be expected eventually to characterize all. For that which the highest human nature is capable of is within the reach of human nature at large." "We gravitate towards the ideal," she writes, "and this gravitation is infinite, as is the ideal itself." And her place remains among those few great intelligences who can be said to have given humanity an appreciable impulse in the direction of progress. CHAPTER XII LATER YEARS. When, in 1869, Madame Sand was applied to by M. Louis Ulbach--a literary friend who proposed to write her biography--for some account of her life from that time onwards where her memoirs break off, she replied, in a letter now appended to those memoirs, as follows:-- For the last five-and-twenty years there is nothing more that is of interest. It is old age, very quiet and very happy, _en famille_, crossed by sorrows entirely personal in their nature--deaths, defections, and then the general state of affairs in which we have suffered, you and I, from the same causes. My time is spent in amusing the children, doing a little botany, long walks in summer--I am still a first-rate pedestrian--and writing novels, when I can secure two hours in the daytime and two in the evening. I write easily and with pleasure. This is my recreation, for my correspondence is numerous, and there lies work indeed! If one had none but one's friends to write to! But how many requests, some touching, some impertinent! Whenever there is anything I can do, I reply. Those for whom I can do nothing I do not answer. Some deserve that one should try, even with small hope of succeeding. Then one must answer that one will try. All this, with private affairs to which one must really give attention now and then, makes some ten letters a day. The old age of George Sand, brighter, fuller and more active than the youth of most men and women, was in itself a most signal proof of the stability and worth of her mental organization. Life, which deteriorates a frail character, told with a perfecting and elevating power upon hers. Of her earlier personal beauty few traces remained after middle age except a depth of expression in her eyes, the features having become thickened by age. Some among those who, like Dickens, first saw her in her later years and still looked for the semblance of a heroine of romance, failed to find the muse Lélia of their imaginations under the guise of a middle-aged _bourgeoise_. But such impressions were superficial. Her portrait in black and white by Couture, engraved by Manceau, seems to reconcile these apparent discrepancies. Beauty is not here, but the face is so powerful and comprehensive that we perceive there at once the mirror of a mind capable of embracing both the prose and the poetry of life; and by many this portrait is preferred to the earlier likenesses. Nor is there anything more remarkable in her correspondence than the extremely interesting series of letters, extending from February, 1863, to within three months of her death in 1876, and addressed to Gustave Flaubert, at this period her familiar friend. The intercourse of two minds of so different an intellectual and moral order as those of the authors of _Consuelo_ and of _Madame Bovary_ offers to all a curious study. To the admirers of George Sand these letters are invaluable, both from a literary point of view and as a record of her inner life from that time onwards, when, as expressed by herself, she resolutely buried youth, and owned herself the gainer by an increasing calm within. The secret of her future happiness she found in living for her children and her friends. That she retained her zest for intellectual pleasures she ascribed to the very fact that she never allowed herself to be absorbed for long in these and in herself. "Artists are spoilt children," she writes to Flaubert, "and the best of them are great egoists. You tell me I love them too well; I love them as I love woods and fields, all things, all beings that I know a little and make my constant study. In the midst of it all I pursue my calling; and how I love that calling of mine, and all that nourishes and renovates it!" We must now take up the thread of outward events again, which we have slightly anticipated. In the autumn of 1860 Madame Sand had a severe attack of typhoid fever. She was then on the point of beginning her little tale, _La Famille de Germandre_; "_le roman de ma fièvre_," she playfully terms it afterwards, when retracing the circumstances in a letter to her old friend François Rollinat:-- The day before that upon which I was suddenly taken very seriously ill, I had felt quite well. I had scribbled the beginning of a novel; I had placed all my personages; I knew them thoroughly; I knew their situations in the world, their characters, tendencies, ideas, relations to each other. I saw their faces. All that remained to be known was what they were going to do, and I did not trouble my head about that, having time to think it over to-morrow. Struck down on the morrow, she was for many days in a precarious condition; and in the confused fancies of fever found herself wandering with _La Famille de Germandre_ about the country, alighting in ruined castles, and encountering the most whimsical adventures in flood and field. It would have been an easy death, she remarked afterwards, had she died then, as she might, in her dream; but she came to herself to find her son and friends in such anxiety on her account, so overjoyed at her convalescence, that she could not but be glad of the life that was given back to her. Early in 1861 we find her recruiting her forces by a stay at Tamaris, near Toulon, completing the novel interrupted by illness; resuming her long walks and botanic studies, and thoroughly enjoying the sense of returning vital powers. She stood always in great dread of the idea of possibly losing her activity as she advanced in years. The infirmities of old age, however, she was happily to be spared, preserving her energy and mental faculties, as will be seen, till just before her death. But though she was restored to health and strength, this illness seems to have left its traces on her constitution. Her son's marriage to Mdlle. Calamatta, spoken of by Madame Sand as a heart's desire of hers at length fulfilled, took place in 1862, not many months after his return from half a year of travel in Africa and America, in the company of Prince Napoleon. The event proved a fresh source of the purest happiness to her, and was not to separate her from her son. The young people settled at Nohant, which remained her head-quarters. There a few years later we find her residing almost exclusively, except when called by matters of business to her _pied-à-terre_ in Paris, where she never lingered long. To the two little grand-daughters, Aurore and Gabrielle, whom she saw spring up in her home, she became passionately devoted. Most of her compositions henceforward are dated from Nohant, where, indeed, more than fifty years of her life were spent. As regards decorum of expression and temperance of sentiments, the later novels of George Sand have earned more praise than censure; but some readers may feel that in fundamental questions of taste the comparison between them and their forerunners is not always entirely to their advantage. The fervor of youth has a certain purifying power to redeem from offense matter, even though over-frankly treated, which becomes disagreeable in cold analysis, however sober the wording, and clear and admirable the moral pointed. _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_, which appeared in 1863, was suggested by M. Octave Feuillet's _Sibille_. The point of M. Feuillet's novel is, that Sibille, an ardent Catholic, stifles her love, and renounces her lover on account of his heterodox opinions. Madame Sand gives us the reverse--a heroine who is reflectively rather than mystically inclined, and whose lover by degrees succeeds in effecting her conversion to his more liberal views. Here, as elsewhere, the author's mind shows a sympathetic comprehension of the standpoint of enlightened Protestantism curiously rare among those who, like herself, have renounced Romanism for the pursuit of free thought and speculation. But even those who prefer the _dénoûment_ of George Sand's novel to that of M. Feuillet's will not rank _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ very high among the author's productions. It is colorless, and artistically weak, however controversially strong. Madame Sand, according to her own reckoning in 1869, had made at least £40,000 by her writings. Out of this she had saved no fortune. She had always preferred to live from day to day on the proceeds of her work, regulating her expenses accordingly, trusting her brain to answer to any emergency and bring her out of the periodical financial crises in which the uncertainty of literary gains and the liberality of her expenditure involved her. She continued fond of travelling, especially of exploring the nooks and corners of France, felt by her to be less well known than they deserve, and fully as picturesque as the spots tourists go far to visit. Here she sought fresh frames for her novels. "If I have only three words to say about a place," she tells us, "I like to be able to refer to it in my memory so as to make as few mistakes as possible." In January, 1869, we find her writing of herself in a playful strain to her friend Flaubert:-- The individual called George Sand is quite well, enjoying the marvelous winter now reigning in Berry, gathering flowers, taking note of interesting botanic anomalies, stitching at dresses and mantles for her daughter-in-law, costumes for the marionettes, dressing dolls, reading music, but, above all, spending hours with little Aurore, who is a wonderful child. There is not a being on earth more tranquil and happier in his home than this old troubadour retired from business, now and then singing his little song to the moon, singing well or ill he does not particularly care, so long as he gives the _motif_ that is running in his head.... He is happy, for he is at peace, and can find amusement in everything. M. Plauchut, another literary friend and a visitor at Nohant during this last decade of her lifetime, gives a picture of the order of her day; it is simplicity itself. Nine o'clock, in summer and in winter alike, was her hour of waking. Letters and newspapers would then occupy her until noon, when she came down to join the family _déjeûner_. Afterwards she would stroll for an hour in the garden and the wood, visiting and tending her favorite plants and flowers. At two o'clock she would come indoors to give a lesson to her grandchildren in the library, or work there on her own account, undistracted by the romps around her. Dinner at six was followed by a short evening walk, after which she played with the children, or set them dancing indoors. She liked to sit at the piano, playing over to herself bits of music by her favorite Mozart, or old Spanish and Berrichon airs. After a game of dominoes or cards she would still sit up so late, occupying herself with water-color painting or otherwise, that sometimes her son was obliged to take away the lights. These long evenings, the same writer bears witness, sometimes afforded rare opportunities of hearing Madam Sand talk of the events and the men of her time. In the absolute quiet of the country, among a small circle of responsive minds, she, so silent otherwise, became expansive. "Those who have never heard George Sand at such hours," he concludes, "have never known her. She spoke well, with great elevation of ideas, charming eloquence, and a spirit of infinite indulgence." When at length she retired, it was to write on until the morning hours according to her old habit, only relinquished when her health made this imperative. She had allowed her son and her daughter-in-law to take the cares of household management off her hands. This left her free, as she expressed it, to be a child again, to hold aloof from things immediate and transitory, reserving her thoughts and contemplations for what is general and eternal. She found a poet's pleasure in abstracting herself from human life, saying: "There are hours when I escape from myself, when I live in a plant, when I feel myself grass, a bird, a tree-top, a cloud, a running stream." Shaking off, as it were, the sense of personality, she felt more freely and fully the sense of kinship with the life and soul of the universe. It was her habit every evening to sum up in a few lines the impressions of the day, and this journal, for the conspicuous absence of incident in its pages, she compares to the log-book of a ship lying at anchor. But one terrible and little anticipated break in its tranquil monotony was yet to come. George Sand lived to see her country pass through every imaginable political experience. Born before the First Republic had expired, she had witnessed the First Empire, the restored Monarchy, the Revolution of 1830, the reign of Louis Philippe, the convulsions of 1848, the presidency of Louis Bonaparte, and the Second Empire. She was still to see and outlive its fall, the Franco-German War, the Commune, and to die, as she was born, under a republic. To some of her friends who had reproached her with showing too much indulgence for the state of things under Imperial rule, she replied that the only change in her was that she had acquired more patience in proportion as more was required. The _régime_ she condemned--and amid apparent prosperity had foretold the corrupting influence on the nation of the established ideal of frivolity, and that a crash of some kind must ensue. Her judgment on the Emperor, after his fall, is worth noting, if only because it is dispassionate. Since his elevation to the Imperial dignity she had lost all old illusions as to his public intentions. With regard to these, on the occasion of her interviews with him at the Elysée, he had completely deceived her, and designedly, she had at first thought. Nor had she concealed her disgust. I left Paris, and did not come to an appointment he had offered me. They did not tell me "The King might have had to wait!" but they wrote "The Emperor waited." However, I continued to write to him, whenever I saw hopes of saving some victim, to ponder his answers and watch his actions; and I became convinced that he did not intentionally impose upon any one. He imposed on himself and on everybody else.... In private life he had genuine qualities. I happened to see in him a side that was really generous and sincere. His dream of grandeur for France was not that of a sound mind, but neither of an ordinary mind. Really France would have sunk too low if she had submitted for twenty years to the supremacy of a _crétin_, working only for himself. One would then have to give her up in despair for ever and ever. The truth is that she mistook a meteor for a star, a silent dreamer for a man of depth. Then seeing him sink under disasters he ought to have foreseen, she took him for a coward. George Sand's _Journal d'un Voyageur pendant la guerre_ has a peculiar and painful interest. It is merely a note-book of passing impressions from September, 1870, to January, 1871; but its pages give a most striking picture of those effects of war which have no place in military annals. The army disasters of the autumn were preceded by natural calamities of great severity. The heat of the summer in Berry had been tremendous, and Madame Sand describes the havoc as unprecedented in her experience--the flowers and grass killed, the leaves scorched and yellowed, the baked earth under foot literally cracking in many places; no water, no hay, no harvest, but destructive cattle-plague, forest-fires driving scared wolves to seek refuge in the courtyard of Nohant itself--the remnant of corn spared by the sun, ruined by hail-storms. She and all her family had suffered from the unhealthiness of the season. Thus the political catastrophe found her already weakened by anxiety and fatigue, and feeling greatly the effort to set to work again. Finally, an outbreak of malignant small-pox in the village forced her to take her little grandchildren and their mother from Nohant out of reach of the infection. September and October were passed at or in the neighborhood of Boussac, a small town some thirty miles off. Sedan was over, and the worst had begun; the protracted suspense, the long agony of hope. Those suffered most perhaps who, like herself, had to wait in enforced inaction, amid the awful dead calm that reigned in the provinces, yet forbidden to forget their affliction for a moment. The peasant was gone from the land--only the old and infirm were left to look after the flocks, to till and sow the field. Madame Sand notes, and with a kind of envy, the stolid patience and industry, the inextinguishable confidence, of poor old Jacques Bonhomme when things are at the worst. "He knows that in one way or another it is he who will have to pay the expenses of the war; he knows next winter will be a season of misery and want, but he believes in the spring"--in the bounty of nature to repair war's ravages. During this time of unimaginable trouble some of the strongest minds were unhinged. It is no small honor to George Sand that hers should have preserved its balance. The pages of this journal are distinguished throughout by a wonderful calm of judgment and an equitable tone--not the calm of indifference, but of a broad and penetrating intelligence, no longer to be blinded by the wild excitement and passions of the moment, or exalted by childish hopes one hour to be thrust into the madness of despair the next. Although tempted now and then to regret that she had recovered from her illness ten years ago, surviving but to witness the abasement of France, she was not, like others, panic-struck at the prospect of invasion, as though this meant the end of their country. "It will pass like a squall over a lake," she said. But it was a time when they could be sure of nothing except of their distress. The telegraph wires were cut; rumors of good news they feared to believe would be succeeded by tales of horror they feared to discredit. Tidings would come that three hundred thousand of the enemy had been disposed of in a single engagement and King William taken prisoner; then of fatal catastrophes befallen to private friends--stories which often proved equally unfounded. She had friends shut up in Paris of whom she knew not whether they were alive or dead. The strain of anxiety and painful excitement made sleep impossible to her except in the last extremity of fatigue. Yet she had her little grandchildren to care for; and when they came around her, clamoring for the fairy tales she was used to supply, she contented them as well as she could and gave them their lessons as usual, anxious to keep them from realizing the sadness the causes of which they were too young to understand. It was the first time that she had known a distress that forbade her to find a solace in nature. She describes how one day, walking out with some friends and following the course of the river Tarde, she had half abandoned herself to the enjoyment of the scene--the cascade, the dragon-flies skimming the surface, the purple scabious flowers, the goats clambering on the boulders of rock that strewed the borders and bed of the stream--when one of the party remarks: "Here's a retreat pretty well fortified against the Prussians." And the present, forgotten for an instant in reverie, came back upon her with a shock. Letters in that district took three or four days to travel thirty miles. Newspapers were rarely to be procured; and when procured, made up of contradictions, wild suggestions, and the pretentious speeches of national leaders, meant to be reassuring, but marked by a vagueness and violence from which Madame Sand rightly augured ill. The red-letter days were those that brought communications from their friends in Paris by the aerial post. On October 11, two balloons, respectively called "George Sand" and the "Armand Barbès," left the capital. "My name," she remarks, "did not bring good luck to the first--which suffered injuries and descended with difficulty, yet rescued the Americans who had gone up in it." The "Barbès" had a smoother but a more famous flight; alighting and depositing M. Gambetta safely at Tours. As the autumn advanced Madame Sand and her family were enabled to return to Nohant. But what a return was that! The enemy were quartered within forty miles, at Issoudun; the fugitives thence were continually seen passing, carrying off their children, their furniture and their merchandise to places of security. Already the enemy's guns were said to have been heard at La Châtre. Madame Sand walked in her garden daily among her marigolds, snapdragon and ranunculus, making curious speculations as to what might be in store for herself and her possessions. She remarks:-- You get accustomed to it, even though you have not the consolation of being able to offer the slightest resistance.... I look at my garden, I dine, I play with the children, whilst waiting in expectation of seeing the trees felled roots upwards; of getting no more bread to eat, and of having to carry my grandchildren off on my shoulders; for the horses have all been requisitioned. I work, expecting my scrawls to light the pipes of the Prussians. But the enemy, though so near, never passed the boundaries of the "Black Valley." The department of the Indre remained uninvaded, though compassed on all sides by the foreign army; and George Sand was able to say afterwards that she at least had never seen a Prussian soldier. A sad Christmas was passed. On the last night of 1870 a meeting of friends at Nohant broke up with the parting words, "All is lost!" "The execrable year is out," writes Madame Sand, "but to all appearances we are entering upon a worse." On the 15th of January, 1871, her little drama _François le Champi_, first represented in the troublous months of 1849, was acted in Paris for the benefit of an ambulance. She notes the singular fate of this piece to be reproduced in time of bombardment. A pastoral! The worst strain of suspense ended January 29, with the capitulation of Paris. Here the _Journal d'un Voyageur_ breaks off. It would be sad indeed had her life, like that of more than one of her compeers, closed then over France in mourning. Although it was impossible but that such an ordeal must have impaired her strength, she outlived the war's ending, and the horrible social crisis which she had foreseen must succeed the political one. Happier than Prosper Mérimée, than Alexandre Dumas, and others, she saw the dawn of a new era of prosperity for her country, whose vital forces, as she had also foretold, were to prevail in the end over successive ills--the enervation of corruption, of military disaster, and the "orgie of pretended renovators" at home, that signalized the first months of peace abroad. In January, 1872, we again find her writing cheerily to Flaubert:-- Mustn't be ill, mustn't be cross, my old troubadour. Say that France is mad, humanity stupid, and that we are unfinished animals every one of us, you must love on all the same, yourself, your race, above all, your friends. I have my sad hours. I look at my blossoms, those two little girls smiling as ever, their charming mother, and my good, hard-working son, whom the end of the world will find hunting, cataloguing, doing his daily task, and yet as merry as Punch in his rare leisure moments. In a later letter she writes in a more serious strain:-- I do not say that humanity is on the road to the heights; I believe it in spite of all, but I do not argue about it, which is useless, for every one judges according to his own eyesight, and the general outlook at the present moment is ugly and poor. Besides, I do not need to be assured of the salvation of our planet and its inhabitants in order to believe in the necessity of the good and the beautiful; if our planet departs from this law it will perish; if its inhabitants discard it they will be destroyed. As for me, I wish to hold firm till my last breath, not with the certainty or the demand to find a "good place" elsewhere, but because my sole pleasure is to maintain myself and mine in the upward way. The last five years of her life saw her pen in full activity. In the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, _Malgrétout_, the novel of 1870, was succeeded by _Flamarande_ and _Les Deux Frères_--compositions executed with unflagging energy and animation of style; _La Tour de Percemont_, and a series of graceful fairy-stories entitled _Contes d'une grand'mère_. _Nanon_ (1872), a rustic romance of the First Revolution, is a highly remarkable little work, possibly suggested by her recent experiences of the effect of public disturbances on remote country places. She was also a constant contributor to the newspaper _Le Temps_. A critical notice by her hand of M. Renan's _Dialogues et Fragments Philosophiques_, reprinted from those columns, bears date May, 1876, immediately before she succumbed to the illness which in a few days was to cut short her life. At the beginning of this year she had written on this subject to Flaubert, in the brave spirit she would fain impart to her weaker brethren:-- Life is perhaps eternal, and work in consequence eternal. If so, let us finish our march bravely. If otherwise, if the individual perish utterly, let us have the honor of having done our task. That is duty, for our only obvious duties are to ourselves and our fellow-creatures. What we destroy in ourselves we destroy in them. Our abasement abases them; our falls drag them down; we owe to them to stand fast, to save them from falling. The desire to die early is a weakness, as is the desire to live long. George Sand, like most persons of an exceptional constitution, had little faith in the efficacy for herself of medical science. She was persuaded that the prescribed remedies did her more harm than good, and on more than one occasion, when her health had caused her children uneasiness, they had had to resort to an affectionate _ruse_ to induce her to take advice. Her habit of disregarding physical ailments, fighting against them as a weakness, and working on in their despite, led her to neglect for too long failing health that should have been attended to. During the whole of May, 1876, Madame Sand, though suffering from real illness, continued to join in the household routine and to proceed with her literary work as usual. Not till the last days of the month did she, unable any longer to make light of her danger, at length consent to send for professional advice. It was then too late. She was suffering from internal paralysis. The medical attention which, sought earlier, might, in the opinion of the doctors, have prolonged her life for years, could now do nothing to avert the imminent fatal consequences of her illness. "It is death," she said; "I did not ask for it, but neither do I regret it." For beyond the sorrow of parting it had no particular terrors for her; she had viewed and could meet it in another spirit. "Death is no more," she had written; "it is life renewed and purified." She lingered for a week, in great suffering, but bearing all with fortitude and an unflinching determination not to distress those around her by painful complaining. Up to her last hour she preserved consciousness and lucidity. The words, "_Ne touchez pas à la verdure_," among the last that fell from her lips, were understood by her children, who knew her wish that the trees should be undisturbed under which, in the village cemetery, she was soon to find a resting-place--a wish that had been sacredly respected. Her suffering ceased a short while before death, which came to her so quietly that the transition was almost imperceptible to the watchers by her side. It was on the morning of the 8th of June. She was within a month of completing her seventy-second year. Although her life's work had long since been mainly accomplished, yet the extinction of that great intelligence was felt by many--as fitly expressed by M. Renan--"like a diminution of humanity." Two days later she was buried in the little cemetery of Nohant, that adjoins her own garden wall. The funeral was conducted with extreme simplicity, in accordance with her taste and spirit. The scene was none the less a memorable one. The rain fell in torrents, but no one seemed to regard it; the country-people flocking in from miles around, old men standing bare-headed for hours, heedless of the deluge. The peasant and the prince, Parisian leaders of the world of thought and letters, and the humblest and most unlearned of her poorer neighbors, stood together over her grave. Six peasants carried the bier from the house to the church, a few paces distant. The village priest came, preceded by three chorister-boys and the venerable singing-clerk of the parish, to perform the ceremony. A portion of the little churchyard, railed off from the rest and planted with evergreen-trees, contains the graves of her grandmother, her father, and the two little grandchildren she had lost. A plain granite tomb in their midst now marks the spot where George Sand was laid, literally buried in flowers. A great spirit was gone from the world; and a good spirit, it will be generally acknowledged: an artist in whose work the genuine desire to leave those she worked for better than she found them, is one inspiring motive. Such endeavor may seem to fail, and she affirmed: "A hundred times it does fail in its immediate results. But it helps, notwithstanding, to preserve that tradition of good desires and of good deeds, without which all would perish." * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [A] The biography of Alfred De Musset, by Paul De Musset, translated from the French by Harriet W. Preston. Boston, Roberts Brothers. [B] Mauprat, translated by Miss Vaughan. Boston, Roberts Brothers. [C] The Miller of Angibault. Translated by M. E. Dewey. Boston, Roberts Brothers. [D] The "Snow Man," translated by Virginia Vaughan. Boston: Roberts Brothers. * * * * * GEORGE SAND'S NOVELS. I. MAUPRAT. Translated by VIRGINIA VAUGHAN. II. ANTONIA. Translated by VIRGINIA VAUGHAN. III. MONSIEUR SYLVESTRE. Translated by FRANCIS GEORGE SHAW. IV. THE SNOW MAN. Translated by VIRGINIA VAUGHAN. V. THE MILLER OF ANGIBAULT. Translated by MARY E. DEWEY. VI. MY SISTER JEANNIE. Translated by S. R. CROCKER. _A standard Library Edition, uniformly bound, in neat 16mo volumes. Each volume sold separately. Price $1.50._ SOME NOTICES OF "MAUPRAT." "An admirable translation. As to 'Mauprat,' with which novel Roberts Brothers introduce the first of French novelists to the American public, if there were any doubts as to George Sand's power, it would for ever set them at rest.... The object of the story is to show how, by her (Edmée's) noble nature, he (Mauprat) is subsequently transformed from a brute to a man; his sensual passion to a pure and holy love."--_Harper's Monthly._ "The excellence of George Sand, as we understand it, lies in her comprehension of the primitive elements of mankind. She has conquered her way into the human heart, and whether it is at peace or at war, is the same to her; for she is mistress of all its moods. No woman before ever painted the passions and the emotions with such force and fidelity, and with such consummate art. Whatever else she may be, she is always an artist.... Love is the key-note of 'Mauprat,'--love, and what it can accomplish in taming an otherwise untamable spirit. The hero, Bernard Mauprat, grows up with his uncles, who are practically bandits, as was not uncommon with men of their class, in the provinces, before the breaking out of the French Revolution. He is a young savage, of whom the best that can be said is, that he is only less wicked than his relatives, because he has somewhere within him a sense of generosity and honor, to which they are entire strangers. To sting this sense into activity, to detect the makings of a man in this brute, to make this brute into a man, is the difficult problem, which is worked out by love,--the love of Bernard for his cousin Edmée, and hers for him,--the love of two strong, passionate, noble natures, locked in a life-and-death struggle, in which the man is finally overcome by the unconquerable strength of womanhood. Only a great writer could have described such a struggle, and only a great artist could have kept it within allowable limits. This George Sand has done, we think; for her portrait of Bernard is vigorous without being coarse, and her situations are strong without being dangerous. Such, at least, is the impression we have received from reading 'Mauprat,' which, besides being an admirable study of character, is also a fine picture of French provincial life and manners."--_Putnam's Monthly._ "Roberts Brothers propose to publish a series of translations of George Sand's better novels. We can hardly say that all are worth appearing in English; but it is certain that the 'better' list will comprise a good many which are worth translating, and among these is 'Mauprat,'--though by no means the best of them. Written to show the possibility of constancy in man, a love inspired before and continuing through marriage, it is itself a contradiction to a good many of the popular notions respecting the author,--who is generally supposed to be as indifferent to the sanctities of the marriage relation as was her celebrated ancestor, Augustus of Saxony.... The translation is admirable. It is seldom that one reads such good English in a work translated from any language. The new series is inaugurated in the best possible way, under the hands of Miss Vaughan, and we trust that she may have a great deal to do with its continuance. It is not every one who can read French who can write English so well."--_Old and New._ _Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised price, by the Publishers_, ROBERTS BROTHERS. BOSTON. _Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._ FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES. EMILY BRONTË. BY A. MARY F. ROBINSON. One vol. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. "Miss Robinson has written a fascinating biography.... Emily Brontë is interesting, not because she wrote 'Wuthering Heights,' but because of her brave, baffled, human life, so lonely, so full of pain, but with a great hope shining beyond all the darkness, and a passionate defiance in bearing more than the burdens that were laid upon her. The story of the three sisters is infinitely sad, but it is the ennobling sadness that belongs to large natures cramped and striving for freedom to heroic, almost desperate, work, with little or no result. The author of this intensely interesting, sympathetic, and eloquent biography, is a young lady and a poet, to whom a place is given in a recent anthology of living English poets, which is supposed to contain only the best poems of the best writers."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._ "Miss Robinson had many excellent qualifications for the task she has performed in this little volume, among which may be named, an enthusiastic interest in her subject and a real sympathy with Emily Brontë's sad and heroic life. 'To represent her as she was,' says Miss Robinson, 'would be her noblest and most fitting monument.' ... Emily Brontë here becomes well known to us and, in one sense, this should be praise enough for any biography."--_New York Times._ "The biographer who finds such material before him as the lives and characters of the Brontë family need have no anxiety as to the interest of his work. Characters not only strong but so uniquely strong, genius so supreme, misfortunes so overwhelming, set in its scenery so forlornly picturesque, could not fail to attract all readers, if told even in the most prosaic language. When we add to this, that Miss Robinson has told their story _not_ in prosaic language, but with a literary style exhibiting all the qualities essential to good biography, our readers will understand that this life of Emily Brontë is not only as interesting as a novel, but a great deal more interesting than most novels. As it presents most vividly a general picture of the family, there seems hardly a reason for giving it Emily's name alone, except perhaps for the masterly chapters on 'Wuthering Heights,' which the reader will find a grateful condensation of the best in that powerful but somewhat forbidding story. We know of no point in the Brontë history--their genius, their surroundings, their faults, their happiness, their misery, their love and friendships, their peculiarities, their power, their gentleness, their patience, their pride,--which Miss Robinson has not touched upon with conscientiousness and sympathy."--_The Critic._ "'Emily Brontë' is the second of the 'Famous Women Series,' which Roberts Brothers, Boston, propose to publish, and of which 'George Eliot' was the initial volume. Not the least remarkable of a very remarkable family, the personage whose life is here written, possesses a peculiar interest to all who are at all familiar with the sad and singular history of herself and her sister Charlotte. That the author, Miss A. Mary F. Robinson, has done her work with minute fidelity to facts as well as affectionate devotion to the subject of her sketch, is plainly to be seen all through the book."--_Washington Post._ Sold by all Booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the Publishers, MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' Classic Series. A collection of world-renowned works selected from the literatures of all nations, printed from new type in the best manner, and neatly and durably bound. Handy books, convenient to hold, and an ornament to the library shelves. READY AND IN PREPARATION. SIR WALTER SCOTT'S "LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL," "MARMION," and "THE LADY OF THE LAKE." The three poems in one volume. "There are no books for boys like these poems by Sir Walter Scott. Every boy likes them, if they are not put into his hands too late. _They surpass everything for boy reading._"--_Ralph Waldo Emerson._ OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S "THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD." With Illustrations by Mulready. DEFOE'S "ROBINSON CRUSOE." 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The idea of the series is an excellent one, and the reputation of its publishers is a guarantee for its adequate execution. This book contains about three hundred pages in open type, and not only collects and condenses the main facts that are known in regard to the history of George Eliot, but supplies other material from personal research. It is agreeably written, and with a good idea of proportion in a memoir of its size. The critical study of its subject's works, which is made in the order of their appearance, is particularly well done. In fact, good taste and good judgment pervade the memoir throughout."--_Saturday Evening Gazette._ "Miss Blind's little book is written with admirable good taste and judgment, and with notable self-restraint. It does not weary the reader with critical discursiveness, nor with attempts to search out high-flown meanings and recondite oracles in the plain 'yea' and 'nay' of life. It is a graceful and unpretentious little biography, and tells all that need be told concerning one of the greatest writers of the time. It is a deeply interesting if not fascinating woman whom Miss Blind presents," says the New York _Tribune_. "Miss Blind's little biographical study of George Eliot is written with sympathy and good taste, and is very welcome. It gives us a graphic if not elaborate sketch of the personality and development of the great novelist, is particularly full and authentic concerning her earlier years, tells enough of the leading motives in her work to give the general reader a lucid idea of the true drift and purpose of her art, and analyzes carefully her various writings, with no attempt at profound criticism or fine writing, but with appreciation, insight, and a clear grasp of those underlying psychological principles which are so closely interwoven in every production that came from her pen."--_Traveller._ "The lives of few great writers have attracted more curiosity and speculation than that of George Eliot. Had she only lived earlier in the century she might easily have become the centre of a mythos. As it is, many of the anecdotes commonly repeated about her are made up largely of fable. It is, therefore, well, before it is too late, to reduce the true story of her career to the lowest terms, and this service has been well done by the author of the present volume."--_Philadelphia Press._ Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. A SELECTION FROM Messrs. ROBERTS BROTHERS' Latest New Publications. FIGURES OF THE PAST. From the Leaves of Old Journals. By Josiah Quincy (Class of 1821, Harvard College). 16mo. Price, $1.50 "There are chapters on life in the Academy at Andover, on Harvard Sixty Years Ago, on Commencement Day in 1821, the year of the author's graduation, and on visits to and talks with John Adams, with reminiscences of Lafayette, Judge Story, John Randolph, Jackson and other eminent persons, and sketches of old Washington and old Boston society. The kindly pen of the author is never dipped in gall--he remembers the pleasing aspects of character, and his stories and anecdotes are told in the best of humor and leave no sting. The book is of a kind which we are not likely to have again, for the men of Mr. Quincy's generation, those at least who had his social opportunities, are nearly all gone. These pictures of old social and political conditions are especially suggestive as reminding us that a single life, only lately closed, linked us with days, events and men that were a part of our early history and appear remote because of the multitude of changes that have transformed society in the interval."--_Boston Journal._ WHIST, OR BUMBLEPUPPY? By Pembridge. From the Second London Edition. 16mo. Cloth. Price, .50 DEFINITION OF BUMBLEPUPPY--Bumblepuppy is persisting to play whist, either in utter ignorance of all its known principles, or in defiance of them, or both. 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A book that must survive."--_London Athenæum._ ***Our publications are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent post-paid on receipt of advertised price. PHYLLIS BROWNE. A Story. By Flora L. Shaw. Author of "Castle Blair" and "Hector." 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price, $1.00 "'Castle Blair' and 'Hector' are such good stories that a third, by the same author, Flora L. Shaw, will be equally welcomed. 'Hector' was one of the most charming books ever written about a boy. 'Phyllis Browne' is the new story. She is evidently the author's ideal girl, as Hector was her ideal boy, and a noble, splendid girl she is. Yet the book is not a child's book; it is _about_ children, but not for them. The story is far more interesting than most novels are, and far more exciting. The rash generosity of the children is beautiful; their free, trustful lives are noble and sweet; but when they undertake to right social wrongs, and gallantly set their brave hearts and childish inexperience against the established wrongs of society, they come to grief, but in no common-place way. Their dangers are as unusual and on as large a scale as their characters and courage are. The book is full of tender and loving things; it makes the heart larger, and brings back the splendid dreams of one's own youth," says the Boston correspondent of the _Worcester Spy_. THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. A Romance. By Harriet Prescott Spofford, author of "The Amber Gods," "The Thief in the Night," etc. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00 "This is the latest offering of the author of 'The Amber Gods,' and it is as odd as striking, and as impressive in its shadowy implication as anything she has ever written. 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138	----	GEORGE SAND Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings by Rene Doumic Translated by Alys Hallard First published in 1910. This volume is dedicated to Madame L. Landouzy with gratitude and affection This book is not intended as a study of George Sand. It is merely a series of chapters touching on various aspects of her life and writings. My work will not be lost if the perusal of these pages should inspire one of the historians of our literature with the idea of devoting to the great novelist, to her genius and her influence, a work of this kind. CONTENTS I AURORE DUPIN II BARONNE DUDEVANT III A FEMINIST OF 1832 IV THE ROMANTIC ESCAPADE V THE FRIEND OF MICHEL (DE BOURGES) VI A CASE OF MATERNAL AFFECTION IN LOVE VII THE HUMANITARIAN DREAM VIII 1848 IX THE 'BONNE DAME' OF NOHANT X THE GENIUS OF THE WRITER LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS GEORGE SAND (From a photogravure by N. Desmardyl, after a Painting by A. Charpentier) GEORGE SAND (From an engraving by L. Calamatia) JULES SANDEAU (From an etching by M. Desboutins) ALFRED DE MUSSET (From a lithograph) FACSIMILE OF AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER OF GEORGE SAND (Written from Venice to Hipp. Chatiron) GEORGE SAND (From a lithograph) F. CHOPIN (From a photograph) PIERRE LEROUX (From a lithograph by A. Collette) GEORGE SAND (From a lithograph) GEORGE SAND I AURORE DUPIN PSYCHOLOGY OF A DAUGHTER OF ROUSSEAU In the whole of French literary history, there is, perhaps, no subject of such inexhaustible and modern interest as that of George Sand. Of what use is literary history? It is not only a kind of museum, in which a few masterpieces are preserved for the pleasure of beholders. It is this certainly, but it is still more than this. Fine books are, before anything else, living works. They not only have lived, but they continue to live. They live within us, underneath those ideas which form our conscience and those sentiments which inspire our actions. There is nothing of greater importance for any society than to make an inventory of the ideas and the sentiments which are composing its moral atmosphere every instant that it exists. For every individual this work is the very condition of his dignity. The question is, should we have these ideas and these sentiments, if, in the times before us, there had not been some exceptional individuals who seized them, as it were, in the air and made them viable and durable? These exceptional individuals were capable of thinking more vigorously, of feeling more deeply, and of expressing themselves more forcibly than we are. They bequeathed these ideas and sentiments to us. Literary history is, then, above and beyond all things, the perpetual examination of the conscience of humanity. There is no need for me to repeat what every one knows, the fact that our epoch is extremely complex, agitated and disturbed. In the midst of this labyrinth in which we are feeling our way with such difficulty, who does not look back regretfully to the days when life was more simple, when it was possible to walk towards a goal, mysterious and unknown though it might be, by straight paths and royal routes? George Sand wrote for nearly half a century. For fifty times three hundred and sixty-five days, she never let a day pass by without covering more pages than other writers in a month. Her first books shocked people, her early opinions were greeted with storms. From that time forth she rushed head-long into everything new, she welcomed every chimera and passed it on to us with more force and passion in it. Vibrating with every breath, electrified by every storm, she looked up at every cloud behind which she fancied she saw a star shining. The work of another novelist has been called a repertory of human documents. But what a repertory of ideas her work was! She has said what she had to say on nearly every subject; on love, the family, social institutions and on the various forms of government. And with all this she was a woman. Her case is almost unique in the history of letters. It is intensely interesting to study the influence of this woman of genius on the evolution of modern thought. I shall endeavour to approach my subject conscientiously and with all due respect. I shall study biography where it is indispensable for the complete understanding of works. I shall give a sketch of the original individuals I meet on my path, portraying these only at their point of contact with the life of our authoress, and it seems to me that a gallery in which we see Sandeau, Sainte-Beuve, Musset, Michel (of Bourges), Liszt, Chopin, Lamennais, Pierre Leroux, Dumas _fils_, Flaubert and many, many others is an incomparable portrait gallery. I shall not attack persons, but I shall discuss ideas and, when necessary, dispute them energetically. We shall, I hope, during our voyage, see many perspectives open out before us. I have, of course, made use of all the works devoted to George Sand which were of any value for my study, and among others of the two volumes published, under the name of Wladimir Karenine,(1) by a woman belonging to Russian aristocratic society. For the period before 1840, this is the most complete work that has been written. M. Samuel Rocheblave, a clever University professor and the man who knows more than any one about the life and works of George Sand, has been my guide and has helped me greatly with his wise advice. Private collections of documents have also been placed at my service most generously. I am therefore able to supply some hitherto unpublished writings. George Sand published, in all, about a hundred volumes of novels and stories, four volumes of autobiography, and six of correspondence. In spite of all this we are still asked for fresh documents. (1) WLADIMIR KARENINE: _George Sand, Sa vie et ses oeuvres._ 2 Vols. Ollendorf. It is interesting, as a preliminary study, to note the natural gifts, and the first impressions of Aurore Dupin as a child and young girl, and to see how these predetermined the woman and the writer known to us as George Sand. Lucile-Amandine-Aurore Dupin, legitimate daughter of Maurice Dupin and of Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, was born in Paris, at 15 Rue Meslay, in the neighbourhood of the Temple, on the 1st of July, 1804. I would call attention at once to the special phenomenon which explains the problem of her destiny: I mean by this her heredity, or rather the radical and violent contrast of her maternal and paternal heredity. By her father she was an aristocrat and related to the reigning houses. Her ancestor was the King of Poland, Augustus II, the lover of the beautiful Countess Aurora von Koenigsmarck. George Sand's grandfather was Maurice de Saxe. He may have been an adventurer and a _condottiere_, but France owes to him Fontenoy, that brilliant page of her history. All this takes us back to the eighteenth century with its brilliant, gallant, frivolous, artistic and profligate episodes. Maurice de Saxe adored the theatre, either for itself or for the sake of the women connected with it. On his campaign, he took with him a theatrical company which gave a representation the evening before a battle. In this company was a young artiste named Mlle. de Verrieres whose father was a certain M. Rinteau. Maurice de Saxe admired the young actress and a daughter was born of this _liaison_, who was later on recognized by her father and named Marie-Aurore de Saxe. This was George Sand's grandmother. At the age of fifteen the young girl married Comte de Horn, a bastard son of Louis XV. This husband was obliging enough to his wife, who was only his wife in name, to die as soon as possible. She then returned to her mother "the Opera lady." An elderly nobleman, Dupin de Francueil, who had been the lover of the other Mlle. Verrieres, now fell in love with her and married her. Their son, Maurice Dupin, was the father of our novelist. The astonishing part of this series of adventures is that Marie-Aurore should have been the eminently respectable woman that she was. On her mother's side, though, Aurore Dupin belonged to the people. She was the daughter of Sophie-Victoire Delaborde milliner, the grandchild of a certain bird-seller on the Quai des Oiseaux, who used to keep a public-house, and she was the great-granddaughter of Mere Cloquart. This double heredity was personified in the two women who shared George Sand's childish affection. We must therefore study the portraits of these two women. The grandmother was, if not a typical _grande dame_, at least a typical elegant woman of the latter half of the eighteenth century. She was very well educated and refined, thanks to living with the two sisters, Mlles. Verrieres, who were accustomed to the best society. She was a good musician and sang delightfully. When she married Dupin de Francueil, her husband was sixty-two, just double her age. But, as she used to say to her granddaughter, "no one was ever old in those days. It was the Revolution that brought old age into the world." Dupin was a very agreeable man. When younger he had been _too_ agreeable, but now he was just sufficiently so to make his wife very happy. He was very lavish in his expenditure and lived like a prince, so that he left Marie-Aurore ruined and poor with about three thousand a year. She was imbued with the ideas of the philosophers and an enemy of the Queen's _coterie_. She was by no means alarmed at the Revolution and was very soon taken prisoner. She was arrested on the 26th of November, 1793, and incarcerated in the _Couvent des Anglaises_, Rue des Fosse's-Saint-Victor, which had been converted into a detention house. On leaving prison she settled down at Nohant, an estate she had recently bought. It was there that her granddaughter remembered her in her early days. She describes her as tall, slender, fair and always very calm. At Nohant she had only her maids and her books for company. When in Paris, she delighted in the society of people of her own station and of her time, people who had the ideas and airs of former days. She continued, in this new century, the shades of thought and the manners and Customs of the old _regime._ As a set-off to this woman of race and of culture, Aurore's mother represented the ordinary type of the woman of the people. She was small, dark, fiery and violent. She, too, the bird-seller's daughter, had been imprisoned by the Revolution, and strangely enough in the _Couvent des Anglaises_ at about the same time as Maurice de Saxe's granddaughter. It was in this way that the fusion of classes was understood under the Terror. She was employed as a _figurante_ in a small theatre. This was merely a commencement for her career. At the time when Maurice Dupin met her, she was the mistress of an old general. She already had one child of doubtful parentage. Maurice Dupin, too, had a natural son, named Hippolyte, so that they could not reproach each other. When Maurice Dupin married Sophie-Victoire, a month before the birth of Aurore, he had some difficulty in obtaining his mother's consent. She finally gave in, as she was of an indulgent nature. It is possible that Sophie-Victoire's conduct was irreproachable during her husband's lifetime, but, after his death, she returned to her former ways. She was nevertheless of religious habits and would not, upon any account, have missed attending Mass. She was quick-tempered, jealous and noisy and, when anything annoyed her, extremely hot-headed. At such times she would shout and storm, so that the only way to silence her was to shout still more loudly. She never bore any malice, though, and wished no harm to those she had insulted. She was of course sentimental, but more passionate than tender, and she quickly forgot those whom she had loved most fondly. There seemed to be gaps in her memory and also in her conscience. She was ignorant, knowing nothing either of literature or of the usages of society. Her _salon_ was the landing of her flat and her acquaintances were the neighbours who happened to live next door to her. It is easy to imagine what she thought of the aristocrats who visited her mother-in-law. She was amusing when she joked and made parodies on the women she styled "the old Countesses." She had a great deal of natural wit, a liveliness peculiar to the native of the faubourgs, all the impudence of the street arab, and a veritable talent of mimicry. She was a good housewife, active, industrious and most clever in turning everything to account. With a mere nothing she could improvise a dress or a hat and give it a certain style. She was always most skilful with her fingers, a typical Parisian work-girl, a daughter of the street and a child of the people. In our times she would be styled "a midinette." Such are the two women who shared the affection of Aurore Dupin. Fate had brought them together, but had made them so unlike that they were bound to dislike each other. The childhood of little Aurore served as the lists for their contentions. Their rivalry was the dominating note in the sentimental education of the child. As long as Maurice Dupin lived, Aurore was always with her parents in their little Parisian dwelling. Maurice Dupin was a brilliant officer, and very brave and jovial. In 1808, Aurore went to him in Madrid, where he was Murat's _aide-de-camp_. She lived in the palace of the Prince of Peace, that vast palace which Murat filled with the splendour of his costumes and the groans caused by his suffering. Like Victor Hugo, who went to the same place at about the same time and under similar conditions, Aurore may have brought back with her: _de ses courses lointaines_ _Comme un vaguefaisceau de lueurs incertaines._ This does not seem probable, though. The return was painful, as they came back worried and ill, and were glad to take refuge at Nohant. They were just beginning to organize their life when Maurice Dupin died suddenly, from an accident when riding, leaving his mother and his wife together. From this time forth, Aurore was more often with her grandmother at Nohant than with her mother in Paris. Her grandmother undertook the care of her education. Her half-brother, Hippolyte Chatiron, and she received lessons from M. Deschartres, who had educated Maurice Dupin. He was steward and tutor combined, a very authoritative man, arrogant and a great pedant. He was affectionate, though, and extremely devoted. He was both detestable and touching at the same time, and had a warm heart hidden under a rough exterior. Nohant was in the heart of Berry, and this meant the country and Nature. For Aurore Dupin Nature proved to be an incomparable educator. There was only one marked trait in the child's character up to this date, and that was a great tendency to reverie. For long hours she would remain alone, motionless, gazing into space. People were anxious about her when they saw her looking so _stupid_, but her mother invariably said: "Do not be alarmed. She is always ruminating about something." Country life, while providing her with fresh air and plenty of exercise, so that her health was magnificent, gave fresh food and another turn to her reveries. Ten years earlier Alphonse de Lamartine had been sent to the country at Milly, and allowed to frequent the little peasant children of the place. Aurore Dupin's existence was now very much the same as that of Lamartine. Nohant is situated in the centre of the Black Valley. The ground is dark and rich; there are narrow, shady paths. It is not a hilly country, and there are wide, peaceful horizons. At all hours of the day and at all seasons of the year, Aurore wandered along the Berry roads with her little playfellows, the farmers' children. There was Marie who tended the flock, Solange who collected leaves, and Liset and Plaisir who minded the pigs. She always knew in what meadow or in what place she would find them. She played with them amongst the hay, climbed the trees and dabbled in the water. She minded the flock with them, and in winter, when the herdsmen talked together, assembled round their fire, she listened to their wonderful stories. These credulous country children had "seen with their own eyes" Georgeon, the evil spirit of the Black Valley. They had also seen will-o'-the-wisps, ghosts, the "white greyhound" and the "Big Beast"! In the evenings, she sat up listening to the stories told by the hemp-weaver. Her fresh young soul was thus impregnated at an early age with the poetry of the country. And it was all the poetry of the country, that which comes from things, such as the freshness of the air and the perfume of the flowers, but also that which is to be found in the simplicity of sentiments and in that candour and surprise face to face with those sights of Nature which have remained the same and have been just as incomprehensible ever since the beginning of the world. The antagonism of the two mothers increased, though. We will not go into detail with regard to the various episodes, but will only consider the consequences. The first consequence was that the intelligence of the child became more keen through this duality. Placed as she was, in these two different worlds, between two persons with minds so unlike, and, obliged as she was to go from one to the other, she learnt to understand and appreciate them both, contrasts though they were. She had soon reckoned each of them up, and she saw their weaknesses, their faults, their merits and their advantages. A second consequence was to increase her sensitiveness. Each time that she left her mother, the separation was heartrending. When she was absent from her, she suffered on account of this absence, and still more because she fancied that she would be forgotten. She loved her mother, just as she was, and the idea that any one was hostile or despised her caused the child much silent suffering. It was as though she had an ever-open wound. Another consequence, and by no means the least important one, was to determine in a certain sense the immense power of sympathy within her. For a long time she only felt a sort of awe, when with her reserved and ceremonious grandmother. She felt nearer to her mother, as there was no need to be on ceremony with her. She took a dislike to all those who represented authority, rules and the tyranny of custom. She considered her mother and herself as oppressed individuals. A love for the people sprang up in the heart of the daughter of Sophie-Victoire. She belonged to them through her mother, and she was drawn to them now through the humiliations she underwent. In this little enemy of reverences and of society people, we see the dawn of that instinct which, later on, was to cause her to revolt openly. George Sand was quite right in saying, later on, that it was of no use seeking any intellectual reason as the explanation of her social preferences. Everything in her was due to sentiment. Her socialism was entirely the outcome of her suffering and torments as a child. Things had to come to a crisis, and the crisis was atrocious. George Sand gives an account of the tragic scene in her _Histoire de ma vie_. Her grandmother had already had one attack of paralysis. She was anxious about Aurore's future, and wished to keep her from the influence of her mother. She therefore decided to employ violent means to this end. She sent for the child to her bedside, and, almost beside herself, in a choking voice, she revealed to her all that she ought to have concealed. She told her of Sophie-Victoire's past, she uttered the fatal word and spoke of the child's mother as a lost woman. With Aurore's extreme sensitiveness, it was horrible to receive such confidences at the age of thirteen. Thirty years later, George Sand describes the anguish of the terrible minute. "It was a nightmare," she says. "I felt choked, and it was as though every word would kill me. The perspiration came out on my face. I wanted to interrupt her, to get up and rush away. I did not want to hear the frightful accusation. I could not move, though; I seemed to be nailed on my knees, and my head seemed to be bowed down by that voice that I heard above me, a voice which seemed to wither me like a storm wind." It seems extraordinary that a woman, who was in reality so kind-hearted and so wise, should have allowed herself to be carried away like this. Passion has these sudden and unexpected outbursts, and we see here a most significant proof of the atmosphere of passion in which the child had lived, and which gradually insinuated itself within her. Under these circumstances, Aurore's departure for the convent was a deliverance. Until just recently, there has always been a convent in vogue in France in which it has been considered necessary for girls in good society to be educated. In 1817, _the Couvent des Anglaises_ was in vogue, the very convent which had served as a prison for the mother and grandmother of Aurore. The three years she spent there in that "big feminine family, where every one was as kind as God," she considered the most peaceful and happy time of her life. The pages she devotes to them in her _Histoire de ma vie_ have all the freshness of an oasis. She describes most lovingly this little world, apart, exclusive and self-sufficing, in which life was so intense. The house consisted of a number of constructions, and was situated in the neighbourhood given up to convents. There were courtyards and gardens enough to make it seem like a small village. There was also a labyrinth of passages above and underground, just as in one of Anne Radcliffe's novels. There were old walls overgrown with vine and jasmine. The cock could be heard at midnight, just as in the heart of the country, and there was a bell with a silvery tone like a woman's voice. From her little cell, Aurore looked over the tops of the great chestnut trees on to Paris, so that the air so necessary for the lungs of a child accustomed to wanderings in the country was not lacking in her convent home. The pupils had divided themselves into three categories: the _diables_, the good girls, who were the specially pious ones, and the silly ones. Aurore took her place at once among the _diables_. The great exploit of these convent girls consisted in descending into the cellars, during recreation, and in sounding the walls, in order to "deliver the victim." There was supposed to be an unfortunate victim imprisoned and tortured by the good, kindhearted Sisters. Alas! all the _diables_ sworn to the task in the _Couvent des Anglaises_ never succeeded in finding the victim, so that she must be there still. Very soon, though, a sudden change-took place in Aurore's soul. It would have been strange had it been otherwise. With so extraordinarily sensitive an organization, the new and totally different surroundings could not fail to make an impression. The cloister, the cemetery, the long services, the words of the ritual, murmured in the dimly-lighted chapel, and the piety that seems to hover in the air in houses where many prayers have been offered up--all this acted on the young girl. One evening in August, she had gone into the church, which was dimly lighted by the sanctuary lamp. Through the open window came the perfume of honeysuckle and the songs of the birds. There was a charm, a mystery and a solemn calm about everything, such as she had never before experienced. "I do not know what was taking place within me," she said, when describing this, later on, "but I breathed an atmosphere that was indescribably delicious, and I seemed to be breathing it in my very soul. Suddenly, I felt a shock through all my being, a dizziness came over me, and I seemed to be enveloped in a white light. I thought I heard a voice murmuring in my ear: _'Tolle Lege.'_ I turned round, and saw that I was quite alone. . . ." Our modern _psychiatres_ would say that she had had an hallucination of hearing, together with olfactory trouble. I prefer saying that she had received the visit of grace. Tears of joy bathed her face and she remained there, sobbing for a long time. The convent had therefore opened to Aurore another world of sentiment, that of Christian emotion. Her soul was naturally religious, and the dryness of a philosophical education had not been sufficient for it. The convent had now brought her the aliment for which she had instinctively longed. Later on, when her faith, which had never been very enlightened, left her, the sentiment remained. This religiosity, of Christian form, was essential to George Sand. The convent also rendered her another eminent service. In the _Histoire de ma vie_, George Sand retraces from memory the portraits of several of the Sisters. She tells us of Madame Marie-Xavier, and of her despair at having taken the vows; of Sister Anne-Joseph, who was as kind as an angel and as silly as a goose; of the gentle Marie-Alicia, whose serene soul looked out of her blue eyes, a mirror of purity, and of the mystical Sister Helene, who had left home in spite of her family, in spite of the supplications and the sobs of her mother and sisters, and who had passed over the body of a child on her way to God. It is like this always. The costumes are the same, the hands are clasped in the same manner, the white bands and the faces look equally pale, but underneath this apparent uniformity what contrasts! It is the inner life which marks the differences so vigorously, and shows up the originality of each one. Aurore gradually discovered the diversity of all these souls and the beauty of each one. She thought of becoming a nun, but her confessor did not advise this, and he was certainly wise. Her grandmother, who had a philosopher's opinion of priests, blamed their fanaticism, and took her little granddaughter away from the convent. Perhaps she felt the need of affection for the few months she had still to live. At any rate, she certainly had this affection. One of the first results of the larger perspicacity which Aurore had acquired at the convent was to make her understand her grandmother at last. She was able now to grasp the complex nature of her relative and to see the delicacy hidden under an appearance of great reserve. She knew now all that she owed to her grandmother, but unfortunately it was one of those discoveries which are made too late. The eighteen months which Aurore now passed at Nohant, until the death of her grandmother, are very important as regards her psychological biography. She was seventeen years old, and a girl who was eager to live and very emotional. She had first been a child of Nature. Her convent life had taken her away from Nature and accustomed her to falling back on her own thoughts. Nature now took her back once more, and her beloved Nohant feted her return. "The trees were in flower," she says, "the nightingales were singing, and, in the distance, I could hear the classic, solemn sound of the labourers. My old friends, the big dogs, who had growled at me the evening before, recognized me again and were profuse in their caresses. . . ." She wanted to see everything again. The things themselves had not changed, but her way of looking at them now was different. During her long, solitary walks every morning, she enjoyed seeing the various landscapes, sometimes melancholy-looking and sometimes delightful. She enjoyed, too, the picturesqueness of the various things she met, the flocks of cattle, the birds taking their flight, and even the sound of the horses' feet splashing in the water. She enjoyed everything, in a kind of voluptuous reverie which was no longer instinctive, but conscious and a trifle morbid. Added to all this, her reading at this epoch was without any order or method. She read everything voraciously, mixing all the philosophers up together. She read Locke, Condillac, Montesquieu, Bossuet, Pascal, Montaigne, but she kept Rousseau apart from the others. She devoured the books of the moralists and poets, La Bruyere, Pope, Milton, Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare. All this reading was too much for her and excited her brain. She had reserved Chateaubriand's _Rene_, and, on reading that, she was overcome by the sadness which emanates from these distressing pages. She was disgusted with life, and attempted to commit suicide. She tried to drown herself, and only owed her life to the healthy-mindedness of the good mare Colette, as the horse evidently had not the same reasons as its young mistress for wishing to put an end to its days. All this time Aurore was entirely free to please herself. Deschartres, who had always treated her as a boy, encouraged her independence. It was at his instigation that she dressed in masculine attire to go out shooting. People began to talk about her "eccentricities" at Landerneau, and the gossip continued as far as La Chatre. Added to this, Aurore began to study osteology with a young man who lived in the neighbourhood, and it was said that this young man, Stephane Ajasson de Grandsaigne, gave her lessons in her own room. This was the climax. We have a curious testimony as regards the state of the young girl's mind at this epoch. A review, entitled _Le Voile de pourpre_, published recently, in its first number, a letter from Aurore to her mother, dated November 18, 1821. Her mother had evidently written to her on hearing the gossip about her, and had probably enlarged upon it. "You reproach me, mother, with neither having timidity, modesty, nor charm," she writes, "or at least you suppose that I have these qualities, but that I refrain from showing them, and you are quite certain that I have no outward decency nor decorum. You ought to know me before judging me in this way. You would then be able to form an opinion about my conduct. Grandmother is here, and, ill though she is, she watches over me carefully and lovingly, and she would not fail to correct me if she considered that I had the manners of a dragoon or of a hussar." She considered that she had no need of any one to guide or protect her, and no need of leading-strings. "I am seventeen," she says, "and I know my way about." If this Monsieur de Grandsaigne had ventured to take any liberty with her, she was old enough to take care of herself. Her mother had blamed her for learning Latin and osteology. "Why should a woman be ignorant?" she asks. "Can she not be well educated without this spoiling her and without being pedantic? Supposing that I should have sons in the future, and that I had profited sufficiently by my studies to be able to teach them, would not a mother's lessons be as good as a tutor's?" She was already challenging public opinion, starting a campaign against false prejudices, showing a tendency to generalize, and to make the cause of one woman the cause of all women. We must now bear in mind the various traits we have discovered, one after another, in Aurore's character. We must remember to what parentage she owed her intellectuality and her sentimentality. It will then be more easy to understand the terms she uses when describing her fascination for Rousseau's writings. "The language of Jean-Jacques and the form of his deductions impressed me as music might have done when heard in brilliant sunshine. I compared him to Mozart, and I understood everything." She understood him, for she recognized herself in him. She sympathized with that predominance of feeling and imagination, that exaggeration of sentiment, that preference for life according to Nature, that emotion on beholding the various sights of the country, that distrust of people, those effusions of religious sentimentality, those solitary reveries, and that melancholy which made death seem desirable to him. All this was to Aurore Dupin the gospel according to Rousseau. The whole of her psychology is to be found here. She was an exceptional being undoubtedly; but in order to be a genial exception one must have within oneself, and then personify with great intensity all the inspirations which, at a certain moment, are dispersed in the atmosphere. Ever since the great agitation which had shaken the moral world by Rousseau's preaching, there had been various vague currents and a whole crowd of confused aspirations floating about. It was this enormous wave that entered a feminine soul. Unconsciously Aurore Dupin welcomed the new ideal, and it was this ideal which was to operate within her. The question was, what would she do with it, in presence of life with all its everyday and social realities. This question is the object of our study. In the solution of it lies the interest, the drama and the lesson of George Sand's destiny. II BARONNE DUDEVANT MARRIAGE AND FREEDOM--THE ARRIVAL IN PARIS--JULES SANDEAU We must now endeavour to discover what the future George Sand's experiences of marriage were, and the result of these experiences on the formation of her ideas. "You will lose your best friend in me," were the last words of the grandmother to her granddaughter on her death-bed. The old lady spoke truly, and Aurore was very soon to prove this. By a clause in her will, Madame Dupin de Francueil left the guardianship of Aurore to a cousin, Rene de Villeneuve. It was scarcely likely, though, that Sophie-Victoire should consent to her own rights being frustrated by this illegal clause, particularly as this man belonged to the world of the "old Countesses." She took her daughter with her to Paris. Unfortunately for her, Aurore's eyes were now open, and she was cultured enough to have been in entire sympathy with her exquisite grandmother. It was no longer possible for her to have the old passionate affection and indulgence for her mother, especially as she felt that she had hitherto been deserted by her. She saw her mother now just as she was, a light woman belonging to the people, a woman who could not resign herself to growing old. If only Sophie-Victoire had been of a tranquil disposition! She was most restless, on the contrary, wanting to change her abode and change her restaurant every day. She would quarrel with people one day, make it up the next; wear a different-shaped hat every day, and change the colour of her hair continually. She was always in a state of agitation. She loved police news and thrilling stories; read the _Sherlock Holmes_ of those days until the middle of the night. She dreamed of such stories, and the following day went on living in an atmosphere of crime. When she had an attack of indigestion, she always imagined that she had been poisoned. When a visitor arrived, she thought it must be a burglar. She was most sarcastic about Aurore's "fine education" and her literary aspirations. Her hatred of the dead grandmother was as strong as ever. She was constantly insulting her memory, and in her fits of anger said unheard-of things. Aurore's silence was her only reply to these storms, and this exasperated her mother. She declared that she would correct her daughter's "sly ways." Aurore began to wonder with terror whether her mother's mind were not beginning to give way. The situation finally became intolerable. Sophie-Victoire took her daughter to spend two or three days with some friends of hers, and then left her there. They lived in the country at Plessis-Picard, near Melun. Aurore was delighted to find a vast park with thickets in which there were roebucks bounding about. She loved the deep glades and the water with the green reflections of old willow trees. Monsieur James Duplessis and his wife, Angele, were excellent people, and they adopted Aurore for the time being. They already had five daughters, so that one more did not make much difference. They frequented a few families in the neighbourhood, and there was plenty of gaiety among the young people. The Duplessis took Aurore sometimes to Paris and to the theatre. "One evening," we are told in the _Histoire de ma vie_, "we were having some ices at Tortoni's after the theatre, when suddenly my mother Angele said to her husband, 'Why, there's Casimir!' A young man, slender and rather elegant, with a gay expression and a military look, came and shook hands, and answered all the questions he was asked about his father, Colonel Dudevant, who was evidently very much respected and loved by the family." This was the first meeting, the first appearance of Casimir in the story, and this was how he entered into the life of Aurore. He was invited to Plessis, he joined the young people good-humouredly in their games, was friendly with Aurore, and, without posing as a suitor, asked for her hand in marriage. There was no reason for her to refuse him. He was twenty-seven years of age, had served two years in the army, and had studied law in Paris. He was a natural son, of course, but he had been recognized by his father, Colonel Dudevant. The Dudevant family was greatly respected. They had a _chateau_ at Guillery in Gascony. Casimir had been well brought up and had good manners. Aurore might as well marry him as any other young man. It would even be preferable to marry him rather than another young man. He was already her friend, and he would then be her husband. That would not make much difference. The marriage almost fell through, thanks to Sophie-Victoire. She did not consider Casimir good-looking enough. She was not thinking of her daughter, but of herself. She had made up her mind to have a handsome son-in-law with whom she could go out. She liked handsome men, and particularly military men. Finally she consented to the marriage, but, a fortnight before the ceremony, she arrived at Plessis, like a veritable thunderbolt. An extraordinary idea had occurred to her. She vowed that she had discovered that Casimir had been a waiter at a _cafe_. She had no doubt dreamt this, but she held to her text, and was indignant at the idea of her daughter marrying a waiter! . . . Things had arrived at this crisis when Casimir's mother, Madame Dudevant, who had all the manners of a _grande dame_, decided to pay Sophie-Victoire an official visit. The latter was greatly flattered, for she liked plenty of attention paid to her. It was in this way that Aurore Dupin became Baronne Dudevant. She was just eighteen years of age. It is interesting to read her description of herself at this time. In her _Voyage en Auvergne_, which was her first writing, dated 1827, she traces the following portrait, which certainly is not exaggerated. "When I was sixteen," she says, "and left the convent, every one could see that I was a pretty girl. I was fresh-looking, though dark. I was like those wild flowers which grow without any art or culture, but with gay, lively colouring. I had plenty of hair, which was almost black. On looking at myself in the glass, though, I can truthfully say that I was not very well pleased with myself. I was dark, my features were well cut, but not finished. People said that it was the expression of my face that made it interesting. I think this was true. I was gay but dreamy, and my most natural expression was a meditative one. People said, too, that in this absent-minded expression there was a fixed look which resembled that of the serpent when fascinating his prey. That, at any rate, was the far-fetched comparison of my provincial adorers." They were not very far wrong, these provincial adorers. The portraits of Aurore at this date show us a charming face of a young girl, as fresh-looking as a child. She has rather long features, with a delicately-shaped chin. She is not exactly pretty, but fascinating, with those great dark eyes, which were her prominent feature, eyes which, when fixed on any one, took complete possession of them--dreamy, passionate eyes, sombre because the soul reflected in them had profound depths. It is difficult to define that soul, for it was so complex. To judge by appearances, it was a very peaceful soul, and perhaps, too, it was in reality peaceful. George Sand, who knew herself thoroughly, frequently spoke of her laziness and of her apathy, traits peculiar to the natives of Berry. Superficial observers looked no further, and her mother used to call her "St. Tranquillity." The nuns, though, of her convent had more perspicacity. They said, when speaking of her: "Still waters run deep." Under the smooth surface they fancied that storms were gathering. Aurore had within her something of her mother and of her grandmother, and their opposite natures were blended in her. She had the calmness of Marie-Aurore, but she also had the impetuousness of Sophie-Victoire, and undoubtedly, too, something of the free and easy good humour of her father, the break-neck young officer. It certainly is not surprising to find a love of adventure in a descendant of Maurice de Saxe. Beside all these inner contrasts, the observer was particularly struck by her sudden changes of humour, by the way in which, after a fit of melancholy sadness, she suddenly gave way to the most exuberant gaiety, followed by long fits of depression and nervous exhaustion. Personally, I do not believe much in the influence of the physical over the moral nature, but I am fully convinced of the action of the moral over the physical nature. In certain cases and in presence of extremely accentuated conditions, physiological explanations must be taken into account. All these fits of melancholy and weeping, this prostration, these high spirits and the long walks, in order to sober down, denote the exigencies of an abnormal temperament. When once the crisis was passed, it must not be supposed that, as with many other people, nothing remained of it all. This was by no means the case, as in a nature so extraordinarily organized for storing up sensations nothing was lost, nothing evaporated, and everything increased. The still water seemed to be slumbering. Its violence, though held in check, was increasing in force, and when once let loose, it would carry all before it. Such was the woman whom Casimir Dudevant was to marry. The fascination was great; the honour rather to be feared, for all depended on his skill in guiding this powerful energy. The question is whether he loved her. It has been said that it was a marriage of interest, as Aurore's fortune amounted to twenty thousand pounds, and he was by no means rich. This may have been so, but there is no reason why money should destroy one's sentiments, and the fact that Aurore had money was not likely to prevent Casimir from appreciating the charms of a pretty girl. It seems, therefore, very probable that he loved his young wife, at any rate as much as this Casimir was capable of loving his wife. The next question is whether she loved him. It has been said that she did, simply because she declared that she did not. When, later on, after her separation, she spoke of her marriage, all her later grievances were probably in her mind. There are her earlier letters, though, which some people consider a proof that she cared for Casimir, and there are also a few words jotted down in her notebook. When her husband was absent, she was anxious about him and feared that he had met with an accident. It would be strange indeed if a girl of eighteen did not feel some affection for the man who had been the first to make love to her, a man whom she had married of her own free-will. It is rare for a woman to feel no kind of attachment for her husband, but is that attachment love? When a young wife complains of her husband, we hear in her reproaches the protest of her offended dignity, of her humbled pride. When a woman loves her husband, though, she does not reproach him, guilty though he may be, with having humiliated and wounded her. What she has against him then, is that he has broken her heart by his lack of love for her. This note and this accent can never be mistaken, and never once do we find it with Aurore. We may therefore conclude that she had never loved her husband. Casimir did not know how to win her affection. He did not even realize that he needed to win it. He was very much like all men. The idea never occurs to them that, when once they are married, they have to win their wife. He was very much like all men. . . . That is the most faithful portrait that can be traced of Casimir at this epoch. He had not as yet the vices which developed in him later on. He had nothing to distinguish him from the average man. He was selfish, without being disagreeable, rather idle, rather incapable, rather vain and rather foolish. He was just an ordinary man. The wife he had married, though, was not an ordinary woman. That was their misfortune. As Emile Faguet has very wittily put it, "Monsieur Dudevant, about whom she complained so much, seems to have had no other fault than that of being merely an ordinary man, which, of course, is unendurable to a superior woman. The situation was perhaps equally unendurable for the man." This is quite right, for Casimir was very soon considerably disconcerted. He was incapable of understanding her psychology, and, as it seemed impossible to him that a woman was not his inferior, he came to the logical conclusion that his wife was "idiotic." This was precisely his expression, and at every opportunity he endeavoured to crush her by his own superiority. All this seems to throw some light on his character and also on the situation. Here was a man who had married the future George Sand, and he complained, in all good faith, that his wife was "idiotic"! Certainly, on comparing the _Correspondance_ with the _Histoire de ma vie_, the difference of tone is most striking. The letters in which Baronne Dudevant tells, day by day, of her home life are too enthusiastic for the letters of an unhappy wife. There are receptions at Nohant, lively dinners, singing and dancing. All this is, at any rate, the surface, but gradually the misunderstandings are more pronounced, and the gulf widens. There may have been a misunderstanding at the very beginning of their married life, and Aurore may have had a surprise of the nature of the one to which Jane de Simerose confesses in _L'Ami des femmes_. In an unpublished letter written much later on, in the year 1843, from George Sand to her half-brother Hippolyte Chatiron on the occasion of his daughter's engagement, the following lines occur: "See that your son-in-law is not brutal to your daughter the first night of their marriage. . . . Men have no idea that this amusement of theirs is a martyrdom for us. Tell him to sacrifice his own pleasure a little, and to wait until he has taught his wife gradually to understand things and to be willing. There is nothing so frightful as the horror, the suffering and the disgust of a poor girl who knows nothing and who is suddenly violated by a brute. We bring girls up as much as possible like saints, and then we hand them over like fillies. If your son-in-law is an intelligent man and if he really loves your daughter, he will understand his _role_, and will not take it amiss that you should speak to him beforehand."(2) (2) Communicated by M. S. Rocheblave. Is George Sand recalling here any hidden and painful memories? Casimir had, at bottom, a certain brutality, which, later on, was very evident. The question is whether he had shown proofs of it at a time when it would have been wiser to have refrained. However that may be, the fundamental disagreement of their natures was not long in making itself felt between the husband and wife. He was matter-of-fact, and she was romantic; he only believed in facts, and she in ideas; he was of the earth, earthy, whilst she aspired to the impossible. They had nothing to say to each other, and when two people have nothing to say, and love does not fill up the silences, what torture the daily _tete-a-tete_ must be. Before they had been married two years, they were bored to death. They blamed Nohant, but the fault was in themselves. Nohant seemed unbearable to them, simply because they were there alone with each other. They went to Plessis, perhaps in the hope that the remembrance of the days of their engagement might have some effect on them. It was there, in 1824, that the famous scene of the blow took place. They were playing at a regular children's game in the park, and throwing sand at each other. Casimir lost his patience and struck his wife. It was certainly impolite, but Aurore did not appear to have been very indignant with her husband at the time. Her grievances were quite of another kind, less tangible and much more deeply felt. From Plessis they went to Ormesson. We do not know what took place there, but evidently something which made a deep impression morally, something very serious. A few years later, referring to this stay at Ormesson, George Sand wrote to one of her friends: "You pass by a wall and come to a house. . . . If you are allowed to enter you will find a delightful English garden, at the bottom of which is a spring of water hidden under a kind of grotto. It is all very stiff and uninteresting, but it is very lonely. I spent several months there, and it was there that I lost my health, my confidence in the future, my gaiety and my happiness. It was there that I felt, and very deeply too, my first approach of trouble. . . ."(3) (3) Extract from the unpublished letters of George Sand to Dr. Emile Regnault. They left Ormesson for Paris, and Paris for Nohant, and after that, by way of trying to shake off the dulness that was oppressing them, they had recourse to the classical mode of diversion--a voyage. They set off on the 5th of July, 1825, for that famous expedition to the Pyrenees, which was to be so important a landmark in Aurore Dudevant's history. On crossing the Pyrenees, the scenery, so new to her--or rather the memory of which had been lying dormant in her mind since her childhood--filled her with wild enthusiasm. This intense emotion contributed to develop within her that sense of the picturesque which, later on, was to add so considerably to her talent as a writer. She had hitherto been living in the country of plains, the Ile-de-France and Berry. The contrast made her realize all the beauties of nature, and, on her return, she probably understood her own familiar scenery, and enjoyed it all the more. She had hitherto appreciated it vaguely. Lamartine learnt to love the severe scenery of Milly better on returning to it after the softness of Italy. The Pyrenees served, too, for Baronne Dudevant as the setting for an episode which was unique in her sentimental life. In the _Histoire de ma vie_ there is an enigmatical page in which George Sand has intentionally measured and veiled every expression. She speaks of her moral solitude, which, at that time, was profound and absolute, and she adds: "It would have been mortal to a tender mind and to a girl in the flower of her youth, if it had not been filled with a dream which had taken the importance of a great passion, not in my life, as I had sacrificed my life to duty, but in my thoughts. I was in continual correspondence with an absent person to whom I told all my thoughts, all my dreams, who knew all my humble virtues, and who heard all my platonic enthusiasm. This person was excellent in reality, but I attributed to him more than all the perfections possible to human nature. I only saw this man for a few days, and sometimes only for a few hours, in the course of a year. He was as romantic, in his intercourse with me, as I was. Consequently he did not cause me any scruples, either of religion or of conscience. This man was the stay and consolation of my exile, as regards the world of reality." It was this dream, as intense as any passion, that we must study here. We must make the acquaintance of this excellent and romantic man. Aurelien de Seze was a young magistrate, a few years older than Aurore. He was twenty-six years of age and she was twenty-one. He was the great-nephew of the counsel who pleaded for Louis XVI. There was, therefore, in his family a tradition of moral nobility, and the young man had inherited this. He had met Aurore at Bordeaux and again at Cauterets. They had visited the grottoes of Lourdes together. Aurelien had appreciated the young wife's charm, although she had not attempted to attract his attention, as she was not coquettish. She appreciated in him--all that was so lacking in Casimir--culture of mind, seriousness of character, discreet manners which people took at first for coldness, and a somewhat dignified elegance. He was scrupulously honest, a magistrate of the old school, sure of his principles and master of himself. It was, probably, just that which appealed to the young wife, who was a true woman and who had always wished to be dominated. When they met again at Breda, they had an explanation. This was the "violent grief" of which George Sand speaks. She was consoled by a friend, Zoe Leroy, who found a way of calming this stormy soul. She came through this crisis crushed with emotion and fatigue, but calm and joyful. They had vowed to love each other, but to remain without reproach, and their vow was faithfully kept. Aurore, therefore, had nothing with which to reproach herself, but with her innate need of being frank, she considered it her duty to write a letter to her husband, informing him of everything. This was the famous letter of November 8, 1825. Later on, in 1836, when her case for separation from her husband was being heard, a few fragments of it were read by her husband's advocate with the idea of incriminating her. By way of reply to this, George Sand's advocate read the entire letter in all its eloquence and generosity. It was greeted by bursts of applause from the audience. All this is very satisfactory. It is exactly the situation of the Princess of Cleves in Madame de Lafayette's novel. The Princess of Cleves acknowledges to her husband the love she cannot help feeling for Monsieur de Nemours, and asks for his help and advice as her natural protector. This fine proceeding is usually admired, although it cost the life of the Prince of Cleves, who died broken-hearted. Personally, I admire it too, although at times I wonder whether we ought not rather to see in it an unconscious suggestion of perversity. This confession of love to the person who is being, as it were, robbed of that love, is in itself a kind of secret pleasure. By speaking of the love, it becomes more real, we bring it out to light instead of letting it die away in those hidden depths within us, in which so many of the vague sentiments which we have not cared to define, even to ourselves, die away. Many women have preferred this more silent way, in which they alone have been the sufferers. But such women are not the heroines of novels. No one has appreciated their sacrifice, and they themselves could scarcely tell all that it has cost them. Aurelien de Seze had taken upon himself the _role_ of confidant to this soul that he had allotted to himself. He took his _role_ very seriously, as was his custom in all things. He became the young wife's director in all matters of conscience. The letters which he wrote to her have been preserved, and we know them by the extracts and the analysis that Monsieur Rocheblave has given us and by his incisive commentaries of them.(4) They are letters of guidance, spiritual letters. The laic confessor endeavours, before all things, to calm the impatience of this soul which is more and more ardent and more and more troubled every day. He battles with her about her mania of philosophizing, her wish to sift everything and to get to the bottom of everything. Strong in his own calmness, he kept repeating to her in a hundred different ways the words: "Be calm!" The advice was good; the only difficulty was the following of the advice. (4) "George Sand avant George Sand," by S. Rocheblave (_Revue de Paris_, December 15, 1894). Gradually the professor lost his hold on his pupil, for it seems as though Aurore were the first to tire. Aurelien finally began to doubt the efficacy of his preaching. The usual fate of sentiments outside the common order of things is that they last the length of time that a crisis of enthusiasm lasts. The best thing that can happen then is that their nature should not change, that they should not deteriorate, as is so often the case. When they remain intact to the end, they leave behind them, in the soul, a trail of light, a trail of cold, pure light. The decline of this platonic _liaison_ with Aurelien de Seze dates from 1828. Some grave events were taking place at Nohant about this time. For the last few years Casimir had fallen into the vices of certain country squires, or so-called gentlemen farmers. He had taken to drink, in company with Hippolyte Chatiron, and it seems that the intoxication peculiar to the natives of Berry takes a heavy and not a gay form. He had also taken to other bad habits, away from home at first, and later on under the conjugal roof. He was particularly partial to the maid-servants, and, the day following the birth of her daughter, Solange, Aurore had an unpleasant surprise with regard to her husband. From that day forth, what had hitherto been only a vague wish on her part became a fixed idea with her, and she began to form plans. A certain incident served as a pretext. When putting some papers in order, Aurore came upon her husband's will. It was a mere diatribe, in which the future "deceased" gave utterance to all his past grievances against his _idiotic_ wife. Her mind was made up irrevocably from this moment. She would have her freedom again; she would go to Paris and spend three months out of six there. She had a young tutor from the south of France, named Boucoiran, educating her children. This Boucoiran needed to be taken to task constantly, and Baronne Dudevant did not spare him.(5) (5) An instance of her disposition for lecturing will be seen in the following curious letter sent by George Sand to her friend and neighbour, Adolphe Duplomb. This letter has never been published before, and we owe our thanks for it to Monsieur Charles Duplomb. _Nohant, July_ 23,1830. "Are you so very much afraid of me, my poor Hydrogene? You expect a good lecture and you will not expect in vain. Have patience, though. Before giving you the dressing you deserve, I want to tell you that I have not forgotten you, and that I was very vexed on returning from Paris, to find my great simpleton of a son gone. I am so used to seeing your solemn face that I quite miss it. You have a great many faults, but after all, you are a good sort, and in time you will get reasonable. Try to remember occasionally, my dear Plombeus, that you have friends. If I were your only friend, that would be a great deal, as I am to be depended on, and am always at my post as a friend, although I may not be very tender. I am not very polite either, as I speak the truth plainly. That is my characteristic, though. I am a firm friend nevertheless, and to be depended on. Do not forget what I have said now, as I shall not often repeat this. Remember, too, that happiness in this world depends on the interest and esteem that we inspire. I do not say this to every one, as it would be impossible, but just to a certain number of friends. It is impossible to find one's happiness entirely in one's self, without being an egoist, and I do not think so badly of you that I imagine you to be one. A man whom no one cares for is wretched, and the man who has friends is afraid of grieving them by behaving badly. As Polyte says, all this is for the sake of letting you know that you must do your best to behave well, if you want to prove to me that you are not ungrateful for my interest in you. You ought to get rid of the bad habit of boasting that you have adopted through frequenting young men as foolish as yourself. Do whatever your position and your health allow you to do, provided that you do not compromise the honour or the reputation of any one else. I do not see that a young man is called upon to be as chaste as a nun. But keep your good or bad luck in your love affairs to yourself. Silly talk is always repeated, and it may chance to get to the ears of sensible people who will disapprove. Try, too, not to make so many plans, but to carry out just one or two of them. You know that is why I quarrel with you always. I should like to see more constancy in you. You tell Hippolyte that you are very willing and courageous. As to physical courage, of the kind that consists in enduring illness and in not fearing death, I dare say you have that, but I doubt very much whether you have the courage necessary for sustained work, unless you have very much altered. Everything fresh delights you, but after a little time you only see the inconveniences of your position. You will scarcely find anything without something that is annoying and troublesome, but if you cannot learn to put up with things you will never be a man. "This is the end of my sermon. I expect you have had enough of it, especially as you are not accustomed to reading my bad handwriting. I shall be glad to hear from you, but do not consider your letter as a State affair, and do not torment yourself to arrange well-turned phrases. I do not care for such phrases at all. A letter is always good enough when the writer expresses himself naturally, and says what he thinks. Fine pages are all very well for the schoolmaster, but I do not appreciate them at all. Promise me to be reasonable, and to think of my sermons now and then. That is all I ask. You may be very sure that if it were not for my friendship for you I should not take the trouble to lecture you. I should be afraid of annoying you if it were not for that. As it is, I am sure that you are not displeased to have my lectures, and that you understand the feeling which dictates them. "Adieu, my dear Adolphe. Write to me often and tell me always about your affairs. Take care of yourself, and try to keep well; but if you should feel ill come back to your native place. There will always be milk and syrup for you, and you know that I am not a bad nurse. Every one wishes to be remembered to you, and I send you my holy blessing. "AURORE D----" She considered him idle, and reproached him with his lack of dignity and with making himself too familiar with his inferiors. She could not admit this familiarity, although she was certainly a friend of the people and of the peasants. Between sympathy and familiarity there was a distinction, and Aurore took care not to forget this. There was always something of the _grande dame_ in her. Boucoiran was devoted, though, and she counted on him for looking after her children, for keeping her strictly _au courant_, and letting her know in case of illness. Perfectly easy on this score, she could live in Paris on an income of sixty pounds by adding to it what she could earn. Casimir made no objections. All that happened later on in this existence, which was from henceforth so stormy, happened with his knowledge and with his consent. He was a poor sort of man. Let us consider now, for a moment, Baronne Dudevant's impressions after such a marriage. We will not speak of her sadness nor of her disgust. In a union of this kind, how could the sacred and beneficial character of marriage have appeared to her? A husband should be a companion. She never knew the charm of true intimacy, nor the delight of thoughts shared with another. A husband is the counsellor, the friend. When she needed counsel, she was obliged to go elsewhere for it, and it was from another man that guidance and encouragement came. A husband should be the head and, I do not hesitate to say, the master. Life is a ceaseless struggle, and the man who has taken upon himself the task of defending a family from all the dangers which threaten its dissolution, from all the enemies which prowl around it, can only succeed in his task of protector if he be invested with just authority. Aurore had been treated brutally: that is not the same thing as being dominated. The sensation which never left her was that of an immense moral solitude. She could no longer dream in the Nohant avenues, for the old trees had been lopped, and the mystery chased away. She shut herself up in her grandmother's little boudoir, adjoining her children's room, so that she could hear them breathing, and whilst Casimir and Hippolyte were getting abominably intoxicated, she sat there thinking things over, and gradually becoming so irritated that she felt the rebellion within her gathering force. The matrimonial bond was a heavy yoke to her. A Christian wife would have submitted to it and accepted it, but the Christianity of Baronne Dudevant was nothing but religiosity. The trials of life show up the insufficiency of religious sentiment which is not accompanied by faith. Marriage, without love, friendship, confidence and respect, was for Aurore merely a prison. She endeavoured to escape from it, and when she succeeded she uttered a sigh of relief at her deliverance. Such, then, is the chapter of marriage in Baronne Dudevant's psychology. It is a fine example of failure. The woman who had married badly now remained an individual, instead of harmonizing and blending in a general whole. This ill-assorted union merely accentuated and strengthened George Sand's individualism. Aurore Dudevant arrived in Paris the first week of the year 1831. The woman who was rebellious to marriage was now in a city which had just had a revolution. The extraordinary effervescence of Paris in 1831 can readily be imagined. There was tempest in the air, and this tempest was bound to break out here or there, either immediately or in the near future, in an insurrection. Every one was feverishly anxious to destroy everything, in order to create all things anew. In everything, in art, ideas and even in costume, there was the same explosion of indiscipline, the same triumph of capriciousness. Every day some fresh system of government was born, some new method of philosophy, an infallible receipt for bringing about universal happiness, an unheard-of idea for manufacturing masterpieces, some invention for dressing up and having a perpetual carnival in the streets. The insurrection was permanent and masquerade a normal state. Besides all this, there was a magnificent burst of youth and genius. Victor Hugo, proud of having fought the battle of _Hernani_, was then thinking of _Notre-Dame_ and climbing up to it. Musset had just given his _Contes d'Espagne el d'Italie_. Stendhal had published _Le Rouge et le Noir_, and Balzac _La Peau de Chagrin_. The painters of the day were Delacroix and Delaroche. Paganini was about to give his first concert at the Opera. Such was Paris in all its impatience and impertinence, in its confusion and its splendour immediately after the Revolution. The young wife, who had snapped her bonds asunder, breathed voluptuously in this atmosphere. She was like a provincial woman enjoying Paris to the full. She belonged to the romantic school, and was imbued with the principle that an artist must see everything, know everything, and have experienced himself all that he puts into his books. She found a little group of her friends from Berry in Paris, among others Felix Pyat, Charles Duvernet, Alphonse Fleury, Sandeau and de Latouche. This was the band she frequented, young men apprenticed either to literature, the law, or medicine. With them she lived a student's life. In order to facilitate her various evolutions, she adopted masculine dress. In her _Histoite de ma vie_ she says: "Fashion helped me in my disguise, for men were wearing long, square frock-coats styled a _la proprietaire_. They came down to the heels, and fitted the figure so little that my brother, when putting his on, said to me one day at Nohant: 'It is a nice cut, isn't it? The tailor takes his measures from a sentry-box, and the coat then fits a whole regiment.' I had 'a sentry-box coat' made, of rough grey cloth, with trousers and waistcoat to match. With a grey hat and a huge cravat of woollen material, I looked exactly like a first-year student. . . ." Dressed in this style, she explored the streets, museums, cathedrals, libraries, painters' studios, clubs and theatres. She heard Frederick Lemaitre one day, and the next day Malibran. One evening it was one of Dumas' pieces, and the next night _Moise_ at the Opera. She took her meals at a little restaurant, and she lived in an attic. She was not even sure of being able to pay her tailor, so she had all the joys possible. "Ah, how delightful, to live an artist's life! Our device is liberty!" she wrote.(6) She lived in a perpetual state of delight, and, in February, wrote to her son Maurice as follows: "Every one is at loggerheads, we are crushed to death in the streets, the churches are being destroyed, and we hear the drum being beaten all night."(7) In March she wrote to Charles Duvernet: "Do you know that fine things are happening here? It really is amusing to see. We are living just as gaily among bayonets and riots as if everything were at peace. All this amuses me."(8) (6) _Correspondance_: To Boucoiran, March 4, 1831. (7) _Ibid_. To Maurice Dudevant, February 15, 1831. (8) _Ibid_. To Charles Duvernet, March 6, 1831. She was amused at everything and she enjoyed everything. With her keen sensitiveness, she revelled in the charm of Paris, and she thoroughly appreciated its scenery. "Paris," she wrote, "with its vaporous evenings, its pink clouds above the roofs, and the beautiful willows of such a delicate green around the bronze statue of our old Henry, and then, too, the dear little slate-coloured pigeons that make their nests in the old masks of the Pont Neuf . . ."(9) (9) Unpublished letters of Dr. Emile Regnault. She loved the Paris sky, so strange-looking, so rich in colouring, so variable.(10) (10) _Ibid_. She became unjust with regard to Berry. "As for that part of the world which I used to love so dearly and where I used to dream my dreams," she wrote, "I was there at the age of fifteen, when I was very foolish, and at the age of seventeen, when I was dreamy and disturbed in my mind. It has lost its charm for me now."(11) (11) _Ibid_. She loved it again later on, certainly, but just at this time she was over-excited with the joy of her newly-found liberty. It was that really which made her so joyful and which intoxicated her. "I do not want society, excitement, theatres, or dress; what I want is freedom," she wrote to her mother. In another letter she says: "I am absolutely independent. I go to La Chatre, to Rome. I start out at ten o'clock or at midnight. I please myself entirely in all this."(12) (12) _Correspondance_: To her mother, May 31, 1831. She was free, and she fancied she was happy. Her happiness at that epoch meant Jules Sandeau. In a letter, written in the humoristic style in which she delighted, she gives us portraits of some of her comrades of that time. She tells us of Duvernet, of Alphonse Fleury, surnamed "the Gaulois," and of Sandeau. "Oh, fair-haired Charles!" she writes, "young man of melancholy thoughts, with a character as gloomy as a stormy day. . . . And you, gigantic Fleury, with your immense hands and your alarming beard. . . . And you, dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of fragrant savannahs!"(13) (13) _Correspondance_: December 1, 1830. The "dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of fragrant savannahs," was to be Baronne Dudevant's Latin Quarter _liaison_. Her biographers usually pass over this _liaison_ quickly, as information about it was not forthcoming. Important documents exist, though, in the form of fifty letters written by George Sand to Dr. Emile Regnault, then a medical student and the intimate friend and confidant of Jules Sandeau, who kept nothing back from him. His son, Dr. Paul Regnault, has kindly allowed me to see this correspondence and to reproduce some fragments of it. It is extremely curious, by turn lyrical and playful, full of effusions, ideas, plans of work, impressions of nature, and confidences about her love affairs. Taken altogether it reflects, as nearly as possible, the state of the young woman's mind at this time. The first letter is dated April, 1831. George Sand had left Paris for Nohant, and is anxiously wondering how her poor Jules has passed this wretched day, and how he will go back to the room from which she had torn herself with such difficulty that morning. In her letter she gives utterance to the gratitude she owes to the young man who has reconciled her once more to life. "My soul," she says, "eager itself for affection, needed to inspire this in a heart capable of understanding me thoroughly, with all my faults and qualities. A fervent soul was necessary for loving me in the way that I could love, and for consoling me after all the ingratitude which had made my earlier life so desolate. And although I am now old, I have found a heart as young as my own, a lifelong affection which nothing can discourage and which grows stronger every day. Jules has taught me to care once more for this existence, of which I was so weary, and which I only endured for the sake of my children. I was disgusted beforehand with the future, but it now seems more beautiful to me, full as it appears to me of him, of his work, his success, and of his upright, modest conduct. . . . Oh, if you only knew how I love him! . . . ."(14) (14) This quotation and those that follow are borrowed from the unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault. "When I first knew him I was disillusioned about everything, and I no longer believed in those things which make us happy. He has warmed my frozen heart and restored the life that was dying within me." She then recalls their first meeting. It was in the country, at Coudray, near Nohant. She fell in love with her dear Sandeau, thanks to his youthfulness, his timidity and his awkwardness. He was just twenty, in 1831. On approaching the bench where she was awaiting him, "he concealed himself in a neighbouring avenue--and I could see his hat and stick on the bench," she writes. "Everything, even to the little red ribbon threaded in the lining of his grey hat, thrilled me with joy. . . ." It is difficult to say why, but everything connected with this young Jules seems absurd. Later on we get the following statement: "Until the day when I told him that I loved him, I had never acknowledged as much to myself. I felt that I did, but I would not own it even to my own heart. Jules therefore learnt it at the same time as I did myself." People at La Chatre took the young man for her lover. The idea of finding him again in Paris was probably one of her reasons for wishing to establish herself there. Then came her life, as she describes it herself, "in the little room looking on to the quay. I can see Jules now in a shabby, dirty-looking artist's frock-coat, with his cravat underneath him and his shirt open at the throat, stretched out over three chairs, stamping with his feet or breaking the tongs in the heat of the discussion. The Gaulois used to sit in a corner weaving great plots, and you would be seated on a table." All this must certainly have been charming. The room was too small, though, and George Sand commissioned Emile Regnault to find her a flat, the essential condition of which should be some way of egress for Jules at any hour. A little flat was discovered on the Quay St. Michel. There were three rooms, one of which could be reserved. "This shall be the dark room," wrote George Sand, "the mysterious room, the ghost's retreat, the monster's den, the cage of the performing animal, the hiding-place for the treasure, the vampire's cave, or whatever you like to call it. . . ." In plainer language, it was Jules' room; and then follows some touching eloquence about the dear boy she worshipped who loved her so dearly. This is the beginning of things, but later on the tone of the correspondence changes. The letters become less frequent, and are also not so gay. George Sand speaks much less of Jules in them and much more of little Solange, whom she intended to bring back to Paris with her. She is beginning to weary of Jules and to esteem him at his true value. He is lazy, and has fits of depression and all the capriciousness of a spoilt child. She has had enough of him, and then, too, it is very evident from the letters that there has been some division among the lively friends who had sworn to be comrades for life. There are explanations and justifications. George Sand discovers that there are certain inconveniences connected with intimacies in which there is such disproportion of age and of social position. Finally there are the following desperate letters, written in fits of irritation: "My dear friend, go to Jules and look after him. He is broken-hearted, and you can do nothing for him in that respect. It is no use trying. I do not ask you to come to me yet, as I do not need anything. I would rather be alone to-day. Then, too, there is nothing left for me in life. It will be horrible for him for a long time, but he is so young. The day will come, perhaps, when he will not be sorry to have lived. . . . Do not attempt to put matters right, as this time there is no remedy. We do not blame each other at all, and for some time we have been struggling against this horrible necessity. We have had trouble enough. There seemed to be nothing left but to put an end to our lives, and if it had not been for my children, we should have done this." The question is, Was George Sand blameless in the matter? It appears that she had discovered that her dear Jules was faithless to her, and that, during her absence, he had deceived her. She would not forgive him, but sent him off to Italy, and refused to see him again. The last of these letters is dated June 15, 1833. "I shall make a parcel of a few of Jules' things that he left in the wardrobe," she says, "and I will send them to you. I do not want anything to do with him when he comes back, and, according to the last words of the letter you showed me, his return may be soon. For a long time I have been very much hurt by the discoveries I made with regard to his conduct, and I could not feel anything else for him now but affectionate compassion. His pride, I hope, would refuse this. Make him clearly understand, if necessary, that there can never be anything more between us. If this hard task should not be necessary, that is, if Jules should himself understand that it could not be otherwise, spare him the sorrow of hearing that he has lost everything, even my respect. He must undoubtedly have lost his own self-esteem, so that he is punished enough." Thus ended this great passion. This was the first of George Sand's errors, and it certainly was an immense one. She had imagined that happiness reigns in students' rooms. She had counted on the passing fancy of a young man of good family, who had come to Paris to sow his wild oats, for giving her fresh zest and for carving out for herself a fresh future. It was a most commonplace adventure, utterly destitute of psychology, and by its very bitterness it contrasted strangely with her elevated sentimental romance with Aurelien de Seze. That was the quintessence of refinement. All that is interesting about this second adventure is the proof that it gives us of George Sand's wonderful illusions, of the intensity of the mirage of which she was a dupe, and of which we have so many instances in her life. Baronne Dudevant had tried conjugal life, and she had now tried free love. She had been unsuccessful in both instances. It is to these adventures though, to these trials, errors and disappointments that we owe the writer we are about to study. George Sand was now born to literature. III A FEMINIST OF 1832 THE FIRST NOVELS AND THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE When Baronne Dudevant arrived in Paris, in 1831, her intention was to earn her living with her pen. She never really counted seriously on the income she might make by her talent for painting flowers on snuff-boxes and ornamenting cigar-cases with water-colours. She arrived from her province with the intention of becoming a writer. Like most authors who commence, she first tried journalism. On the 4th of March, she wrote as follows to the faithful Boucoiran: "In the meantime I must live, and for the sake of that, I have taken up the worst of trades: I am writing articles for the _Figaro_. If only you knew what that means! They are paid for, though, at the rate of seven francs a column." She evidently found it worth while to write for the _Figaro_, which at that time was quite a small newspaper, managed by Henri de Latouche, who also came from Berry. He was a very second-rate writer himself, and a poet with very little talent but, at any rate, he appreciated and discovered talent in others. He published Andre Chenier's first writings, and he introduced George Sand to the public. His new apprentice was placed at one of the little tables at which the various parts of the paper were manufactured. Unfortunately she had not the vocation for this work. The first principle with regard to newspaper articles is to make them short. When Aurore had come to the end of her paper, she had not yet commenced her subject. It was no use attempting to continue, so she gave up "the worst of trades," lucrative though it might be. She could not help knowing, though, that she had the gift of writing. She had inherited it from her ancestors, and this is the blest part of her atavism. No matter how far back we go, and in every branch of her genealogical tree, there is artistic heredity to be found. Maurice de Saxe wrote his _Reveries_. This was a fine book for a soldier to write, and for that alone he would deserve praise, even if he had not beaten the English so gloriously. Mademoiselle Verrieres was an actress and Dupin de Francueil a dilettante. Aurore's grandmother, Marie-Aurore, was very musical, she sang operatic songs, and collected extracts from the philosophers. Maurice Dupin was devoted to music and to the theatre. Even Sophie-Victoire had an innate appreciation of beauty. She not only wept, like Margot, at melodrama, but she noticed the pink of a cloud, the mauve of a flower, and, what was more important, she called her little daughter's attention to such things. This illiterate mother had therefore had some influence on Aurore and on her taste for literature. It is not enough to say that George Sand was a born writer. She was a born novelist, and she belonged to a certain category of novelists. She had been created by a special decree of Providence to write her own romances, and not others. It is this which makes the history of the far-back origins of her literary vocation so interesting. It is extremely curious to see, from her earliest childhood, the promises of those faculties which were to become the very essence of her talent. When she was only three years old, her mother used to put her between four chairs in order to keep her still. By way of enlivening her captivity, she tells us what she did. "I used to make up endless stories, which my mother styled my novels. . . . I told these stories aloud, and my mother declared that they were most tiresome on account of their length and of the development I gave to my digressions. . . . There were very few bad people in them, and never any serious troubles. Everything was always arranged satisfactorily, thanks to my lively, optimistic ideas. . . ." She had already commenced, then, at the age of three, and these early stories are the precursors of the novels of her maturity. They are optimistic, drawn out, and with long digressions. Something similar is told about Walter Scott. There is evidently a primordial instinct in those who are born story-tellers, and this urges them on to invent fine stories for amusing themselves. A little later on we have another phenomenon, almost as curious, with regard to Aurore. We are apt to wonder how certain descriptive writers proceed in order to give us pictures, the various features of which stand out in such intense relief that they appear absolutely real to us. George Sand tells us that when Berquin's stories were being read to her at Nohant, she used to sit in front of the fire, from which she was protected by an old green silk screen. She used gradually to lose the sense of the phrases, but pictures began to form themselves in front of her on the green screen. "I saw woods, meadows, rivers, towns of strange and gigantic architecture. . . . One day these apparitions were so real that I was startled by them, and I asked my mother whether she could see them." With hallucinations like these a writer can be picturesque. He has in front of him, although it may be between four walls, a complete landscape. He has only to follow the lines of it and to reproduce the colours, so that in painting imaginary landscapes he can paint them from nature, from this model that appears to him, as though by enchantment. He can, if he likes, count the leaves of the trees and listen to the sound of the growing grass. Still later on, vague religious or philosophical conceptions began to mingle with the fiction that Aurore always had in her mind. To her poetical life, was added a moral life. She always had a romance going on, to which she was constantly adding another chapter, like so many links in a never-ending chain. She now gave a hero to her romance, a hero whose name was Corambe. He was her ideal, a man whom she had made her god. Whilst blood was flowing freely on the altars of barbarous gods, on Corambe's altar life and liberty were given to a whole crowd of captive creatures, to a swallow, to a robin-redbreast, and even to a sparrow. We see already in all this her tendency to put moral intentions into her romantic stories, to arrange her adventures in such a way that they should serve as examples for making mankind better. These were the novels, with a purpose, of her twelfth year. Let us now study a striking contrast, by way of observing the first signs of vocation in two totally different novelists. In the beginning of _Facino Cane_, Balzac tells us an incident of the time when, as an aspiring writer, he lived in his attic in the Rue Lesdiguieres. One evening, on coming out of the theatre, he amused himself with following a working-man and his wife from the Boulevard du Pontaux-Choux to the Boulevard Beaumarchais. He listened to them as they talked of the piece they had just seen. They then discussed their business matters, and afterwards house and family affairs. "While listening to this couple," says Balzac, "I entered into their life. I could feel their clothes on my back and, I was walking in their shabby boots." This is the novelist of the objective school, the one who comes out of himself, who ceases to be himself and becomes another person. Instead of this exterior world, to which Balzac adapts himself, Aurore talks to us of an inner world, emanating from her own fancy, the reflection of her own imagination, the echo of her own heart, which is really herself. This explains the difference between Balzac's impersonal novel and George Sand's personal novel. It is just the difference between realistic art, which gives way to the object, and idealistic art, which transforms this according to its own will and pleasure. Up to this time George Sand's ideas had not been put on to paper. Both _Corambe_ and the stories composed between four chairs were merely fancies of a child's mind. Aurore soon began to write, though. She had composed two novels while in the convent, one of which was religious and the other a pastoral story. She was wise enough to tear them both up. On leaving the convent she wrote another novel for Rene' de Villeneuve, and this shared the same fate. In 1827, she wrote her _Voyage en Auvergne_, and in 1829, another novel. In her _Histoire de ma vie_ she says of this: "After reading it, I was convinced that it was of no value, but at the same time I was sure I could write a better one. . . . I saw that I could write quickly and easily, and without feeling any fatigue. The ideas that were lying dormant in my mind were quickened and became connected, by my deductions, as I wrote. With my meditative life, I had observed a great deal, and had understood the various characters which Fate had put in my way, so that I really knew enough of human nature to be able to depict it." She now had that facility, that abundance of matter and that nonchalance which were such characteristic features of her writing. When George Sand began to publish, she had already written a great deal. Her literary formation was complete. We notice this same thing whenever we study the early work of a writer. Genius is revealed to us, perhaps, with a sudden flash, but it has been making its way for a long time underground, so that what we take for a spontaneous burst of genius is nothing but the final effort of a sap which has been slowly accumulating and which from henceforth is all-powerful. George Sand had to go through the inevitable period of feeling her way. We are glad to think that the first book she published was not written by herself alone, so that the responsibility of that execrable novel does not lie solely with her. On the 9th of March, 1831, George Sand wrote to Boucoiran as follows: "Monstrosities are in vogue, so we must invent monstrosities. I am bringing forth a very pleasant one just at present. . . ." This was the novel written in collaboration with Sandeau which appeared under the signature of Jules Sand towards the end of 1831. It was entitled, _Rose et Blanche, ou la Comedienne et la Religieuse_. It begins by a scene in a coach, rather like certain novels by Balzac, but accompanied by insignificant details in the worst taste imaginable. Two girls are travelling in the same coach. Rose is a young comedian, and Sister Blanche is about to become a nun. They separate at Tarbes, and the scene of the story is laid in the region of the Pyrenees, in Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and finishes with the return to Paris. Rose, after an entertainment which is a veritable orgy, is handed over by her mother to a licentious young man. He is ashamed of himself, and, instead of leading Rose astray, he takes her to the Convent of the Augustines, where she finds Sister Blanche once more. Sister Blanche has not yet pronounced her vows, and the proof of this is that she marries Horace. But what a wedding! As a matter of fact, Sister Blanche was formerly named Denise. She was the daughter of a seafaring man of Bordeaux, and was both pretty and foolish. She had been dishonoured by the young libertine whom she is now to marry. The memory of the past comes back to Blanche, and makes her live over again her life as Denise. In the mean time Rose had become a great singer. She now arrives, just in time to be present at her friend's deathbed. She enters the convent herself, and takes the place left vacant by Sister Blanche. The whole of this is absurd and frequently very disagreeable. It is quite easy to distinguish the parts due to the two collaborators, and to see that George Sand wrote nearly all the book. There are the landscapes, Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and a number of recollections of the famous journey to the Pyrenees and of her stay at Guillery with the Dudevant family. The Convent of the Augustines in Paris, with its English nuns and its boarders belonging to the best families, is the one in which Aurore spent three years. The cloister can be recognized, the garden planted with chestnut trees, and the cell from which there was a view over the city. All her dreams seemed so near Heaven there, for the rich, cloudy sky was so near--"that most beautiful and ever-changing sky, perhaps the most beautiful in the world," of which we read in _Rose et Blanche_. But together with this romance of religious life is a libertine novel with stories of orgies, of a certain private house, and of very risky and unpleasant episodes. This is the collaborator's share in the work. The risky parts are Sandeau's. Such, then, is this hybrid composition. It was, in reality, the monstrosity announced by George Sand. It had a certain success, but the person who was most severe in her judgment of it was Sophie-Victoire, George Sand's mother, who had very prudish tastes in literature. This woman is perfectly delightful, and every time we come across her it is a fresh joy. Her daughter was obliged to make some excuse for herself, and this she did by stating that the work was not entirely her own. "I do not approve of a great deal of the nonsense," she writes, "and I only let certain things pass to please my publisher, who wanted something rather lively. . . . I do not like the risky parts myself. . . ." Later on in the same letter, she adds: "There is nothing of the kind in the book I am writing now, and I am using nothing of my collaborator's in this, except his name."(15) (15) _Correspondance_: To her mother, February 22, 1832. This was true. Jules Sand had had his day, and the book of which she now speaks was _Indiana_. She signed this "George Sand." The unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault, some fragments of which we have just read, contains a most interesting letter concerning the composition of _Indiana_. It is dated February 28, 1832. George Sand first insists on the severity of the subject and on its resemblance to life. "It is as simple, as natural and as positive as you could wish," she says. "It is neither romantic, mosaic, nor frantic. It is just ordinary life of the most _bourgeois_ kind, but unfortunately this is much more difficult than exaggerated literature. . . . There is not the least word put in for nothing, not a single description, not a vestige of poetry. There are no unexpected, extraordinary, or amazing situations, but merely four volumes on four characters. With only just these characters, that is, with hidden feelings, everyday thoughts, with friendship, love, selfishness, devotion, self-respect, persistency, melancholy, sorrow, ingratitude, disappointment, hope, and all the mixed-up medley of the human mind, is it possible to write four volumes which will not bore people? I am afraid of boring people, of boring them as life itself does. And yet what is more interesting than the history of the heart, when it is a true history? The main thing is to write true history, and it is just that which is so difficult. . . ." This declaration is rather surprising to any one who reads it to-day. We might ask whether what was natural in 1832 would be natural in 1910? That is not the question which concerns us, though. The important fact to note is that George Sand was no longer attempting to manufacture monstrosities. She was endeavouring to be true, and she wanted above everything else to present a character of woman who would be the typical modern woman. "Noemi (this name was afterwards left to Sandeau, who had used it in _Marianna_. George Sand changed it to that of _Indiana_) is a typical woman, strong and weak, tired even by the weight of the air, but capable of holding up the sky; timid in everyday life, but daring in days of battle; shrewd and clever in seizing the loose threads of ordinary life, but silly and stupid in distinguishing her own interests when it is a question of her happiness; caring little for the world at large, but allowing herself to be duped by one man; not troubling much about her own dignity, but watching over that of the object of her choice; despising the vanities of the times as far as she is concerned, but allowing herself to be fascinated by the man who is full of these vanities. This, I believe," she says, "is the usual woman, an extraordinary mixture of weakness and energy, of grandeur and of littleness, a being ever composed of two opposite natures, at times sublime and at times despicable, clever in deceiving and easily deceived herself." This novel, intended to present to us the modern woman, ought to be styled a "feminist novel." It was also, as regards other points of view. _Indiana_ appeared in May, 1832, _Valentine_ in 1833, and _Jacques_ in 1834. In these three books I should like to show our present feminism, already armed, and introduced to us according to George Sand's early ideas. _Indiana_ is the story of a woman who had made an unfortunate marriage. At the age of nineteen she had married Colonel Delmare. Colonels were very much in vogue in those days, and the fact that he had attained that rank proves that he was much older than she was. Colonel Delmare was an honest, straightforward man in the Pharisaical sense of the word. This simply means that he had never robbed or killed any one. He had no delicacy and no charm, and, fond as he was of his own authority, he was a domestic tyrant. Indiana was very unhappy between this execrable husband and a cousin of hers, Ralph, a man who is twice over English, in the first place because his name is Brown, and then because he is phlegmatic. Ralph is delightful and most excellent, and it is on his account that she is insensible to the charms of Raymon de Ramieres an elegant and distinguished young man who is a veritable lady-killer. Space forbids us to go into all the episodes of this story, but the crisis is that Colonel Delmare is ruined, and his business affairs call him to the Isle of Bourbon. He intends to take Indiana with him, but she refuses to accompany him. She knows quite well that Raymon will do all he can to prevent her going. She hurries away to him, offers herself to him, and volunteers to remain with him always. It is unnecessary to give Raymon's reply to this charming proposal. Poor Indiana receives a very wet blanket on a cold winter's night. She therefore starts for the Isle of Bourbon, and, some time after her arrival there, she gets a letter from Raymon which makes her think that he is very unhappy. She accordingly hastens back to him, but is received by the young wife whom Raymon has just married. It is a very brilliant marriage, and Raymon could not have hoped for anything more satisfactory. Poor Indiana! The Seine, however, is quite near, and she throws herself into it. This was quite safe, as Ralph was there to fish her out again. Ralph was always at hand to fish his cousin out of everything. He is her appointed rescuer, her Newfoundland dog. In the country or in the town, on _terra firma_ or on the boat which takes Indiana to the Isle of Bourbon, we always see Ralph turn up, phlegmatic as usual. Unnecessary to say that Ralph is in love with Indiana. His apparent calmness is put on purposely. It is the snowy covering under which a volcano is burning. His awkward and unprepossessing appearance conceals an exquisite soul. Ralph brings Indiana good news. Colonel Delmare is dead, so that she is free. What will she do now with her liberty? After due deliberation, Ralph and Indiana decide to commit suicide, but they have to agree about the kind of death they will die. Ralph considers that this is a matter of certain importance. He does not care to kill himself in Paris; there are too many people about, so that there is no tranquillity. The Isle of Bourbon seems to him a pleasant place for a suicide. There was a magnificent horizon there; then, too, there was a precipice and a waterfall. . . . Ralph's happy ideas are somewhat sinister, but the couple set out nevertheless for the Isle of Bourbon in search of a propitious waterfall. A sea-voyage, under such circumstances, would be an excellent preparation. When once there, they carry out their plans, and Ralph gives his beloved wise advice at the last moment. She must not jump from the side, as that would be bad. "Throw yourself into the white line that the waterfall makes," he says. "You will then reach the lake with that, and the torrent will plunge you in." This sounds enticing. Such a suicide was considered infinitely poetical at that epoch, and every one pitied Indiana in her troubles. It is curious to read such books calmly a long time afterwards, books which reflect so exactly the sentiments of a certain epoch. It is curious to note how the point of view has changed, and how people and things appear to us exactly the reverse of what they appeared to the author and to contemporaries. As a matter of fact, the only interesting person in all this is Colonel Delmare, or, at any rate, he is the only one of whom Indiana could not complain. He loved her, and he loved no one else but her. The like cannot be said for Indiana. Few husbands would imitate his patience and forbearance, and he certainly allowed his wife the most extraordinary freedom. At one time we find, a young man in Indiana's bedroom, and at another time Indiana in a young man's bedroom. Colonel Delmare receives Raymon at his house in a friendly way, and he tolerates the presence of the sempiternal Ralph in his home. What more can be asked of a husband than to allow his wife to have a man friend and a cousin? Indiana declares that Colonel Delmare has struck her, and that the mark is left on her face. She exaggerated, though, as we know quite well what took place. In reality all this was at Plessis-Picard. Delmare-Dudevant struck Indiana-Aurore. This was certainly too much, but there was no blood shed. As to the other personages, Raymon is a wretched little rascal, who was first the lover of Indiana's maid. He next made love to poor Noun's mistress, and then deserted her to make a rich marriage. Ralph plunges Indiana down a precipice. That was certainly bad treatment for the woman he loved. As regards Indiana, George Sand honestly believed that she had given her all the charms imaginable. As a matter of fact, she did charm the readers of that time. It is from this model that we have one of the favourite types of woman in literature for the next twenty years--the misunderstood woman. The misunderstood woman is pale, fragile, and subject to fainting. Up to page 99 of the book, Indiana has fainted three times. I did not continue counting. This fainting was not the result of bad health. It was the fashion to faint. The days of nerves and languid airs had come back. The women whose grandmothers had walked so firmly to the scaffold, and whose mothers had listened bravely to the firing of the cannon under the Empire, were now depressed and tearful, like so many plaintive elegies. It was just a matter of fashion. The misunderstood woman was supposed to be unhappy with her husband, but she would not have been any happier with another man. Indiana does not find fault with Colonel Delmare for being the husband that he is, but simply for being the husband! "She did not love her husband, for the mere reason, perhaps, that she was told it was her duty to love him and that it had become her second nature, a principle and a law of her conscience to resist inwardly all moral constraint." She affected a most irritating gentleness, an exasperating submissiveness. When she put on her superior, resigned airs, it was enough to unhinge an angel. Besides, what was there to complain about, and why should she not accommodate herself to conditions of existence with which so many others fall in? She must not be compared to others, though. She is eminently a distinguished woman, and she asks without shrinking: "Do you know what it means to love a woman such as I am?" In her long silences and her persistent melancholy, she is no doubt thinking of the love appropriate to a woman such as she is. She was a princess in exile and times were then hard for princesses. That is why the one in question took refuge in her homesick sorrow. All this is what people will not understand. Instead of rising to such sublimities, or of being lost in fogs, they judge from mere facts. And on coming across a young wife who is inclined to prefer a handsome, dark young man to a husband who is turning grey, they are apt to conclude: "Well, this is not the first time we have met with a similar case. It is hardly worth while making such a fuss about a young plague of a woman who wants to go to the bad." It would be very unjust, though, not to recognize that _Indiana_ is a most remarkable novel. There is a certain relief in the various characters, Colonel Delmare, Raymon, Ralph and Inaiana. We ought to question the husbands who married wives belonging to the race of misunderstood women brought into vogue by _Indiana_. _Valentine_, too, is the story of a woman unhappily married. This time the chief _role_ is given to the lover, and not to the woman. Instead of the misunderstood woman, though, we have the typical frenzied lover, created by the romantic school. Louise-Valentine de Raimbault is about to marry Norbert-Evariste de Lansac, when suddenly this young person, who is accustomed to going about in the country round and to the village fetes, falls in love with the nephew of one of her farmers. The young man's name is Benedict, and he is a peasant who has had some education. His mentality is probably that of a present-day elementary school-teacher. Valentine cannot resist him, although we are told that Benedict is not very handsome. It is his soul which Valentine loves in him. Benedict knows very well that he cannot marry Valentine, but he can cause her a great deal of annoyance by way of proving his love. On the night of the wedding he is in the nuptial chamber, from which the author has taken care to banish the husband for the time being. Benedict watches over the slumber of the woman he loves, and leaves her an epistle in which he declares that, after hesitating whether he should kill her husband, her, or himself, or whether he should kill all three, or only select two of the three, and after adopting in turn each of these combinations, he has decided to only kill himself. He is found in a ditch in a terrible plight, but we are by no means rid of him. Benedict is not dead, and he has a great deal of harm to do yet. We shall meet with him again several times, always hidden behind curtains, listening to all that is said and watching all that takes place. At the right moment he comes out with his pistol in his hand. The husband is away during all this time. No one troubles about him, though. He is a bad husband, or rather he is--a husband, and Benedict has nothing to fear as far as he is concerned. But one day a peasant, who does not like the looks of Benedict, attacks him with his pitchfork and puts an end to this valuable life. The question arises, by what right Benedict disturbs Valentine's tranquillity. The answer is by the right of his passion for her. He has an income of about twenty pounds a year. It would be impossible for him to marry on that. What has he to offer to the woman whose peace of mind he disturbs and whose position he ruins? He offers himself. Surely that should be enough. Then, too, it is impossible to reason with individuals of his temperament. We have only to look at him, with his sickly pallor and the restless light in his eyes. We have only to listen to the sound of his voice and his excited speeches. At times he goes in for wild declamation, and immediately afterwards for cold irony and sarcasm. He is always talking of death. When he attempts to shoot himself he always misses, but when Adele d'Hervey resists him, at the time he has taken the name of Antony, he kills her. He is therefore a dangerous madman. We now have two fresh personages for novels, the misunderstood woman and the frenzied lover. It is a pity they do not marry each other, and so rid us of them. We must not lose sight, though, of the fact that, contestable as _Valentine_ certainly is as a novel of passion, there is a pastoral novel of the highest order contained in this book. The setting of the story is delightful. George Sand has placed the scene in that Black Valley which she knew so well and loved so dearly. It is the first of her novels in which she celebrates her birthplace. There are walks along the country pathways, long meditations at night, village weddings and fetes. All the poetry and all the picturesqueness of the country transform and embellish the story. In _Jacques_ we have the history of a man unhappily married, and this, through the reciprocity which is inevitable under the circumstances, is another story of a woman unhappily married. At the age of thirty-five, after a stormy existence, in which years count double, Jacques marries Fernande, a woman much younger than he is. After a few unhappy months he sees the first clouds appearing in his horizon. He sends for his sister Sylvia to come and live with himself and his wife. Sylvia, like Jacques, is an exceptional individual. She is proud, haughty and reserved. It can readily be imagined that, the presence of this pythoness does not tend to restore the confidence which has become somewhat shaken between the husband and wife. A young man named Octave, who was at first attracted by Sylvia, soon begins to prefer Fernande, who is not a romantic, ironical and sarcastic woman like her sister-in-law. He fancies that he should be very happy with the gentle Fernande. Jacques discovers that Octave and his wife are in love with each other. There are various alternatives for him. He can dismiss his rival, kill him, or merely pardon him. Each alternative is a very ordinary way out of the difficulty, and Jacques cannot resign himself to anything ordinary. He therefore asks his wife's lover whether he really cares for his wife, whether he is in earnest, and also whether this attachment will be durable. Quite satisfied with the result of this examination, he leaves Fernande to Octave. He then disappears and kills himself, but he takes all necessary precautions to avert the suspicion of suicide, in order not to sadden Octave and Fernande in their happiness. He had not been able to keep his wife's love, but he does not wish to be the jailer of the woman who no longer loves him. Fernande has a right to happiness and, as he has not been able to ensure that happiness, he must give place to another man. It is a case of suicide as a duty. There are instances when a husband should know that it is his duty to disappear. . . . Jacques is "a stoic." George Sand has a great admiration for such characters. She gives us her first sketch of one in Ralph, but Jacques is presented to us as a sublime being. Personally, I look upon him as a mere greenhorn, or, as would be said in Wagner's dramas, a "pure simpleton." He did everything to ruin his home life. His young wife had confidence in him; she was gay and naive. He went about, folding his arms in a tragic way. He was absent-minded and gloomy, and she began to be awed by him. One day, when, in her sorrow for having displeased him, she flung herself on her knees, sobbing, instead of lifting her up tenderly, he broke away from her caresses, telling her furiously to get up and never to behave in such a way again in his presence. After this he puts his sister, the "bronze woman," between them, and he invites Octave to live with them. When he has thus destroyed his wife's affection for him, in spite of the fact that at one time she wished for nothing better than to love him, he goes away and gives up the whole thing. All that is too easy. One of Meilhac's heroines says to a man, who declares that he is going to drown himself for her sake, "Oh yes, that is all very fine. You would be tranquil at the bottom of the water! But what about me? . . ." In this instance Jacques is tranquil at the bottom of his precipice, but Fernande is alive and not at all tranquil. Jacques never rises to the very simple conception of his duty, which was that, having made a woman the companion of his life's journey, he had no right to desert her on the way. Rather than blame himself, though, Jacques prefers incriminating the institution of marriage. The criticism of this institution is very plain in the novel we are considering. In her former novels George, Sand treated all this in a more or less vague way. She now states her theory clearly. Jacques considers that marriage is a barbarous institution. "I have not changed my opinion," he says, "and I am not reconciled to society. I consider marriage one of the most barbarous institutions ever invented. I have no doubt that it will be abolished when the human species makes progress in the direction of justice and reason. Some bond that will be more human and just as sacred will take the place of marriage and provide for the children born of a woman and a man, without fettering their liberty for ever. Men are too coarse at present, and women too cowardly, to ask for a nobler law than the iron one which governs them. For individuals without conscience and without virtue, heavy chains are necessary." We also hear Sylvia's ideas and the plans she proposes to her brother for the time when marriage is abolished. "We will adopt an orphan, imagine that it is our child, and bring it up in our principles. We could educate a child of each sex, and then marry them when the time came, before God, with no other temple than the desert and no priest but love. We should have formed their souls to respect truth and justice, so that, thanks to us, there would be one pure and happy couple on the face of the earth." The suppression of marriage, then, was the idea, and, in a future more or less distant, free love! It is interesting to discover by what series of deductions George Sand proceeds and on what principles she bases everything. When once her principles are admitted, the conclusion she draws from them is quite logical. What is her essential objection to marriage? The fact that marriage fetters the liberty of two beings. "Society dictates to you the formula of an oath. You must swear that you will be faithful and obedient to me, that you will never love any one but me, and that you will obey me in everything. One of those oaths is absurd and the other vile. You cannot be answerable for your heart, even if I were the greatest and most perfect of men." Now comes the question of love for another man. Until then it was considered that such love was a weakness, and that it might become a fault. But, after all, is not passion a fatal and irresistible thing? "No human creature can command love, and no one is to be blamed for feeling it or for ceasing to feel it. What lowers a woman is untruth." A little farther on we are told: "They are not guilty, for they love each other. There is no crime where there is sincere love." According to this theory, the union of man and woman depends on love alone. When love disappears, the union cannot continue. Marriage is a human institution, but passion is of Divine essence. In case of any dissension, it is always the institution of marriage which is to be blamed. The sole end in view of marriage is charm, either that of sentiment or that of the senses, and its sole object is the exchange of two fancies. As the oath of fidelity is either a stupidity or a degradation, can anything more opposed to common sense, and a more absolute ignorance of all that is noble and great, be imagined than the effort mankind is making, against all the chances of destruction by which he is surrounded, to affirm, in face of all that changes, his will and intention to continue? We all remember the heart-rending lamentation of Diderot: "The first promises made between two creatures of flesh," he says, "were made at the foot of a rock crumbling to dust. They called on Heaven to be a witness of their constancy, but the skies in the Heaven above them were never the same for an instant. Everything was changing, both within them and around them, and they believed that their heart would know no change. Oh, what children, what children always!" Ah, not children, but what men rather! We know these fluctuations in our affections. And it is because we are afraid of our own fragility that we call to our aid the protection of laws, to which submission is no slavery, as it is voluntary submission. Nature does not know these laws, but it is by them that we distinguish ourselves from Nature and that we rise above it. The rock on which we tread crumbles to dust, the sky above our heads is never the same an instant, but, in the depth of our hearts, there is the moral law--and that never changes! In order to reply to these paradoxes, where shall we go in search of our arguments? We can go to George Sand herself. A few years later, during her intercourse with Lamennals, she wrote her famous _Lettres a Marcie_ for _Le Monde_. She addresses herself to an imaginary correspondent, to a woman supposed to be suffering from that agitation and impatience which she had experienced herself. "You are sad," says George Sand to her, "you are suffering, and you are bored to death." We will now take note of some of the advice she gives to this woman. She no longer believes that it belongs to human dignity to have the liberty of changing. "The one thing to which man aspires, the thing which makes him great, is permanence in the moral state. All which tends to give stability to our desires, to strengthen the human will and affections, tends to bring about the _reign of God_ on earth, which means love and the practice of truth." She then speaks of vain dreams. "Should we even have time to think about the impossible if we did all that is necessary? Should we despair ourselves if we were to restore hope in those people who have nothing left them but hope?" With regard to feminist claims, she says: "Women are crying out that they are slaves: let them wait until men are free! . . . In the mean time we must not compromise the future by our impatience with the present. . . . It is to be feared that vain attempts of this kind and unjustifiable claims may do harm to what is styled at present the cause of women. There is no doubt that women have certain rights and that they are suffering injustice. They ought to lay claim to a better future, to a wise independence, to a greater participation in knowledge, and to more respect, interest and esteem from men. This future, though, is in their own hands." This is wisdom itself. It would be impossible to put it more clearly, and to warn women in a better way, that the greatest danger for their cause would be the triumph of what is called by an ironical term--feminism. These retractions, though, have very little effect. There is a certain piquancy in showing up an author who is in contradiction with himself, in showing how he refutes his own paradoxes. But these are striking paradoxes which are not readily forgotten. What I want to show is that in these first novels by George Sand we have about the whole of the feminist programme of to-day. Everything is there, the right to happiness, the necessity of reforming marriage, the institution, in a more or less near future, of free unions. Our feminists of to-day, French, English, or Norwegian authoresses, and theoricians like Ellen Key, with her book on _Love and Marriage_, all these rebels have invented nothing. They have done nothing but take up once more the theories of the great feminist of 1832, and expose them with less lyricism but with more cynicism. George Sand protested against the accusation of having aimed at attacking institutions in her feminist novels. She was wrong in protesting, as it is just this which gives her novels their value and significance. It is this which dates them and which explains the enormous force of expansion that they have had. They came just after the July Revolution, and we must certainly consider them as one of the results of that. A throne had just been overturned, and, by way of pastime, churches were being pillaged and an archbishop's palace had been sackaged. Literature was also attempting an insurrection, by way of diversion. For a long time it had been feeding the revolutionary ferment which it had received from romanticism. Romanticism had demanded the freedom of the individual, and the writers at the head of this movement were Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo and Dumas. They claimed this freedom for Rene, for Hermann and for Antony, who were men. An example had been given, and women meant to take advantage of it. Women now began their revolution. Under all these influences, and in the particular atmosphere now created, the matrimonial mishap of Baronne Dudevant appeared to her of considerable importance. She exaggerated and magnified it until it became of social value. Taking this private mishap as her basis, she puts into each of her heroines something of herself. This explains the passionate tone of the whole story. And this passion could not fail to be contagious for the women who read her stories, and who recognized in the novelist's cause their own cause and the cause of all women. This, then, is the novelty in George Sand's way of presenting feminist grievances. She had not invented these grievances. They were already contained in Madame de Stael's books, and I have not forgotten her. Delphine and Corinne, though, were women of genius, and presented to us as such. In order to be pitied by Madame de Stael, it was absolutely necessary to be a woman of genius. For a woman to be defended by George Sand, it was only necessary that she should not love her husband, and this was a much more general thing. George Sand had brought feminism within the reach of all women. This is the characteristic of these novels, the eloquence of which cannot be denied. They are novels for the vulgarization of the feminist theory. IV THE ROMANTIC ESCAPADE THE VENICE ADVENTURE George Sand did not have to wait long for success. She won fame with her first book. With her second one she became rich, or what she considered rich. She tells us that she sold it for a hundred and sixty pounds! That seemed to her the wealth of the world, and she did not hesitate to leave her attic on the Quay St. Michel for a more comfortable flat on Quay Malaquais, which de Latouche gave up to her. There was, at that time, a personage in Paris who had begun to exercise a sort of royal tyranny over authors. Francois Buloz had taken advantage of the intellectual effervescence of 1831 to found the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. He was venturesome, energetic, original, very shrewd, though apparently rough, obliging, in spite of his surly manners. He is still considered the typical and traditional review manager. He certainly possessed the first quality necessary for this function. He discovered talented writers, and he also knew how to draw from them and squeeze out of them all the literature they contained. Tremendously headstrong, he has been known to keep a contributor under lock and key until his article was finished. Authors abused him, quarrelled with him, and then came back to him again. A review which had, for its first numbers, George Sand, Vigny, Musset, Merimee, among many others, as contributors, may be said to have started well. George Sand tells us that after a battle with the _Revue de Paris_ and the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, both of which papers wanted her work, she bound herself to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, which was to pay her a hundred and sixty pounds a year for thirty-two pages of writing every six weeks. In 1833 the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ published Lelia, and on January 1, 1876, it finished publishing the _Tour de Percemont_. This means an uninterrupted collaboration, extending over a period of forty-three years. The literary critic of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ at that time was a man who was very much respected and very little liked, or, in other words, he was universally detested. This critic was Gustave Planche. He took his own _role_ too seriously, and endeavoured to put authors on their guard about their faults. Authors did not appreciate this. He endeavoured, too, to put the public on guard against its own infatuations. The public did not care for this. He sowed strife and reaped revenge. This did not stop him, though, for he went calmly on continuing his executions. His impassibility was only feigned, and this is the curious side of the story. He suffered keenly from the storms of hostility which he provoked. He had a kindly disposition at bottom and tender places in his heart. He was rather given to melancholy and intensely pessimistic. To relieve his sadness, he gave himself up to hard work, and he was thoroughly devoted to art. In order to comprehend this portrait and to see its resemblance, we, who knew our great Brunetiere, have only to think of him. He, too, was noble, fervent and combative, and he sought in his exclusive devotion to literature a diversion from his gloomy pessimism, underneath which was concealed such kindliness. It seemed with him, too, as though he took a pride in making a whole crowd of enemies, whilst in reality the discovery of every fresh adversary caused him great suffering. When _Lelia_ appeared, the novel was very badly treated in _L'Europe litteraire_. Planche challenged the writer of the article, a certain Capo de Feuillide, to a duel. So much for the impassibility of severe critics. The duel took place, and afterwards there was a misunderstanding between George Sand and Planche. From that time forth critics have given up fighting duels for the sake of authors. About the same time, George Sand made use of Sainte-Beuve as her confessor. He seemed specially indicated for this function. In the first place, he looked rather ecclesiastical, and then he had a taste for secrets, and more particularly for whispered confessions. George Sand had absolute confidence in him. She considered that he had an almost angelic nature. In reality, just about that time, the angelic man was endeavouring to get into the good graces of the wife of his best friend, and was writing his _Livre d'Amour_, and divulging to the world a weakness of which he had taken advantage. This certainly was the most villainous thing a man could do. But then he, too, was in love and was struggling and praying. George Sand declares her veneration for him, and she constituted herself his penitent. She begins her confession by an avowal that must have been difficult for her. She tells of her intimacy with Merimee, an intimacy which was of short duration and very unsatisfactory. She had been fascinated by Merimee's art. "For about a week," she says, "I thought he had the secret of happiness." At the end of the week she was "weeping with disgust, suffering and discouragement." She had hoped to find in him the devotion of a consoler, but she found "nothing but cold and bitter jesting."(16) This experiment had also proved a failure. (16) Compare _Lettres a Sainte-Beuve_. Such were the conditions in which George Sand found herself at this epoch. Her position was satisfactory; she might have been calm and independent. Her inner life was once more desolate, and she was thoroughly discouraged. She felt that she had lived centuries, that she had undergone torture, that her heart had aged twenty years, and that nothing was any pleasure to her now. Added to all this, public life saddened her, for the horizon had clouded over. The boundless hopes and the enthusiasm of 1831 were things of the past. "The Republic, as it was dreamed of in July," she writes, "has ended in the massacres of Warsaw and in the holocaust of the Saint-Merry cloister. The cholera has just been raging. Saint Simonism has fallen through before it had settled the great question of love."(17) (17) _Histoire de ma vie_. Depression had come after over-excitement. This is a phenomenon frequently seen immediately after political convulsions. It might be called the perpetual failure of revolutionary promises. It was under all these influences that George Sand wrote _Lelia_. She finished it in July, and it appeared in August, 1833. It is absolutely impossible to give an analysis of _Lelia_. There really is no subject. The personages are not beings of flesh and blood. They are allegories strolling about in the garden of abstractions. Lelia is a woman who has had her trials in life. She has loved and been disappointed, so that she can no longer love at all. She reduces the gentle poet Stenio to despair. He is much younger than she is, and he has faith in life and in love. His ingenuous soul begins to wither and to lose its freshness, thanks to the scepticism of the beautiful, disdainful, ironical and world-weary Lelia. This strange person has a sister Pulcherie, a celebrated courtesan, whose insolent sensuality is a set-off to the other one's mournful complaints. We have here the opposition of Intelligence and of the Flesh, of Mind and Matter. Then comes Magnus, the priest, who has lost his faith, and for whom Lelia is a temptation, and after him we have Trenmor, Lelia's great friend, Trenmor, the sublime convict. As a young man he had been handsome. He had loved and been young. He had known what it was to be only twenty years of age. "The only thing was, he had known this at the age of sixteen" (!!) He had then become a gambler, and here follows an extraordinary panegyric on the fatal passion for gambling. Trenmor ruins himself, borrows without paying back, and finally swindles "an old millionaire who was himself a defrauder and a dissipated man" out of a hundred francs. Apparently the bad conduct of the man Trenmor robs, excuses the swindling. He is condemned to five years of hard labour. He undergoes his punishment, and is thereby regenerated. "What if I were to tell you," writes George Sand, "that such as he now is, crushed, with a tarnished reputation, ruined, I consider him superior to all of us, as regards the moral life. As he had deserved punishment, he was willing to bear it. He bore it, living for five years bravely and patiently among his abject companions. He has come back to us out of that abominable sewer holding his head up, calm, purified, pale as you see him, but handsome still, like a creature sent by God." We all know how dear convicts are to the hearts of romantic people. There is no need for me to remind you how they have come to us recently, encircled with halos of suffering and of purity. We all remember Dostoiewsky's _Crime and Punishment_ and Tolstoi's _Resurrection_. When the virtue of expiation and the religion of human suffering came to us from Russia, we should have greeted them as old acquaintances, if certain essential works in our own literature, of which these books are the issue, had not been unknown to us. The last part of the novel is devoted to Stenio. Hurt by Lelia's disdain, which has thrown him into the arms of her sister Pulcherie, he gives himself up to debauch. We find him at a veritable orgy in Pulcherie's house. Later on he is in a monastery at Camaldules, talking to Trenmor and Magnus. In such books we must never be astonished. . . . There is a long speech by Stenio, addressed to Don Juan, whom he regrets to have taken as his model. The poor young man of course commits suicide. He chooses drowning as the author evidently prefers that mode of suicide. Lelia arrives in time to kneel down by the corpse of the young man who has been her victim. Magnus then appears on the scene, exactly at the right moment, to strangle Lelia. Pious hands prepare Lelia and Stenio for their burial. They are united and yet separated up to their very death. The summing up we have given is the original version of _Lelia_. In 1836, George Sand touched up this work, altering much of it and spoiling, what she altered. It is a pity that her new version, which is longer, heavier and more obscure, should have taken the place of the former one. In its first form _Lelia_ is a work of rare beauty, but with the beauty of a poem or an oratorio. It is made of the stuff of which dreams are composed. It is a series of reveries, adapted to the soul of 1830. At every different epoch there is a certain frame of mind, and certain ideas are diffused in the air which we find alike in the works of the writers of that time, although they did not borrow them from each other. _Lelia_ is a sort of summing up of the themes then in vogue in the personal novel and in lyrical poetry. The theme of that suffering which is beneficent and inspiring is contained in the following words: "Come back to me, Sorrow! Why have you left me? It is by grief alone that man is great." This is worthy of Chateaubriand. The theme of melancholy is as follows: "The moon appeared. . . . What is the moon, and what is its nocturnal magic to me? One hour more or less is nothing to me." This might very well be Lamartine. We then have the malediction pronounced in face of impassible Nature: "Yes, I detested that radiant and magnificent Nature, for it was there before me in all its stupid beauty, silent and proud, for us to gaze on, believing that it was enough to merely show itself." This reminds us of Vigny in his _Maison du berger_. Then we have the religion of love: "Doubt God, doubt men, doubt me if you like, but do not doubt love." This is Musset. But the theme which predominates, and, as we have compared all this to music, we might say the _leit-motiv_ of all, is that of desolation, of universal despair, of the woe of life. It is the same lamentation which, ever since Werther, was to be heard throughout all literature. It is the identical suffering which Rene, Obermann and Lara had been repeating to all the echoes. The elements of it were the same: pride which prevents us from adapting ourselves to the conditions of universal life, an abuse of self-analysis which opens up our wounds again and makes them bleed, the wild imagination which presents to our eyes the deceptive mirage of Promised Lands from which we are ever exiles. Lelia personifies, in her turn, the "_mal du siecle_." Stenio reproaches her with only singing grief and doubt. "How many, times," he says, "have you appeared to me as typical of the indescribable suffering in which mankind is plunged by the spirit of inquiry! With your beauty and your sadness, your world-weariness and your scepticism, do you not personify the excess of grief produced by the abuse of thought?" He then adds: "There is a great deal of pride in this grief, Lelia!" It was undoubtedly a malady, for Lelia had no reason to complain of life any more than her brothers in despair. It is simply that the general conditions of life which all people have to accept seem painful to them. When we are well the play of our muscles is a joy to us, but when we are ill we feel the very weight of the atmosphere, and our eyes are hurt by the pleasant daylight. When _Lelia_ appeared George Sand's old friends were stupefied. "What, in Heaven's name, is this?" wrote Jules Neraud, the _Malgache._ "Where have you been in search of this? Why have you written such a book? Where has it sprung from, and what is it for? . . . This woman is a fantastical creature. She is not at all like you. You are lively and can dance a jig; you can appreciate butterflies and you do not despise puns. You sew and can make jam very well."(18) (18) _Histoire de ma vie_. It certainly was not her portrait. She was healthy and believed in life, in the goodness of things and in the future of humanity, just as Victor Hugo and Dumas _pere_, those other forces of Nature, did, at about the same time. A soul foreign to her own had entered into her, and it was the romantic soul. With the magnificent power of receptivity which she possessed, George Sand welcomed all the winds which came to her from the four quarters of romanticism. She sent them back with unheard-of fulness, sonorous depth and wealth of orchestration. From that time forth a woman's voice could be heard, added to all the masculine voices which railed against life, and the woman's voice dominated them all! In George Sand's psychological evolution, _Lelia_ is just this: the beginning of the invasion of her soul by romanticism. It was a borrowed individuality, undoubtedly, but it was not something to be put on and off at will like a mask. It adhered to the skin. It was all very fine for George Sand to say to Sainte-Beuve: "Do not confuse the man himself with the suffering. . . . And do not believe in all my satanical airs. . . . This is simply a style that I have taken on, I assure you. . . ." Sainte-Beuve had every reason to be alarmed, and the confessor was quite right in his surmises. The crisis of romanticism had commenced. It was to take an acute form and to reach its paroxysm during the Venice escapade. It is from this point of view that we will study the famous episode, which has already been studied by so many other writers. No subject, perhaps, has excited the curiosity of readers like this one, and always without satisfying that curiosity. A library could be formed of the books devoted to this subject, written within the last ten years. Monsieur Rocheblave, Monsieur Maurice Clouard, Dr. Cabanes, Monsieur Marieton, the enthusiastic collector, Spoelberch de Lovenjoul and Monsieur Decori have all given us their contributions to the debate.(19) Thanks to them, we have the complete correspondence of George Sand and Musset, the diary of George Sand and Pagello's diary. (19) Consult: Rocheblave, _La fin dune Legende;_ Maurice Clouard, _Documents inedits sur A. de Musset;_ Dr. Cabanes, _Musset et le Dr. Pagello_; Paul Marieton, _Une histoire d'amour;_ Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, _La vrai histoire d'Elle et Lui;_ Decori, _Lettres de George Sand et Musset._ With the aid of all these documents Monsieur Charles Maurras has written a book entitled _Les Amants de Venise_. It is the work of a psychologist and of an artist. The only fault I have to find with it is that the author of it seems to see calculation and artifice everywhere, and not to believe sufficiently in sincerity. We must not forget, either, that as early as the year 1893, all that is essential had been told us by that shrewd writer and admirable woman, Arvede Barine. The chapter which she devotes to the Venice episode, in her biography of Alfred de Musset, is more clear and simple, and at the same time deeper than anything that had yet been written. It is a subject that has been given up to the curiosity of people and to their disputes. The strange part is the zeal which at once animates every one who takes part in this controversy. The very atmosphere seems to be impregnated with strife, and those interested become, at once, the partisans of George Sand or the partisans of Musset. The two parties only agree on one point, and that is, to throw all the blame on the client favoured by their adversary. I must confess that I cannot take a passionate interest in a discussion, the subject of which we cannot properly judge. According to _Mussetistes_, it was thanks to George Sand that the young poet was reduced to the despair which drove him to debauchery. On the other hand, if we are to believe the _Sandistes_, George Sand's one idea in interesting herself in Musset was to rescue him from debauchery and convert him to a better life. I listen to all such pious interpretations, but I prefer others for myself. I prefer seeing the physiognomy of each of the two lovers standing out, as it does, in powerful relief. It is the custom, too, to pity these two unfortunates, who suffered so much. At the risk of being taken for a very heartless man, I must own that I do not pity them much. The two lovers wished for this suffering, they wanted to experience the incomparable sensations of it, and they got enjoyment and profit from this. They knew that they were working for posterity. "Posterity will repeat our names like those of the immortal lovers whose two names are only one at present, like Romeo and Juliette, like Heloise and Abelard. People will never speak of one of us without speaking of the other." Juliette died at the age of fifteen and Heloise entered a convent. The Venice lovers did not have to pay for their celebrity as dearly as that. They wanted to give an example, to light a torch on the road of humanity. "People shall know my story," writes George Sand. "I will write it. . . . Those who follow along the path I trod will see where it leads." _Et nunc erudimini_. Let us see for ourselves, and learn. Their _liaison_ dates from August, 1833. George Sand was twenty-nine years of age. It was the time of her greatest charm. We must try to imagine the enchantress as she then was. She was not tall and she was delightfully slender, with an extraordinary-looking face of dark, warm colouring. Her thick hair was very dark, and her eyes, her large eyes, haunted Musset for years after. "_Ote-moi, memoire importune_, _Ote-moi ces yeux que je vois toujours!_" he writes. And this woman, who could have been loved passionately, merely for her charm as a woman, was a celebrity! She was a woman of genius! Alfred de Musset was twenty-three years old. He was elegant, witty, a flirt, and when he liked he could be irresistible. He had won his reputation by that explosion of gaiety and imagination, _Les Contes d'Espagne el d'Italle_. He had written some fine poetry, dreamy, disturbing and daring. He had also given _Les Caprices de Marianne_, in which he figures twice over himself, for he was both Octave the sceptic, the disillusioned man, and Coelio, the affectionate, candid Coelio. He imagined himself Rolla. It was he, and he alone, who should have been styled the sublime boy. And so here they both are. We might call them Lelia and Stenio, but _Lelia_ was written before the Venice adventure. She was not the reflection of it, but rather the presentiment. This is worthy of notice, but not at all surprising. Literature sometimes imitates reality, but how much more often reality is modelled on literature! It was as though George Sand had foreseen her destiny, for she had feared to meet Musset. On the 11th of March, she writes as follows to Sainte-Beuve: "On second thoughts, I do not want you to bring Alfred de Musset. He is a great dandy. We should not suit each other, and I was really more curious to see him than interested in him." A little later on, though, at a dinner at the _Freres provencaux_, to which Buloz invited his collaborators, George Sand found herself next Alfred de Musset. She invited him to call on her, and when _Lelia_ was published she sent him a copy, with the following dedication written in the first volume: _A Monsieur mon gamin d'Allred_; and in the second volume: _A Monsieur le vicomte Allred de Musset, hommage respectueux de son devoue serviteur George Sand_. Musset replied by giving his opinion of the new book. Among the letters which followed, there is one that begins with these words: "My dear George, I have something silly and ridiculous to tell you. I am foolishly writing, instead of telling you, as I ought to have done, after our walk. I am heartbroken to-night that I did not tell you. You will laugh at me, and you will take me for a man who simply talks nonsense. You will show me the door, and fancy that I am not speaking the truth. . . . I am in love with you. . . ." She did not laugh at him, though, and she did not show him the door. Things did not drag on long, evidently, as she writes to her confessor, Sainte-Beuve, on the 25th of August: "I have fallen in love, and very seriously this time, with Alfred de Musset." How long was this to last? She had no idea, but for the time being she declared that she was absolutely happy. "I have found a candour, a loyalty and an affection which delight me. It is the love of a young man and the friendship of a comrade." There was a honeymoon in the little flat looking on the Quay Malaquals. Their friends shared the joy of the happy couple, as we see by Musset's frolicsome lines: _George est dans sa chambrette, Entre deux pots de fleurs, Fumiant sa cigarette, Les yeux baignes de pleurs._ _Buloz assis par terre Lui fait de doux serments, Solange par derriere Gribouille ses romans._ _Plante commme une borne_, _Boucoiran tout crott_, _Contemple d'un oeil morne_ _Musset tout debraille, etc._ It is evident that, as poetry, this does not equal the _Nuits._ In the autumn they went for a honeymoon trip to Fontainebleau. It was there that the strange scene took place which is mentioned in _Elle et Lui_. One evening when they were in the forest, Musset had an extraordinary hallucination, which he has himself described: _Dans tin bois, sur une bruyere, Au pied d'un arbre vint s'asseoir Un jeune homme vetu de noir Qui me ressemblail comme un frere._ _Le lui demandais mon chemin, Il tenait un luth d'ue main, De l'autre un bouquet d'eglantine. Il me fit tin salut d'ami Et, se detournant a demu, Me montra du doigt la colline._ He really saw this "double," dressed in black, which was to visit him again later on. His _Nuit de decembre_ was written from it. They now wanted to see Italy together. Musset had already written on Venice; he now wanted to go there. Madame de Musset objected to this, but George Sand promised so sincerely that she would be a mother to the young man that finally his own mother gave her consent. On the evening of December 12, 1833, Paul de Musset accompanied the two travellers to the mail-coach. On the boat from Lyons to Avignon they met with a big, intelligent-looking man. This was Beyle-Stendhal, who was then Consul at Civita-Vecchia. He was on his way to his post. They enjoyed his lively conversation, although he made fun of their illusions about Italy and the Italian character. He made fun, though, of everything and of every one, and they felt that he was only being witty and trying to appear unkind. At dinner he drank too much, and finished by dancing round the table in his great fur-lined boots. Later on he gave them some specimens of his obscene conversation, so that they were glad to continue their journey without him. On the 28th the travellers reached Florence. The aspect of this city and his researches in the _Chroniques florentines_ supplied the poet with the subject for _Lorenzaccio_. It appears that George Sand and Musset each treated this subject, and that a _Lorenzaccio_ by George Sand exists. I have not read it, but I prefer Musset's version. They reached Venice on January 19, 1834, and put up at the Hotel Danieli. By this time they were at loggerheads. The cause of their quarrel and disagreement is not really known, and the activity of retrospective journalists has not succeeded in finding this out. George Sand's letters only give details about their final quarrel. On arriving, George Sand was ill, and this exasperated Musset. He was annoyed, and declared that a woman out of sorts was very trying. There are good reasons for believing that he had found her very trying for some time. He was very elegant and she a learned "white blackbird." He was capricious and she a placid, steady _bourgeois_ woman, very hard-working and very regular in the midst of her irregularity. He used to call her "personified boredom, the dreamer, the silly woman, the nun," when he did not use terms which we cannot transcribe. The climax was when he said to her: "I was mistaken, George, and I beg your pardon, for I do not love you." Wounded and offended, she replied: "We do not love each other any longer, and we never really loved each other." They therefore took back their independence. This is a point to note, as George Sand considered this fact of the greatest importance, and she constantly refers to it. She was from henceforth free, as regarded her companion. Illness kept them now at Venice. George Sand's illness first and then Musset's alarming malady. He had high fever, accompanied by chest affection and attacks of delirium which lasted six consecutive hours, during which it took four men to hold him. George Sand was an admirable nurse. This must certainly be acknowledged. She sat up with him at night and she nursed him by day, and, astonishing woman that she was, she was also able to work and to earn enough to pay their common expenses. This is well known, but I am able to give another proof of it, in the letters which George Sand wrote from Venice to Buloz. These letters have been communicated to me by Madame Pailleron, _nee_ Buloz, and by Madame Landouzy, _veuve_ Buloz, whom I thank for the public and for myself. The following are a few of the essential passages: "February 4. _Read this when you are alone._ "MY DEAR BULOZ,--Your reproaches reach me at a miserable moment. If you have received my letter, you already know that I do not deserve them. A fortnight ago I was well again and working. Alfred was working too, although he was not very well and had fits of feverishness. About five days ago we were both taken ill, almost at the same time. I had an attack of dysentery, which caused me horrible suffering. I have not yet recovered from it, but I am strong enough, anyhow, to nurse him. He was seized with a nervous and inflammatory fever, which has made such rapid progress that the doctor tells me he does not know what to think about it. We must wait for the thirteenth or fourteenth day before knowing whether his life is in danger. And what will this thirteenth or fourteenth day be? Perhaps his last one? I am in despair, overwhelmed with fatigue, suffering horribly, and awaiting who knows what future? How can I give myself up to literature or to anything in the world at such a time? I only know that our entire fortune, at present, consists of sixty francs, that we shall have to spend an enormous amount at the chemist's, for the nurse and doctor, and that we are at a very expensive hotel. We were just about to leave it and go to a private house. Alfred cannot be moved now, and even if everything should go well, he probably cannot be moved for a month. We shall have to pay one term's rent for nothing, and we shall return to France, please God. If my ill-luck continues, and if Alfred should die, I can assure you that I do not care what happens after to me. If God allows Alfred to recover, I do not know how we shall pay the expenses of his illness and of his return to France. The thousand francs that you are to send me will not suffice, and I do not know what we shall do. At any rate, do not delay sending that, as, by the time it arrives, it will be more than necessary. I am sorry about the annoyance you are having with the delay for publishing, but you can now judge whether it is my fault. If only Alfred had a few quiet days, I could soon finish my work. But he is in a frightful state of delirium and restlessness. I cannot leave him an instant. I have been nine hours writing this letter. Adieu, my friend, and pity me. "GEORGE. "Above everything, do not tell any one, not any one in the world, that Alfred is ill. If his mother heard (and it only needs two persons for telling a secret to all Paris) she would go mad. If she has to be told, let who will undertake to tell her, but if in a fortnight Alfred is out of danger, it is useless for her to grieve now. Adieu." "February 13, 1834. "My friend, Alfred is saved. There has been no fresh attack, and we have nearly reached the fourteenth day without the improvement having altered. After the brain affection inflammation of the lungs declared itself, and this rather alarmed us for two days. . . . He is extremely weak at present, and he wanders occasionally. He has to be nursed night and day. Do not imagine, therefore, that I am only making pretexts for the delay in my work. I have not undressed for eight nights. I sleep on a sofa, and have to get up at any minute. In spite of this, ever since I have been relieved in my mind about the danger, I have been able to write a few pages in the mornings while he is resting. You may be sure that I should like to be able to take advantage of this time to rest myself. Be assured, my friend, that I am not short of courage, nor yet of the will to work. You are not more anxious than I am that I should carry out my engagements. You know that a debt makes me smart like a wound. But you are friend enough to make allowances for my situation and not to leave me in difficulties. I am spending very wretched days here at this bedside, for the slightest sound, the slightest movement causes me constant terror. In this disposition of mind I shall not write any light works. They will be heavy, on the contrary, like my fatigue and my sadness. "Do not leave me without money, I beseech you, or I do not know what will happen to me. I spend about twenty francs a day in medicine of all sorts. We do not know how to keep him alive. . . ." These letters give the lie to some of the gossip that has been spread abroad with regard to the episode of the Hotel Danieli. And I too, thanks to these letters, shall have put an end to a legend! In the second volume of Wladimir Karenine's work on George Sand, on page 61, we have the following words-- "Monsieur Plauchut tells us that, according to Buloz, Musset had been enticed into a gambling hell during his stay in Venice, and had lost about four hundred pounds there. The imprudent young man could not pay this debt of honour, and he never would have been able to do so. He had to choose between suicide or dishonour. George Sand did not hesitate a moment. She wrote at once to the manager of the _Revue_, asking him to advance the money." And this debt was on her shoulders for a long time. The facts of the case are as follows, according to a letter from George Sand to Buloz: "I beseech you, as a favour, to pay Alfred's debt and to write to him that it is all settled. You cannot imagine the impatience and the disturbance that this little matter cause him. He speaks to me of it every minute, and begs me every day to write to you about it. He owes these three hundred and sixty francs (L14 8_s_.) to a young man he knows very little and who might talk of it to people. . . . You have already advanced much larger sums to him. He has always paid you back, and you are not afraid that this would make you bankrupt. If, through his illness, he should not be able to work for a long time, my work could be used for that, so be at ease. . . . Do this, I beseech you, and write him a short letter to ease his mind at once. I will then read it to him, and this will pacify one of the torments of his poor head. Oh, my friend, if you only knew what this delirium is like! What sublime and awful things he has said, and then what convulsions and shouts! I do not know how he has had strength enough to pull through and how it is that I have not gone mad myself. Adieu, adieu, my friend." There really was a gambling debt, then, but we do not know exactly where it was contracted. It amounted to three hundred and sixty francs, which is very different from the ten thousand francs and the threat of suicide. And now we come to the pure folly! Musset had been attended by a young doctor, Pietro Pagello. He was a straightforward sort of young man, of rather slow intelligence, without much conversation, not speaking French, but very handsome. George Sand fell in love with him. One night, after having scribbled a letter of three pages, she put it into an envelope without any address and gave it to Pagello. He asked her to whom he was to give the letter. George Sand took the envelope back and wrote on it: "To stupid Pagello." We have this declaration, and among other things in the letter are the following lines: "You will not deceive me, anyhow. You will not make any idle promises and false vows. . . . I shall not, perhaps, find in you what I have sought for in others, but, at any rate, I can always believe that you possess it. . . . I shall be able to interpret your meditations and make your silence speak eloquently. . . ." This shows us clearly the kind of charm George Sand found in Pagello. She loved him because he was stupid. The next questions are, when did they become lovers, and how did Musset discover their intimacy? It is quite certain that he suspected it, and that he made Pagello confess his love for George Sand.(20) A most extraordinary scene then took place between the three of them, according to George Sand's own account. "Adieu, then," she wrote to Musset, later on, "adieu to the fine poem of our sacred friendship and of that ideal bond formed between the three of us, when you dragged from him the confession of his love for me and when he vowed to you that he would make me happy. Oh, that night of enthusiasm, when, in spite of us, you joined our hands, saying: 'You love each other and yet you love me, for you have saved me, body and soul." Thus, then, Musset had solemnly abjured his love for George Sand, he had engaged his mistress of the night before to a new lover, and was from henceforth to be their best friend. Such was the ideal bond, such the sacred friendship! This may be considered the romantic escapade. (20) On one of George Sand's unpublished letters to Buloz the following lines are written in the handwriting of Buloz: "In the morning on getting up he discovered, in an adjoining room, a tea-table still set, but with only one cup. "'Did you have tea yesterday evening?' "'Yes,' answered George Sand, 'I had tea with the doctor.' "'Ah, how is it that there is only one cup?' "'The other has been taken away.' "'No, nothing has been taken away. You drank out of the same cup.' "'Even if that were so, you have no longer the right to trouble about such things.' "'I have the right, as I am still supposed to be your lover. You ought at least to show me respect, and, as I am leaving in three days, you might wait until I have gone to do as you like.' "The night following this scene Musset discovered George Sand, crouching on her bed, writing a letter. "'What are you doing?' he asked. "'I am reading,' she replied, and she blew out the candle. "'If you are reading, why do you put the candle out?' "'It went out itself: light it again.' "Alfred de Musset lit it again. "'Ah, so you were reading, and you have no book. Infamous woman, you might as well say that you are writing to your lover.' George Sand had recourse to her usual threat of leaving the house. Alfred de Musset read her up: 'You are thinking of a horrible plan. You want to hurry off to your doctor, pretend that I am mad and that your life is in danger. You will not leave this room. I will keep you from anything so base. If you do go, I will put such an epitaph on your grave that the people who read it will turn pale,' said Alfred with terrible energy. "George Sand was trembling and crying. "'I no longer love you,' Alfred said scoffingly to George Sand. "'It is the right moment to take your poison or to go and drown yourself.' "Confession to Alfred of her secret about the doctor. Reconciliation. Alfred's departure. George Sand's affectionate and enthusiastic letters." Such are the famous episodes of the _tea-cup_ and _the letter_ as Buloz heard them told at the time. Musset returned in March, 1834, leaving George Sand with Pagello in Venice. The sentimental exaggeration continued, as we see from the letters exchanged between Musset and George Sand. When crossing the Simplon the immutable grandeur of the Alps struck Alusset with admiration, and he thought of his two "great friends." His head was evidently turned by the heights from which he looked at things. George Sand wrote to him: "I am not giving you any message from Pagello, except that he is almost as sad as I am at your absence." "He is a fine fellow," answered Musset. "Tell him how much I like him, and that my eyes fill with tears when I think of him." Later on he writes: "When I saw Pagello, I recognized in him the better side of my own nature, but pure and free from the irreparable stains which have ruined mine." "Always treat me like that," writes Musset again. "It makes me feel proud. My dear friend, the woman who talks of her new lover in this way to the one she has given up, but who still loves her, gives him a proof of the greatest esteem that a man can receive from a woman. . . ." That romanticism which made a drama of the situation in _L'Ecole des Femmes_, and another one out of that in the _Precieuses ridicules_, excels in taking tragically situations that belong to comedy and in turning them into the sublime. Meanwhile George Sand had settled down in Venice with Pagello--and with all the family, all the Pagello tribe, with the brother, the sister, to say nothing of the various rivals who came and made scenes. It was the vulgar, ordinary platitude of an Italian intimacy of this kind. In spite of everything, she continued congratulating herself on her choice. "I have my love, my stay here with me. He never suffers, for he is never weak or suspicious. . . . He is calm and good. . . . He loves me and is at peace; he is happy without my having to suffer, without my having to make efforts for his happiness. . . . As for me, I must suffer for some one. It is just this suffering which nurtures my maternal solicitude, etc. . . ." She finally begins to weary of her dear Pagello's stupidity. It occurred to her to take him with her to Paris, and that was the climax. There are some things which cannot be transplanted from one country to another. When they had once set foot in Paris, the absurdity of their situation appeared to them. "From the moment that Pagello landed in France," says George Sand, "he could not understand anything." The one thing that he was compelled to understand was that he was no longer wanted. He was simply pushed out. George Sand had a remarkable gift for bringing out the characteristics of the persons with whom she had any intercourse. This Pagello, thanks to his adventure with her, has become in the eyes of the world a personage as comic as one of Moliere's characters. Musset and George Sand still cared for each other. He beseeched her to return to him. "I am good-for-nothing," he says, "for I am simply steeped in my love for you. I do not know whether I am alive, whether I eat, drink, or breathe, but I know I am in love." George Sand was afraid to return to him, and Sainte-Beuve forbade her. Love proved stronger than all other arguments, however, and she yielded. As soon as she was with him once more, their torture commenced again, with all the customary complaints, reproaches and recriminations. "I was quite sure that all these reproaches would begin again immediately after the happiness we had dreamed of and promised each other. Oh, God, to think that we have already arrived at this!" she writes. What tortured them was that the past, which they had believed to be "a beautiful poem," now seemed to them a hideous nightmare. All this, we read, was a game that they were playing. A cruel sort of game, of which Musset grew more and more weary, but which to George Sand gradually became a necessity. We see this, as from henceforth it was she who implored Musset. In her diary, dated December 24, 1834, we read: "And what if I rushed to him when my love is too strong for me. What if I went and broke the bell-pull with ringing, until he opened his door to me. Or if I lay down across the threshold until he came out!" She cut off her magnificent hair and sent it to him. Such was the way in which this proud woman humbled herself. She was a prey to love, which seemed to her a holy complaint. It was a case of Venus entirely devoted to her prey. The question is, was this really love? "I no longer love you," she writes, "but I still adore you. I do not want you any more, but I cannot do without you." They had the courage to give each other up finally in March, 1835. It now remains for us to explain the singularity of this adventure, which, as a matter of fact, was beyond all logic, even the logic of passion. It is, however, readily understood, if we treat it as a case of acute romanticism, the finest case of romanticism, that has been actually lived, which the history of letters offers us. The romanticism consists first in exposing one's life to the public, in publishing one's most secret joys and sorrows. From the very beginning George Sand and Musset took the whole circle of their friends into their confidence. These friends were literary people. George Sand specially informs Sainte-Beuve that she wishes her sentimental life from thenceforth to be known. They were quite aware that they were on show, as it were, subjects of an experiment that would be discussed by "the gallery." Romanticism consists next in the writer putting his life into his books, making literature out of his emotions. The idea of putting their adventure into a story occurred to the two lovers before the adventure had come to an end. It was at Venice that George Sand wrote her first _Lettres d'un voyageur_, addressed to the poet--and to the subscribers of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Musset, to improve on this idea, decides to write a novel from the episode which was still unfinished. "I will not die," he says, "until I have written my book on you and on myself, more particularly on you. No, my beautiful, holy fiancee, you shall not return to this cold earth before it knows the woman who has walked on it. No, I swear this by my youth and genius." Musset's contributions to this literature were _Confession d'un enfant du siecle_, _Histoire d'un merle blanc_, _Elle et Lui_, and all that followed. In an inverse order, romanticism consists in putting literature into our life, in taking the latest literary fashion for our rule of action. This is not only a proof of want of taste; it is a most dangerous mistake. The romanticists, who had so many wrong ideas, had none more erroneous than their idea of love, and in the correspondence between George Sand and Musset we see the paradox in all its beauty. It consists in saying that love leads to virtue and that it leads there through change. Whether the idea came originally from _her_ or from _him_, this was their common faith. "You have said it a hundred times over," writes George Sand, "and it is all in vain that you retract; nothing will now efface that sentence: 'Love is the only thing in the world that counts.' It may be that it is a divine faculty which we lose and then find again, that we must cultivate, or that we have to buy with cruel suffering, with painful experience. The suffering you have endured through loving me was perhaps destined, in order that you might love another woman more easily. Perhaps the next woman may love you less than I do, and yet she may be more happy and more beloved. There are such mysteries in these things, and God urges us along new and untrodden paths. Give in; do not attempt to resist. He does not desert His privileged ones. He takes them by the hand and places them in the midst of the sandbanks, where they are to learn to live, in order that they may sit down at the banquet at which they are to rest. . . ." Later on she writes as follows: "Do you imagine that one love affair, or even two, can suffice for exhausting or taking the freshness from a strong soul? I believed this, too, for a long time, but I know now that it is quite the contrary. Love is a fire that endeavours to rise and to purify itself. Perhaps the more we have failed in our endeavours to find it, the more apt we become to discover it, and the more we have been obliged to change, the more conservative we shall become. Who knows? It is perhaps the terrible, magnificent and courageous work of a whole lifetime. It is a crown of thorns which will blossom and be covered with roses when our hair begins to turn white." This was pure frenzy, and yet there were two beings ready to drink in all this pathos, two living beings to live out this monstrous chimera. Such are the ravages that a certain conception of literature may make. By the example we have of these two illustrious victims, we may imagine that there were others, and very many others, obscure and unknown individuals, but human beings all the same, who were equally duped. There are unwholesome fashions in literature, which, translated into life, mean ruin. The Venice adventure shows up the truth of this in bright daylight. This is its interest and its lesson. V THE FRIEND OF MICHEL (DE BOURGES) LISZT AND COMTESSE D'AGOULT. _MAUPRAT_ We have given the essential features of the Venice adventure. The love affair, into which George Sand and Musset had put so much literature, was to serve literature. Writers of the romantic school are given to making little songs with their great sorrows. When the correspondence between George Sand and Musset appeared, every one was surprised to find passages that were already well known. Such passages had already appeared in the printed work of the poet or of the authoress. An idea, a word, or an illustration used by the one was now, perhaps, to be found in the work of the other one. "It is I who have lived," writes George Sand, "and not an unreal being created by my pride and my _ennui_." We all know the use to which Musset put this phrase. He wrote the famous couplet of Perdican with it: "All men are untruthful, inconstant, false, chatterers, hypocritical, proud, cowardly, contemptible and sensual; all women are perfidious, artful, vain, inquisitive and depraved. . . . There is, though, in this world one thing which is holy and sublime. It is the union of these two beings, imperfect and frightful as they are. We are often deceived in our love; we are often wounded and often unhappy, but still we love, and when we are on the brink of the tomb we shall turn round, look back, and say to ourselves: 'I have often suffered, I have sometimes been deceived, but I have loved. It is I who have lived, and not an unreal being created by my pride and _ennui_.'" Endless instances of this kind could be given. They are simply the sign of the reciprocal influence exercised over each other by George Sand and Musset, an influence to be traced through all their work. This influence was of a different kind and of unequal degree. It was George Sand who first made literature of their common recollections. Some of these recollections were very recent ones and were impregnated with tears. The two lovers had only just separated when George Sand made the excursion described in the first _Lettre d'un voyageur_. She goes along the Brenta. It is the month of May, and the meadows are in flower. In the horizon she sees the snowy peaks of the Tyrolese Alps standing out. The remembrance of the long hours spent at the invalid's bedside comes back to her, with all the anguish of the sacred passion in which she thinks she sees God's anger. She then pays a visit to the Oliero grottoes, and once more her wounded love makes her heart ache. She returns through Possagno, whose beautiful women served as models for Canova. She then goes back to Venice, and the doctor gives her a letter from the man she has given up, the man she has sent away. These poetical descriptions, alternating with lyrical effusions, this kind of dialogue with two voices, one of which is that of nature and the other that of the heart, remind us of one of Musset's _Nuits_. The second of these _Lettres d'un voyageur_ is entirely descriptive. It is spring-time in Venice. The old balconies are gay with flowers; the nightingales stop singing to listen to the serenades. There are songs to be heard at every street corner, music in the wake of every gondola. There are sweet perfumes and love-sighs in the air. The delights of the Venetian nights had never been described like this. The harmony of "the three elements, water, sky and marble," had never been better expressed, and the charm of Venice had never been suggested in so subtle and, penetrating a manner. The second letter treats too of the gondoliers, and of their habits and customs. The third letter, telling us about the nobility and the women of Venice, completes the impression. Just as the Pyrenees had moved George Sand, so Italy now moved her. This was a fresh acquisition for her palette. More than once from henceforth Venice was to serve her for the wonderful scenery of her stories. This is by no means a fresh note, though, in George Sand's work. There is no essential difference, then, in her inspiration. She had always been impressionable, but her taste was now getting purer. Musset, the most romantic of French poets, had an eminently classical taste. In the _Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet_, he defined romanticism as an abuse of adjectives. He was of Madame de Lafayette's opinion, that a word taken out was worth twenty pennies, and a phrase taken out twenty shillings. In a copy of _Indiana_ he crossed out all the useless epithets. This must have made a considerable difference to the length of the book. George Sand was too broad-minded to be hurt by such criticism, and she was intelligent enough to learn a lesson from it. Musset's transformation was singularly deeper. When he started for Venice, he was the youngest and most charming of poets, fanciful and full of fun. "Monsieur mon gamin d'Alfred," George Sand called him at that time. When he returned from there, he was the saddest of poets. For some time he was, as it were, stunned. His very soul seemed to be bowed down with his grief. He was astonished at the change he felt in himself, and he did not by any means court any fresh inspiration. _J'ai vu, le temps ou ma jeunesse_ _Sur mes levres etait sans cesse_ _Prete a chanter comme un oiseau;_ _Mais j'ai souffert un dur martyre_ _Et le moins que j'en pourrais dire_, _Si je lessayais sur a lyre_, _La briserait comme un roseau_, he writes. In the _Nuit de Mai_, the earliest of these songs of despair, we have the poet's symbol of the pelican giving its entrails as food to its starving young. The only symbols that we get in this poetry are symbols of sadness, and these are at times given in magnificent fulness of detail. We have solitude in the _Nuit de decembre_, and the labourer whose house has been burnt in the _Lettre a Lamartine_. The _Nuit d'aout_ gives proof of a wild effort to give life another trial, but in the _Auit d'octobre_ anger gets the better of him once more. _Honte a toi, qui la premiere M'as appris la trahison . . . !_ The question has often been asked whether the poet refers here to the woman he loved in Venice but it matters little whether he did or not. He only saw her through the personage who from henceforth symbolized "woman" to him and the suffering which she may cause a man. And yet, as this suffering became less intense, softened as it was by time, he began to discover the benefit of it. His soul had expanded, so that he was now in communion with all that is great in Nature and in Art. The harmony of the sky, the silence of night, the murmur of flowing water, Petrarch, Michel Angelo, Shakespeare, all appealed to him. The day came when he could write: _Un souvenir heureux est peut-etre sur terre Plus vrai que le bonheur_. This is the only philosophy for a conception of life which treats love as everything for man. He not only pardons now, but he is grateful: _Je ne veux rien savoir, ni si les champs fleurissent, Nice quil adviendra di., simulacre humain, Ni si ces vastes cieux eclaireront demain Ce qu' ils ensevelissent heure, en ce lieu, Je me dis seulement: a cette Un jour, je fus aime, j'aimais, elle etait belle, Jenfouis ce tresor dans mon ame immortelle Et je l'em porte a Dieu._ This love poem, running through all he wrote from the _Nuit de Mai_ to the _Souvenir_, is undoubtedly the most beautiful and the most profoundly human of anything in the French language. The charming poet had become a great poet. That shock had occurred within him which is felt by the human being to the very depths of his soul, and makes of him a new creature. It is in this sense that the theory of the romanticists, with regard to the educative virtues of suffering, is true. But it is not only suffering in connection with our love affairs which has this special privilege. After some misfortune which uproots, as it were, our life, after some disappointment which destroys our moral edifice, the world appears changed to us. The whole network of accepted ideas and of conventional opinions is broken asunder. We find ourselves in direct contact with reality, and the shock makes our true nature come to the front. . . . Such was the crisis through which Musset had just passed. The man came out of it crushed and bruised, but the poet came through it triumphant. It has been insisted on too much that George Sand was only the reflection of the men who had approached her. In the case of Musset it was the contrary. Musset owed her more than she owed to him. She transformed him by the force of her strong individuality. She, on the contrary, only found in Musset a child, and what she was seeking was a dominator. She thought she had discovered him this very year 1835. The sixth _Lettre d'un voyageur_ was addressed to Everard. This Everard was considered by her to be a superior man. He was so much above the average height that George Sand advised him to sit down when he was with other men, as when standing he was too much above them. She compares him to Atlas carrying the world, and to Hercules in a lion's skin. But among all her comparisons, when she is seeking to give the measure of his superiority, without ever really succeeding in this, it is evident that the comparison she prefers is that of Marius at Minturnae. He personifies virtue a _l'antique:_ he is the Roman. Let us now consider to whom all this flattery was addressed, and who this man, worthy of Plutarch's pen, was. His name was Michel, and he was an advocate at Bourges. He was only thirty-seven years of age, but he looked sixty. After Sandeau and Musset, George Sand had had enough of "adolescents." She was very much struck with Michel, as he looked like an old man. The size of his cranium was remarkable, or, as she said of his craniums: "It seemed as though he had two craniums, one joined to the other." She wrote: "The signs of the superior faculties of his mind were as prominent at the prow of this strong vessel as those of his generous instincts at the stern."(21) In order to understand this definition of the "fine physique" by George Sand, we must remember that she was very much taken up with phrenology at this time. One of her _Lettres d'un voyageur_ was entitled Sur _Lavater et sur une Maison deserte_. In a letter to Madame d'Agoult, George Sand tells that her gardener gave notice to leave, and, on asking him his reason, the simple-minded man replied: "Madame has such an ugly head that my wife, who is expecting, might die of fright." The head in question was a skull, an anatomical one with compartments all marked and numbered, according to the system of Gall and Spurzheim. In 1837, phrenology was very much in favour. In 1910, it is hypnotism, so we have no right to judge the infatuation of another epoch. (21) _Histoire de ma vie_. Michel's cranium was bald. He was short, slight, he stooped, was short-sighted and wore glasses. It is George Sand who gives these details for his portrait. He was born of peasant parents, and was of Jacobin simplicity. He wore a thick, shapeless inverness and sabots. He felt the cold very much, and used to ask permission to put on a muffler indoors. He would then take three or four out of his pockets and put them on his head, one over the other. In the _Lettre d'un voyageur_ George Sand mentions this crown on Everard's head. Such are the illusions of love. The first time she met Michel was at Bourges. She went with her two friends, Papet and Fleury, to call on him at the hotel. From seven o'clock until midnight he never ceased talking. It was a magnificent night, and he proposed a walk in the town at midnight. When they came back to his door he insisted on taking them home, and so they continued walking backwards and forwards until four in the morning. He must have been an inveterate chatterer to have clung to this public of three persons at an hour when the great buildings, with the moon throwing its white light over them and everything around, must have suggested the majesty of silence. To people who were amazed at this irrepressible eloquence, Michel answered ingenuously: "Talking is thinking aloud. By thinking aloud in this way I advance more quickly than if I thought quietly by myself." This was Numa Roumestan's idea. "As for me," he said, "when I am not talking, I am not thinking." As a matter of fact, Michel, like Numa, was a native of Provence. In Paris there was a repetition of this nocturnal and roving scene. Michel and his friends had come to a standstill on the Saints-Peres bridge. They caught sight of the Tuileries lighted up for a ball. Michel became excited, and, striking the innocent bridge and its parapet with his stick, he exclaimed: "I tell you that if you are to freshen and renew your corrupt society, this beautiful river will first have to be red with blood, that accursed palace will have to be reduced to ashes, and the huge city you are now looking at will have to be a bare strand where the family of the poor man can use the plough and build a cottage home." This was a fine phrase for a public meeting, but perhaps too fine for a conversation between friends on the Saints-Peres bridge. This was in 1835, at the most brilliant moment of Michel's career. It was when he was taking part in the trial of the accused men of April. After the insurrections of the preceding year at Lyons and Paris, a great trial had commenced before the Chamber of Peers. We are told that: "The Republican party was determined to make use of the cross-questioning of the prisoners for accusing the Government and for preaching Republicanism and Socialism. The idea was to invite a hundred and fifty noted Republicans to Paris from all parts of France. In their quality of defenders, they would be the orators of this great manifestation." Barb'es, Blanqui, Flocon, Marie, Raspail, Trelat and Michel of Bourges were among these Republicans. "On the 11th of May, the revolutionary newspapers published a manifesto in which the committee for the defence congratulated and encouraged the accused men. One hundred and ten signatures were affixed to this document, which was a forgery. It had been drawn up by a few of the upholders of the scheme, and, in order to make it appear more important, they had affixed the names of their colleagues without their authorization. Those who had done this then took fright, and attempted to get out of the dangerous adventure by a public avowal. In order to save the situation, two of the guilty party, Trelat and Michel of Bourges, took the responsibility of the drawing up of the manifesto and the apposition of the signatures upon themselves. They were sentenced by the Court of Peers, Trelat to four years of prison and Michel to a month."(22) This was the most shocking inequality, and Michel could not forgive Trelat for getting such a fine sentence. (22) Thureau Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet_, II. 297. What good was one month of prison? Michel's career certainly had been a very ordinary one. He hesitated and tacked about. In a word, he was just a politician. George Sand tells us that he was obliged "to accept, in theory, what he called the necessities of pure politics, ruse, charlatanism and even untruth, concessions that were not sincere, alliances in which he did not believe, and vain promises." We should say that he was a radical opportunist. To be merely an opportunist, though, is not enough for ensuring success. There are different ways of being an opportunist. Michel had been elected a Deputy, but he had no _role_ to play. In 1848, he could not compete with the brilliancy of Raspail, nor had he the prestige of Flocon. He went into the shade completely after the _coup d'etat_. For a long time he had really preferred business to politics, and a choice must be made when one is not a member of the Government. It is easy to see what charmed George Sand in Michel. He was a sectarian, and she took him for an apostle. He was brutal, and she thought him energetic. He had been badly brought up, but she thought him simply austere. He was a tyrant, but she only saw in him a master. He had told her that he would have her guillotined at the first possible opportunity. This was an incontestable proof of superiority. She was sincere herself, and was consequently not on her guard against vain boasting. He had alarmed her, and she admired him for this, and at once incarnated in him that stoical ideal of which she had been dreaming for years and had not yet been able to attribute to any one else. This is how she explained to Michel her reasons for loving him. "I love you," she says, "because whenever I figure to myself grandeur, wisdom, strength and beauty, your image rises up before me. No other man has ever exercised any moral influence over me. My mind, which has always been wild and unfettered, has never accepted any guidance. . . . You came, and you have taught me." Then again she says: "It is you whom I love, whom I have loved ever since I was born, and through all the phantoms in whom I thought, for a moment, that I had found you." According to this, it was Michel she loved through Musset. Let us hope that she was mistaken. A whole correspondence exists between George Sand and Michel of Bourges. Part of it was published not long ago in the _Revue illustree_ under the title of _Lettres de lemmze_. None of George Sand's letters surpass these epistles to Michel for fervent passion, beauty of form, and a kind of superb _impudeur_. Let us take, for instance, this call to her beloved. George Sand, after a night of work, complains of fatigue, hunger and cold: "Oh, my lover," she cries, "appear, and, like the earth on the return of the May sunshine, I should be reanimated, and would fling off my shroud of ice and thrill with love. The wrinkles of suffering would disappear from my brow, and I should seem beautiful and young to you, for I should leap with joy into your iron strong arms. Come, come, and I shall have strength, health, youth, gaiety, hope. . . . I will go forth to meet you like the bride of the song, 'to her well-beloved.'" The Well-beloved to whom this Shulamite would hasten was a bald-headed provincial lawyer who wore spectacles and three mufflers. But it appears that his "beauty, veiled and unintelligible to the vulgar, revealed itself, like that of Jupiter hidden under human form, to the women whom he loved." We must not smile at these mythological comparisons. George Sand had, as it were, restored for herself that condition of soul to which the ancient myths are due. A great current of naturalist poetry circulates through these pages. In Theocritus and in Rousard there are certain descriptive passages. There is an analogy between them and that image of the horse which carries George Sand along on her impetuous course. "As soon as he catches sight of me, he begins to paw the ground and rear impatiently. I have trained him to clear a hundred fathoms a second. The sky and the ground disappear when he bears me along under those long vaults formed by the apple-trees in blossom. . . . The least sound of my voice makes him bound like a ball; the smallest bird makes him shudder and hurry along like a child with no experience. He is scarcely five years old, and he is timid and restive. His black crupper shines in the sunshine like a raven's wing." This description has all the relief of an antique figure. Another time, George Sand tells how she has seen Phoebus throw off her robe of clouds and rush along radiant into the pure sky. The following day she writes: "She was eaten by the evil spirits. The dark sprites from Erebus, riding on sombre-looking clouds, threw themselves on her, and it was in vain that she struggled." We might compare these passages with a letter of July 10, 1836, in which she tells how she throws herself, all dressed as she is, into the Indre, and then continues her course through the sunny meadows, and with what voluptuousness she revels in all the joys of primitive life, and imagines herself living in the beautiful times of ancient Greece. There are days and pages when George Sand, under the afflux of physical life, is pagan. Her genius then is that of the greenwood divinities, who, at certain times of the year, were intoxicated by the odour of the meadows and the sap of the woods. If some day we were to have her complete correspondence given to us, I should not be surprised if many people preferred it to her letters to Musset. In the first place, it is not spoiled by that preoccupation which the Venice lovers had, of writing literature. Mingled with the accents of sincere passion, we do not find extraordinary conceptions of paradoxical metaphysics. It is Nature which speaks in these letters, and for that very reason they are none the less sorrowful. They, too, tell us of a veritable martyrdom. We can easily imagine from them that Michel was coarse, despotic, faithless and jealous. We know, too, that more than once George Sand came very near losing all patience with him, so that we can sympathize with her when she wrote to Madame d'Agoult in July, 1836: "I have had, my fill of great men (excuse the expression). . . . I prefer to see them all in Plutarch, as they would not then cause me any suffering on the human side. May they all be carved in marble or cast in bronze, but may I hear no more about them!" _Amen_. What disgusted George Sand with her Michel was his vanity and his craving for adulation. In July, 1837, she had come to the end of her patience, as she wrote to Girerd. It was one of her peculiarities to always take a third person into her confidence. At the time of Sandeau, this third person was Emile Regnault; at the time of Musset, Sainte-Beuve, and now it was Girerd. "I am tired out with my own devotion, and I have fought against my pride with all the strength of my love. I have had nothing but ingratitude and hardness as my recompense. I have felt my love dying away and my soul being crushed, but I am cured at last. . . ." If only she had had all this suffering for the sake of a great man, but this time it was only in imaginary great man. The influence, though, that he had had over her thought was real, and in a certain way beneficial. At the beginning she was far from sharing Michel's ideas, and for some of them she felt an aversion which amounted to horror. The dogma of absolute equality seemed an absurdity to her. The Republic, or rather the various republics then in gestation, appeared to her a sort of Utopia, and as she saw each of her friends making "his own little Republic" for himself, she had not much faith in the virtue of that form of government for uniting all French people. One point shocked her above all others in Michel's theories. This politician did not like artists. Just as the Revolution did not find chemists necessary, he considered that the Republic did not need writers, painters and musicians. These were all useless individuals, and the Republic would give them a little surprise by putting a labourer's spade or a shoemaker's awl into their hands. George Sand considered this idea not only barbarous, but silly. Time works wonders, for we have an indisputable proof that certain of his opinions soon became hers. This proof is the Republican catechism contained in her letters to her son Maurice, who was then twelve years of age. He was at the Lycee Henri IV, in the same class as the princes of Orleans. It is interesting to read what his mother says to him concerning the father of his young school friends. In a letter, written in December, 1835, she says: "It is certainly true that Louis-Philippe is the enemy of humanity. . . ." Nothing less than that! A little later, the enemy of humanity invites the young friends of his son Montpensier to his _chateau_ for the carnival holiday. Maurice is allowed to accept the invitation, as he wishes to, but he is to avoid showing that gratitude which destroys independence. "The entertainments that Montpensier offers you are favours," writes this mother of the Gracchi quite gravely. If he is asked about his opinions, the child is to reply that he is rather too young to have opinions yet, but not too young to know what opinions he will have when he is free to have them. "You can reply," says his mother, "that you are Republican by race and by nature." She then adds a few aphorisms. "Princes are our natural enemies," she says; and then again: "However good-hearted the child of a king may be, he is destined to be a tyrant." All this is certainly a great commotion to make about her little son accepting a glass of fruit syrup and a few cakes at the house of a schoolfellow. But George Sand was then under the domination of "Robespierre in person." Michel had brought George Sand over to republicanism. Without wishing to exaggerate the service he had rendered her by this, it appears to me that it certainly was one, if we look at it in one way. Rightly or wrongly, George Sand had seen in Michel the man who devotes himself entirely to a cause of general interest. She had learnt something in his school, and perhaps all the more thoroughly because it was in his school. She had learnt that love is in any case a selfish passion. She had learnt that another object must be given to the forces of sympathy of a generous heart, and that such an object may be the service of humanity, devotion to an idea. This was a turn in the road, and led the writer on to leave the personal style for the impersonal style. There was another service, too, which Michel had rendered to George Sand. He had pleaded for her in her petition for separation from her husband, and she had won her case. Ever since George Sand had taken back her independence in 1831, her intercourse with Dudevant had not been disagreeable. She and her husband exchanged cordial letters. When he came to Paris, he made no attempt to stay with his wife, lest he should inconvenience her. "I shall put up at Hippolyte's," he says in his letter to her. "I do not want to inconvenience you in the least, nor to be inconvenienced myself, which is quite natural." He certainly was a most discreet husband. When she started for Italy, he begs her to take advantage of so good an opportunity for seeing such a beautiful country. He was also a husband ready to give good advice. Later on, he invited Pagello to spend a little time at Nohant. This was certainly the climax in this strange story. During the months, though, that the husband and wife were together, again at Nohant, the scenes began once more. Dudevant's irritability was increased by the fact that he was always short of money, and that he was aware of his own deplorable shortcomings as a financial administrator. He had made speculations which had been disastrous. He was very credulous, as so many suspicious people are, and he had been duped by a swindler in an affair of maritime armaments. He had had all the more faith in this enterprise because a picture of the boat had been shown him on paper. He had spent ninety thousand francs of the hundred thousand he had had, and was now living on his wife's income. Something had to be decided upon. George Sand paid his debts first, and the husband and wife then signed an agreement to the effect that their respective property should be separated. Dudevant regretted having signed this afterwards, and it was torn up after a violent scene which took place before witnesses in October, 1835. The pretext of this scene had been an order given to Maurice. In a series of letters, which have never hitherto been published, George Sand relates the various incidents of this affair. We give some of the more important passages. The following letter is to her half-brother Hippolyte, who used to be Casimir's drinking companion. _"To Hippolyte Chatiron._ "My friend, I am about to tell you some news which will reach you indirectly, and that you had better hear first from me. Instead of carrying out our agreement pleasantly and loyally, Casimir is acting with the most insane animosity towards me. Without my giving him any reason for such a thing, either by my conduct or my manner of treating him, he endeavoured to strike me. He was prevented by five persons, one of whom was Dutheil, and he then fetched his gun to shoot me. As you can imagine, he was not allowed to do this. "On account of such treatment and of his hatred, which amounts to madness, there is no safety for me in a house to which he always has the right to come. I have no guarantee, except his own will and pleasure, that he will keep our agreement, and I cannot remain at the mercy of a man who behaves so unreasonably and indelicately to me. I have therefore decided to ask for a legal separation, and I shall no doubt obtain this. Casimir made this frightful scene the evening before leaving for Paris. On his return here, he found the house empty, and me staying at Dutheil's, by permission of the President of La Chatre. He also found a summons awaiting him on the mantelshelf. He had to make the best of it, for he knew it was no use attempting to fight against the result of his own folly, and that, by holding out, the scandal would all fall on him. He made the following stipulations, promising to adhere to them. Duthell was our intermediary. I am to allow him a pension of 3,800 francs, which, with the 1,200 francs income that he now has, will make 5,000 francs a year for him. I think this is all straightforward, as I am paying for the education of the two children. My daughter will remain under my guidance, as I understand. My son will remain at the college where he now is until he has finished his education. During the holidays he will spend a month with his father and a month with me. In this way, there will be no contest. Dudevant will return to Paris very soon, without making any opposition, and the Court will pronounce the separation in default."(23) (23) Communicated by M. S. Rocheblave. The following amusing letter on the same subject was written by George Sand to Adolphe Duplomb in the _patois_ peculiar to Berry: "DEAR HYDROGEN, "You have been misinformed about what took place at La Chatre. Duthell never quarrelled with the Baron of Nohant-Vic. This is the true story. The baron took it into his head to strike me. Dutheil objected. Fleury and Papet also objected. The baron went to search for his gun to kill every one. Every one did not want to be killed, and so the baron said: 'Well, that's enough then,' and began to drink again. That was how it all happened. No one quarrelled with him. But I had had enough. As I do not care to earn my living and then leave _my substance_ in the hands of the _diable_ and be bowed out of the house every year, while the village hussies sleep in my beds and bring their fleas into my house, I just said: 'I ain't going to have any more of that,' and I went and found the big judge of La Chatre, and I says, says I: 'That's how it is.' And then he says, says he: 'All right.' And so he unmarried us. And I am not sorry. They say that the baron will make an appeal. I ain't knowin'. We shall see. If he does, he'll lose everything. And that's the whole story."(24) (24) Communicated by M. Charles Duplomb. The case was pleaded in March, 1836, at La Chatre, and in July at Bourges. The Court granted the separation, and the care of the children was attributed to George Sand. This was not the end of the affair, though. In September, 1837, George Sand was warned that Dudevant intended to get Maurice away from her. She sent a friend on whom she could count to take her boy to Fontainebleau, and then went herself to watch over him. In the mean time, Dudevant, not finding his son at Nohant, took Solange away with him, in spite of the child's tears and the resistance of the governess. George Sand gave notice to the police, and, on discovering that her little daughter was sequestered at Guillery, near Nerac, she went herself in a post-chaise to the sub-prefect, a charming young man, who was no other than Baron Haussmann. On hearing the story, he went himself with her, and, accompanied by the lieutenant of the constabulary and the sheriff's officer on horseback, laid siege to the house at Guillery in which the young girl was imprisoned. Dudevant brought his daughter to the door and handed her over to her mother, threatening at the same time to take Maurice from her by legal authority. The husband and wife then separated . . . delighted with each other, according to George Sand. They very rarely met after this affair. Dudevant certainly did not impress people very favourably. After the separation, when matters were being finally settled, he put in a claim for fifteen pots of jam and an iron frying-pan. All this seems very petty. The first use George Sand made of the liberty granted to her by the law, in 1836, was to start off with Maurice and Solange for Switzerland to join her friends Franz Liszt and the Comtesse d'Agoult. George Sand had made Liszt's acquaintance through Musset. Liszt gave music-lessons to Alfred's sister, Herminie. He was born in 1811, so that he was seven years younger than George Sand. He was twenty-three at the time he first met her, and their friendship was always platonic. They had remarkable affinities of nature. Liszt had first thought of becoming a priest. His religious fervour was gradually transformed into an ardent love of humanity. His early education had been neglected, and he now read eagerly. He once asked Monsieur Cremieux, the advocate, to teach him "the whole of French literature." On relating this to some one, Cremieux remarked: "Great confusion seems to reign in this young man's mind." He had been wildly excited during the movement of 1830, greatly influenced by the Saint-Simon ideas, and was roused to enthusiasm by Lamennals, who had just published the _Paroles d'un Croyant_. After reading Leone Leoni, he became an admirer of George Sand. Leone Leoni is a transposition of Manon Lescaut into the romantic style. A young girl named Juliette has been seduced by a young seigneur, and then discovers that this man is an abominable swindler. If we try to imagine all the infamous things of which an _apache_ would be capable, who at the same time is devoted to the women of the pavement, we then have Leone Leoni. Juliette, who is naturally honest and straightforward, has a horror of all the atrocities and shameful things she sees. And yet, in spite of all, she comes back to Leone Leoni, and cannot love any one else. Her love is stronger than she is, and her passion sweeps away all scruples and triumphs over all scruples. The difference between the novel of the eighteenth century, which was so true to life, and this lyrical fantasy of the nineteenth century is very evident. Manon and Des Grieux always remained united to each other, for they were of equal value. Everything took place in the lower depths of society, and in the mire, as it were, of the heart. You have only to make a good man of Des Grieux, or a virtuous girl of Manon, and it is all over. The transposing of Leone Leoni is just this, and the romanticism of it delighted Liszt. He had just given a fine example of applying romanticism to life. Marie d'Agoult, _nee_ de Flavigny, had decided, one fine day, to leave her husband and daughter for the sake of the passion that was everything to her. She accordingly started for Geneva, and Liszt joined her there. Between these two women a friendship sprang up, which was due rather to a wish to like each other than to a real attraction or real fellow-feeling. The Comtesse d'Agoult, with her blue eyes, her slender figure, and somewhat ethereal style, was a veritable Diana, an aristocrat and a society woman. George Sand was her exact opposite. But the Comtesse d'Agoult had just "sacrificed all the vanities of the world for the sake of an artist," so that she deserved consideration. The stay at Geneva was gay and animated. The _Piffoels_ (George Sand and her children) and the _Fellows_ (Liszt and his pupil, Hermann Cohen) enjoyed scandalizing the whole hotel by their Bohemian ways. They went for an excursion to the frozen lake. At Lausanne Liszt played the organ. On returning to Paris the friends did not want to separate. In October, 1836, George Sand took up her abode on the first floor of the Hotel de France, in the Rue Laffitte, and Liszt and the Corntesse d'Agoult took a room on the floor above. The trio shared, a drawing-room between them, but in reality it became more the Comtesse d'Agoult's _salon_ than George Sand's. Lamennais, Henri Heine, Mickiewicz, Michel of Bourges and Charles Didier were among their visitors, and we are told that this _salon_, improvised in a hotel was "a reunion of the _elite_, over which the Comtesse d'Agoult presided with exquisite grace." She was a true society woman, a veritable mistress of her home, one of those who could transform a room in a hotel, a travelling carriage, or even a prison into that exquisite thing, so dear to French polite society of yore--a _salon_. Among the _habitues_ of Madame d'Agoult's _salon_ was Chopin. This is a new chapter in George Sand's life, and a little later on we shall be able to consider, as a whole, the importance of this intercourse with great artists as regards her intellectual development. Before finishing our study of this epoch in her life, we must notice how much George Sand's talent had developed and blossomed out. _Mauprat_ was published in 1837, and is undoubtedly the first of her _chefs-d'oeuvre_. In her uninterrupted literary production, which continued regularly in spite of and through all the storms of her private life, there is much that is strange and second-rate and much that is excellent. _Jacques_ is an extraordinary piece of work. It was written at Venice when she was with Pagello. George Sand declared that she had neither put herself nor Musset into this book. She was nevertheless inspired by their case, and she merely transposed their ideal of renunciation. _Andre_ may be classed among the second-rate work. It is the story of a young noble who seduces a girl of the working-class. It is a souvenir of Berry, written in a home-sick mood when George Sand was at Venice. _Simon_ also belongs to the second-rate category. The portrait of Michel of Bourges can easily be traced in it. George Sand had intended doing more for Michel than this. She composed a revolutionary novel in three volumes, in his honour, entitled: _Engelwald with the high forehead_. Buloz neither cared for _Engelwald_ nor for his high forehead, and this novel was never published. According to George Sand, when she wrote _Mauprat_ her idea was the rehabilitation of marriage. "I had just been petitioning for a separation," she says. "I had, until then, been fighting against the abuses of marriage, and, as I had never developed my ideas sufficiently, I had given every one the notion that I despised the essential principles of it. On the contrary, marriage really appeared to me in all the moral beauty of those principles, and in my book I make my hero, at the age of eighty, proclaim his faithfulness to the only woman he has ever loved." "She is the only woman I have ever loved," says Bernard de Mauprat. "No other woman has ever attracted my attention or been embraced by me. I am like that. When I love, I love for ever, in the past, in the present and in the future." _Mauprat_, then, according to George Sand, was a novel with a purpose, just as _Indiana_ was, although they each had an opposite purpose. Fortunately it is nothing of the kind. This is one of those explanations arranged afterwards, peculiar sometimes to authors. The reality about all this is quite different. In this book George Sand had just given the reins to her imagination, without allowing sociological preoccupations to spoil everything. During her excursions in Berry, she had stopped to gaze at the ruins of an old feudal castle. We all know the power of suggestion contained in those old stones, and how wonderfully they tell stories of the past they have witnessed to those persons who know how to question them. The remembrance of the _chateau_ of Roche Mauprat came to the mind of the novelist. She saw it just as it stood before the Revolution, a fortress, and at the same time a refuge for the wild lord and his eight sons, who used to sally forth and ravage the country. In French narrative literature there is nothing to surpass the first hundred pages in which George Sand introduces us to the burgraves of central France. She is just as happy when she takes us to Paris with Bernard de Mauprat, to Paris of the last days of the old _regime_. She introduces us to the society which she had learnt to know through the traditions of her grandmother. It is not only Nature, but history, which she uses as a setting for her story. How cleverly, too, she treats the analysis which is the true subject of the book, that of education through love. We see the untamed nature of Bernard de Mauprat gradually giving way under the influence of the noble and delicious Edmee. There are typical peasants, too, in _Mauprat_. We have Marcasse, the mole-catcher, and Patience, the good-natured Patience, the rustic philosopher, well up in Epictetus and in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who has gone into the woods to live his life according to the laws of Nature and to find the wisdom of the primitive days of the world. We are told that, during the Revolution, Patience was a sort of intermediary between the _chateau_ and the cottage, and that he helped in bringing about the reign of equity in his district. It is to be hoped this was so. In any case, it is very certain that we come across this Patience again in Russian novels with a name ending in _ow_ or _ew_. This is a proof that if the personage seems somewhat impossible, he was at any rate original, new and entertaining. We hear people say that George Sand is no longer read. It is to be hoped that _Mauprat_ is still read, otherwise our modern readers miss one of the finest stories in the history of novels. This, then, is the point at which we have arrived in the evolution of George Sand's genius. There may still be modifications in her style, and her talent may still be refreshed under various influences, but with _Mauprat_ she took her place in the first rank of great storytellers. VI A CASE OF MATERNAL AFFECTION IN LOVE CHOPIN We have passed over George Sand's intercourse with Liszt and Madame d'Agoult very rapidly. One of Balzac's novels gives us an opportunity of saying a few more words about it. Balzac had been introduced to George Sand by Jules Sandeau. At the time of her rupture with his friend, Balzac had sided entirely with him. In the _Lettres a l'Etrangere_, we see the author of the _Comedie humaine_ pouring out his indignation with the blue stocking, who was so cruel in her love, in terms which were not extremely elegant. Gradually, and when he knew more about the adventure, his anger cooled down. In March, 1838, he gave Madame Zulma Carraud an account of a visit to Nohant. He found his comrade, George Sand, in her dressing-gown, smoking a cigar by her fireside after dinner. "She had some pretty yellow slippers on, ornamented with fringe, some fancy stockings and red trousers. So much for the moral side. Physically, she had doubled her chin like a canoness. She had not a single white hair, in spite of all her fearful misfortunes; her dusky complexion had not changed. Her beautiful eyes were just as bright, and she looked just as stupid as ever when she was thinking. . . ." This is George Sand in her thirty-fifth year, as she was at the time of the fresh adventure we are about to relate. Balzac continues by giving us a few details about the life of the authoress. It was very much like his own, except that Balzac went to bed at six o'clock and got up at midnight, and George Sand went to bed at six in the morning and got up at noon. He adds the following remark, which shows us the state of her feelings: "She is now in a very quiet retreat, and condemns both marriage and love, because she has had nothing but disappointment in both herself. Her man was a rare one, that was really all." In the course of their friendly conversation, George Sand gave him the subject for a novel which it would be rather awkward for her to write. The novel was to be _Galeriens_ or _Amours forces_. These "galley-slaves" of love were Liszt and the Comtesse d'Agoult, who had been with George Sand at Chamonix, Paris and Nohant. It was very evident that she could not write the novel herself. Balzac accordingly wrote it, and it figures in the _Comedie humaine as Beatrix_. Beatrix is the Comtesse d'Agoult, the inspirer, and Liszt is the composer Conti. "You have no idea yet of the awful rights that a love which no longer exists gives to a man over a woman. The convict is always under the domination of the companion chained to him. I am lost, and must return to the convict prison," writes Balzac in this book. Then, too, there is no mistaking his portrait of Beatrix. The fair hair that seems to give light, the forehead which looks transparent, the sweet, charming face, the long, wonderfully shaped neck, and, above and beyond all, that air of a princess, in all this we can easily recognize "the fair, blue-eyed Peri." Not content with bringing this illustrious couple into his novel, Balzac introduces other contemporaries. Claude Vignon (who, although his special work was criticism, made a certain place for himself in literature) and George Sand herself appear in this book. She is Felicite des Touches, and her pen name is Camille Maupin. "Camille is an artist," we are told; "she has genius, and she leads an exceptional life such as could not be judged in the same way as an ordinary existence." Some one asks how she writes her books, and the answer is: "Just in the same way as you do your woman's work, your netting or your tapestry." She is said to have the intelligence of an angel and even more heart than talent. With her fixed, set gaze, her dark complexion and her masculine ways, she is the exact antithesis of the fair Beatrix. She is constantly being compared to the latter, and is evidently preferred to her. It is very evident from whom Balzac gets his information, and it is also evident that the friendship between the two women has cooled down. The cause of the coolness between them was George Sand's infatuation for Chopin, whom she had known through Liszt and Madame d'Agoult. George Sand wrote to Liszt from Nohant, in March, 1837: "Tell Chopin that I hope he will come with you. Marie cannot live without him, and I adore him." In April she wrote to Madame d'Agoult: "Tell Chopin that I idolize him." We do not know whether Madame d'Agoult gave the message, but she certainly replied: "Chopin coughs with infinite grace. He is an irresolute man. The only thing about him that is permanent is his cough." This is certainly very feminine in its ferociousness. At the time when he came into George Sand's life, Chopin, the composer and virtuoso, was the favourite of Parisian _salons_, the pianist in vogue. He was born in 1810, so that he was then twenty-seven years of age. His success was due, in the first place, to his merits as an artist, and nowhere is an artist's success so great as in Paris. Chopin's delicate style was admirably suited to the dimensions and to the atmosphere of a _salon_.(25) (25) As regards Chopin, I have consulted a biography by Liszt, a study by M. Camille Bellaigue and the volume by M. Elie Poiree in the _Collection des musiciens celebres_, published by H. Laurens. He confessed to Liszt that a crowd intimidated him, that he felt suffocated by all the quick breathing and paralyzed by the inquisitive eyes turned on him. "You were intended for all this," he adds, "as, if you do not win over your public, you can at least overwhelm it." Chopin was made much of then in society. He was fragile and delicate, and had always been watched over and cared for. He had grown up in a peaceful, united family, in one of those simple homes in which all the details of everyday life become less prosaic, thanks to an innate distinction of sentiment and to religious habits. Prince Radziwill had watched over Chopin's education. He had been received when quite young in the most aristocratic circles, and "the most celebrated beauties had smiled on him as a youth." Social life, then, and feminine influence had thus helped to make him ultra refined. It was very evident to every one who met him that he was a well-bred man, and this is quickly observed, even with pianists. On arriving he made a good impression, he was well dressed, his white gloves were immaculate. He was reserved and somewhat languid. Every one knew that he was delicate, and there was a rumour of an unhappy love affair. It was said that he had been in love with a girl, and that her family had refused to consent to her marriage with him. People said he was like his own music, the dreamy, melancholy themes seemed to accord so well with the pale young face of the composer. The fascination of the languor which seemed to emanate from the man and from his work worked its way, in a subtle manner, into the hearts of his hearers. Chopin did not care to know Lelia. He did not like women writers, and he was rather alarmed at this one. It was Liszt who introduced them. In his biography of Chopin, he tells us that the extremely sensitive artist, who was so easily alarmed, dreaded "this woman above all women, as, like a priestess of Delphi, she said so many things that the others could not have said. He avoided her and postponed the introduction. Madame Sand had no idea that she was feared as a sylph. . . ." She made the first advances. It is easy to see what charmed her in him. In the first place, he appealed to her as he did to all women, and then, too, there was the absolute contrast of their two opposite natures. She was all force, of an expansive, exuberant nature. He was very discreet, reserved and mysterious. It seems that the Polish characteristic is to lend oneself, but never to give oneself away, and one of Chopin's friends said of him that he was "more Polish than Poland itself." Such a contrast may prove a strong attraction, and then, too, George Sand was very sensitive to the charm of music. But what she saw above all in Chopin was the typical artist, just as she understood the artist, a dreamer, lost in the clouds, incapable of any activity that was practical, a "lover of the impossible." And then, too, he was ill. When Musset left Venice, after all the atrocious nights she had spent at his bedside, she wrote: "Whom shall I have now to look after and tend?" In Chopin she found some one to tend. About this time, she was anxious about the health of her son Maurice, and she thought she would take her family to Majorca. This was a lamentable excursion, but it seemed satisfactory at first. They travelled by way of Lyons, Avignon, Vaucluse and Nimes. At Perpignan, Chopin arrived, "as fresh as a rose." "Our journey," wrote George Sand, "seems to be under the most favourable conditions." They then went on to Barcelona and to Palma. In November, 1838, George Sand wrote a most enthusiastic letter: "It is poetry, solitude, all that is most artistic and _chique_ on earth. And what skies, what a country; we are delighted."(26) The disenchantment was soon to begin, though. The first difficulty was to find lodgings, and the second to get furniture. There was no wood to burn and there was no linen to be had. It took two months to have a pair of tongs made, and it cost twenty-eight pounds at the customs for a piano to enter the country. With great difficulty, the forlorn travellers found a country-house belonging to a man named Gomez, which they were able to rent. It was called the "Windy House." The wind did not inconvenience them like the rain, which now commenced. Chopin could not endure the heat and the odour of the fires. His disease increased, and this was the origin of the great tribulations that were to follow. Buloz: _Monday 13th._ MY DEAR CHRISTINE, "I have only been at Palma four days. My journey has been very satisfactory, but rather long and difficult until we were out of France. I took up my pen (as people say) twenty times over to write the last five or six pages for which _Spiridion_ has been waiting for six months. It is not the easiest thing in the world, I can assure you, to give the conclusion of one's own religious belief, and when travelling it is impossible. At twenty different places I have resolved to think it solemnly over and to write down my conclusion. But these stoppages were the most tiring part of our journey. There were visits, dinners, walks, curiosities, ruins, the Vaucluse fountain, Reboul and the Nimes arena, the Barcelona cathedrals, dinners on board the war-ships, the Italian theatres of Spain (and what theatres and what Italians!), guitars and Heaven knows what beside. There was the moonlight on the sea and above all Valma and Mallorca, the most delightful place in the world, and all this kept me terribly far away from philosophy and theology. Fortunately I have found some superb convents here all in ruins, with palm-trees, aloes and the cactus in the midst of broken mosaics and crumbling cloisters, and this takes me back to _Spiridion_. For the last three days I have had a rage for work, which I cannot satisfy yet, as we have neither fire nor lodging. There is not an inn in Palma, no house to let and no furniture to be bought. On arriving here people first have to buy some ground, then build, and afterwards send for furniture. After this, permission to live somewhere has to be obtained from Government, and after five or six years one can think about opening one's trunk and changing one's chemise, whilst waiting for permission from the Customs to have some shoes and handkerchiefs passed. For the last four days then we have spent our time going from door to door, as we do not want to sleep in the open air. We hope now to be settled in about three days, as a miracle has taken place. For the first time in the memory of man, there is a furnished house to let in Mallorca, a charming country-house in a delightful desert. . . ." At that time Spain was the very last country in which to travel with a consumptive patient. In a very fine lecture, the subject of which was _The Fight with Tuberculosis_,(27) Dr. Landouzy proves to us that ever since the sixteenth century, in the districts of the Mediterranean, in Spain, in the Balearic Isles and throughout the kingdom of Naples, tuberculosis was held to be contagious, whilst the rest of Europe was ignorant of this contagion. Extremely severe rules had been laid down with regard to the measures to be taken for avoiding the spread of this disease. A consumptive patient was considered as a kind of plague-stricken individual. Chateaubriand had experienced the inconveniences of this scare during his stay in Rome with Madame de Beaumont, who died there of consumption, at the beginning of the winter of 1803. George Sand, in her turn, was to have a similar experience. When Chopin was convicted of consumption, "which," as she writes, "was equivalent to the plague, according to the Spanish doctors, with their foregone conclusions about contagion," their landlord simply turned them out of his house. They took refuge in the Chartreuse monastery of Valdemosa, where they lived in a cell. The site was very beautiful. By a wooded slope a terrace could be reached, from which there was a view of the sea on two sides. (27) L. Landouzy of the Academy of Medecine, _La Lutte contre la tuberculose_, published by L. Maretheux. "We are planted between heaven and earth," wrote George Sand. "The clouds cross our garden at their own will and pleasure, and the eagles clamour over our heads." A cell in this monastery was composed of three rooms: the one in the middle was intended for reading, prayer and meditation, the other two were the bedroom and the workshop. All three rooms looked on to a garden. Reading, rest and manual labour made up the life of these men. They lived in a limited space certainly, but the view stretched out infinitely, and prayer went up direct to God. Among the ruined buildings of the enormous monastery there was a cloister still standing, through which the wind howled desperately. It was like the scenery in the nuns' act in _Robert le Diable_. All this made the old monastery the most romantic place in the world.(28) (28) George Sand to Madame Buloz. Postscript to the letter already quoted: "I am leaving for the country where I have a furnished house with a garden, magnificently situated for 50 francs a month. I have also taken a cell, that is three rooms and a garden for 35 francs a year in the Chartreuse of Valdemosa, a magnificent, immense monastery quite lonely in the midst of mountains. Our garden is full of oranges and lemons. The trees break under them. We have hedges of cactus twenty to thirty feet high, the sea is about a mile and a half away. We have a donkey to take us to the town, roads inaccessible to visitors, immense cloisters and the most beautiful architecture, a charming church, a cemetery with a palm-tree and a stone cross like the one in the third act of _Robert le Diable_. Then, too, there are beds of shrubs cut in form. All this we have to ourselves with an old woman to wait on us, and the sacristan who is warder, steward, majordomo and Jack-of-all-trades. I hope we shall have ghosts. The door of my cell leads into an enormous cloister, and when the wind slams the door it is like a cannon going off through all the monastery. I am delighted with everything, and fancy I shall be more often in the cell than in the country-house, which is about six miles away. You see that I have plenty of poetry and solitude, so that if I do not work I shall be a stupid thing." The only drawback was that it was most difficult to live there. There was no way of getting warm. The stove was a kind of iron furnace which gave out a terrible odour, and did not prevent the rooms from being so damp that clothes mildewed while they were being worn. There was no way of getting proper food either. They had to eat the most indigestible things. There were five sorts of meat certainly, but these were pig, pork, bacon, ham and pickled pork. This was all cooked in dripping, pork-dripping, of course, or in rancid oil. Still more than this, the natives refused, not only to serve the unfortunate travellers, but to sell them the actual necessaries of life. The fact was, they had scandalized the Majorcan people. All Majorca was indignant because Solange, who at that time was nine years old, roamed about the mountains _disguised as a man_. Added to this, when the horn sounded which called people to their devotions in the churches, these strange inhabitants of the old Valdemosa monastery never took any more notice than pagans. People kept clear of them. Chopin suffered with the cold, the cooking made him sick, and he used to have fits of terror in the cloisters. They had to leave hastily. The only steamboat from the island was used to transport the pigs which are the pride and wealth of Majorca. People were only taken as an extra. It was, therefore, in the company of these squealing, ill-smelling creatures that the invalid crossed the water. When he arrived at Barcelona, he looked like a spectre and was spitting blood. George Sand was quite right in saying that this journey was an "awful fiasco." Art and literature did not gain much either by this expedition. George Sand finished her novel entitled _Spiridion_ at Valdemosa. She had commenced it before starting for Spain. In a volume on _Un hiver a Majorque_ she gave some fine descriptions, and also a harsh accusation of the monks, whom she held responsible for all the mishaps of the Sand caravan. She considered that the Majorcans had been brutalized and fanaticized, thanks to their influence. As to Chopin, he was scarcely in a state to derive any benefit from such a journey, and he certainly did not get any. He did not thoroughly appreciate the beauties of nature, particularly of Majorcan nature. In a letter to one of his friends he gives the following description of their habitation:-- "Between rocks and sea, in a great deserted monastery, in a cell, the doors of which are bigger than the carriage entrances to the houses in Paris, you can imagine me, without white gloves, and no curl in my hair, as pale as usual. My cell is the shape of a large-sized bier. . . ." This certainly does not sound very enthusiastic. The question is whether he composed anything at all at Valdemosa. Liszt presents him to us improvising his Prelude in B flat minor under the most dramatic circumstances. We are told that one day, when George Sand and her children had started on an excursion, they were surprised by a thunderstorm. Chopin had stayed at home in the monastery, and, terrified at the danger he foresaw for them, he fainted. Before they reached home he had improvised his _Prelude_, in which he has put all his terror and the nervousness due to his disease. It appears, though, that all this is a legend, and that there is not a single echo of the stay at Valdemosa in Chopin's work. The deplorable journey to Majorca dates from November, 1838 to March, 1839. The intimacy between George Sand and Chopin continued eight years more. In the summer Chopin stayed it Nohant. Eugene Delacroix, who was paying a visit there too, describes his presence as follows: "At times, through the window opening on to the garden, we get wafts of Chopin's music, as he too is at work. It is mingled with the songs of the nightingales and with the perfume of the rose trees." Chopin did not care much for Nohant. In the first place, he only liked the country for about a fortnight at a time, which is very much like not caring for it at all. Then what made him detest the country were the inhabitants. Hippolyte Chatiron was terrible after he had been drinking. He was extremely effusive and cordial. In the winter they first lived in the Rue Pigalle. George Sand used to receive Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Edgar Quinet, Etienne Arago, and many other men. Chopin, who was not very intellectual, felt ill at ease amongst all these literary men, these reformers, arguers and speechifiers. In 1842, they emigrated to the Square d'Orleans. There was a sort of little colony established there, consisting of Alexandre Dumas, Dantan the caricaturist, the Viardots, Zimmermann, and the wife of the Spanish consul, Madame Marliani, who had attracted them all there. They took their meals together. It was a regular phalinstery, and Chopin had very elegant tastes! We must give George Sand credit for looking after him with admirable devotion. She certainly went on nursing her "invalid," or her "dear skeleton," as she called him, but her infatuation had been over for a long time. The absolute contrast of two natures may be attractive at first, but the attraction does not last, and, when the first enthusiasm is over, the logical consequence is that they become disunited. This was what Liszt said in rather an odd but energetic way. He points out all that there was "intolerably incompatible, diametrically opposite and secretly antipathetic between two natures which seemed to have been mutually drawn to each other by a sudden and superficial attraction, for the sake of repulsing each other later on with all the force of inexpressible sorrow and boredom." Illness had embittered Chopin's character. George Sand used to say that "when he was angry he was terrifying." He was very intelligent, too, and delighted in quizzing people for whom he did not care. Solange and Maurice were now older, and this made the situation somewhat delicate. Chopin, too, had a mania for meddling with family matters. He quarrelled one day with Maurice. Another day George Sand was annoyed with her son-in-law Clesinger and with her daughter Solange, and Chopin took their side. This was the cause of their quarrel; it was the last drop that made the cup of bitterness overflow. The following is a fragment of a letter which George Sand sent to Grzymala, in 1847: "For seven years I have lived with him as a virgin. If any woman on earth could inspire him with absolute confidence, I am certainly that woman, but he has never understood. I know, too, that many people accuse me of having worn him out with my violent sensuality, and others accuse me of having driven him to despair by my freaks. I believe you know how much truth there is in all this. He himself complains to me that I am killing him by the privations I insist upon, and I feel certain that I should kill him by acting otherwise."(29) (29) Communicated by M. Rocheblave. It has been said that when Chopin was at Nohant he had a village girl there as his mistress. We do not care to discuss the truth of this statement. It is interesting to endeavour to characterize the nature of this episode in George Sand's sentimental life. She helps us herself in this. As a romantic writer she neglected nothing which she could turn into literature. She therefore made an analysis of her own case, worked out with the utmost care, and published it in one of her books which is little read now. The year of the rupture was 1847, and before the rupture had really occurred, George Sand brought out a novel entitled _Lucrezia Floriani_. In this book she traces the portrait of Chopin as Prince Karol. She denied, of course, that it was a portrait, but contemporaries were not to be deceived, and Liszt gives several passages from _Lucrezia Floriani_ in his biography of the musician. The decisive proof was that Chopin recognized himself, and that he was greatly annoyed. As a matter of fact, there was nothing disagreeable about this portrait. The following fragments are taken from it: "Gentle, sensitive, exquisite in all things, at the age of fifteen he had all the charms of youth, together with the gravity of a riper age. He remained delicate in body ind mind. The lack of muscular development caused him to preserve his fascinating beauty. . . . He was something like one of those ideal creatures which mediaeval poetry used for the ornamentation of Christian temples. Nothing could have been purer and at the same time more enthusiastic than his ideas. . . . He was always lost in his dreams, and had no sense of reality. . . ." His exquisite politeness was then described, and the ultra acuteness and nervosity which resulted in that power of divination which he possessed. For a portrait to be living, it must have some faults as well as qualities. His delineator does not forget to mention the attitude of mystery in which the Prince took refuge whenever his feelings were hurt. She speaks also of his intense susceptibility. "His wit was very brilliant," she says; "it consisted of a kind of subtle mocking shrewdness, not really playful, but a sort of delicate, bantering gaiety." It may have been to the glory of Prince Karol to resemble Chopin, but it was also quite creditable to Chopin to have been the model from which this distinguished neurasthenic individual was taken. Prince Karol meets a certain Lucrezia Floriani, a rich actress and courtesan. She is six years older than he is, somewhat past her prime, and now leading a quiet life. She has done with love and love affairs, or, at least, she thinks so. "The fifteen years of passion and torture, which she had gone through, seemed to her now so cruel that she was hoping to have them counted double by the supreme Dispenser of our trials." It was, of course, natural that she should acknowledge God's share in the matter. We are told that "implacable destiny was not satisfied," so that when Karol makes his first declaration, Lucrezia yields to him, but at the same time she puts a suitable colouring on her fall. There are many ways of loving, and it is surely noble and disinterested in a woman to love a man as his mother. "I shall love him," she says, kissing the young Prince's pale face ardently, "but it will be as his mother loved him, just as fervently and just as faithfully. This maternal affection, etc. . . ." Lucrezia Floriani had a way of introducing the maternal instinct everywhere. She undertook to encircle her children and Prince Karol with the same affection, and her notions of therapeutics were certainly somewhat strange and venturesome, for she fetched her children to the Prince's bedside. "Karol breathed more freely," we are told, "when the children were there. Their pure breath mingling with their mother's made the air milder and more gentle for his feverish lungs." This we shall not attempt to dispute. It is the study of the situation, though, that forms the subject of _Lucrezia Floriani_. George Sand gives evidence of wonderful clear-sightedness and penetration in the art of knowing herself. She gives us warning that it is "a sad story and sorrowful truth" that she is telling us. She has herself the better _role_ of the two naturally. It could not have been on that, account that Chopin' was annoyed. He was a Pole, and therefore doubly chivalrous, so that such an objection would have been unworthy of a lover. What concerns us is that George Sand gives, with great nicety, the exact causes of the rupture. In the first place, Karol was jealous of Lucrezia's stormy past; then his refined nature shrank from certain of her comrades of a rougher kind. The invalid was irritated by her robust health, and by the presence and, we might almost say, the rivalry of the children. Prince Karol finds them nearly always in his way, and he finally takes a dislike to them. There comes a moment when Lucrezia sees herself obliged to choose between the two kinds of maternity, the natural kind and the maternity according to the convention of lovers. The special kind of sentiment, then, between George Sand and Chopin, Just as between Lucrezia and Prince Karol, was just this: love with maternal affection. This is extremely difficult to define, as indeed is everything which is extremely complex. George Sand declares that her reason for not refusing intimacy with Chopin was that she considered this in the light of a duty and as a safeguard. "One duty more," she writes, "in a life already so full, a life in which I was overwhelmed with fatigue, seemed to me one chance more of arriving at that austerity towards which I felt myself being drawn with a kind of religious enthusiasm."(30) (30) _Histoire de via vie._ We can only imagine that she was deceiving herself. To accept a lover for the sake of giving up lovers altogether seems a somewhat heroic means to an end, but also somewhat deceptive. It is certainly true that there was something more in this love than the attraction she felt for Musset and for Michel. In the various forms and degrees of our feelings, there is nothing gained by attempting to establish decided divisions and absolute demarcations for the sake of classifying them all. Among sentiments which are akin, but which our language distinguishes when defining them, there may be some mixture or some confusion with regard to their origin. Alfred de Vigny gives us in _Samson_, as the origin of love, even in man, the remembrance of his mother's caresses: _Il revera toujours a la chaleur du sein._ It seems, therefore, that we cannot apply the same reasoning, with regard to love, when referring to the love of a man or of a woman. With the man there is more pride of possession, and with the woman there is more tenderness, more pity, more charity. All this leads us to the conclusion that maternal affection in love is not an unnatural sentiment, as has so often been said, or rather a perversion of sentiment. It is rather a sentiment in which too much instinct and heredity are mingled in a confused way. The object of the education of feeling is to arrive at discerning and eliminating the elements which interfere with the integrity of it. Rousseau called Madame de Warens his mother, but he was a man who was lacking in good taste. George Sand frequently puts into her novels this conception of love which we see her put into practice in life. It is impossible when analyzing it closely not to find something confused and disturbing in it which somewhat offends us. It now remains for us to study what influence George Sand's friendship with some of the greatest artists of her times had on her works. Beside Liszt and Chopin, she knew Delacroix, Madame Dorval, Pauline Viardot, Nourrit and Lablache. Through them she went into artistic circles. Some of her novels are stories of the life of artists. _Les Maitres Mosaistes_ treats of the rivalry between two studios. _La derniere Aldini_ is the story of a handsome gondolier who, as a tenor, turned the heads of patrician women. The first part of _Consuelo_ takes us back to the singing schools and theatres of Venice in the eighteenth century, and introduces us to individuals taken from life and cleverly drawn. We have Comte Zustiniani, the dilettante, a wealthy patron of the fine arts; Porpora, the old master, who looks upon his art as something sacred; Corilla, the prima donna, annoyed at seeing a new star appear; Anzoleto, the tenor, who is jealous because he gets less applause than his friend; and above and beyond all the others Consuelo, good kind Consuelo, the sympathetic singer. The theatres of Venice seem to be very much like those of Paris and of other places. We have the following sketch of the vanity of the comedian. "Can a man be jealous of a woman's advantages? Can a lover dislike his sweetheart to have success? A man can certainly be jealous of a woman's advantages when that man is a vain artist, and a lover may hate his sweetheart to have any success if they both belong to the theatre. A comedian is not a man, Consuelo, but a woman. He lives on his sickly vanity; he only thinks of satisfying that vanity, and he works for the sake of intoxicating himself with vanity. A woman's beauty is apt to take attention from him and a woman's talent may cause his talent to be thrown in the background. A woman is his rival, or rather he is the rival of a woman. He has all the little meannesses, the caprices, the exigences and the weak points of a coquette." Such is the note of this picture of things and people in the theatrical world. How can we doubt its veracity! At any rate, the general idea that George Sand had of the artist was exactly the idea adopted by romanticism. We all know what a being set apart and free from all social and moral laws, what a "monster" romanticism made of the artist. It is one of its dogmas that the necessities of art are incompatible with the conditions of a regular life. An artist, for instance, cannot be _bourgeois_, as he is the exact opposite. We have Kean's speech in Dumas' drama, entitled _Kean, or Disorder and Genius._ "An actor," he says, "must know all the passions, so that he may express them as he should. I study them in myself." And then he adds: "That is what you call, orderly! And what is to become of genius while I am being orderly?" All this is absurd. The artist is not the man who has felt the most, but the man best gifted for imagining the various states of mind and feeling and for expressing them. We know, too, that an irregular life is neither the origin nor the stamp of extraordinary intellectual worth. All the cripples of Bohemian life prove to us that genius is not the outcome of that kind of life, but that, on the contrary, such life is apt to paralyze talent. It is very convenient, though, for the artist and for every other variety of "superior beings" to make themselves believe that ordinary morals are not for them. The best argument we can have against this theory is the case of George Sand. The artist, in her case, was eminently a very regular and hard-working _bourgeois_ woman. The art in which George Sand gave evidence of the surest taste was music. That is worthy of notice. In one of her _Lettres d'un voyageur_, she celebrates Liszt attacking the _Dies irae_ on the Fribourg organ. She devotes another letter to the praise of Meyer-beer. She has analyzed the different forms of musical emotion in several of her books. One of the ideas dear to romanticism was that of the union and fusion of all the arts. The writer can, and in a certain way he ought, to produce with words the same effects that the painter does with colours and the sculptor with lines. We all know how much literature romantic painters and sculptors have put into their art. The romantic writers were less inclined to accord the same welcome to music as to the plastic arts. Theophile Gautier is said to have exclaimed that music was "the most disagreeable and the dearest of all the arts." Neither Lamartine, Hugo, nor any other of the great writers of that period was influenced by music. Musset was the first one to be impassioned by it, and this may have been as much through his dandyism as from conviction. _Fille de la douleur, Harmonie, Harmonie, Langue que fiour l'amour invents le ginie, Qui nous viens d'Italie, et qui lui vins des cieux, Douce langue du coeur, la seule ou la pensee, Cette vierge craintive et d'une ombre ofensie, Passe en gardant son voile et sans craindre les eux, Qui sait ce qu'un enfant peut entendre et peut dire Dans tes soupirs divins nes de l'air qu'il respire, Tristes comme son coeur et doux comme sa voix?_ George Sand, who agreed with Musset, claimed for "the most beautiful of all the arts," the honour of being able to paint "all the shades of sentiment and all the phases of passion." "Music," she says, "can express everything. For describing scenes of nature it has ideal colours and lines, neither exact nor yet too minute, but which are all the more vaguely and delightfully poetical."(31) (31) Eleventh _Lettre d'un voyageur_: To Giacomo Meyerbeer. As examples of music in literature we have George Sand's phrase, more lyrical and musical than picturesque. We have, too, the gentle, soothing strophes of Sully Prudhomme and the vague melody of the Verlaine songs: "_De la musique avant toute chose_." It would be absurd to exaggerate the influence exercised by George Sand, and to attribute to her an importance which does not belong to her, over poetical evolution. It is only fair to say, though, that music, which was looked upon suspiciously for so long a time by classical writers of sane and sure taste, has completely invaded our present society, so that we are becoming more and more imbued with it. George Sand's predilection for modern art is another feature which makes her one of us, showing that her tendencies were very marked for things of the present day. VII THE HUMANITARIAN DREAM PIERRE LEROUX--SOCIALISTIC NOVELS Hitherto we have seen George Sand put into her work her sufferings, her protests as a woman, and her dreams as an artist. But the nineteenth-century writer did not confine his ambitions to this modest task. He belonged to a corporation which counted among its members Voltaire and Rousseau. The eighteenth-century philosophers had changed the object of literature. Instead of an instrument of analysis, they had made of it a weapon for combat, an incomparable weapon for attacking institutions and for overthrowing governments. The fact is, that from the time of the Restoration we shall scarcely meet with a single writer, from the philosopher to the vaudevillist, and from the professor to the song-maker, who did not wish to act as a torch on the path of humanity. Poets make revolutions, and show Plato how wrong he was in driving them away from his Republic. Sophocles was appointed a general at Athens for having written a good tragedy, and so novelists, dramatists, critics and makers of puns devoted themselves to making laws. George Sand was too much a woman of her times to keep aloof from such a movement. We shall now have to study her in her socialistic _role_. We can easily imagine on what side her sympathies were. She had always been battling with institutions, and it seemed to her that institutions were undoubtedly in the wrong. She had proved that there was a great deal of suffering in the world, and as human nature is good at bottom, she decided that society was all wrong. She was a novelist, and she therefore considered that the most satisfactory solutions are those in which imagination and feeling play a great part. She also considered that the best politics are those which are the most like a novel. We must now follow her, step by step, along the various roads leading to Utopia. The truth is, that in that great manufactory of systems and that storehouse of panaceas which the France of Louis-Philippe had become, the only difficulty was to choose between them all. The first, in date, of the new gospels was that of the Saint-Simonians. When George Sand arrived in Paris, Saint-Simonism was one of the curiosities offered to astonished provincials. It was a parody of religion, but it was organized in a church with a Father in two persons, Bazard and Enfantin. The service took place in a _bouis-bouis_. The costume worn consisted of white trousers, a red waistcoat and a blue tunic. On the days when the Father came down from the heights of Menilmontant with his children, there was great diversion for the people in the street. An important thing was lacking in the organization of the Saint-Simonians. In order to complete the "sacerdotal couple," a woman was needed to take her place next the Father. A Mother was asked for over and over again. It was said that she would soon appear, but she was never forthcoming. Saint-Simon had tried to tempt Madame de Stael. "I am an extraordinary man," he said to her, "and you are just as extraordinary as a woman. You and I together would have a still more extraordinary child." Madame de Stael evidently did not care to take part in the manufacture of this prodigy. When George Sand's first novels appeared, the Saint-Simonians were full of hope. This was the woman they had been waiting for, the free woman, who having meditated on the lot of her sisters would formulate the Declaration of the rights and duties of woman. Adolphe Gueroult was sent to her. He was the editor of the _Opinion nationale_. George Sand had a great fund of common sense, though, and once more the little society awaited the Mother in vain. It was finally decided that she should be sought for in the East. A mission was organized, and messengers were arrayed in white, as a sign of the vow of chastity, with a pilgrim's staff in their hand. They begged as they went along, and slept sometimes outdoors, but more often at the police-station. George Sand was not tempted by this kind of maternity, but she kept in touch with the Saint-Simonians. She was present at one of their meetings at Menilmontant. Her published _Correspondance_ contains a letter addressed by her to the Saint-Simonian family in Paris. As a matter of fact, she had received from it, on the 1st of January, 1836, a large collection of presents. There were in all no less than fifty-nine articles, among which were the following: a dress-box, a pair of boots, a thermometer, a carbine-carrier, a pair of trousers and a corset. Saint-Simonism was universally jeered at, but it is quite a mistake to think that ridicule is detrimental in France. On the contrary, it is an excellent means of getting anything known and of spreading the knowledge of it abroad; it is in reality a force. Saint-Simonism is at the root of many of the humanitarian doctrines which were to spring up from its ashes. One of its essential doctrines was the diffusion of the soul throughout all humanity, and another that of being born anew. Enfantin said: "I can feel St. Paul within me. He lives within me." Still another of its doctrines was that of the rehabilitation of the flesh. Saint-Simonism proclaimed the equality of man and woman, that of industry and art and science, and the necessity of a fresh repartition of wealth and of a modification of the laws concerning property. It also advocated increasing the attributions of the State considerably. It was, in fact, the first of the doctrines offering to the lower classes, by way of helping them to bear their wretched misery, the ideal of happiness here below, lending a false semblance of religion to the desire for material well-being. George Sand had one vulnerable point, and that was her generosity. By making her believe that she was working for the outcasts of humanity, she could be led anywhere, and this was what happened. Among other great minds affected by the influence of Saint-Simonism, it is scarcely surprising to find Lamennais. When George Sand first knew him, he was fifty-three years of age. He had broken with Rome, and was the apocalyptic author of _Paroles d'un croyant_. He put into his revolutionary faith all the fervour of his loving soul, a soul that had been created for apostleship, and to which the qualification of "a disaffected cathedral" certainly applied. After the famous trial, Liszt took him to call on George Sand in her attic. This was in 1835. She gives us the following portrait of him: "Monsieur de Lamennais is short, thin, and looks ill. He seems to have only the feeblest breath of life in his body, but how his face beams. His nose is too prominent for his small figure and for his narrow face. If it were not for this nose out of all proportion, he would be handsome. He was very easily entertained. A mere nothing made him laugh, and how heartily he laughed."(32) It was the gaiety of the seminarist, for Monsieur Feli always remained the _Abbe_ de Lamennais. George Sand had a passionate admiration for him. She took his side against any one who attacked him in her third _Lettre d'un voyageur_, in her _Lettre a Lerminier_, and in her article on _Amshaspands et Darvands_. This is the title of a book by Lamennais. The extraordinary names refer to the spirits of good and evil in the mythology of Zoroaster. George Sand proposed to pronounce them _Chenapans et Pedants_. Although she had a horror of journalism, she agreed to write in Lamennais' paper, _Le Monde._ (32) _Histoire de ma vie._ "He is so good and I like him so much," she writes, "that I would give him as much of my blood and of my ink as he wants."(33) She did not have to give him any of her blood, and he did not accept much of her ink. She commenced publishing her celebrated _Lettres a Marcie_ in _Le Monde_. We have already spoken of these letters, in order to show how George Sand gradually attenuated the harshness of her early feminism. (33) _Correspondance_: To Jules Janin, February 15, 1837. These letters alarmed Lamennais, nevertheless, and she was obliged to discontinue them. Feminism was the germ of their disagreement. Lamennais said: "She does not forgive St. Paul for having said: 'Wives, obey your husbands.'" She continued to acknowledge him as "one of our saints," but "the father of our new Church" gradually broke away from her and her friends, and expressed his opinion about her with a severity and harshness which are worthy of note. Lamennais' letters to Baron de Vitrolles contain many allusions to George Sand, and they are most uncomplimentary. "I hear no more about Carlotta" (Madame Marliani), he writes, "nor about George Sand and Madame d'Agoult. I know there has been a great deal of quarrelling among them. They are as fond of each other as Lesage's two _diables_, one of whom said: 'That reconciled us, we kissed each other, and ever since then we have been mortal enemies.'" He also tells that there is a report that in her novel, entitled _Horace_, she has given as unflattering a portrait as possible of her dear, sweet, excellent friend, Madame d'Agoult, the _Arabella_ of the _Lettres d'un voyageur_. "The portraits continue," he writes, "all true to life, without being like each other." In the same book, _Horace_, there is a portrait of Mallefille, who was beloved "during one quarter of the moon," and abhorred afterwards. He concludes the letter with the following words: "Ah, how fortunate I am to be forgotten by those people! I am not afraid of their indifference, but I should be afraid of their attentions. . . . Say what you like, my dear friend, those people do not tempt me at all. Futility and spitefulness dissolved in a great deal of _ennui_, is a bad kind of medicine." He then goes on to make fun, in terms that it is difficult to quote, of the silly enthusiasm of a woman like Marliani, and even of George Sand, for the theories of Pierre Leroux, of which they did not understand the first letter, but which had taken their fancy. George Sand may have looked upon Lamennais as a master, but it is very evident that she was not his favoured disciple. It was due to his teaching that George Sand obtained her definite ideas about Catholicism, or rather against it. She was decidedly its adversary, because she held that the Church had stifled the spirit of liberty, that it had thrown a veil over the words of Christ, and that it was the obstacle in the way of holy equality. What she owed specially, though, to Lamennais was another lesson, of quite another character. Lamennais was the man of the nineteenth century who waged the finest battle against individualism, against "the scandal of the adoration of man by man."(34) (34) Compare Brunetiere, _Evolution de la poesie lyrique_, vol. i. p. 310. Under his influence, George Sand began to attach less importance to the personal point of view, she ceased applying everything to herself, and she discovered the importance of the life of others. If we study this attentively, we shall see that a new phase now commenced in the history of her ideas. Lamennais was the origin of this transformation, although it is personified in another man, and that other man, was named Pierre Leroux. What a strange mystery it is, among so many other mysteries, that of one mind taking possession of another mind. We have come into contact with great minds which have made no impression on us, whilst other minds, of secondary intelligence, perhaps, and it may be inferior to our own, have governed us. By the side of a Lamennais, this Pierre Leroux was a very puny personage. He had been a compositor in a printing works, before founding the _Globe_. This paper, in his hands, was to become an organ of Saint-Simonism. He belonged neither to the _bourgeois_ nor to the working-class. He was Clumsy, not well built, and had an enormous shock of hair, which was the joy of caricaturists. He was shy and awkward, in addition to all this. He nevertheless appeared in various _salons_, and was naturally more or less ridiculous. In January, 1840, Beranger writes: "You must know that our metaphysician has surrounded himself with women, at the head of whom are George Sand and Marliani, and that, in gilded drawing-rooms, under the light of chandeliers, he exposes his religious principles and his muddy boots." George Sand herself made fun of this occasionally. In a letter to Madame d'Agoult, she writes: "He is very amusing when he describes making his appearance in your drawing-room of the Rue Laffitte. He says: 'I was all muddy, and quite ashamed of myself. I was keeping out of sight as much as possible in a corner. _This lady_ came to me and talked in the kindest way possible. She is very beautiful.'"(35) (35) _Correspondance_: To Madame d'Agoult, October 16, 1837. There are two features about him, then, which seem to strike every one, his unkemptness and his shyness. He expressed his ideas, which were already obscure, in a form which seemed to make them even more obscure. It has been said wittily that when digging out his ideas, he buried himself in them.(36) Later on, when he spoke at public meetings, he was noted for the nonsense he talked in his interminable and unintelligible harangues. (36) P. Thureau-Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet._ And yet, in spite of all this, the smoke from this mind attracted George Sand, and became her pillar of light moving on before her. His hazy philosophy seemed to her as clear as daylight, it appealed to her heart and to her mind, solved her doubts, and gave her tranquillity, strength, faith, hope and a patient and persevering love of humanity. It seems as though, with that marvellous faculty that she had for idealizing always, she manufactured a Pierre Leroux of her own, who was finer than the real one. He was needy, but poverty becomes the man who has ideas. He was awkward, but the contemplative man, on coming down from the region of thought on to our earth once more, only gropes along. He was not clear, but Voltaire tells us that when a man does not understand his own words, he is talking metaphysics. Chopin had personified the artist for her; Pierre Leroux, with his words as entangled as his hair, figured now to her as the philosopher. She saw in him the chief and the master. _Tu duca e tu maestro_. In February, 1844, she wrote the following extraordinary lines: "I must tell you that George Sand is only a pale reflection of Pierre Leroux, a fanatical disciple of the same ideal, but a disciple mute and fascinated when listening to his words, and quite prepared to throw all her own works into the fire, in order to write, talk, think, pray and act under his inspiration. I am merely the popularizer, with a ready pen and an impressionable mind, and I try to translate, in my novels, the philosophy of the master." The most extraordinary part about these lines is that they were absolutely true. The whole secret of the productions of George Sand for the next ten years is contained in these words. With Pierre Leroux and Louis Viardot she now founded a review, _La Revue independante_, in which she could publish, not only novels (beginning with _Horace_, which Buloz had refused), but articles by which philosophical-socialistic ideas could have a free course. Better still than this, the novelist could take the watchword from the sociologist, just as Mascarilla put Roman history into madrigals, she was able to put Pierre Leroux's philosophy into novels. It would be interesting to know what she saw in Pierre Leroux, and which of his ideas she approved and preferred. One of the ideas dear to Pierre Leroux was that of immortality, but an immortality which had very little in common with Christianity. According to it, we should live again after death, but in humanity and in another world. The idea of metempsychosis was very much in vogue at this epoch. According to Jean Reynaud and Lamennais, souls travelled from star to star, but Pierre Leroux believed in metempsychosis on earth. "We are not only the children and the posterity of those who have already lived, but we are, at bottom, the anterior generations themselves. We have gone through former existences which we do not remember, but it may be that at times we have fragmentary reminiscences of them." George Sand must have been very deeply impressed by this idea. It inspired her with _Sept cordes de la lyre_, _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_ and the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, the whole cycle of her philosophical novels. The _Sept cordes de la lyre_ is a dramatic poem after the manner of _Faust_. Maitre Albertus is the old doctor conversing with Mephistocles. He has a ward, named Helene, and a lyre. A spirit lives in this lyre. It is all in vain that the painter, the _maestro_, the poet, the critic endeavour to make the cords vibrate. The lyre remains dumb. Helene, even without putting her hands on it, can draw from it magnificent harmony; Helene is mad. All this may seem very incomprehensible to you, and I must confess that it is so to me. Albertus himself declares: "This has a poetical sense of a very high order perhaps, but it seems vague to me." Personally, I am of the same opinion as Albertus. With a little effort, I might, like any one else, be able to give you an interpretation of this logogriph, which might appear to have something in it. I prefer telling you frankly that I do not understand it. The author, perhaps, did not understand it much better so that it may have been metaphysics. I would call your attention, though, to that picture of Helene, with the magic lyre in her hand, risking her life, by climbing to the spire of the steeple and uttering her inspiring speech from there. Is not this something like Solness, the builder, from the top of his tower? Like Tolstoi, Ibsen had evidently read George Sand and had not forgotten her. _Spiridion_ introduces us into a strange convent, in which we see the portraits come out of their frames and roam about the cloisters. The founder of the convent, Hebronius, lives again in the person of Father Alexis, who is no other than Leroux. In _Consuelo_ we have the same imagination. We have already considered the first part of this novel, that which takes place at Venice, in the schools of music and in the theatres of song. Who would have thought that the charming diva, the pupil of Porpora, was to have such strange adventures? She arrives in Bohemia, at the Chateau of Rudolstadt. She has been warned that extraordinary things take place there. Comte Albert de Rudolstadt is subject to nervous fits and to great lethargy. He disappears from the chateau and then reappears, without any one seeing him go in or out. He believes that he has been Jean Ziska, and this is probably true. He has been present at events which took place three hundred years previously, and he describes them. Consuelo discovers Albert's retreat. It is a cavern hollowed out of a mountain in the vicinity, which communicates, by means of a well, with his rooms. The Chateau of Rudolstadt is built on the same architectural plan as Anne Radcliffe's chateau. After staying for some time in this bewildering place, Consuelo sets forth once more. She now meets Haydn, goes through the Bohmer Wald with him, arrives in Venice, is introduced to Maria Theresa, and is engaged at the Imperial Theatre. She is now recalled to the Chateau of Rudolstadt. Albert is on his deathbed, and he marries her _in extremis_, after telling her that he is going to leave her for a time, but that he shall return to her on earth by a new birth. He, too, had evidently read Pierre Leroux, and it was perhaps that which had caused his illness. _Consuelo_ is a novel of adventures after the style of _Gil Blas_, the _Vie de Marianne_, and _Wilkelm Meister_. It is a historical novel, for which we have Joseph Haydn, Maria Theresa, Baron Trenk, and the whole history of the Hussites. It is a fantastical story with digressions on music and on popular songs, but running through it all, with the persistency of a fixed idea, are divagations on the subject of earthly metempsychosis. Such, then, is this incongruous story, odd and exaggerated, but with gleams of light and of great beauty, the reading of which is apt to leave one weary and disturbed. We meet with Consuelo again in another book. In those days, it was not enough for a novel to consist of several volumes. People liked a sequel also. _Vingt ans apres_ was the sequel to _Trois Mousquetaires_, and the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_ was a sequel to that sequel. Our grandparents were capable of allowing themselves to be bored to a degree which makes us ashamed of our frivolity. The _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ was the sequel to _Consuelo_. As time went on, Pierre Leroux called George Sand's attention to the study of freemasonry. In 1843, she declared that she was plunged in it, and that it was a gulf of nonsense and uncertainties, in which "she was dabbling courageously." "I am up to my ears in freemasonry," she writes. "I cannot get away from the kaddosh, the Rose Croix and the Sublime Scotchman. The result of all this will be a mysterious novel." The mysterious novel was the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_. Consuelo, who through her marriage with Albert is now Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour. She reaches Berlin, and we find her at the Court of Frederick II. We now have Voltaire, La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and the occult sciences. Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison. There appears to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she must first have been imprisoned. Some mysterious rescuers take a great interest in Consuelo, and transport her to a strange dwelling, where she has a whole series of surprises. It is, in fact, a sort of Palace of Illusions. She is first in a dark room, and she then finds herself suddenly in a room of dazzling light. "At the far end of this room, the whole aspect of which is very forbidding, she distinguishes seven personages, wrapped in red cloaks and wearing masks of such livid whiteness that they looked like corpses. They were all seated behind a table of black marble. Just in front of the table, and on a lower seat, was an eighth spectre. He was dressed in black, and he, too, wore a white mask. By the wall, on each side of the room, were about twenty men in black cloaks and masks. There was the most profound silence. Consuelo turned round and saw that there were also black phantoms behind her. At each door there were two of them standing up, each holding a huge, bright sword."(37) (37) _Comtesse de Rudolstadt._ She wondered whether she had reached the infernal regions, but she discovered that she was in the midst of a secret society, styled the Invisibles. Consuelo is to go through all the various stages of the initiation. She first puts on the bridal dress, and after this the widow's weeds. She undergoes all the various trials, and has to witness the different spectacles provided for her edification, including coffins, funeral palls, spectres and simulated tortures. The description of all the various ceremonies takes up about half of the book. George Sand's object was to show up this movement of secret societies, which was such a feature of the eighteenth century, and which was directed both against monarchical power and against the Church. It contributed to prepare the way for the Revolution, and gave to this that international character and that mystic allure which would otherwise have been incomprehensible. From _Spiridion_ to the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, then, we have this series of fantastical novels with ghosts, subterranean passages, secret hiding-places, hallucinations and apparitions. The unfortunate part is that at present we scarcely know to what category of readers they would appeal. As regards grown-up people, we all prefer something with a vestige of truth in it now-a-days. As to our children, they would prefer _Monte-Cristo_ to _Consuelo_, and _Tom Thumb_ to _Spiridion_. At the time that they were written, in spite of the fact that Buloz protested against all this philosophy, these novels were quite in accordance with the public taste. A mania for anything fantastic had taken possession of the most serious people. Ballanche wrote his _La Palingenesie_, and Edgar Quinet _Ahasverus_. Things took place through the ages, and the reader travelled through the immensity of the centuries, just as though Wells had already invented his machine for exploring time. In a country like France, where clear-mindedness and matter-of-fact intelligence are appreciated, all this seems surprising. It was no doubt the result of infiltrations which had come from abroad. There was something wrong with us just then, "something rotten in the kingdom of France." We see this by that fever of socialistic doctrines which burst forth among us about the year 1840. We have the _Phalanstere_ by Fourier, _La Phalange_ by Considerant, the _Icarie_ by Cabet, and his famous _Voyage_, which appeared that very year. We were always to be devoured by the State, accompanied by whatever sauce we preferred. The State was always to find us shelter, to dress us, to govern us and to tyrannize over us. There was the State as employer, the State as general storekeeper, the State to feed us; all this was a dream of bliss. Buonarotti, formerly Babeuf's accomplice, preached Communism. Louis Blanc published his _Organisation du travail_, in which he calls to his aid a political revolution, foretaste of a social revolution. Proudhon published his _Memoire sur la propriete_, containing the celebrated phrase: "Property means theft." He declared himself an anarchist, and as a matter of fact anarchy was already everywhere. A fresh evil had suddenly made its appearance, and, by a cruel irony, it was the logical consequence of that industrial development of which the century was so proud. The result of all that wealth had been to create a new form of misery, an envious, jealous form of misery, much more cruel than the former one, for it filled the heart with a ferment of hatred, a passion for destruction. It was Pierre Leroux, also, who led George Sand on to Socialism. She had been on the way to it by herself. For a long time she had been raising an altar in her heart to that entity called the People, and she had been adorning it with all the virtues. The future belonged to the people, the whole of the future, and first of all that of literature. Poetry was getting a little worn out, but to restore its freshness there were the poets of the people. Charles Poncy, of Toulon, a bricklayer, published a volume of poetry, in 1842, entitled _Marines_. George Sand adopted him. He was the demonstration of her theory, the example which illustrated her dream. She congratulated him and encouraged him. "You are a great poet," she said to him, and she thereupon speaks of him to all her friends. "Have you read Baruch?" she asks them. "Have you read Poncy, a poet bricklayer of twenty years of age?" She tells every one about his book, dwells on its beauties, and asks people to speak of it. As a friend of George Sand, I have examined the poems by Poncy of which she specially speaks. The first one is entitled _Meditation sur les toits_. The poet has been obliged to stay on the roof to complete his work, and while there he meditates. _"Le travail me retient bien tard sur ces toitures_. . . ." He then begins to wonder what he would see if, like Asmodee in the _Diable boiteux_, he could have the roof taken off, so that the various rooms could be exposed to view. Alas! he would not always find the concord of the Golden Age. _Que de fois contemolant cet amas de maisons Quetreignent nos remparts couronnes de gazons, Et ces faubourgs naissants que la ville trop pleine Pour ses enfants nouveaux eleve dans la plaine. Immobiles troufieaux ou notre clocher gris Semble un patre au milieu de ses blanches brebis, Jai pense que, malgre notre angoisse et nos peines, Sous ces toits paternels il existait des haines, Et que des murs plus forts que ces murs mitoyens Separent ici-bas les coeurs des citoyens._ This was an appeal to concord, and all brothers of humanity were invited to rally to the watchword. The intention was no doubt very good. Then, too, _murs mitoyens_ was an extremely rich and unexpected rhyme for _citoyens_. This was worthy indeed of a man of that party. Another of the poems greatly admired by George Sand was _Le Forcat_. _Regarder le forcat sur la poutre equarrie Poser son sein hale que le remords carie_. . . Certainly if Banville were to lay claim to having invented rhymes that are puns, we could only say that he was a plagiarist after reading Charles Poncy. In another poem addressed to the rich, entitled _L'hiver_, the poet notices with grief that the winter . . . _qui remplit les salons, les Watres, Remplit aussi la Morgue et les amphitheatres._ He is afraid that the people will, in the end, lose their patience, and so he gives to the happy mortals on this earth the following counsel: _Riches, a vos plaisirs faites participer L'homme que les malheurs s'acharnent a frapper Oh, faites travailler le pere de famille, Pour qu'il puisse arbiter la pudeur de sa fille, Pourqu'aux petits enfants maigris par les douleurs Il rapporte, le soir, le pain et non des pleurs, Afin que son epouse, au desespoir en proie, Se ranime a sa vue et l'embrasse avec joie, Afin qua l'Eternel, a l'heure de sa mort. Vous n'offriez pas un coeur carie de remords_. The expression certainly leaves much to be desired in these poems, but they are not lacking in eloquence. We had already had something of this kind, though, written by a poet who was not a bricklayer. He, too, had asked the rich the question following: _Dans vos fetes d'hiver, riches, heureux du monde, Quand le bal tournoyant de ses feux vous inonde. . . Songez-vous qu'il est la, sous le givre et la neige, Ce pere sans travail que la famine assiege?_ He advises them to practise charity, the sister of prayer. "_Donnez afin qu'un jour, a votre derniere heure, Contre tous vos peches vous ayez la Priere D'un mendiant puissant au ciel_." We cannot, certainly, expect Poncy to be a Victor Hugo. But as we had Victor Hugo's verses, of what use was it for them to be rewritten by Poncy? My reason for quoting a few of the fine lines from _Feuilles d'automne_ is that I felt an urgent need of clearing away all these platitudes. Poncy was not the only working-man poet. Other trades produced their poets too. The first poem in _Marines_ is addressed to Durand, a poet carpenter, who introduces himself as "_Enfant de la foret qui ceint Fontainebleau_." This man handled the plane and the lyre, just as Poncy did the trowel and the lyre. This poetry of the working-classes was to give its admirers plenty of disappointment. George Sand advised Poncy to treat the things connected with his trade, in his poetry. "Do not try to put on other men's clothes, but let us see you in literature with the plaster on your hands which is natural to you and which interests us," she said to him. Proud of his success with the ladies of Paris, Poncy wanted to wash his hands, put on a coat, and go into society. It was all in vain that George Sand beseeched Poncy to remain the poet of humanity. She exposed to him the dogma of impersonality in such fine terms, that more than one _bourgeois_ poet might profit by what she said. "An individual," she said, "who poses as a poet, as a pure artist, as a god like most of our great men do, whether they be _bourgeois_ or aristocrats, soon tires us with his personality. . . . Men are only interested in a man when that man is interested in humanity." This was all of no use, though, for Poncy was most anxious to treat other subjects rather more lively and--slightly libertine. His literary godmother admonished him. "You are dedicating to _Juana l'Espagnole_ and to various other fantastical beauties verses that I do not approve. Are you a _bourgeois_ poet or a poet of the people? If the former, you can sing in honour of all the voluptuousness and all the sirens of the universe, without ever having known either. You can sup with the most delicious houris or with all the street-walkers, in your poems, without ever leaving your fireside or having seen any greater beauty than the nose of your hall-porter. These gentlemen write their poetry in this way, and their rhyming is none the worse for it. But if you are a child of the people and the poet of the people, you ought not to leave the chaste breast of Desiree, in order to run about after dancing-girls and sing about their voluptuous arms."(38) (38) See the letters addressed to Charles Poncy in the _Correspondance._ It is to be hoped that Poncy returned to the chaste Desiree. But why should he not read to the young woman the works of Pierre Leroux? We need a little gaiety in our life. In George Sand's published _Correspondance_, we only have a few of her letters to Charles Poncy. They are all in excellent taste. There is an immense correspondence which M. Rocheblave will publish later on. This will be a treat for us, and it will no doubt prove that there was a depth of immense candour in the celebrated authoress. It does not seem to me that the writings of the working-men poets have greatly enriched French literature. Fortunately George Sand's sympathy with the people found its way into literature in another way, and this time in a singularly interesting way. She did not get the books written by the people themselves, but she put the people into books. This was the plan announced by George Sand in her preface to the _Compagnon du tour de France_. There is an entirely fresh literature to create, she writes, "with the habits and customs of the people, as these are so little known by the other classes." The _Compagnon du tour de France_ was the first attempt at this new literature of the people. George Sand had obtained her documents for this book from a little work which had greatly struck her, entitled _Livre du compagnonnage_, written by Agricol Perdiguier, surnamed Avignonnais-la-Vertu, who was a _compagnon_ carpenter. Agricol Perdiguier informs us that the _Compagnons_ were divided into three chief categories: the _Gavots_, the _Devorants_ and the _Drilles_, or the _Enfants de Salomon_, the _Enlants de Maitre Jacques_ and the _Enfants du_ _Pere Soubise_. He then describes the rites of this order. When two _Compagnons_ met, their watchword was "_Tope_." After this they asked each other's trade, and then they went to drink a glass together. If a _Compagnon_ who was generally respected left the town, the others gave him what was termed a "conduite en regle." If it was thought that he did not deserve this, he had a "conduite de Grenoble." Each _Compagnon_ had a surname, and among such surnames we find _The Prudence of Draguignan_, _The Flower of Bagnolet_ and _The Liberty of Chateauneuf_. The unfortunate part was that among the different societies, instead of the union that ought to have reigned, there were rivalries, quarrels, fights, and sometimes all this led to serious skirmishes; Agricol Perdiguier undertook to preach to the different societies peace and tolerance. He went about travelling through France with this object in view. His second expedition was-at George Sand's expense. A fresh edition of his book contained the letters of approval addressed to him by those who approved his campaign. Among these signatures are the following: Nantais-Pret-a-bien-faire, Bourgignonla-Felicite, Decide-le-Briard. All this is a curious history of the syndicates of the nineteenth century. Agricol Perdiguier may have seen the _Confederation du Travail_ dawning in the horizon. In the _Compagnon du Tour de France_, Pierre Huguenin, a carpenter, travels about among all these different societies of the _Compagnonnage_, and lets us see something of their competition, rivalries, battles, etc. He is then sent for to the Villepreux Chateau, to do some work. The noble Yseult falls in love with this fine-talking carpenter, and at once begs him to make her happy by marrying her. In the _Meunier d'Angibault_ it is a working locksmith, Henri Lemor, who falls in love with Marcelle de Blanchemont. Born to wealth, she regrets that she is not the daughter or the mother of workingmen. Finally, however, she loses her fortune, and rejoices in this event. The personage who stands out in relief in this novel is the miller, Grand Louis. He is always gay and contented, with a smile on his lips, singing lively songs and giving advice to every one. In the _Peche de M. Antoine_, the _role_ of Grand Louis falls to Jean the carpenter. In this story all the people are communists, with the exception of the owner of the factory, who, in consequence, is treated with contempt. His son Emile marries the daughter of Monsieur Antoine. Her name is Gilberte, and a silly old man, the Marquis de Boisguilbaut, leaves her all his money, on condition that the young couple found a colony of agriculturists in which there shall be absolute communism. All these stories, full of eloquence and dissertations on the misfortune of being rich and the corrupting influence of wealth, would be insufferable, if it were not for the fact that the Angibault mill were in the Black Valley, and the crumbling chateau, belonging to Monsieur Antoine, on the banks of the Creuse. They are very poor novels, and it would be a waste of time to attempt to defend them. They are not to be despised, though, as regards their influence on the rest of George Sand's work, and also as regards the history of the French novel. They rendered great service to George Sand, inasmuch as they helped her to come out of herself and to turn her attention to the miseries of other people, instead of dwelling all the time on her own. The miseries she now saw were more general ones, and consequently more worthy of interest. In the history of the novel they are of capital importance, as they are the first ones to bring into notice, by making them play a part, people of whom novelists had never spoken. Before Eugene Sue and before Victor Hugo, George Sand gives a _role_ to a mason, a carpenter and a joiner. We see the working-class come into literature in these novels, and this marks an era. As to their socialistic influence, it is supposed by many people that they had none. The kind of socialism that consists of making tinkers marry marchionesses, and duchesses marry zinc-workers, seems very childish and very feminine. It is just an attempt at bringing about the marriage of classes. This socialistic preaching, by means of literature, cannot be treated so lightly, though, as it is by no means harmless. It is, on the contrary, a powerful means of diffusing doctrines to which it lends the colouring of imagination, and for which it appeals to the feelings. George Sand propagated the humanitarian dream among a whole category of men and women who read her books. But for her, they would probably have turned a deaf ear to the inducements held out to them with regard to this Utopia. Lamartine with his _Girondins_ reconciled the _bourgeois_ classes to the idea of the Revolution. In both cases the effect was the same, and it is just this which literature does in affairs of this kind. Its _role_ consists here in creating a sort of snobbism, and this snobbism, created by literature in favour of all the elements of social destruction, continues to rage at present. We still see men smiling indulgently and stupidly at doctrines of revolt and anarchy, which they ought to repudiate, not because of their own interest, but because it is their duty to repudiate them with all the strength of their own common sense and rectitude. Instead of any arguments, we have facts to offer. All this was in 1846, and the time was now drawing near when George Sand was to see those novels of hers actually taking place in the street, so that she could throw down to the rioters the bulletins that she wrote in their honour. VIII 1848 GEORGE SAND AND THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT--HER PASTORAL NOVELS IN 1846, George Sand published _Le Peche de M. Antoine_. It was a very dull story of a sin, for sins are not always amusing. The same year, though, she published _La Mare au Diable_. People are apt to say, when comparing the socialistic novels and the pastoral novels by George Sand, that the latter are superb, because they are the result of a conception of art that was quite disinterested, as the author had given up her preaching mania, and devoted herself to depicting people that she knew and things that she liked, without any other care than that of painting them well. Personally, I think that this was not so. George Sand's pastoral style is not essentially different from her socialistic style. The difference is only in the success of the execution, but the ideas and the intentions are the same. George Sand is continuing her mission in them, she is going on with her humanitarian dream, that dream which she dreamed when awake. We have a proof of this in the preface of the author to the reader with which the _Mare au Diable_ begins. This preface would be disconcerting to any one who does not remember the intellectual atmosphere in which it was written. People have wondered by what fit of imagination George Sand, when telling such a wholesome story of country life, should evoke the ghastly vision of Holbein's Dance of Death. It is the close of day, the horses are thin and exhausted, there is an old peasant, and, skipping about in the furrows near the team, is Death, the only lively, careless, nimble being in this scene of "sweat and weariness." She gives us the explanation of it herself. She wanted to show up the ideal of the new order of things, as opposed to the old ideal, as translated by the ghastly dance. "We have nothing more to do with death," she writes, "but with life. We no longer believe in the _neant_ of the tomb, nor in salvation bought by enforced renunciation. We want life to be good, because we want it to be fertile. . . . Every one must be happy, so that the happiness of a few may not be criminal and cursed by God." This note we recognize as the common feature of all the socialistic Utopias. It consists in taking the opposite basis to that on which the Christian idea is founded. Whilst Christianity puts off, until after death, the possession of happiness, transfiguring death by its eternal hopes, Socialism places its Paradise on earth. It thus runs the risk of leaving all those without any recourse who do not find this earth a paradise, and it has no answer to give to the lamentations of incurable human misery. George Sand goes on to expose to us the object of art, as she understands it. She believes that it is for pleading the cause of the people. She does not consider that her _confreres_ in novel-writing and in Socialism set about their work in the best way. They paint poverty that is ugly and vile, and sometimes even vicious and criminal. How is it to be expected that the bad, rich man will take pity on the sorrows of the poor man, if this poor man is always presented to him as an escaped convict or a night loafer? It is very evident that the people, as presented to us in the _Mysteres de Paris_, are not particularly congenial to us, and we should have no wish to make the acquaintance of the "Chourineur." In order to bring about conversions, George Sand has more faith in gentle, agreeable people, and, in conclusion, she tells us: "We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and of love, and that the novel of to-day ought to take the place of the parable and the apologue of more primitive times." The object of the artist, she tells us, "is to make people appreciate what he presents to them." With that end in view, he has a right to embellish his subjects a little. "Art," we are told, "is not a study of positive reality; it is the seeking for ideal truth." Such is the point of view of the author of _La Mare au Diable_, which we are invited to consider as a parable and an apologue. The parable is clear enough, and the apologue is eloquent. The novel commences with that fine picture of the ploughing of the fields, so rich in description and so broadly treated that there seems to be nothing in French literature to compare with it except the episode of the Labourers in _Jocelyn_. When _Jocelyn_ was published, George Sand was severe in her criticism of it, treating it as poor work, false in sentiment and careless in style. "In the midst of all this, though," she adds, "there are certain pages and chapters such as do not exist in any language, pages that I read seven times over, crying all the time like a donkey." I fancy that she must have cried over the episode of the _Labourers_. Whether she remembered it or not when writing her own book little matters. My only reason for mentioning it is to point out the affinity of genius between Lamartine and George Sand, both of them so admirable in imagining idylls and in throwing the colours of their idyllic imagination on to reality. I have ventured, to analyze the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ and even _Consuelo_, but I shall not be guilty of the bad taste of telling the story of _La Mare au Diable_, as all the people of that neighbourhood are well known to us, and have been our friends for a long time. We are all acquainted with Germain, the clever farm-labourer, with Marie, the shepherdess, and with little Pierre. We remember how they climbed the _Grise_, lost their way in the mist, and were obliged to spend the night under the great oak-trees. When we were only about fifteen years of age, with what delight we read this book, and how we loved that sweet Marie for her simple grace and her affection, which all seemed so maternal. How much better we liked her than the Widow Guerin, who was so snobbish with her three lovers. And how glad we were to be present at that wedding, celebrated according to the custom in Berry from time immemorial. It is easy to see the meaning of all these things. They show us how natural kindliness is to the heart of man. If we try to find out why Germain and Marie appear so delightful to us, we shall discover that it is because they are simple-hearted, and follow the dictates of Nature. Nature must not be deformed, therefore, by constraint nor transformed by convention, as it leads straight to virtue. We have heard the tune of this song before, and we have seen the blossoming of some very fine pastoral poems and a veritable invasion of sentimental literature. In those days tears were shed plentifully over poetry, novels and plays. We have had Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Sedaine, Florian and Berquin. The Revolution, brutal and sanguinary as it was, did not interrupt the course of these romantic effusions. Never were so many tender epithets used as during the years of the Reign of Terror, and in official processions Robespierre was adorned with flowers like a village bride. This taste for pastoral things, at the time of the Revolution, was not a mere coincidence. The same principles led up to the idyll in literature and to the Revolution in history. Man was supposed to be naturally good, and the idea was to take away from him all the restraints which had been invented for curbing his nature. Political and religious authority, moral discipline and the prestige of tradition had all formed a kind of network of impediments, by which man had been imprisoned by legislators who were inclined to pessimism. By doing away with all these fetters, the Golden Age was to be restored and universal happiness was to be established. Such was the faith of the believers in the millennium of 1789, and of 1848. The same dream began over and over again, from Diderot to Lamartine and from Jean-Jacques to George Sand. The same state of mind which we see reflected in _La Mare au Diable_ was to make of George Sand the revolutionary writer of 1848. We can now understand the _role_ which the novelist played in the second Republic. It is one of the most surprising pages in the history of this extraordinary character. The joy with which George Sand welcomed the Republic can readily be imagined. She had been a Republican ever since the days of Michel of Bourges, and a democrat since the time when, as a little girl, she took the side of her plebeian mother against "the old Countesses." For a long time she had been wishing for and expecting a change of government. She would not have been satisfied with less than this. She was not much moved by the Thiers-Guizot duel, and it would have given her no pleasure to be killed for the sake of Odilon Barrot. She was a disciple of Romanticism, and she wanted a storm. When the storm broke, carrying all before it, a throne, a whole society with its institutions, she hurried away from her peaceful Nohant. She wanted to breathe the atmosphere of a revolution, and she was soon intoxicated by it. "Long live the Republic," she wrote in her letters. "What a dream and what enthusiasm, and then, too, what behaviour, what order in Paris. I have just arrived, and I saw the last of the barricades. The people are great, sublime, simple and generous, the most admirable people in the universe. I spent nights without any sleep and days without sitting down. Every one was wild and intoxicated with delight, for after going to sleep in the mire they have awakened in heaven."(39) (39) _Correspondance: _ To Ch. Poncy, March 9, 1848. She goes on dreaming thus of the stars. Everything she hears, everything she sees enchants her. The most absurd measures delight her. She either thinks they are most noble, liberal steps to have taken, or else they are very good jokes. "Rothschild," she writes, "expresses very fine sentiments about liberty at present. The Provisional Government is keeping him in sight, as it does not wish him to make off with his money, and so will put some of the troops on his track. The most amusing things are happening." A little later on she writes: "The Government and the people expect to have bad deputies, but they have agreed to put them through the window. You must come, and we will go and see all this and have fun."(40) (40) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, March 24, 1848. She was thoroughly entertained, and that is very significant. We must not forget the famous phrase that sounded the death-knell of the July monarchy, "La France s'ennuie." France had gone in for a revolution by way of being entertained. George Sand was entertained, then, by what was taking place. She went down into the street where there was plenty to see. In the mornings there were the various coloured posters to be read. These had been put up in the night, and they were in prose and in verse. Processions were also organized, and men, women and children, with banners unfurled, marched along to music to the Hotel de Ville, carrying baskets decorated with ribbons and flowers. Every corporation and every profession considered itself bound in honour to congratulate the Government and to encourage it in its well-doing. One day the procession would be of the women who made waistcoats or breeches, another day of the water-carriers, or of those who had been decorated in July or wounded in February; then there were the pavement-layers, the washerwomen, the delegates from the Paris night-soil men. There were delegates, too, from the Germans, Italians, Poles, and most of the inhabitants of Montmartre and of Batignolles. We must not forget the trees of Liberty, as George Sand speaks of meeting with three of these in one day. "Immense pines," she writes, "carried on the shoulders of fifty working-men. A drum went first, then the flag, followed by bands of these fine tillers of the ground, strong-looking, serious men with wreaths of leaves on their head, and a spade, pick-axe or hatchet over their shoulder. It was magnificent; finer than all the _Roberts_ in the world."(41) Such was the tone of her letters. (41) _Correspondance._ She had the Opera from her windows and an Olympic circus at every cross-road. Paris was certainly _en fete_. In the evenings it was just as lively. There were the Clubs, and there were no less than three hundred of these. Society women could go to them and hear orators in blouses proposing incendiary movements, which made them shudder deliciously. Then there were the theatres. Rachel, draped in antique style, looking like a Nemesis, declaimed the _Marseillaise_. And all night long the excitement continued. The young men organized torchlight processions, with fireworks, and insisted on peaceably-inclined citizens illuminating. It was like a National Fete day, or the Carnival, continuing all the week. All this was the common, everyday aspect of Paris, but there were the special days as well to break the monotony of all this. There were the manifestations, which had the great advantage of provoking counter-manifestations. On the 16th of March, there was the manifestation of the National Guard, who were tranquil members of society, but on the 17th there was a counter-manifestation of the Clubs and workingmen. On such days the meeting-place would be at the Bastille, and from morning to night groups, consisting of several hundred thousand men, would march about Paris, sometimes in favour of the Assembly against the Provisional Government, and sometimes in favour of the Provisional Government against the Assembly. On the 17th of April, George Sand was in the midst of the crowd, in front of the Hotel de Ville, in order to see better. On the 15th of May, as the populace was directing its efforts against the Palais Bourbon, she was in the Rue de Bourgogne, in her eagerness not to miss anything. As she was passing in front of a _cafe_, she saw a woman haranguing the crowd in a very animated way from one of the windows. She was told that this woman was George Sand. Women were extremely active in this Revolution. They organized a Legion for themselves, and were styled _"Les Vesuviennes_." They had their clubs, their banquets and their newspapers. George Sand was far from approving all this feminine agitation, but she did not condemn it altogether. She considered that "women and children, disinterested as they are in all political questions, are in more direct intercourse with the spirit that breathes from above over the agitations of this world."(42) It was for them, therefore, to be the inspirers of politics. George Sand was one of these inspirers. In order to judge what counsels this Egeria gave, we have only to read some of her letters. On the 4th of March, she wrote as follows to her friend Girerd: "Act vigorously, my dear brother. In our present situation, we must have even more than devotion and loyalty; we must have fanaticism if necessary." In conclusion, she says that he is not to hesitate "in sweeping away all that is of a _bourgeois_ nature." In April she wrote to Lamartine, reproaching him with his moderation and endeavouring to excite his revolutionary spirit. Later on, although she was not of a very warlike disposition, she regretted that they had not, like their ancestors of 1793, cemented their Revolution at home by a war with the nations. (42) _Correspondance:_ To the Citizen Thore, May 28, 1848. "If, instead of following Lamartine's stupid, insipid policy," she then wrote, "we had challenged all absolute monarchies, we should have had war outside, but union at home, and strength, in consequence of this, it home and abroad."(43) Like the great ancestors, she declared that the revolutionary idea is neither that of a sect nor of a party. "It is a religion," she says, "that we want to proclaim." All this zeal, this passion and this persistency in a woman is not surprising, but one does not feel much confidence in a certain kind of inspiration for politics after all this. (43) _Correspondance:_ To Mazzini, October 10, 1849. My reason for dwelling on the subject is that George Sand did not content herself with merely looking on at the events that were taking place, or even with talking about them with her friends. She took part in the events, by means of her pen. She scattered abroad all kinds of revolutionary writings. On the 7th of March, she published her first _Letter to the People_, at the price of a penny, the profits of which were to be distributed among working-men without employment. After congratulating these great and good people on their noble victory, she tells them they are all going to seek together for the truth of things. That was exactly the state of the case. They did not yet know what they wanted, but, in the mean time, while they were considering, they had at any rate begun with a revolution. There was a second _Letter to the People_, and then these ceased. Publications in those days were very short-lived. They came to life again, though, sometimes from their ashes. In April a newspaper was started, entitled _The Cause of the People_. This was edited almost entirely by George Sand. She wrote the leading article: _Sovereignty is Equality_. She reproduced her first _Letter to the People_, gave an article on the aspect of the streets of Paris, and another on theatrical events. She left to her collaborator, Victor Borie, the task of explaining that the increase of taxes was an eminently republican measure, and an agreeable surprise for the person who had to pay them. The third number of this paper contained a one-act play by George Sand, entitled _Le Roi attend_. This had just been given at the Comedie-Francaise, or at the Theatre de la Republique, as it was then called. It had been a gratis performance, given on the 9th of April, 1848, as a first national representation. The actors at that time were Samson, Geffroy, Regnier, Anais, Augustine Brohan and Rachel. There were not many of them, but they had some fine things to interpret. In George Sand's piece, Moliere was at work with his servant, Laforet, who could not read, but without whom, it appears, he could not have written a line. He has not finished his play, the actors have not learnt their parts, and the king is impatient at being kept waiting. Moliere is perplexed, and, not knowing what to do, he decides to go to sleep. The Muse appears to him, styles him "the light of the people," and brings to him all the ghosts of the great poets before him. AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare all declare to him that, in their time, they had all worked towards preparing the Revolution of 1848. Moliere then wakes up, and goes on to the stage to pay his respects to the king. The king has been changed, though. "I see a king," says Moliere, "but his name is not Louis XIV. It is the people, the sovereign people. That is a word I did not know, a word as great as eternity." We recognize the democrat in all this. _Le Roi_ _attend_ may be considered as an authentic curiosity of revolutionary art. The newspaper announced to its readers that subscriptions could be paid in the Rue Richelieu. Subscribers were probably not forthcoming, as the paper died a natural death after the third number. George Sand did much more than this, though.(44) We must not forget that she was an official publicist in 1848. She had volunteered her services to Ledru-Rollin, and he had accepted them. "I am as busy as a statesman," she wrote at this time. "I have already written two Government circulars."(45) (44) With regard to George Sand's _role_, see _La Revolution de_ 1848, by Daniel Stern (Madame d'Agoult). (45) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, March 24, 1848. With George Sand's collaboration, the _Bulletin de la Republique_ became unexpectedly interesting. This paper was published every other day, by order of Ledru-Rollin, and was intended to establish a constant interchange of ideas and sentiments between the Government and the people. "It was specially addressed to the people of rural districts, and was in the form of a poster that the mayor of the place could have put up on the walls, and also distribute to the postmen to be given away. The _Bulletins_ were anonymous, but several of them were certainly written by George Sand. The seventh is one of these, and also the twelfth. The latter was written with a view to drawing the attention of the public to the wretched lot of the women and girls of the lower classes, who were reduced to prostitution by the lowness of their wages. Their virginity is an object of traffic," we are told, "quoted on the exchange of infamy." The sixteenth _Bulletin_ was simply an appeal for revolt. George Sand was looking ahead to what ought to take place, in case the elections did not lead to the triumph of social truth. "The people," she hoped, "would know their duty. There would, in that case, be only one way of salvation for the people who had erected barricades, and that would be to manifest their will a second time, and so adjourn the decisions of a representation that was not national." This was nothing more nor less than the language of another Fructidor. And we know what was the result of words in those days. The _Bulletin_ was dated the 15th, and on the 17th the people were on the way to the Hotel de Ville. These popular movements cannot always be trusted, though, as they frequently take an unexpected turn, and even change their direction when on the way. It happened this time that the manifestation turned against those who were its instigators. Shouts were heard that day in Paris of _"Death to the Communists"_ and _"Down with Cabet_." George Sand could not understand things at all. This was not in the programme, and she began to have her doubts about the future of the Republic--the real one, that of her friends. It was much worse on the 15th of May, the day which was so fatal to Barbes, for he played the part of hero and of dupe on that eventful day. Barbes was George Sand's idol at that time. It was impossible for her to be without one, although, with her vivid imagination, she changed her idols frequently. With her idealism, she was always incarnating in some individual the perfections that she was constantly imagining. It seems as though she exteriorized the needs of her own mind and put them into an individual who seemed suitable to her for the particular requirements of that moment. At the time of the monarchy, Michel of Bourges and Pierre Leroux had been able to play the part, the former of a radical theorician and the latter of the mystical forerunner of the new times. At present Barbes had come on to the scene. He was a born conspirator, the very man for secret societies. He had made his career by means of prisons, or rather he had made prison his career, In 1835, he had commenced by helping thirty of the prisoners of April to escape from Sainte-Pelagie. At that time he was affiliated to the _Societe des Familles_. The police discovered a whole arsenal of powder and ammunition at the house in the Rue de Lourcine, and Barbes was condemned to prison for a year and sent to Carcassonne, where he had relatives. When he left prison, the _Societe des Saisons_ had taken the place of the _Societe des Familles_. With Blanqui's approval, Barbes organized the insurrection of May 12 and 13, 1830. This time blood was shed. In front of the Palais de Justice, the men, commanded by Barbes, had invited Lieutenant Droulneau to let them enter. The officer replied that he would die first. He was immediately shot, but Barbes was sentenced to death for this. Thanks to the intervention of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, his life was spared, but he was imprisoned at Mont Saint-Michel until 1843, and afterwards at Nimes. On the 28th of February, 1848, the Governor of Nimes prison informed him that he was free. He was more surprised and embarrassed than pleased by this news. "I was quite bewildered," he owned later on, "by this idea of leaving prison. I looked at my prison bed, to which I had grown so accustomed. I looked at my blanket and at my pillow and at all my belongings, hung so carefully at the foot of my bed." He asked permission to stay there another day. He had become accustomed to everything, and when once he was out again, and free, he was like a man who feels ill at ease. He took part in the affair of the 15th of May, and this is what gives a tragic, and at the same time comic, character to the episode. Under pretext of manifesting in favour of Poland, the National Assembly was to be invaded. Barbes did not approve of this manifestation, and had decided to keep out of it. Some people cannot be present at a revolutionary scene without taking part in it, and without soon wanting to play the chief part in it. The excitement goes to their head. Barbes seems to have been obeying in instinct over which he had no control, for, together with a workman named Albert, he headed the procession which was to march from the Chamber of Deputies to the Hotel de Ville and establish a fresh Provisional Government. He had already commenced composing the proclamations to be thrown through the windows to the people, after the manner of the times, when suddenly Lamartine appeared on the scene with Ledru-Rollin and a captain in the artillery. The following dialogue then took place: "Who are you?" "A member of the Provisional Government." "Of the Government of yesterday or of to-day?" "Of the one of to-day." "In that case I arrest you." Barbes was taken to Vincennes. He had been free rather less than three months, when he returned to prison as though it were his natural dwelling-place. George Sand admired him just as much after this as before. For her, the great man of the Revolution was neither Ledru-Rollin, Lamartine, nor even Louis-Blanc; it was Barbes. She compared him to Joan of Arc and to Robespierre. To her, he was much more than a mere statesman, this man of conspiracies and dungeons, ever mysterious and unfortunate, always ready for a drama or a romance. In her heart she kept an altar for this martyr, and never thought of wondering whether, after all, this idol and hero were not a mere puppet. The skirmish of May 15 undeceived George Sand very considerably. The June insurrection and the civil war, with blood flowing in the Paris streets, those streets which were formerly so lively and amusing, caused her terrible grief. From henceforth her letters were full of her sadness and discouragement. The most gloomy depression took the place of her former enthusiasm. It had only required a few weeks for this change to take place. In February she had been so proud of France, and now she felt that she was to be pitied for being a Frenchwoman. It was all so sad, and she was so ashamed. There was no one to count upon now. Lamartine was a chatterer; Ledru-Rollin was like a woman; the people were ignorant and ungrateful, so that the mission of literary people was over. She therefore took refuge in fiction, and buried herself in her dreams of art. We are not sorry to follow her there. _Francois le Champi_ appeared as a serial in the _Journal des Debats_. The _denouement_ was delayed by another _denouement_, which the public found still more interesting. This was nothing less than the catastrophe of the July Monarchy, in February, 1848. After the terrible June troubles, George Sand had been heartbroken, and had turned once more to literature for consolation. She wrote _La Petite Fadette_, so that the pastoral romances and the Revolution are closely connected with each other. Beside the novels of this kind which we have already mentioned, we must add _Jeanne_, which dates from 1844, and the _Maitres Sonneurs_, written in 1853. This, then, completes the incomparable series, which was the author's _chef-d'oeuvre_, and one of the finest gems of French literature. This was George Sand's real style, and the note in literature which was peculiarly her own. She was well fitted for such writing, both by her natural disposition and by circumstances. She had lived nearly all her life in the country, and it was there only that she lived to the full. She made great efforts, but Paris certainly made her homesick for her beloved Berry. She could not help sighing when she thought of the ploughed fields, of the walnut-trees, and of the oxen answering to the voice of the labourers. "It is no use," she wrote about the same time, "if you are born a country person, you cannot get used to the noise of cities. It always seems to me that our mud is beautiful mud, whilst that here makes me feel sick. I very much prefer my keeper's wit to that of certain of the visitors here. It seems to me that I am livelier when I have eaten some of Nannette's wheat-cake than I am after my coffee in Paris. In short, it appears to me that we are all perfect and charming, that no one could be more agreeable than we are, and that Parisians are all clowns."(46) (46) _Correspondance:_ To. Ch. Duvernet, November 12, 1842. This was said in all sincerity. George Sand was quite indifferent about all the great events of Parisian life, about social tittle-tattle and Boulevard gossip. She knew the importance, though, of every episode of country life, of a sudden fog or of the overflowing of the river. She knew the place well, too, as she had visited every nook and corner in all weathers and in every season. She knew all the people; there was not a house she had not entered, either to visit the sick or to clear up some piece of business for the inmates. Not only did she like the country and the country people because she was accustomed to everything there, but she had something of the nature of these people within her. She had a certain turn of mind that was peasant-like, her slowness to take things in, her dislike of speech when thinking, her thoughts taking the form of "a series of reveries which gave her a sort of tranquil ecstasy, whether awake or asleep."(47) It does not seem as though there has ever been such an _ensemble_ of favourable conditions. (47) See in _Jeanne_ a very fine page on the peasant soul. She did not succeed in her first attempt. In several of her novels, ever since _Valentine_, she had given us peasants among her characters. She had tried labourers, mole-catchers, fortune-tellers and beggars, but all these were episodic characters. _Jeanne_ is the first novel in which the heroine is a peasant. Everything connected with Jeanne herself in the novel is exquisite. We have all seen peasant women of this kind, women with serious faces and clearly-cut features, with a dreamy look in their eyes that makes us think of the maid of Lorraine. It is one of these exceptional creatures that George Sand has depicted. She has made an ecstatic being of her, who welcomes all that is supernatural, utterly regardless of dates or epochs. To her all wonderful beings appeal, the Virgin Mary and fairies, Druidesses, Joan of Arc and Napoleon. But Jeanne, the Virgin of Ep Nell, the Velleda of the Jomatres stones, the mystical sister of the Great Shepherdess, was very poorly supported. This remark does not refer to her cousin Claudie, although this individual's conduct was not blameless. Jeanne had gone into service at Boussac, and she was surrounded by a group of middle-class people, among whom was Sir Arthur----, a wealthy Englishman, who wanted to marry her. This mixture of peasants and _bourgeois_ is not a happy one. Neither is the mixture of _patois_ with a more Christian way of talking, or rather with a written style. The author was experimenting and feeling her way. When she wrote _La Mare au Diable_ she had found it, for in this work we have unity of tone, harmony of the characters with their setting, of sentiment with the various adventures, and, above all, absolute simplicity. In _Francois le Champi_ there is much that is graceful, and there is real feeling mingled with a touch of sentimentality. Madeleine Blanchet is rather old for Champi, whom she had brought up like her own child. In the country, though, where difference of age is soon less apparent, the disproportion does not seem as objectionable as it would in city life. The novel is not a study of maternal affection in love, as it is not Madeleine's feelings that are analyzed, but those of Francois. For a long time he had been in love without knowing it, and he is only aware of it when this love, instead of being a sort of agreeable dream and melancholy pleasure, is transformed into suffering. The subject of _La Petite Fadette_ is another analysis of a love which has been silent for a long time. It is difficult to say which is the best of these delightful stories, but perhaps, on the whole, this last one is generally preferred, on account of the curious and charming figure of little Fadette herself. We can see the thin, slender girl, suddenly appearing on the road, emerging from a thicket. She seems to be part of the scenery, and can scarcely be distinguished from the objects around her. The little wild country girl is like the spirit of the fields, woods, rivers and precipices. She is a being very near to Nature. Inquisitive and mischievous, she is bold in her speech, because she is treated as a reprobate. She jeers, because she knows that she is detested, and she scratches, because she suffers. The day comes when she feels some of that affection which makes the atmosphere breathable for human beings. She feels her heart beating faster in her bosom, thanks to this affection, and from that minute a transformation takes place within her. Landry, who has been observing her, is of opinion that she must be something of a witch. Landry is very simple-minded. There is no witchcraft here except that of love, and it was not difficult for that to work the metamorphosis. It has worked many others in this world. The _Maitres Soneurs_ initiates us into forest life, so full of mysterious visions. In opposition to the sedentary, stay-at-home life of the inhabitant of plains, with his indolent mind, we have the free-and-easy humour of the handsome and adventurous muleteer, Huriel, with his love of the road and of all that is unexpected. He is a _cheminau_ before the days of M. Richepin. I do not know any stories more finished than these. They certainly prove that George Sand had the artistic sense, a quality which has frequently been denied her. The characters in these stories are living and active, and at the same time their psychology is not insisted upon, and they do not stand out in such relief as to turn our attention from things, which, as we know, are more important than people in the country. We are surrounded on all sides by the country, and bathed, as it were, in its atmosphere. And yet, in spite of all this, the country is not once described. There is not one of those descriptions so dear to the heart of those who are considered masters in the art of word-painting. We do not describe those things with which we live. We are content to have them ever present in our mind and to be in constant communion with them. Style is, perhaps, the sovereign quality in these stories. Words peculiar to the district are introduced just sufficiently to give an accent. Somewhat old-fashioned expressions are employed, and these prove the survival of by-gone days, which, in the country, are respected more than elsewhere. Without any apparent effort, the narrative takes that epic form so natural to those who, as _aedes_ of primitive epochs, or story-tellers by country firesides, give their testimony about things of the past. I am aware that George Sand has been accused of tracing portraits of her peasants which were not like them. This is so absurd that I do not consider it worth while to spend time in discussing it. It would be so easy to show that in her types of peasants there is more variety, and also more reality, than in Balzac's more realistic ones. Without being untruthful portraits, it may be that they are somewhat flattered, and that we have more honest, delicate and religious peasants in these stories than in reality. This may be so, and George Sand warns us of this herself. It was her intention to depict them thus. It was not absolute reality and the everyday details of the peasants' habits and customs that she wanted to show us, but the poetry of the country, the reflection of the great sights of Nature in the soul of those who, thanks to their daily work, are the constant witnesses of them. The peasant certainly has no exact notion of the poetry of Nature, nor is he always conscious of it. He feels it, though, within his soul in a vague way. At certain moments he has glimpses of it, perhaps, when love causes him emotion, or perhaps when he is absent from the part of the world, where he has always lived. His homesickness then gives him a keener perception. This poetry is perhaps never clearly revealed to any individual, not to the labourer who traces out his furrows tranquilly in the early morning, nor to the shepherd who spends whole weeks alone in the mountains, face to face with the stars. It dwells, though, in the inner conscience of the race. The generations which come and go have it within them, and they do not fall to express it. It is this poetry which we find in certain customs and beliefs, in the various legends and songs. When Le Champi returns to his native place, he finds the whole country murmuring with the twitter of birds which he knew so well. "And all this reminded him of a very old song with which his mother Zabelli used to sing him to sleep. It was a song with words such as people used to employ in olden times." In George Sand's pastoral novels we have some of these old words. They come to us from afar, and are like a supreme blossoming of old traditions. It is all this which characterizes these books, and assigns to them their place in our literature. We must not compare them with the rugged studies of Balzac, nor with the insipid compositions of the bucolic writer, nor even with Bernadin de Saint-Pierre's masterpiece, as there are too many cocoanut trees in that. They prevent us seeing the French landscapes. Very few people know the country in France and the humble people who dwell there. Very few writers have loved the country well enough to be able to depict its hidden charms. La Fontaine has done it in his fables and Perrault in his tales. George Sand has her place, in this race of writers, among the French Homers. IX THE 'BONNE DAME' OF NOHANT THE THEATRE--ALEXANDRE DUMAS FILS--LIFE AT NOHANT Novelists are given to speaking of the theatre somewhat disdainfully. They say that there is too much convention, that an author is too much the slave of material conditions, and is obliged to consider the taste of the crowd, whilst a book appeals to the lover of literature, who can read it by his own fireside, and to the society woman, who loses herself in its pages. As soon, though, as one of their novels has had more success than its predecessors, they do not hesitate to cut it up into slices, according to the requirements of the publishing house, so that it may go beyond the little circle of lovers of literature and society women and reach the crowd--the largest crowd possible. George Sand never pretended to have this immense disdain for the theatre which is professed by ultra-refined writers. She had always loved the theatre, and she bore it no grudge, although her pieces had been hissed. In those days plays that did not find favour were hissed. At present they are not hissed, either because there are no more poor plays, or because the public has seen so many bad ones that it has become philosophical, and does not take the trouble to show its displeasure. George Sand's first piece, _Cosima_, was a noted failure. About the year 1850, she turned to the theatre once more, hoping to find a new form of expression for her energy and talent. _Francois le Champi_ was a great success. In January, 1851, she wrote as follows, after the performance of _Claudie:_ "A tearful success and a financial one. The house is full every day; not a ticket given away, and not even a seat for Maurice. The piece is played admirably; Bocage is magnificent. The public weeps and blows its nose, as though it were in church. I am told that never in the memory of man has there been such a first night. I was not present myself." There may be a slight exaggeration in the words "never in the memory of man," but the success was really great. _Claudie_ is still given, and I remember seeing Paul Mounet interpret the part of Remy admirably at the Odeon Theatre. As to the _Mariage de Victorine_, it figures every year on the programme of the Conservatoire competitions. It is the typical piece for would-be _ingenues._ _Francois le Champi, Claudie_ and the _Mariage de Victorine_ may be considered as the series representing George Sand's dramatic writings. These pieces were all her own, and, in her own opinion, that was their principal merit. The dramatic author is frequently obliged to accept the collaboration of persons who know nothing of literature. "Your characters say this," observes the manager; "it is all very well, but, believe me, it will be better for him to say just the opposite. The piece will run at least sixty nights longer." There was a manager at the Gymnase Theatre in those days named Montigny. He was a very clever manager, and knew exactly what the characters ought to say for making the piece run. George Sand complained of his mania for changing every play, and she added: "Every piece that I did not change, such, for instance, as _Champi_, _Claudie_, _Victorine, Le Demon du foyer_ and _Le Pressoir_, was a success, whilst all the others were either failures or they had a very short run."(48) (48) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, February 24, 1855. It was in these pieces that George Sand carried out her own idea of what was required for the theatre. Her idea was very simple. She gives it in two or three words: "I like pieces that make me cry." She adds: "I like drama better than comedy, and, like a woman, I must be infatuated by one of the characters." This character is the congenial one. The public is with him always and trembles for him, and the trembling is all the more agreeable, because the public knows perfectly well that all will end well for this character. It can even go as far as weeping the traditional six tears, as Madame de Sevigne did for Andromaque. Tears at the theatre are all the sweeter, because they are all in vain. When, in a play, we have a congenial character who is there from the beginning to the end, the play is a success. Let us take _Cyraino de Bergerac_, for instance, which is one of the greatest successes in the history of the theatre. Francois le Champi is eminently a congenial character, for he is a man who always sets wrong things right. We are such believers in justice and in the interference of Providence. When good, straightforward people are persecuted by fate, we always expect to see a man appear upon the scene who will be the champion of innocence, who will put evil-doers to rights, and find the proper thing to do and say in every circumstance. Francois appears at the house of Madeleine Blanchet, who is a widow and very sad and ill. He takes her part and defends her from the results of La Severe's intrigues. He is hard on the latter, and he disdains another woman, Mariette, but both La Severe and Mariette love him, so true is it that women have a weakness for conquerors. Francois only cares for Madeleine, though. On the stage, we like a man to be adored by all women, as this seems to us a guarantee that he will only care for one of them. "Champi" is a word peculiar to a certain district, meaning "natural son." Dumas _fils_ wrote a play entitled _Le Fils naturel_. The hero is also a superior man, who plays the part of Providence to the family which has refused to recognize him. In _Claudie_, as in _Francois le Champi_, the rural setting is one of the great charms of the play. The first act is one of the most picturesque scenes on the stage. It takes place in a farmyard, the day when the reapers have finished their task, which is just as awe-inspiring as that of the sowers. A cart, drawn by oxen, enters the yard, bringing a sheaf all adorned with ribbons and flowers. The oldest of the labourers, Pere Remy, addresses a fine couplet to the sheaf of corn which has cost so much labour, but which is destined to keep life in them all. Claudie is one of those young peasant girls, whom we met with in the novel entitled _Jeanne_. She had been unfortunate, but Jeanne, although virtuous and pure herself, did not despise her, for in the country there is great latitude in certain matters. This is just the plain story, but on the stage everything becomes more dramatic and is treated in a more detailed and solemn fashion. Claudie's misfortune causes her to become a sort of personage apart, and it raises her very high in her own esteem. "I am not afraid of anything that can be said about me," observes Claudie, "for, on knowing the truth, kind-hearted, upright people will acknowledge that I do not deserve to be insulted." Her old grandfather, Remy, has completely absolved her. "You have repented and suffered enough, and you have worked and wept and expiated enough, too, my poor Claudie," he says. Through all this she has become worthy to make an excellent marriage. It is a case of that special moral code by which, after free love, the fault must be recompensed. Claudie is later on the Jeannine of the _Idees de Madame Aubray_, the Denise of Alexandre Dumas. She is the unmarried mother, whose misfortunes have not crushed her pride, who, after being outraged, has a right now to a double share of respect. The first good young man is called upon to accept her past life, for there is a law of solidarity in the world. The human species is divided into two categories, the one is always busy doing harm, and the other is naturally obliged to give itself up to making good the harm done. _The Mariage de Victorine_ belongs to a well-known kind of literary exercise, which was formerly very much in honour in the colleges. This consists in taking a celebrated work at the place where the author has left it and in imagining the "sequel." For instance, after the _Cid_, there would be the marriage of Rodrigue and Chimene for us. As a continuation of _L'Ecole des Femmes_, there is the result of the marriage of the young Horace with the tiresome little Agnes. Corneille gave a sequel to the _Menteur_ himself. Fabre d'Eglantine wrote the sequel to _Le Misanthrope_, and called it _Le Philinte de Moliere_. George Sand gives us here the sequel of Sedaine's _chef-d'oeuvre_ (that is, a _chef-d'oeuvre_ for Sedaine), _Le Philosophe sans le savor._ In _Le Philosophe sans le savoir_ Monsieur Vanderke is a nobleman, who has become a merchant in order to be in accordance with the ideas of the times. He is a Frenchman, but he has taken a Dutch name out of snobbishness. He has a clerk or a confidential servant named Antoine. Victorine is Antoine's daughter. Vanderke's son is to fight a duel, and from Victorine's emotion, whilst awaiting the result of this duel, it is easy to see that she is in love with this young man. George Sand's play turns on the question of what is to be done when the day comes for Victorine to marry. An excellent husband is found for her, a certain Fulgence, one of Monsieur Vanderke's clerks. He belongs to her own class, and this is considered one of the indispensable conditions for happiness in marriage. He loves her, so that everything seems to favour Victorine. We are delighted, and she, too, seems to be in good spirits, but, all the time that she is receiving congratulations and presents, we begin to see that she has some great trouble. "Silk and pearls!" she exclaims; "oh, how heavy they are, but I am sure that they are very fine. Lace, too, and silver; oh, such a quantity of silver. How rich and fine and happy I shall be. And then Fulgence is so fond of me." (She gets sadder and sadder.) "And father is so pleased. How strange. I feel stifled." (She sits down in Antoine's chair.) "Is this joy? . . . I feel . . . Ah, it hurts to be as happy as this. . . ." She bursts into tears. This suppressed emotion to which she finally gives vent, and this forced smile which ends in sobs are very effective on the stage. The question is, how can Victorine's tears be dried? She wants to marry young Vanderke, the son of her father's employer, instead of the clerk. The only thing is, then, to arrange this marriage. "Is it a crime, then, for my brother to love Victorine?" asks Sophie, "and is it mad of me to think that you will give your consent?" "My dear Sophie," replies Monsieur Vanderke, "there are no unequal marriages in the sight of God. A servitor like Antoine is a friend, and I have always brought you up to consider Victorine as your companion and equal." This is the way the father of the family speaks. Personally, I consider him rather imprudent. As this play is already a sequel to another one, I do not wish to propose a sequel to _Le Mariage de Victorine_, but I cannot help wondering what will happen when Vanderke's son finds himself the son-in-law of an old servant-man, and also what will occur if he should take his wife to call on some of his sister's friends. It seems to me that he would then find out he had, made a mistake. Among the various personages, only one appears to me quite worthy of interest, and that is poor Fulgence, who was so straightforward and honest, and who is treated so badly. But how deep Victorine was! Even if we admit that she did not deliberately scheme and plot to get herself married by the son of the family, she did instinctively all that had to be done for that. She was very deep in an innocent way, and I have come to the conclusion that such deepness is the most to be feared. I see quite well all that is lacking in these pieces, and that they are not very great, but all the same they form a "theatre" apart. There is unity in this theatrical work of George Sand. Whether it makes a hero of the natural son, rehabilitates the seduced girl, or cries down the idea of _mesalliances_, it is always the same fight in which it is engaged; it is always fighting against the same enemies, prejudice and narrow-mindedness. On the stage, we call every opinion contrary to our own prejudice or narrow-mindedness. The theatre lives by fighting. It matters little what the author is attacking. He may wage war with principles, prejudices, giants, or windmills. Provided that there be a battle, there will be a theatre for it. The fact that George Sand's theatre was the forerunner of the theatre of Dumas _fils_ gives it additional value. We have already noticed the analogy of situations and the kinship of theories contained in George Sand's best plays and in the most noted ones by Dumas. I have no doubt that Dumas owed a great deal to George Sand. We shall see that he paid his debt as only he could have done. He knew the novelist when he was quite young, as Dumas _pere_ and George Sand were on very friendly terms. In her letter telling Sainte-Beuve not to take Musset to call on her, as she thought him impertinent, she tells him to bring Dumas _pere_, whom she evidently considered well bred. As she was a friend of his father's, she was like a mother for the son. The first letter to him in the _Correspondance_ is dated 1850. Dumas _fils_ was then twenty-six years of age, and she calls him "my son." He had not written _La Dame aux Camelias_ then. It was performed for the first time in February, 1852. He was merely the author of a few second-rate novels and of a volume of execrable poetry. He had not found out his capabilities at that time. There is no doubt that he was greatly struck by George Sand's plays, imbued as they were with the ideas we have just pointed out. All this is worthy of note, as it is essential for understanding the work of Alexandre Dumas _fils_. He, too, was a natural son, and his illegitimate birth had caused him much suffering. He was sent to the Pension Goubaux, and for several years he endured the torture he describes with such harshness at the beginning of _L'Affaire Clemenceau_. He was exposed to all kinds of insults and blows. His first contact with society taught him that this society was unjust, and that it made the innocent suffer. The first experience he had was that of the cruelty and cowardice of men. His mind was deeply impressed by this, and he never lost the impression. He did not forgive, but made it his mission to denounce the pharisaical attitude of society. His idea was to treat men according to their merits, and to pay them back for the blows he had received as a child.(49) It is easy, therefore, to understand how the private grievances of Dumas _fils_ had prepared his mind to welcome a theatre which took the part of the oppressed and waged war with social prejudices. I am fully aware of the difference in temperament of the two writers. Dumas _fils_, with his keen observation, was a pessimist. He despised woman, and he advises us to kill her, under the pretext that she has always remained "the strumpet of the land of No." although she may be dressed in a Worth costume and wear a Reboux hat. (49) See our study of Dumas _fils_ in a volume entitled _Portraits d'ecrivains._ As a dramatic author, Alexandre Dumas _fils_ had just what George Sand lacked. He was vigorous, he had the art of brevity and brilliant dialogue. It is thanks to all this that we have one of the masterpieces of the French theatre, _Le Marquis de Villemer_, as a result of their collaboration. We know from George Sand's letters the share that Dumas _fils_ had in this work. He helped her to take the play from her novel, and to write the scenario. After this, when once the play was written, he touched up the dialogue, putting in more emphasis and brilliancy. It was Dumas, therefore, who constructed the play. We all know how careless George Sand was with her composition. She wrote with scarcely any plan in her mind beforehand, and let herself be carried away by events. Dumas' idea was that the _denouement_ is a mathematical total, and that before writing the first word of a piece the author must know the end and have decided the action. Theatrical managers complained of the sadness of George Sand's plays. It is to Dumas that we owe the gaiety of the Duc d'Aleria's _role_. It is one continual flow of amusing speeches, and it saves the piece from the danger of falling into tearful drama. George Sand had no wit, and Dumas _fils_ was full of it. It was he who put into the dialogue those little sayings which are so easily recognized as his. "What do the doctors say?" is asked, and the reply comes: "What do the doctors say? Well, they say just what they know: they say nothing." "My brother declares that the air of Paris is the only air he can breathe," says another character. "Congratulate him for me on his lungs," remarks his interlocutor. "Her husband was a baron . . ." remarks some one. "Who is not a baron at present?" answers another person. A certain elderly governess is being discussed. "Did you not know her?" "Mademoiselle Artemise? No, monsieur." "Have you ever seen an albatross?" "No, never." "Not even stuffed? Oh, you should go to the Zoo. It is a curious creature, with its great beak ending in a hook. . . . It eats all day long. . . . Well, Mademoiselle Artemise, etc. . . ." The _Marquis de Villemer_ is in its place in the series of George Sand's plays, and is quite in accordance with the general tone of her theatre. It is like the _Mariage de Victorine_ over again. This time Victorine is a reader, who gets herself married by a Marquis named Urbain. He is of a gloomy disposition, so that she will not enjoy his society much, but she will be a Marquise. Victorine and Caroline are both persons who know how to make their way in the world. When they have a son, I should be very much surprised if they allowed him to make a _mesalliance_. George Sand was one of the persons f or whom Dumas _fils_ had the greatest admiration. As a proof of this, a voluminous correspondence between them exists. It has not yet been published, but there is a possibility that it may be some day. I remember, when talking with Dumas _fils_, the terms in which he always spoke of "la mere Sand," as he called her in a familiar but filial way. He compared her to his father, and that was great praise indeed from him. He admired in her, too, as he admired in his father, that wealth of creative power and immense capacity for uninterrupted work. As a proof of this admiration, we have only to turn to the preface to _Le Fils naturel_, in which Dumas is so furious with the inhabitants of Palaiseau. George Sand had taken up her abode at Palaiseau, and Dumas had been trying in vain to discover her address in the district, when he came across one of the natives, who replied as follows: "George Sand? Wait a minute. Isn't it a lady with papers?" "So much for the glory," concludes Dumas, "of those of us with papers." According to him, no woman had ever had more talent or as much genius. "She thinks like Montaigne," he says, "she dreams like Ossian and she writes like Jean-Jacques. Leonardo sketches her phrases for her, and Mozart sings them. Madame de Sevigne kisses her hands, and Madame de Stael kneels down to her as she passes." We can scarcely imagine Madame de Stael in this humble posture, but one of the charms of Dumas was his generous nature, which spared no praise and was lavish in enthusiasm. At the epoch at which we have now arrived, George Sand had commenced that period of tranquillity and calm in which she was to spend the rest of her life. She had given up politics, for, as we have seen, she was quickly undeceived with regard to them, and cured of her illusions. When the _coup d'etat_ of December, 1851, took place, George Sand, who had been Ledru-Rollin's collaborator and a friend of Barbes, soon made up her mind what to do. As the daughter of Murat's _aide-de-camp_, she naturally had a certain sympathy with the Bonapartists. Napoleon III was a socialist, so that it was possible to come to an understanding. When the prince had been a prisoner at Ham, he had sent the novelist his study entitled _L'Extinction du pauperisme_. George Sand took advantage of her former intercourse with him to beg for his indulgrence in favour of some of her friends. This time she was in her proper _role_, the _role_ of a woman. The "tyrant" granted the favours she asked, and George Sand then came to the conclusion that he was a good sort of tyrant. She was accused of treason, but she nevertheless continued to speak of him with gratitude. She remained on good terms with the Imperial family, particularly with Prince Jerome, as she appreciated his intellect. She used to talk with him on literary and philosophical questions. She sent him two tapestry ottomans one year, which she had worked for him. Her son Maurice went for a cruise to America on Prince Jerome's yacht, and he was the godfather of George Sand's little grandchildren who were baptized as Protestants. George Sand deserves special mention for her science in the art of growing old. It is not a science easy to master, and personally this is one of my reasons for admiring her. She understood what a charm there is in that time of life when the voice of the passions is no longer heard, so that we can listen to the voice of things and examine the lesson of life, that time when our reason makes us more indulgent, when the sadness of earthly separations is softened by the thought that we shall soon go ourselves to join those who have left us. We then begin to have a foretaste of the calmness of that Great Sleep which is to console us at the end of all our sufferings and grief. George Sand was fully aware of the change that had taken place within her. She said, several times over, that the age of impersonality had arrived for her. She was delighted at having escaped from herself and at being free from egoism. From henceforth she could give herself up to the sentiments which, in pedantic and barbarous jargon, are called altruistic sentiments. By this we mean motherly and grandmotherly affection, devotion to her family, and enthusiasm for all that is beautiful and noble. She was delighted when she was told of a generous deed, and charmed by a book in which she discovered talent. It seemed to her as though she were in some way joint author of it. "My heart goes out to all that I see dawning or growing . . ." she wrote, at this time. "When we see or read anything beautiful, does it not seem as though it belongs to us in a way, that it is neither yours nor mine, but that it belongs to all who drink from it and are strengthened by it?"(50) (50) _Correspondance:_ To Octave Feuillet, February 27, 1859. This is a noble sentiment, and less rare than is generally believed. The public little thinks that it is one of the great joys of the writer, when he has reached a certain age, to admire the works of his fellow-writers. George Sand encouraged her young _confreres_, Dumas _fils_, Feuillet and Flaubert, at the beginning of their career, and helped them with her advice. We have plenty of information about her at this epoch. Her intimate friends, inquisitive people and persons passing through Paris, have described their visits to her over and over again. We have the impressions noted down by the Goncourt brothers in their _Journal_. We all know how much to trust to this diary. Whenever the Goncourts give us an idea, an opinion, or a doctrine, it is as well to be wary in accepting it. They were not very intelligent. I do not wish, in saying this, to detract from them, but merely to define them. On the other hand, what they saw, they saw thoroughly, and they noted the general look, the attitude or gesture with great care. We give their impressions of George Sand. In March, 1862, they went to call on her. She was then living in Paris, in the Rue Racine. They give an account of this visit in their diary. "_March_ 30, 1862. "On the fourth floor, No. 2, Rue Racine. A little gentleman, very much like every one else, opened the door to us. He smiled, and said: 'Messieurs de Goncourt!' and then, opening another door, showed us into a very large room, a kind of studio. "There was a window at the far end, and the light was getting dim, for it was about five o'clock. We could see a grey shadow against the pale light. It was a woman, who did not attempt to rise, but who remained impassive to our bow and our words. This seated shadow, looking so drowsy, was Madame Sand, and the man who opened the door was the engraver Manceau. Madame Sand is like an automatic machine. She talks in a monotonous, mechanical voice which she neither raises nor lowers, and which is never animated. In her whole attitude there is a sort of gravity and placidness, something of the half-asleep air of a person ruminating. She has very slow gestures, the gestures of a somnambulist. With a mechanical movement she strikes a wax match, which gives a flicker, and lights the cigar she is holding between her lips. "Madame Sand was extremely pleasant; she praised us a great deal, but with a childishness of ideas, a platitude of expression and a mournful good-naturedness that was as chilling as the bare wall of a room. Manceau endeavoured to enliven the dialogue. We talked of her theatre at Nohant, where they act for her and for her maid until four in the morning. . . . We then talked of her prodigious faculty for work. She told us that there was nothing meritorious in that, as she had always worked so easily. She writes every night from one o'clock until four in the morning, and she writes again for about two hours during the day. Manceau explains everything, rather like an exhibitor of phenomena. 'It is all the same to her,' he told us, 'if she is disturbed. Suppose you turn on a tap at your house, and some one comes in the room. You simply turn the tap off. It is like that with Madame Sand.'" The Goncourt brothers were extremely clever in detracting from the merits of the people about whom they spoke. They tell us that George Sand had "a childishness in her ideas and a platitude of expression." They were unkind without endeavouring to be so. They ran down people instinctively. They were eminently literary men. They were also artistic writers, and had even invented "artistic writing," but they had very little in common with George Sand's attitude of mind. To her the theory of art for the sake of art had always seemed a very hollow theory. She wrote as well as she could, but she never dreamed of the profession of writing having anything in common with an acrobatic display. In September, 1863, the Goncourt brothers again speak of George Sand, telling us about her life at Nohant, or rather putting the account they give into the mouth of Theophile Gautier. He had just returned from Nohant, and he was asked if it was amusing at George Sand's. "Just as amusing as a monastery of the Moravian brotherhood," he replies. "I arrived there in the evening, and the house is a long way from the station. My trunk was put into a thicket, and on arriving I entered by the farm in the midst of all the dogs, which gave me a fright. . . ." As a matter of fact, Gautier's arrival at Nohant had been quite a dramatic poem, half tragic and half comic. Absolute freedom was the rule of Nohant. Every one there read, wrote, or went to sleep according to his own will and pleasure. Gautier arrived in that frame of mind peculiar to the Parisian of former days. He considered that he had given a proof of heroism in venturing outside the walls of Paris. He therefore expected a hearty welcome. He was very much annoyed at his reception, and was about to start back again immediately, when George Sand was informed of his arrival. She was extremely vexed at what had happened, and exclaimed, "But had not any one told him how stupid I am!" The Goncourt brothers asked Gautier what life at Nohant was like. "Luncheon is at ten," he replied, "and when the finger was on the hour, we all took our seats. Madame Sand arrived, looking like a somnambulist, and remained half asleep all through the meal. After luncheon we went into the garden and played at _cochonnet_. This roused her, and she would then sit down and begin to talk." It would have been more exact to say that she listened, as she was not a great talker herself. She had a horror of a certain kind of conversation, of that futile, paradoxical and spasmodic kind which is the speciality of "brilliant talkers." Sparkling conversation of this sort disconcerted her and made her feel ill at ease. She did not like the topic to be the literary profession either. This exasperated Gautier, who would not admit of there being anything else in the world but literature. "At three o'clock," he continued, "Madame Sand went away to write until six. We then dined, but we had to dine quickly, so that Marie Caillot would have time to dine. Marie Caillot is the servant, a sort of little Fadette whom Madame Sand had discovered in the neighbourhood for playing her pieces. This Marie Caillot used to come into the drawing-room in the evening. After dinner Madame Sand would play patience, without uttering a word, until midnight. . . . At midnight she began to write again until four o'clock. . . . You know what happened once. Something monstrous. She finished a novel at one o'clock in the morning, and began another during the night. . . . To make copy is a function with Madame Sand." The marionette theatre was one of the Nohant amusements. One of the joys of the family, and also one of the delights of _dilettanti_,(51) was the painting of the scenery, the manufacturing of costumes, the working out of scenarios, dressing dolls and making them talk. (51) "The individual named George Sand is very well. He is enjoying the wonderful winter which reigns in Berry; he gathers flowers, points out any interesting botanical anomalies, sews dresses and mantles for his daughter-in-law, and costumes for the marionettes, cuts out stage scenery, dresses dolls and reads music. . .."--_Correspondance:_ To Flaubert, January 17, 1869. In one of her novels, published in 1857, George Sand introduces to us a certain Christian Waldo, who has a marionette show. He explains the attraction of this kind of theatre and the fascination of these _burattini_, which were living beings to him. Those among us who, some fifteen years ago, were infatuated by a similar show, are not surprised at Waldo's words. The marionettes to which we refer were to be seen in the Passage Vivienne. Sacred plays in verse were given, and the managers were Monsieur Richepin and Monsieur Bouchor. For such plays we preferred actors made of wood to actors of flesh and blood, as there is always a certain desecration otherwise in acting such pieces. George Sand rarely left Nohant now except for her little flat in Paris. In the spring of 1855, she went to Rome for a short time, but did not enjoy this visit much. She sums up her impressions in the following words: "Rome is a regular see-saw." The ruins did not interest her much. "After spending several days in visiting urns, tombs, crypts and columns, one feels the need of getting out of all this a little and of seeing Nature." Nature, however, did not compensate her sufficiently for her disappointment in the ruins. "The Roman Campagna, which has been so much vaunted, is certainly singularly immense, but it is so bare, flat and deserted, so monotonous and sad, miles and miles of meadow-land in every direction, that the little brain one has left, after seeing the city, is almost overpowered by it all." This journey inspired her with one of the weakest of her novels, _La Daniella_. It is the diary of a painter named Jean Valreg, who married a laundry-girl. In 1861, after an illness, she went to Tamaris, in the south of France. This name is the title of one of her novels. She does not care for this place either. She considers that there is too much wind, too much dust, and that there are too many olive-trees in the south of France. I am convinced that at an earlier time in her life she would, have been won over by the fascination of Rome. She had comprehended the charm of Venice so admirably. At an earlier date, too, she would not have been indifferent to the beauties of Provence, as she had delighted in meridional Nature when in Majorca. The years were over, though, for her to enjoy the variety of outside shows with all their phantasmagoria. A time comes in life, and it had already come for her, when we discover that Nature, which has seemed so varied, is the same everywhere, that we have quite near us all that we have been so far away to seek, a little of this earth, a little water and a little sky. We find, too, that we have neither the time nor the inclination to go away in search of all this when our hours are counted and we feel the end near. The essential thing then is to reserve for ourselves a little space for our meditations, between the agitations of life and that moment which alone decides everything for us. X THE GENIUS OF THE WRITER CORRESPONDENCE WITH FLAUBERT--LAST NOVELS With that maternal instinct which was so strong within her, George Sand could not do without having a child to scold, direct and take to task. The one to whom she was to devote the last ten years of her life, who needed her beneficent affection more than any of those she had adopted, was a kind of giant with hair turned back from his forehead and a thick moustache like a Norman of the heroic ages. He was just such a man as we can imagine the pirates in Duc Rollo's boats. This descendant of the Vikings had been born in times of peace, and his sole occupation was to endeavour to form harmonious phrases by avoiding assonances. I do not think there have been two individuals more different from each other than George Sand and Gustave Flaubert. He was an artist, and she in many respects was _bourgeoise_. He saw all things at their worst; she saw them better than they were. Flaubert wrote to her in surprise as follows: "In spite of your large sphinx eyes, you have seen the world through gold colour." She loved the lower classes; he thought them detestable, and qualified universal suffrage as "a disgrace to the human mind." She preached concord, the union of classes, whilst he gave his opinion as follows: "I believe that the poor hate the rich, and that the rich are afraid of the poor. It will be like this eternally." It was always thus. On every subject the opinion of the one was sure to be the direct opposite of the opinion of the other. This was just what had attracted them. "I should not be interested in myself," George Sand said, "if I had the honour of meeting myself." She was interested in Flaubert, as she had divined that he was her antithesis. "The man who is Just passing," says Fantasio, "is charming. There are all sorts of ideas in his mind which would be quite new to me." George Sand wanted to know something of these ideas which were new to her. She admired Flaubert on account of all sorts of qualities which she did not possess herself. She liked him, too, as she felt that he was unhappy. She went to see him during the summer of 1866. They visited the historic streets and old parts of Rouen together. She was both charmed and surprised. She could not believe her eyes, as she had never imagined that all that existed, and so near Paris, too. She stayed in that house at Croisset in which Flaubert's whole life was spent. It was a house with wide windows and a view over the Seine. The hoarse, monotonous sound of the chain towing the heavy boats along could be heard distinctly within the rooms. Flaubert lived there with his mother and niece. To George Sand everything there seemed to breathe of tranquillity and comfort, but at the same time she brought away with her an impression of sadness. She attributed this to the vicinity of the Seine, coming and going as it does according to the bar. "The willows of the islets are always being covered and uncovered," she writes; "it all looks very cold and sad."(52) (52) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, August 10, 1866. She was not really duped, though, by her own explanation. She knew perfectly well that what makes a house sad or gay, warm or icy-cold is not the outlook on to the surrounding country, but the soul of those who inhabit it and who have fashioned it in their own image. She had just been staying in the house of the misanthropist. When Moliere put the misanthropist on the stage with his wretched-looking face, he gave him some of the features which remind us so strongly of Flaubert. The most ordinary and everyday events were always enough to put Alceste into a rage. It was just the same with Flaubert. Everyday things which we are philosophical enough to accept took his breath away. He was angry, and he wanted to be angry. He was irritated with every one and with everything, and he cultivated this irritation. He kept himself in a continual state of exasperation, and this was his normal state. In his letters he described himself as "worried with life," "disgusted with everything," "always agitated and always indignant." He spells _hhhindignant_ with several h's. He signs his letters, "The Reverend Father Cruchard of the Barnabite Order, director of the Ladies of Disenchantment." Added to all this, although there may have been a certain amount of pose in his attitude, he was sincere. He "roared" in his own study, when he was quite alone and there was no one to be affected by his roaring. He was organized in a remarkable way for suffering. He was both romantic and realistic, a keen observer and an imaginative man. He borrowed some of the most pitiful traits from reality, and recomposed them into a regular nightmare. We agree with Flaubert that injustice and nonsense do exist in life. But he gives us Nonsense itself, the seven-headed and ten-horned beast of the Apocalypse. He sees this beast everywhere, it haunts him and blocks up every avenue for him, so that he cannot see the sublime beauties of the creation nor the splendour of human intelligence. In reply to all his wild harangues, George Sand gives wise answers, smiling as she gives them, and using her common sense with which to protect herself against the trickery of words. What has he to complain of, this grown-up child who is too naive and who expects too much? By what extraordinary misfortune has he such an exceptionally unhappy lot? He is fairly well off and he has great talent. How many people would envy him! He complains of life, such as it is for every one, and of the present conditions of life, which had never been better for any one at any epoch. What is the use of getting irritated with life, since we do not wish to die? Humanity seemed despicable to him, and he hated it. Was he not a part of this humanity himself? Instead of cursing our fellow-men for a whole crowd of imperfections inherent to their nature, would it not be more just to pity them for such imperfections? As to stupidity and nonsense, if he objected to them, it would be better to pay no attention to them, instead of watching out for them all the time. Beside all this, is there not more reason than we imagine for every one of us to be indulgent towards the stupidity of other people? "That poor stupidity of which we hear so much," exclaimed George Sand. "I do not dislike it, as I look on it with maternal eyes." The human race is absurd, undoubtedly, but we must own that we contribute ourselves to this absurdity. There is something morbid in Flaubert's case, and with equal clearness of vision George Sand points out to him the cause of it and the remedy. The morbidness is caused in the first place by his loneliness, and by the fact that he has severed all bonds which united him to the rest of the universe. Woe be to those who are alone! The remedy is the next consideration. Is there not, somewhere in the world, a woman whom he could love and who would make him suffer? Is there not a child somewhere whose father he could imagine himself to be, and to whom he could devote himself? Such is the law of life. Existence is intolerable to us as long as we only ask for our own personal satisfaction, but it becomes dear to us from the day when we make a present of it to another human being. There was the same antagonism in their literary opinions. Flaubert was an artist, the theorist of the doctrine of art for art, such as Theophile Gautier, the Goncourt brothers and the Parnassians comprehended it, at about the same epoch. It is singularly interesting to hear him formulate each article of this doctrine, and to hear George Sand's fervent protestations in reply. Flaubert considers that an author should not put himself into his work, that he should not write his books with his heart, and George Sand answers: "I do not understand at all, then. Oh no, it is all incomprehensible to me." With what was an author to write his books, if not with his own sentiments and emotions? Was he to write them with the hearts of other people? Flaubert maintained that an author should only write for about twenty persons, unless he simply wrote for himself, "like a _bourgeois_ turning his serviette-rings round in his attic." George Sand was of opinion that an author should write "for all those who can profit by good reading." Flaubert confesses that if attention be paid to the old distinction between matter and form, he should give the greater importance to form, in which he had a religious belief. He considered that in the correctness of the putting together, in the rarity of the elements, the polish of the surface and the perfect harmony of the whole there was an intrinsic virtue, a kind of divine force. In conclusion, he adds: "I endeavour to think well always, _in order to_ write well, but I do not conceal the fact that my object is to write well." This, then, was the secret of that working up of the style, until it became a mania with him and developed into a torture. We all know of the days of anguish which Flaubert spent in searching for a word that escaped him, and the weeks that he devoted to rounding off one of his periods. He would never write these down until he had said them to himself, or, as he put it himself, until "they had gone through his jaw." He would not allow two complements in the same phrase, and we are told that he was ill after reading in one of his own books the following words: "Une couronne _de_ fleurs _d_'oranger." "You do not know what it is," he wrote, "to spend a whole day holding one's head and squeezing one's brains to find a word. Ideas flow with you freely and continually, like a stream. With me they come like trickling water, and it is only by a huge work of art that I can get a waterfall. Ah, I have had some experience of the terrible torture of style!" No, George Sand certainly had no experience of this kind, and she could not even conceive of such torture. It amazed her to hear of such painful labour, for, personally, she let the wind play on her "old harp" just as it listed. Briefly, she considered that her friend was the victim of a hopeless error. He took literature for the essential thing, but there was something before all literature, and that something was life. "The Holy of Holies, as you call literature, is only secondary to me in life. I have always loved some one better than it, and my family better than that some one." This, then, was the keynote of the argument. George Sand considered that life is not only a pretext for literature, but that literature should always refer to life and should be regulated by life, as by a model which takes the precedence of it and goes far beyond it. This, too, is our opinion. The state of mind which can be read between the lines in George Sand's letters to Flaubert is serenity, and this is also the characteristic of her work during the last period of her life. Her "last style" is that of _Jean de la Rocke_, published in 1860. A young nobleman, Jean de la Roche, loses his heart to the exquisite Love Butler. She returns his affection, but the jealousy of a young brother obliges them to separate. In order to be near the woman he loves, Jean de la Roche disguises himself as a guide, and accompanies the whole family in an excursion through the Auvergne mountains. A young nobleman as a guide is by no means an ordinary thing, but in love affairs such disguises are admitted. Lovers in the writings of Marivaux took the parts of servants, and in former days no one was surprised to meet with princes in disguise on the high-roads. George Sand's masterpiece of this kind is undoubtedly _Le Marquis de Villemer_, published in 1861. A provincial _chateau_, an old aristocratic woman, sceptical and indulgent, two brothers capable of being rivals without ceasing to be friends, a young girl of noble birth, but poor, calumny being spread abroad, but quickly repudiated, some wonderful pages of description, and some elegant, sinuous conversations. All this has a certain charm. The poor girl marries the Marquis in the end. This, too, is a return to former days, to the days when kings married shepherdesses. The pleasure that we have in reading such novels is very much like that which we used to feel on hearing fairy-stories. "If some one were to tell me the story of _Peau d'Ane_, I should be delighted," confessed La Fontaine, and surely it would be bad form to be more difficult and over-nice than he was. Big children as we are, we need stories which give food to our imagination, after being disappointed by the realities of life. This is perhaps the very object of the novel. Romance is not necessarily an exaggerated aspiration towards imaginary things. It is something else too. It is the revolt of the soul which is oppressed by the yoke of Nature. It is the expression of that tendency within us towards a freedom which is impossible, but of which we nevertheless dream. An iron law presides over our destiny. Around us and within us, the series of causes and effects continues to unwind its hard chain. Every single one of our deeds bears its consequence, and this goes on to eternity. Every fault of ours will bring its chastisement. Every weakness will have to be made good. There is not a moment of oblivion, not an instant when we may cease to be on our guard. Romantic illusion is, then, just an attempt to escape, at least in imagination, from the tyranny of universal order. It is impossible, in this volume, to consider all George Sand's works. Some of her others are charming, but the whole series would perhaps appear somewhat monotonous. There is, however, one novel of this epoch to which we must call attention, as it is like a burst of thunder during calm weather. It also reveals an aspect of George Sand's ideas which should not be passed over lightly. This book was perhaps the only one George Sand wrote under the influence of anger. We refer to _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_. Octave Feuillet had just published his _Histoire de Sibylle_, and this book made George Sand furiously angry. We are at a loss to comprehend her indignation. Feuillet's novel is very graceful and quite inoffensive. Sibylle is a fanciful young person, who from her earliest childhood dreams of impossible things. She wants her grandfather to get a star for her, and another time she wants to ride on the swan's back as it swims in the pool. When she is being prepared for her first communion, she has doubts about the truth of the Christian religion, but one night, during a storm, the priest of the place springs into a boat and goes to the rescue of some sailors in peril. All the difficulties of theological interpretations are at once dispelled for her. A young man falls in love with her, but on discovering that he is not a believer she endeavours to convert him, and goes moonlight walks with him. Moonlight is sometimes dangerous for young girls, and, after one of these sentimental and theological strolls, she has a mysterious ailment. . . . In order to understand George Sand's anger on reading this novel, which was both religious and social, and at the same time very harmless, we must know what her state of mind was on the essential question of religion. In the first place, George Sand was not hostile to religious ideas. She had a religion. There is a George Sand religion. There are not many dogmas, and the creed is simple. George Sand believed firmly in the existence of God. Without the notion of God, nothing can be explained and no problem solved. This God is not merely the "first cause." It is a personal and conscious God, whose essential, if not sole, function is to forgive--every one. "The dogma of hell," she writes, "is a monstrosity, an imposture, a barbarism. . . . It is impious to doubt God's infinite pity, and to think that He does not always pardon, even the most guilty of men." This is certainly the most complete application that has ever been made of the law of pardon. This God is not the God of Jacob, nor of Pascal, nor even of Voltaire. He is not an unknown God either. He is the God of Beranger and of all good people. George Sand believed also, very firmly, in the immortality of the soul. On losing any of her family, the certainty of going to them some day was her great consolation. "I see future and eternal life before me as a certainty," she said; "it is like a light, and, thanks to its brilliancy, other things cannot be seen; but the light is there, and that is all I need." Her belief was, then, in the existence of God, the goodness of Providence and the immortality of the soul. George Sand was an adept in natural religion. She did not accept the idea of any revealed religion, and there was one of these revealed religions that she execrated. This was the Catholic religion. Her correspondence on this subject during the period of the Second Empire is most significant. She was a personal enemy of the Church, and spoke of the Jesuits as a subscriber to the _Siecle_ might do to-day. She feared the dagger of the Jesuits for Napoleon III, but at the same time she hoped there might be a frustrated attempt at murder, so that his eyes might be opened. The great danger of modern times, according to her, was the development of the clerical spirit. She was not an advocate for liberty of education either. "The priestly spirit has been encouraged," she wrote.(53) "France is overrun with convents, and wretched friars have been allowed to take possession of education." She considered that wherever the Church was mistress, it left its marks, which were unmistakable: stupidity and brutishness. She gave Brittany as an example. (53) _Correspondance:_ To Barbes, May 12, 1867. "There is nothing left," she writes, "when the priest and Catholic vandalism have passed by, destroying the monuments of the old world and leaving their lice for the future."(54) (54) _Ibid.:_ To Flaubert, September 21, 1860. It is no use attempting to ignore the fact. This is anti-clericalism in all its violence. Is it not curious that this passion, when once it takes possession of even the most distinguished minds, causes them to lose all sentiment of measure, of propriety and of dignity. _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ is the result of a fit of anti-clerical mania. George Sand gives, in this novel, the counterpart of _Sibylle_. Emile Lemontier, a free-thinker, is in love with the daughter of General La Quintinie. Emile is troubled in his mind because, as his _fiancee_ is a Catholic, he knows she will have to have a confessor. The idea is intolerable to him, as, like Monsieur Homais, he considers that a husband could not endure the idea of his wife having private conversations with one of those individuals. Mademoiselle La Quintinie's confessor is a certain Moreali, a near relative of Eugene Sue's Rodin. The whole novel turns on the struggle between Emile and Moreali, which ends in the final discomfiture of Moreali. Mademoiselle La Quintinie is to marry Emile, who will teach her to be a free-thinker. Emile is proud of his work of drawing a soul away from Christian communion. He considers that the light of reason is always sufficient for illuminating the path in a woman's life. He thinks that her natural rectitude will prove sufficient for making a good woman of her. I do not wish to call this into question, but even if she should not err, is it not possible that she may suffer? This free-thinker imagines that it is possible to tear belief from a heart without rending it and causing an incurable wound. Oh, what a poor psychologist! He forgets that beliefs the summing up and the continuation of the belief of a whole series of generations. He does not hear the distant murmur of the prayers of by-gone years. It is in vain to endeavour to stifle those prayers; they will be heard for ever within the crushed and desolate soul. _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ is a work of hatred. George Sand was not successful with it. She had no vocation for writing such books, and she was not accustomed to writing them. It is a novel full of tiresome dissertations, and it is extremely dull. From that date, though, George Sand experienced the joy of a certain popularity. At theatrical performances and at funerals the students manifested in her honour. It was the same for Sainte-Beuve, but this does not seem to have made either of them any greater. We will pass over all this, and turn to something that we can admire. The robust and triumphant old age of George Sand was admirable. Nearly every year she went to some fresh place in France to find a setting for her stories. She had to earn her living to the very last, and was doomed to write novels for ever. "I shall be turning my wheel when I die," she used to say, and, after all, this is the proper ending for a literary worker. In 1870 and 1871, she suffered all the anguish of the "Terrible Year." When once the nightmare was over, she set to work once more like a true daughter of courageous France, unwilling to give in. She was as hardy as iron as she grew old. "I walk to the river," she wrote in 1872, "and bathe in the cold water, warm as I am. . . . I am of the same nature as the grass in the field. Sunshine and water are all I need." For a woman of sixty-eight to be able to bathe every day in the cold water of the Indre is a great deal. In May, 1876, she was not well, and had to stay in bed. She was ill for ten days, and died without suffering much. She is buried at Nohant, according to her wishes, so that her last sleep is in her beloved Berry. In conclusion, we would say just a few words about George Sand's genius, and the place that she takes in the history of the French novel. On comparing George Sand with the novelists of her time, what strikes us most is how different she was from them. She is neither like Balzac, Stendhal, nor Merimee, nor any story-teller of our thoughtful, clever and refined epoch. She reminds us more of the "old novelists," of those who told stories of chivalrous deeds and of old legends, or, to go still further back, she reminds us of the _aedes_ of old Greece. In the early days of a nation there were always men who went to the crowd and charmed them with the stories they told in a wordy way. They scarcely knew whether they invented these stories as they told them, or whether they had heard them somewhere. They could not tell either which was fiction and which reality, for all reality seemed wonderful to them. All the people about whom they told were great, all objects were good and everything beautiful. They mingled nursery-tales with myths that were quite sensible, and the history of nations with children's stories. They were called poets. George Sand did not employ a versified form for her stories, but she belonged to the family of these poets. She was a poet herself who had lost her way and come into our century of prose, and she continued her singing. Like these early poets, she was primitive. Like them, she obeyed a god within her. All her talent was instinctive, and she had all the ease of instinctive talent. When Flaubert complained to George Sand of the "tortures" that style cost him, she endeavoured to admire him. "When I see the difficulty that my old friend has in writing his novel, I am discouraged about my own case, and I say to myself that I am writing poor sort of literature." This was merely her charity, for she never understood that there could be any effort in writing. Consequently she could not understand that it should cause suffering. For her, writing was a pleasure, as it was the satisfaction of a need. As her works were no effort to her, they left no trace in her memory. She had not intended to write them, and, when once written, she forgot them. "_Consuelo and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, what are these books?" she asks. "Did I write them? I do not remember a single word of them." Her novels were like fruit, which, when ripe, fell away from her. George Sand always returned to the celebration of certain great themes which are the eternal subjects of all poetry, subjects such as love and nature, and sentiments like enthusiasm and pity. The very language completes the illusion. The choice of words was often far from perfect, as George Sand's vocabulary was often uncertain, and her expression lacked precision and relief. But she had the gift of imagery, and her images were always delightfully fresh. She never lost that rare faculty which she possessed of being surprised at things, so that she looked at everything with youthful eyes. There is a certain movement which carries the reader on, and a rhythm that is soothing. She develops the French phrase slowly perhaps, but without any confusion. Her language is like those rivers which flow along full and limpid, between flowery banks and oases of verdure, rivers by the side of which the traveller loves to linger and to lose himself in dreams. The share which belongs to George Sand in the history of the French novel is that of having impregnated the novel with the poetry in her own soul. She gave to the novel a breadth and a range which it had never hitherto had. She celebrated the hymn of Nature, of love and of goodness in it. She revealed to us the country and the peasants of France. She gave satisfaction to the romantic tendency which is in every one of us, to a more or less degree. All this is more even than is needed to ensure her fame. She denied ever having written for posterity, and she predicted that in fifty years she would be forgotten. It may be that there has been for her, as there is for every illustrious author who dies, a time of test and a period of neglect. The triumph of naturalism, by influencing taste for a time, may have stopped our reading George Sand. At present we are just as tired of documentary literature as we are disgusted with brutal literature. We are gradually coming back to a better comprehension of what there is of "truth" in George Sand's conception of the novel. This may be summed up in a few words--to charm, to touch and to console. Those of us who know something of life may perhaps wonder whether to console may not be the final aim of literature. George Sand's literary ideal may be read in the following words, which she wrote to Flaubert: "You make the people who read your books still sadder than they were before. I want to make them less unhappy." She tried to do this, and she often succeeded in her attempt. What greater praise can we give to her than that? And how can we help adding a little gratitude and affection to our admiration for the woman who was the good fairy of the contemporary novel? THE END 
5115	----	The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters Translated by A.L. McKenzie (1921) Introduction by Stuart Sherman PREFATORY NOTE This translation of the correspondence between George Sand and Gustave Flaubert was undertaken in consequence of a suggestion by Professor Stuart P. Sherman. The translator desires to acknowledge valuable criticism given by Professor Sherman, Ruth M. Sherman, and Professor Kenneth McKenzie, all of whom have generously assisted in revising the manuscript. A. L. McKenzie INTRODUCTION The correspondence of George Sand and Gustave Flaubert, if approached merely as a chapter in the biographies of these heroes of nineteenth century letters, is sufficiently rewarding. In a relationship extending over twelve years, including the trying period of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, these extraordinary personalities disclose the aspects of their diverse natures which are best worth the remembrance of posterity. However her passionate and erratic youth may have captivated our grandfathers, George Sand in the mellow autumn of her life is for us at her most attractive phase. The storms and anguish and hazardous adventures that attended the defiant unfolding of her spirit are over. In her final retreat at Nohant, surrounded by her affectionate children and grandchildren, diligently writing, botanizing, bathing in her little river, visited by her friends and undistracted by the fiery lovers of the old time, she shows an unguessed wealth of maternal virtue, swift, comprehending sympathy, fortitude, sunny resignation, and a goodness of heart that has ripened into wisdom. For Flaubert, too, though he was seventeen years her junior, the flamboyance of youth was long since past; in 1862, when the correspondence begins, he was firmly settled, a shy, proud, grumpy toiling hermit of forty, in his family seat at Croisset, beginning his seven years' labor at L'Education Sentimentale, master of his art, hardening in his convictions, and conscious of increasing estrangement from the spirit of his age. He, with his craving for sympathy, and she, with her inexhaustible supply of it, meet; he pours out his bitterness, she her consolation; and so with equal candor of self-revelation they beautifully draw out and strengthen each the other's characteristics, and help one another grow old. But there is more in these letters than a satisfaction for the biographical appetite, which, indeed, finds ITS account rather in the earlier chapters of the correspondents' history. What impresses us here is the banquet spread for the reflective and critical faculties in this intercourse of natural antagonists. As M. Faguet observes in a striking paragraph of his study of Flaubert: "It is a curious thing, which does honor to them both, that Flaubert and George Sand should have become loving friends towards the end of their lives. At the beginning, Flaubert might have been looked upon by George Sand as a furious enemy. Emma [Madame Bovary] is George Sand's heroine with all the poetry turned into ridicule. Flaubert seems to say in every page of his work: 'Do you want to know what is the real Valentine, the real Indiana, the real Lelia? Here she is, it is Emma Roualt.' 'And do you want to know what becomes of a woman whose education has consisted in George Sand's books? Here she is, Emma Roualt.' So that the terrible mocker of the bourgeois has written a book which is directly inspired by the spirit of the 1840 bourgeois. Their recriminations against romanticism 'which rehabilitates and poetises the courtesan,' against George Sand, the Muse of Adultery, are to be found in acts and facts in Madame Bovary." Now, the largest interest of this correspondence depends precisely upon the continuance, beneath an affectionate personal relationship, of a fundamental antagonism of interests and beliefs, resolutely maintained on both sides. George Sand, with her lifelong passion for propaganda and reformation, labors earnestly to bring Flaubert to her point of view, to remould him nearer to her heart's desire. He, with a playful deference to the sex and years of his friend, addresses her in his letters as "Dear Master." Yet in the essentials of the conflict, though she never gives over her effort, he never budges a jot; he has taken his ground, and in his last unfinished work, Bouvard and Pecuchet, he dies stubbornly fortifying his position. To the last she speaks from a temperament lyrical, sanguine, imaginative, optimistic and sympathetic; he from a temperament dramatic, melancholy, observing, cynical, and satirical. She insists upon natural goodness; he, upon innate depravity. She urges her faith in social regeneration; he vents his splenetic contempt for the mob. Through all the successive shocks of disillusioning experience, she expects the renovation of humanity by some religious, some semi-mystical, amelioration of its heart; he grimly concedes the greater part of humanity to the devil, and can see no escape for the remnant save in science and aristocratic organization. For her, finally, the literary art is an instrument of social salvation--it is her means of touching the world with her ideals, her love, her aspiration; for him the literary art is the avenue of escape from the meaningless chaos of existence--it is his subtly critical condemnation of the world. The origins of these unreconciled antipathies lie deep beneath the personal relationship of George Sand and Gustave Flaubert; lie deep beneath their successors, who with more or less of amenity in their manners are still debating the same questions today. The main currents of the nineteenth century, with fluent and refluent tides, clash beneath the controversy; and as soon as one hears its "long withdrawing roar," and thinks it is dying away, and is become a part of ancient history, it begins again, and will be heard, no doubt, by the last man as a solemn accompaniment to his final contention with his last adversary. George Sand was, on the whole, a natural and filial daughter of the French Revolution. The royal blood which she received from her father's line mingled in her veins with that of the Parisian milliner, her mother, and predestined her for a leveller by preparing in her an instinctive ground of revolt against all those inherited prejudices which divided the families of her parents. As a young girl wildly romping with the peasant children at Nohant she discovered a joy in untrammeled rural life which was only to increase with years. At the proper age for beginning to fashion a conventional young lady, the hoyden was put in a convent, where she underwent some exalting religious experiences; and in 1822 she was assigned to her place in the "established social order" by her marriage at seventeen to M. Dudevant. After a few years of rather humdrum domestic life in the country, she became aware that this gentleman, her husband, was behaving as we used to be taught that all French husbands ultimately behave; he was, in fact, turning from her to her maids. The young couple had never been strongly united-- the impetuous dreamy girl and her coarse hunting mate; and they had grown wide apart. She should, of course, have adjusted herself quietly to the altered situation and have kept up appearances. But this young wife had gradually become an "intellectual"; she had been reading philosophy and poetry; she was saturated with the writings of Rousseau, of Chateaubriand, of Byron. None of the spiritual masters of her generation counselled acquiescence in servitude or silence in misery. Every eloquent tongue of the time-spirit urged self-expression and revolt. And she, obedient to the deepest impulses of her blood and her time, revolted. At the period when Madame Dudevant withdrew her neck from the conjugal yoke and plunged into her literary career in Paris, the doctrine that men are created for freedom, equality and fraternity was already somewhat hackneyed. She, with an impetus from her own private fortunes, was to give the doctrine a recrudescence of interest by resolutely applying it to the status of women. We cannot follow her in detail from the point where she abandons the domestic sewing-basket to reappear smoking black cigars in the Latin Quarter. We find her, at about 1831, entering into competition with the brilliant literary generation of Balzac, Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Merimee, Stendhal, and Sainte-Beuve. To signalize her equality with her brothers in talent, she adopts male attire: "I had a sentry-box coat made, of rough grey cloth, with trousers and waist-coat to match. With a grey hat and a huge cravat of woolen material, I looked exactly like a first-year student." In the freedom of this rather unalluring garb she entered into relations Platonic, fraternal, or tempestuously passionate with perhaps the most distinguished series of friends and lovers that ever fluttered about one flame. There was Aurelien de Seze; Jules Sandeau, her first collaborator, who "reconciled her to life" and gave her a nom de guerre; the inscrutable Merimee, who made no one happy; Musset--an encounter from which both tiger-moths escaped with singed wings; the odd transitional figure of Pagello; Michel Euraed; Liszt; Chopin, whom she loved and nursed for eight years; her master Lamennais; her master Pierre Leroux; her father-confessor Sainte-Beuve; and Gustave Flaubert, the querulous friend of her last decade. As we have compressed the long and complex story of her personal relationships, so we must compress the intimately related history of her works and her ideas. When under the inspiration of Rousseau, the emancipated George Sand began to write, her purposes were but vaguely defined. She conceived of life as primarily an opportunity for unlimited self-expansion, and of literature as an opportunity for unrestricted self-expression. "Nevertheless," she declares, "my instincts have formed, without my privity, the theory I am about to set down,--a theory which I have generally followed unconsciously. ... According to this theory, the novel is as much a work of poetry as of analysis. It demands true situations, and characters not only true but real, grouped about a type intended to epitomize the sentiment or the main conceptions of the book. This type generally represents the passion of love, since almost all novels are love- stories. According to this theory (and it is here that it begins) the writer must idealize this love, and consequently this type,--and must not fear to attribute to it all the powers to which he inwardly aspires, or all the sorrows whose pangs he has observed or felt. This type must in no wise, however, become degraded by the vicissitude of events; it must either die or triumph." In 1831, when her pen began its fluent course through the lyrical works of her first period--Indiana, Valentine, Lelia, Jacques, and the rest--we conceive George Sand's culture, temper, and point of view to have been fairly comparable with those of the young Shelley when, fifteen years earlier, he with Mary Godwin joined Byron and Jane Clairmont in Switzerland--young revoltes, all of them, nourished on eighteenth century revolutionary philosophy and Gothic novels. Both these eighteenth century currents meet in the work of the new romantic group in England and in France. The innermost origin of the early long poems of Shelley and the early works of George Sand is in personal passion, in the commotion of a romantic spirit beating its wings against the cage of custom and circumstance and institutions. The external form of the plot, whatever is fantastic and wilful in its setting and its adventures, is due to the school of Ann Radcliffe. But the quality in Shelley and in George Sand which bewitched even the austere Matthew Arnold in his green and salad days is the poetising of that liberative eighteenth century philosophy into "beautiful idealisms" of a love emancipated from human limitations, a love exalted to the height of its gamut by the influences of nature, triumphantly seeking its own or shattered in magnificent despair. In her novels of the first period, George Sand takes her Byronic revenge upon M. Dudevant. In Indiana and its immediate successors, consciously or unconsciously, she declares to the world what a beautiful soul M. Dudevant condemned to sewing on buttons; in Jacques she paints the man who might fitly have matched her spirit; and by the entire series, which now impresses us as fantastic in sentiment no less than in plot, she won her early reputation as the apologist for free love, the adversary of marriage. In her middle period--say from 1838 to 1848--of which The Miller of Aginbault, Consuelo, and The Countess of Rudolstadt are representative works, there is a marked subsidence of her personal emotion, and, in compensation, a rising tide of humanitarian enthusiasm. Gradually satiated with erotic passion, gradually convinced that it is rather a mischief-maker than a reconstructive force in a decrepit society, she is groping, indeed, between her successive liaisons for an elusive felicity, for a larger mission than inspiring Musset's Alexandrines or Chopin's nocturnes. It is somewhat amusing, and at the same time indicative of her vague but deep-seated moral yearnings, to find her writing rebukingly to Sainte-Beuve, as early as 1834, apropos of his epicurean Volupte: "Let the rest do as they like; but you, dear friend, you must produce a book which will change and better mankind, do you see? You can, and therefore should. Oh, if poor I could do it! I should lift my head again and my heart would no longer be broken; but in vain I seek a religion: Shall it be God, shall it be love, friendship, the public welfare? Alas, it seems to me that my soul is framed to receive all these impressions, without one effacing another ... Who shall paint justice as it should, as it may, be in our modern society?" To Sainte-Beuve, himself an unscathed intellectual Odysseus, she declares herself greatly indebted intellectually; but on the whole his influence seems to have been tranquillizing. The material for the radical program, economic, political, and religious, which, like a spiritual ancestor of H. G. Wells, she eagerly sought to popularize by the novels of her middle years, was supplied mainly by Saint-Simon, Lamennais, and Leroux. Her new "religion of humanity," a kind of theosophical socialism, is too fantastically garbed to charm the sober spirits of our age. And yet from the ruins of that time and from the emotional extravagance of books grown tedious, which she has left behind her, George Sand emerges for us with one radiant perception which must be included in whatever religion animates a democratic society: "Everyone must be happy, so that the happiness of a few may not be criminal and cursed by God." One of George Sand's French critics, M. Caro, a member of the Academy, who deals somewhat austerely with her religiose enthusiasms and with her Utopian projects for social reformation, remarks gravely and not without tenderness: "The one thing needful to this soul, so strong, so rich in enthusiasm, is a humble moral quality that she disdains, and when she has occasion to speak of it, even slanders,--namely resignation. This is not, as she seems to think, the sluggish virtue of base souls, who, in their superstitious servitude to force, hasten to crouch beneath every yoke. That is a false and degrading resignation; genuine resignation grows out of the conception of the universal order, weighed against which individual sufferings, without ceasing to be a ground of merit, cease to constitute a right of revolt. ... Resignation, in the true, the philosophical, the Christian sense, is a manly acceptance of moral law and also of the laws essential to the social order; it is a free adherence to order, a sacrifice approved by reason of a part of one's private good and of one's personal freedom, not to might nor to the tyranny of a human caprice, but to the exigencies of the common weal, which subsists only by the concord of individual liberty with obedient passions." Well, resigned in the sense of defeated, George Sand never became; nor did she, perhaps, ever wholly acquiesce in that scheme of things which M. Caro impressively designates as "the universal order." Yet with age, the abandonment of many distractions, the retreat to Nohant, the consolations of nature, and her occupation with tales of pastoral life, beginning with La Mare au Diable, there develops within her, there diffuses itself around her, there appears in her work a charm like that which falls upon green fields from the level rays of the evening sun after a day of storms. It is not the charm, precisely, of resignation; it is the charm of serenity--the serenity of an old revolutionist who no longer expects victory in the morning yet is secure in her confidence of a final triumph, and still more secure in the goodness of her cause. "A hundred times in life," she declares, "the good that one does seems to serve no immediate purpose; yet it maintains in one way and another the tradition of well wishing and well doing, without which all would perish." At the outset of her career we compared her with Shelley. In her last phase, she reminds us rather of the authors of Far from the Madding Crowd and The Mill on the Floss, and of Wordsworth, once, too, a torch of revolution, turning to his Michaels and his leech-gatherers and his Peter Bells. Her exquisite pictures of pastoral life are idealizations of it; her representations of the peasant are not corroborated by Zola's; to the last she approaches the shield of human nature from the golden side. But for herself at least she has found a real secret of happiness in country life, tranquil work, and a right direction given to her own heart and conscience. It is at about this point in her spiritual development that she turns towards Gustave Flaubert--perhaps a little suspiciously at first, yet resolved from the first, according to her natural instinct and her now fixed principles, to stimulate by believing in his admirable qualities. Writing from Nohant in 1866 to him at Croisset, she epitomises her distinction as a woman and as an author in this playful sally: "Sainte-Beuve, who loves you nevertheless, pretends that you are dreadfully vicious. But perhaps he sees with eyes a bit dirty, like that learned botanist who pretends that the germander is of a DIRTY yellow. The observation was so false that I could not help writing on the margin of his book: 'IT IS YOU, WHOSE EYES ARE DIRTY.'" We have spoken of George Sand as a faithful daughter of the French Revolution; and by way of contrast we may speak of Flaubert as a disgruntled son of the Second Empire. Between his literary advent and hers there is an interval of a generation, during which the proud expansive spirit and the grandiose aspirations imparted to the nation by the first Napoleon dwindled to a spirit of mediocrity and bourgeois smugness under a Napoleon who had inherited nothing great of his predecessor but his name. This change in the time-spirit may help to explain the most significant difference between Flaubert and George Sand. He inherited the tastes and imagination of the great romantic generation; but he inherited none of its social and political enthusiasm. He was disciplined by the romantic writers; yet his reaction to the literary culture of his youth is not ethical but aesthetic; he finds his inspiration less in Rousseau than in Chateaubriand. He is bred to an admiration of eloquence, the poetic phrase, the splendid picture, life in the grand style; with increasing disgust he finds himself entering a society which, he feels, neither understands nor values any of these things, and which threatens their destruction. Consequently, we find him actuated as a writer by two complementary passions--the love of splendor and the hatred of mediocrity--two passions, of which the second sometimes alternates with the first, sometimes inseparably fuses with it, and ultimately almost extinguishes it. The son of an eminent surgeon of Rouen, Gustave Flaubert may have acquired from his father something of that scientific precision of observation and that cutting accuracy of expression, by which he gained his place at the head of modern French realism and won the discipleship of the Goncourts, Daudet, Zola, and Maupassant and the applause of such connoisseurs of technique as Walter Pater and Henry James. From his mother's Norman ancestry he inherited the physique of a giant, tainted with epilepsy; a Viking countenance, strong- featured with leonine moustaches; and a barbaric temper, habitually somewhat lethargic but irritable, and, when roused, violent and intolerant of opposition. He had a private education at Rouen, with wide desultory reading; went to Paris, which he hated, to study law, which he also hated; frequented the theatres and studios; travelled in Corsica, the Pyrenees, and the East, which he adored, seeing Egypt, Palestine, Constantinople, and Greece; and he had one, and only one, important love-affair, extending from 1846 to 1854--that with Mme. Louise Colet, a woman of letters, whose difficult relations with Flaubert are sympathetically touched upon in Pater's celebrated essay on "Style." When by the death of his father, in 1845, he succeeded to the family-seat at Croisset, near Rouen, he settled himself in a studious solitude to the pursuit of letters, which he followed for thirty-four years with anguish of spirit and dogged persistence. Flaubert probably loved glory as much as any man; but he desired to receive it only on his own terms. He profoundly appeals to writers endowed with "the artistic conscience" as "the martyr of literary style." In morals something of a libertine, in matters of art he exhibited the intolerance of weakness in others and the remorseless self-examination and self-torment commonly attributed to the Puritan. His friend Maxime Du Camp, who tried to bring him out and teach him the arts of popularity, he rebuffed with deliberate insult. He developed an aversion to any interruption of his work, and such tension and excitability of nerves that he shunned a day's outing or a chat with an old companion, lest it distract him for a month afterward. His mistress he seems to have estranged by an ill- concealed preference to her of his exacting Muse. To illustrate his "monkish" consecration to his craft we cannot do better than reproduce a passage, quoted by Pater, from his letters to Madame Colet: "I must scold you for one thing, which shocks, scandalises me, the small concern, namely, you show for art just now. As regards glory be it so--there I approve. But for art!--the one thing in life that is good and real--can you compare with it an earthly love?--prefer the adoration of a relative beauty to the cultus of the true beauty? Well! I tell you the truth. That is the one thing good in me: the one thing I have, to me estimable. For yourself, you blend with the beautiful a heap of alien things, the useful, the agreeable, what not? "The only way not to be unhappy is to shut yourself up in art, and count everything else as nothing. Pride takes the place of all beside when it is established on a large basis. Work! God wills it. That, it seems to me, is clear. "I am reading over again the Aeneid, certain verses of which I repeat to myself to satiety. There are phrases there which stay in one's head, by which I find myself beset, as with those musical airs which are forever returning, and cause you pain, you love them so much. I observe that I no longer laugh much, and am no longer depressed. I am ripe, you talk of my serenity, and envy me. It may well surprise you. Sick, irritated, the prey a thousand times a day of cruel pain, I continue my labour like a true working-man, who, with sleeves turned up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, never troubling himself whether it rains or blows, for hail or thunder. I was not like that formerly." The half-dozen works which Flaubert beat out on his "anvil," with an average expenditure of half-a-dozen years to each, were composed on a theory of which the prime distinguishing feature was the great doctrine of "impersonality." George Sand's fluent improvisations ordinarily originated, as we have noted, in an impulse of her lyrical idealism; she began with an aspiration of her heart, to execute which she invented characters and plot so that she is always on the inside of her story. According to Flaubert's theory, the novel should originate in a desire to present a certain segment of observed life. The author is to take and rigorously maintain a position outside his work. The organ with which he collects his materials is not his heart but his eyes, supplemented by the other senses. Life, so far as the scientific observer can be sure of it, and so far as the artist can control it for representation, is a picture or series of pictures, a dramatic scene or a concatenation of dramatic scenes. Let the novelist first, therefore, with scrupulous fidelity and with minute regard for the possible significance of every observable detail, fill his notebooks, amass his materials, master his subject. After Flaubert, a first-rate sociological investigator is three-fourths of a novelist. The rest of the task is to arrange and set forth these facts so that they shall tell the truth about life impressively, in scene and dramatic spectacle, the meaning of which shall be implicit in the plot and shall reach the reader's consciousness through his senses. Critics have spent much time in discussing the conflict of "romantic" and "realistic" tendencies in Flaubert's works. And it is obviously easy, so far as subject-matter is concerned, to group his books in two divisions: on the one hand, The Temptation of St. Anthony, Salammbo, and two of the Trois Contes; on the other hand, Madame Bovary, L'Education Sentimentale, and the incomplete Bouvard and Pecuchet. We may call the tales in the first group romantic, because the subject-matter is remote in time and place, and because in them Flaubert indulges his passion for splendor--for oriental scenery, for barbaric characters, the pomp of savage war and more savage religion, events strange, terrible, atrocious. We may call the stories in the other group realistic, because the subject-matter is contemporary life in Paris and the provinces, and because in them Flaubert indulges his hatred for mediocrity--for the humdrum existence of the country doctor, the apothecary, the insipid clerk, the vapid sentimental woman, and the charlatans of science. But as a matter of fact, ALL his books are essentially constructed on the same theory: all are just as "realistic" as Flaubert could make them. Henry James called Madame Bovary a brilliantly successful application of Flaubert's theory; he pronounced L'Education Sentimentale "elaborately and massively dreary"; and he briefly dismissed Salammbo as an accomplished work of erudition. Salammbo is indeed a work of erudition; years were spent in getting up its archaeological details. But Madame Bovary is also a work of erudition, and Bouvard and Pecuchet is a work of enormous erudition; a thousand volumes were read for the notes of the first volume and Flaubert is said to have killed himself by the labor of his unfinished investigations. There is no important distinction to be made between the method or the thoroughness with which he collected his facts in the one case or the other; and the story of the war of the mercenaries against the Carthaginians is evolved with the same alternation of picture and dramatic spectacle and the same hard merciless externality that distinguish the evolution of Emma Bovary's history. We may go still farther than that towards wiping out the distinction between Flaubert's "romantic" and his "realistic" works; and by the same stroke what is illusory in the pretensions of the realists, namely, their aspiration to an "impersonal art." If we were seeking to prove that an author can put NOTHING BUT HIMSELF into his art, we should ask for no more impressive illustions than precisely, Madame Bovary and Salammbo. These two masterpieces disclose to reflection, no less patently than the works of George Sand, their purpose and their meaning. And that purpose and meaning are not a whit less personal to Flaubert than the purpose and meaning of Indiana, let us say, are personal to George Sand. The "meaning" of Madame Bovary and Salammbo is, broadly speaking, Flaubert's sense of the significance--or, rather, of the insignificance--of human life; and the "purpose" of the books is to express it. The most lyrical of idealists can do no more to reveal herself. The demonstration afforded by a comparison of Salammbo and Madame Bovary is particularly striking because the subject-matters are superficially so unlike. But take any characteristic series of pictures or incidents from Salammbo: take the passing of the children through the fire to Moloch, or the description of the leprous Hanno, or the physical surrender of the priestess to her country's enemy, or the following picture of the crucified lion: "They were marching through a wide defile, hedged in by two chains of reddish hillocks, when a nauseous odor struck their nostrils, and they believed that they saw something extraordinary at the top of a carob tree; a lion's head stood up above the foliage. "Running towards it, they found a lion attached to a cross by its four limbs, like a criminal; his enormous muzzle hung to his breast, and his forepaws, half concealed beneath the abundance of his mane, were widely spread apart, like a bird's wings in flight; under the tightly drawn skin, his ribs severally protruded and his hind legs were nailed together, but were slightly drawn up; black blood had trickled through the hairs, and collected in stalactites at the end of his tail, which hung straight down the length of the cross. The soldiers crowded around the beast, diverting themselves by calling him 'Consul!' and 'Citizen of Rome!' and threw pebbles into his eyes to scatter the swarming gnats." And now take any characteristic series of pictures or incidents from Madame Bovary: take Bovary's bungling and gruesome operations on the club-footed ostler's leg, with the entire village clustering agape; take the picture of the eyeless, idiotic beggar on the road to Rouen; or the scene in which Emma offers herself for three thousand francs to Rodolphe; or the following bit, only a bit, from the detailed account of the heroine's last hours, after the arsenical poisoning: "Emma's head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her knees, and then rose at the tips of her toes, and it seemed to Charles that infinite masses, an enormous load, were weighing upon her. "The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of the river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace. Monsieur Bournisien from time to time blew his nose noisily and Homais' pen was scratching over the paper." In these two detached pictures--the one from a so-called "romantic," the other from a so-called "realistic" book--one readily observes the likeness in the subjects, which are of a ghastly repulsiveness; the same minuteness of observation--e.g., the lion's hind legs "slightly drawn up," the woman's thumbs "bent into the palms of her hands"; the same careful notation of effect on the several senses; the same rhetorical heightening--e.g., the "stalactites at the end of his tail," the web in the woman's eyes "as if spiders had spun it over"; and finally, that celebrated detachment, that air as of a medical examiner, recording the results of an autopsy. What can we know of such an author? All, or nearly all, that he knew of himself, provided we will searchingly ask ourselves what sort of mind is steadily attracted to the painting of such pictures, to the representation of such incidents, and what sort of mind expresses a lifetime of brooding on the significance of life in two such books as Madame Bovary and Salammbo. At its first appearance, Madame Bovary was prosecuted, though unsuccessfully, as offensive to public morals. In derision of this famous prosecution, Henry James with studious jauntiness, asserts that in the heat of his first admiration he thought what an excellent moral tract it would make. "It may be very seriously maintained," he continues, "that M. Flaubert's masterpiece is the pearl of 'Sunday reading.'" As a work of fiction and recreation the book lacks, in his opinion, one quite indispensable quality: it lacks charm. Well, there are momentary flashes of beauty and grace, dazzling bits of color, haunting melancholy cadences in every chapter of Flaubert; but a charming book he never wrote. A total impression of charm he never gave--he never could give; because his total impression of life was not charming but atrocious. It is perhaps an accident, as has been suggested, that one can so readily employ Madame Bovary to illustrate that text on the "wages of sin." Emma, to be sure, goes down the easy and alluring path to disgrace and ruin. But that is only an incident in the wider meaning of Flaubert's fiction, a meaning more amply expressed in Salammbo, where not one foolish woman alone but thousands on thousands of men, women, and children, mingled with charging elephants and vipers, flounder and fight in indescribable welters of blood and filth, and go down to rot in a common pit. If I read Flaubert's meaning right, all human history is there; you may show it by painting on broad canvas a Carthaginian battle-scene or by photographing the details of a modern bedroom: a brief brightness, night and the odor of carrion, a crucified lion, a dying woman, the jeering of ribald mercenaries, the cackle of M. Homais. It is all one. If Flaubert deserved prosecution, it was not for making vice attractive, but for expressing with invasive energy that personal and desperately pessimistic conception of life by which he was almost overwhelmed. That a bad physical regimen, bad habits of work in excessive quantities, and the solitude of his existence were contributory to Flaubert's melancholy, his exacerbated egotism, and his pessimism is sufficiently obvious in the letters. This Norman giant with his aching head buried all day long in his arms, groping in anguish for a phrase, has naturally a kindly disposition towards various individuals of his species--is even capable of great generosity; but as he admits with a truth and pathos, deeply appealing to the maternal sympathies of his correspondent, he has no talent for living. He has never been able, like richer and more resourceful souls, to reconcile being a man with being an author. He has made his choice; he has renounced the cheerful sanities of the world: "I pass entire weeks without exchanging a word with a human being; and at the end of the week it is not possible for me to recall a single day nor any event whatsoever. I see my mother and my niece on Sundays, and that is all. My only company consists of a band of rats in the garret, which make an infernal racket above my head, when the water does not roar or the wind blow. The nights are black as ink, and a silence surrounds me comparable to that of the desert. Sensitiveness is increased immeasurably in such a setting. I have palpitations of the heart for nothing. "All that results from our charming profession. That is what it means to torment the soul and the body. But perhaps this torment is our proper lot here below." To George Sand, who wrote as naturally as she breathed and almost as easily, seclusion and torment were by no means the necessary conditions of literary activity. Enormously productive, with a hundred books to his half-a-dozen, she has never dedicated and consecrated herself to her profession but has lived heartily and a bit recklessly from day to day, spending herself in many directions freely, gaily, extravagantly. Now that she has definitely said farewell to her youth, she finds that she is twenty years younger; and now that she is, in a sense, dissipating her personality and living in the lives of others, she finds that she is happier than ever before. "It can't be imperative to work so painfully"--such is the burden of her earlier counsels to Flaubert; "spare yourself a little, take some exercise, relax the tendons of your mind, indulge a little the physical man. Live a little as I do; and you will take your fatigues and illnesses and occasional dolours and dumps as incidents of the day's work and not magnify them into the mountainous overshadowing calamities from which you deduce your philosophy of universal misery." No advice could have been more wholesome or more timely. And with what pictures of her own busy felicity she reenforces her advice! I shall produce three of them here in order to emphasize that precious thing which George Sand loved to impart, and which she had the gift of imparting, namely, joy, the spontaneous joyousness of her own nature. The first passage is from a letter of June 14, 1867: "I am a little remorseful to take whole days from your work, I who am never bored with loafing, and whom you could leave for whole hours under a tree, or before two lighted logs, with the assurance that I should find there something interesting. I know so well how to live OUTSIDE OF MYSELF. It hasn't always been like that. I also was young and subject to indignations. It is over! Since I have dipped into real nature, I have found there an order, a system, a calmness of cycles which is lacking in mankind, but which man can, up to a certain point, assimilate when he is not too directly at odds with the difficulties of his own life. When these difficulties return, he must endeavor to avoid them; but if he has drunk the cup of the eternally true, he does not get too excited for or against the ephemeral and relative truth." The second passage is of June 21: "I love everything that makes up a milieu, the rolling of the carriages and the noise of the workmen in Paris, the cries of a thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships on the waters. I love also absolute, profound silence, and, in short, I love everything that is around me, no matter where I am." The last passage gives a glimpse of the seventeenth of January, 1869, a typical day in Nohant: "The individual named George Sand is well: he is enjoying the marvellous winter which reigns in Berry, gathering flowers, noting interesting botanical anomalies, making dresses and mantles for his daughter-in-law, costumes for the marionettes, cutting out scenery, dressing dolls, reading music, but above all spending hours with the little Aurore, who is a marvellous child. There is not a more tranquil or a happier individual in his domestic life than this old troubadour retired from business, who sings from time to time his little song to the moon, without caring much whether he sings well or ill, provided he sings the motif that runs in his head, and who, the rest of the time, idles deliciously.... This pale character has the great pleasure of loving you with all his heart, and of not passing a day without thinking of the other old troubadour, confined in his solitude of a frenzied artist, disdainful of all the pleasures of the world." Flaubert did "exercise" a little--once or twice--in compliance with the injunctions of his "dear master"; but he rather resented the implication that his pessimism was personal, that it had any particular connection with his peculiar temperament or habits. He wished to think of himself as a stoic, quite indifferent about his "carcase." His briefer black moods he might acknowledge had transitory causes. But his general and abiding conceptions of humanity were the result of dispassionate reflections. "You think," he cries in half-sportive pique, "that because I pass my life trying to make harmonious phrases, in avoiding assonances, that I too have not my little judgments on the things of this world? Alas! Yes! and moreover I shall burst, enraged at not expressing them." And later: "Yes, I am susceptible to disinterested angers, and I love you all the more for loving me for that. Stupidity and injustice make me roar,--and I howl in my corner against a lot of things 'that do not concern me.'" "On the day that I am no longer in a rage, I shall fall flat as the marionette from which one withdraws the support of the stick." So far as Flaubert's pessimism has an intellectual basis, it rests upon his researches in human history. For Salammbo and The Temptation of St. Anthony he ransacked ancient literature, devoured religions and mythologies, and saturated himself in the works of the Church Fathers. In order to get up the background of his Education Sentimentale he studied the Revolution of 1848 and its roots in the Revolution of 1789. He found, shall we say? what he was looking for- -inexhaustible proofs of the cruelty and stupidity of men. After "gulping" down the six volumes of Buchez and Roux, he declares: "The clearest thing I got out of them is an immense disgust for the French.... Not a liberal idea which has not been unpopular, not a just thing that has not caused scandal, not a great man who has not been mobbed or knifed. 'The history of the human mind is the history of human folly,' as says M. Voltaire. ... Neo-Catholicism on the one hand, and Socialism on the other, have stultified France." In another letter of the same Period and similar provocation: "However much you fatten human cattle, giving them straw as high as their bellies, and even gilding their stable, they will remain brutes, no matter what one says. All the advance that one can hope for, is to make the brute a little less wicked. But as for elevating the ideas of the mass, giving it a larger and therefore a less human conception of God, I have my doubts." In addition to the charges of violence and cruelty, which he brought against all antiquity as well as against modern times, much in the fashion of Swift or the older Mark Twain, Flaubert nursed four grave causes of indignation, made four major charges of folly against modern "Christian" civilization. In religion, we have substituted for Justice the doctrine of Grace. In our sociological considerations we act no longer with discrimination but upon a principle of universal sympathy. In the field of art and literature we have abandoned criticism and research for the Beautiful in favor of universal puffery. In politics we have nullified intelligence and renounced leadership to embrace universal suffrage, which is the last disgrace of the human spirit. It must be acknowledged that Flaubert's arraignment of modern society possesses the characteristics commended by the late Barett Wendell: it is marked in a high degree by "unity, mass, and coherence." It must be admitted also that George Sand possessed in a high degree the Pauline virtue of being "not easily provoked," or she never could have endured so patiently, so sweetly, Flaubert's reiterated and increasingly ferocious assaults upon her own master passion, her ruling principle. George Sand was one whose entire life signally attested the power of a "saving grace," resident in the creative and recuperative energies of nature, resident in the magical, the miracle-working, powers of the human heart, the powers of love and sympathy. She was a modern spiritual adventurer who had escaped unscathed from all the anathemas of the old theology; and she abounded, like St. Francis, in her sense of the new dispensation and in her benedictive exuberance towards all the creatures of God, including not merely sun, moon, and stars and her sister the lamb but also her brother the wolf. On this principle she loves Flaubert!--and archly asserts her arch-heresy in his teeth. He complains that her fundamental defect is that she doesn't know how to "hate." She replies, with a point that seems never really to have pierced his thick casing of masculine egotism: "Artists are spoiled children and the best are great egotists. You say that I love them too well; I like them as I like the woods and the fields, everything, everyone that I know a little and that I study continually. I make my life in the midst of all that, and as I like my life, I like all that nourishes it and renews it. They do me a lot of ill turns which I see, but which I no longer feel. I know that there are thorns in the hedges, but that does not prevent me from putting out my hands and finding flowers there. If all are not beautiful, all are interesting. The day you took me to the Abbey of Saint-Georges I found the scrofularia borealis, a very rare plant in France. I was enchanted; there was much----in the neighborhood where I gathered it. Such is life! "And if one does not take life like that, one cannot take it in any way, and then how can one endure it? I find it amusing and interesting, and since I accept EVERYTHING, I am so much happier and more enthusiastic when I meet the beautiful and the good. If I did not have a great knowledge of the species, I should not have quickly understood you, or known you or loved you." Two years later the principles and tempers of both these philosophers were put to their severest trial. In 1870, George Sand had opportunity to apply her doctrine of universal acceptance to the Prussians in Paris. Flaubert had opportunity to welcome scientific organization in the Prussian occupation of his own home at Croisset. The first reaction of both was a quite simple consternation and rage, in which Flaubert cries, "The hopeless barbarism of humanity fills me with a black melancholy," and George Sand, for the moment assenting, rejoins: "Men are ferocious and conceited brutes." As the war thickens around him and the wakened militancy of his compatriots presses him hard, Flaubert becomes more and more depressed; he forebodes a general collapse of civilization--before the century passes, a conflict of races, "in which several millions of men kill one another in one engagement." With the curiously vengeful satisfaction which mortals take in their own misery when it offers occasion to cry "I told you so," he exclaims: "Behold then, the NATURAL MAN. Make theories now! Boast the progress, the enlightenment and the good sense of the masses, and the gentleness of the French people! I assure you that anyone here who ventured to preach peace would get himself murdered." George Sand in her fields at Nohant--not "above" but a little aside from the conflict--turns instinctively to her peasant doggedly, placidly, sticking at his plow; turns to her peasant with a kind of intuition that he is a symbol of faith, that he holds the keys to a consolation, which the rest of us blindly grope for: "He is imbecile, people say; no, he is a child in prosperity, a man in disaster, more of a man than we who complain; he says nothing, and while people are killing, he is sowing, repairing continually on one side what they are destroying on the other." Flaubert, who thinks that he has no "illusions" about peasants or the "average man," brings forward his own specific of a quite different nature: "Do you think that if France, instead of being governed on the whole by the crowd, were in the power of the mandarins, we should be where we are now? If, instead of having wished to enlighten the lower classes, we had busied ourselves with instructing the higher, we should not have seen M. de Keratry proposing the pillage of the duchy of Baden." In the great war of our own time with the same foes, our professional advocates of "preparedness," our cheerful chemists, our scientific "intellectuals"--all our materialistic thinkers hard- shell and soft-shell,--took the position of Flaubert, just presented; reproached us bitterly for our slack, sentimental pacificism; and urged us with all speed to emulate the scientific spirit of our enemy. There is nothing more instructive in this correspondence than to observe how this last fond illusion falls away from Flaubert under the impact of an experience which demonstrated to his tortured senses the truth of the old Rabelaisian utterance, that "science without conscience is the ruin of the soul." "What use, pray," he cries in the last disillusion, "is science, since this people abounding in scholars commits abominations worthy of the Huns and worse than theirs, because they are systematic, cold-blooded, voluntary, and have for an excuse, neither passion nor hunger?" And a few months later, he is still in mad anguish of desolation: "I had some illusions! What barbarity! What a slump! I am wrathful at my contemporaries for having given me the feelings of a brute of the twelfth century! I'm stifling in gall! These officers who break mirrors with white gloves on, who know Sanskrit, and who fling themselves on the champagne; who steal your watch and then send you their visiting card, this war for money, these civilized savages give me more horror than cannibals. And all the world is going to imitate them, is going to be a soldier! Russia has now four millions of them. All Europe will wear a uniform. If we take our revenge, it will be ferocious in the last degree; and, mark my word, we are going to think only of that, of avenging ourselves on Germany." Under the imminence of the siege of Paris, Flaubert had drilled men, with an out-flashing of the savage fighting spirit of his ancestors, of which he was more than half ashamed. But at heart he is more dismayed, more demoralized, more thoroughly prostrated than George Sand. He has not fortitude actually to face the degree of depravity which he has always imputed to the human race, the baseness with which his imagination has long been easily and cynically familiar. As if his pessimism had been only a literary pigment, a resource of the studio, he shudders to find Paris painted in his own ebony colors, and his own purely "artistic" hatred of the bourgeois, translated into a principle of action, expressing itself in the horrors of the Commune, with half the population trying to strangle the other half. Hatred, after all, contempt and hatred, are not quite the most felicitous watchwords for the use of human society. Like one whose cruel jest has been taken more seriously than he had intended and has been turned upon his own head, Flaubert considers flight: "I cherish the following dream: of going to live in the sun in a tranquil country." As a substitute for a physical retreat, he buries himself in a study of Buddhism, and so gradually returns to the pride of his intellectual isolation. As the tumult in his senses subsides, he even ventures to offer to George Sand the anodyne of his old philosophical despair: "Why are you so sad? Humanity offers nothing new. Its irremediable misery has filled me with sadness ever since my youth. And in addition I now have no disillusions. I believe that the crowd, the common herd will always be hateful. The only important thing is a little group of minds always the same-- which passes the torch from one to another." There we must leave Flaubert, the thinker. He never passes beyond that point in his vision of reconstruction: a "legitimate aristocracy" established in contempt of the average man--with the Academy of Sciences displacing the Pope. George Sand, amid these devastating external events, is beginning to feel the insidious siege of years. She can no longer rally her spiritual forces with the "bright speed" that she had in the old days. The fountain of her faith, which has never yet failed of renewal, fills more slowly. For weeks she broods in silence, fearing to augment her friend's dismay with more of her own, fearing to resume a debate in which her cause may be better than her arguments and in which depression of her physical energy may diminish her power to put up a spirited defence before the really indomitable "last ditch" of her position. When Flaubert himself makes a momentary gesture towards the white flag, and talks of retreat, she seizes the opportunity for a short scornful sally. "Go to live in the sun in a tranquil country! Where? What country is going to be tranquil in this struggle of barbarity against civilization, a struggle which is going to be universal?" A month later she gives him fair warning that she has no intention of acknowledging final defeat: "For me, the ignoble experiment that Paris is attempting or is undergoing, proves nothing against the laws of the eternal progression of men and things, and, if I have gained any principles in my mind, good or bad, they are neither shattered nor changed by it. For a long time I have accepted patience as one accepts the sort of weather there is, the length of winter, old age, lack of success in all its forms." But Flaubert, thinking that he has detected in her public utterances a decisive change of front, privately urges her in a finely figurative passage of a letter which denounces modern republicanism, universal suffrage, compulsory education, and the press--Flaubert urges her to come out openly in renunciation of her faith in humanity and her popular progressivistic doctrines. I must quote a few lines of his attempt at seduction: "Ah, dear good master, if you could only hate! That is what you lack, hate. In spite of your great Sphinx eyes, you have seen the world through a golden colour. That comes from the sun in your heart; but so many shadows have risen that now you are not recognizing things any more. Come now! Cry out! Thunder! Take your great lyre and touch the brazen string: the monsters will flee. Bedew us with drops of the blood of wounded Themis." That summons roused the citadel, but not to surrender, not to betrayal. The eloquent daughter of the people caught up her great lyre--in the public Reponse a un ami of October 3, 1871. But her fingers passed lightly over the "brazen string" to pluck again with old power the resonant golden notes. Her reply, with its direct retorts to Flaubert, is not perhaps a very closely reasoned argument. In making the extract I have altered somewhat the order of the sentences: "And what, you want me to stop loving? You want me to say that I have been mistaken all my life, that humanity is contemptible, hateful, that it always has been and always will be so? ... What, then, do you want me to do, so as to isolate myself from my kind, from my compatriots, from the great family in whose bosom my own family is only one ear of corn in the terrestrial field? ... But it is impossible, and your steady reason puts up with the most unreasonable of Utopias. In what Eden, in what fantastic Eldorado will you hide your family, your little group of friends, your intimate happiness, so that the lacerations of the social state and the disasters of the country shall not reach them? ... In vain you are prudent and withdraw, your refuge will be invaded in its turn, and in perishing with human civilization you will be no greater a philosopher for not having loved, than those who threw themselves into the flood to save some debris of humanity. ... The people, you say! The people is yourself and myself. It would be useless to deny it. There are not two races. ... No, no, people do not isolate themselves, the ties of blood are not broken, people do not curse or scorn their kind. Humanity is not a vain word. Our life is composed of love, and not to love is to cease to live." This is, if you please, an effusion of sentiment, a chant of faith. In a world more and more given to judging trees by their fruits, we should err if we dismissed this sentiment, this faith, too lightly. Flaubert may have been a better disputant; he had a talent for writing. George Sand may have chosen her side with a truer instinct; she had a genius for living. This faith of hers sustained well the shocks of many long years, and this sentiment made life sweet. STUART P. SHERMAN I. TO GEORGE SAND 1863 Dear Madam, I am not grateful to you for having performed what you call a duty. The goodness of your heart has touched me and your sympathy has made me proud. That is the whole of it. Your letter which I have just received gives added value to your article [Footnote: Letter about Salammbo, January, 1863, Questions d'art et de litterature.] and goes on still further, and I do not know what to say to you unless it be that _I_ QUITE FRANKLY LIKE YOU. It was certainly not I who sent you in September, a little flower in an envelope. But, strange to say, at the same time, I received in the same manner, a leaf of a tree. As for your very cordial invitation, I am not answering yes or no, in true Norman fashion. Perhaps some day this summer I shall surprise you. For I have a great desire to see you and to talk with you. It would be very delightful to have your portrait to hang on the wall in my study in the country where I often spend long months entirely alone. Is the request indiscreet? If not, a thousand thanks in advance. Take them with the others which I reiterate. II. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 15 March, 1864 Dear Flaubert, I don't know whether you lent me or gave me M. Taine's beautiful book. In the uncertainty I am returning it to you. Here I have had only the time to read a part of it, and at Nohant, I shall have only the time to scribble for Buloz; but when I return, in two months, I shall ask you again for this admirable work of which the scope is so lofty, so noble. I am sorry not to have said adieu to you; but as I return soon, I hope that you will not have forgotten me and that you will let me read something of your own also. You were so good and so sympathetic to me at the first performance of Villemer that I no longer admire only your admirable talent, I love you with all my heart. George Sand III. TO GEORGE SAND Paris, 1866 Why of course I am counting on your visit at my own house. As for the hindrances which the fair sex can oppose to it, you will not notice them (be sure of it) any more than did the others. My little stories of the heart or of the senses are not displayed on the counter. But as it is far from my quarter to yours and as you might make a useless trip, when you arrive in Paris, give me a rendezvous. And at that we shall make another to dine informally tete-a-tete. I sent your affectionate little greeting to Bouilhet. At the present time I am disheartened by the populace which rushes by under my windows in pursuit of the fatted calf. And they say that intelligence is to be found in the street! IV. To M. Flobert (Justave) M. of Letters Boulevard du Temple, 42, Paris Paris, 10 May, 1866 [The postage stamp bears the mark Palaiseau 9 May, '66.] M. Flobaire, You must be a truly dirty oaf to have taken my name and written a letter with it to a lady who had some favors for me which you doubtless received in my place and inherited my hat in place of which I have received yours which you left there. It is the lowness of that lady's conduct and of yours that make me think that she lacks education entirely and all those sentiments which she ought to understand. If you are content to have written Fanie and Salkenpeau I am content not to have read them. You mustn't get excited about that, I saw in the papers that there were outrages against the Religion in whose bosom I have entered again after the troubles I had with that lady when she made me come to my senses and repent of my sins with her and, in consequence if I meet you with her whom I care for no longer you shall have my sword at your throat. That will be the Reparation of my sins and the punishment of your infamy at the same time. That is what I tell you and I salute you. Coulard At Palaiseau with the Monks They told me that I was well punished for associating with the girls from the theatre and with aristocrats. V. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 1866 Sir, After the most scrupulous combined searches I found at last the body of my beloved brother. You are in belles-lettres and you would have been struck by the splendor of that scene. The corpse which was a Brother extended nonchalantly on the edge of a foul ditch. I forgot my sorrow a moment to contemplate he was good this young man whom the matches killed, but the real guilty one was that woman whom passions have separated in this disordered current in which our unhappy country is at the moment when it is more to be pitied than blamed for there are still men who have a heart. You who express yourself so well tell that siren that she has destroyed a great citizen. I don't need to tell you that we count on you to dig his noble tomb. Tell Silvanit also that she can come notwithstanding for education obliges me to offer her a glass of wine. I have the honor to salute you. I also have the honor to salute Silvanit for whom I am a brother much to be pitied. Goulard the elder Have the goodness to transmit to Silvanit the last wishes of my poor Theodore. [Footnote: Letter written by Eugene Lambert.] VI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Palaiseau 14 May, 1866 This is not a letter from Goulard. He is dead! The false Goulard killed him by surpassing him in the real and the comic. But this false Goulard also does not deny himself anything, the rascal! Dear friend, I must tell you that I want to dedicate to you my novel which is just coming out. But as every one has his own ideas on the subject--as Goulard would say--I would like to know if you permit me to put at the head of my title page simply: to my friend Gustave Flaubert. I have formed the habit of putting my novels under the patronage of a beloved name. I dedicated the last to Fromentin. I am waiting until it is good weather to ask you to come to dine at Palaiseau with Goulard's Sirenne, and some other Goulards of your kind and of mine. Up to now it has been frightfully cold and it is not worth the trouble to come to the country to catch a cold. I have finished my novel, and you? I kiss the two great diamonds which adorn your face. Jorje Sens The elder Goulard is my little Lambert, it seems to me that he is quite literary in that way. VII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Palaiseau, Wednesday, 16 May, 1866 Well, my dear friend, since you are going away, and as in a fortnight, I am going to Berry for two or three months, do try to find time to come tomorrow Thursday. You will dine with dear and interesting Marguerite Thuillier who is also going away. Do come to see my hermitage and Sylvester's. By leaving Paris, gare de Sceaux, at I o'clock, you will be at my house at 2 o'clock, or by leaving at 5, you will be there at 6, and in the evening you could leave with my strolling players at 9 or 10. Bring the copy. [Footnote: This refers to Monsieur Sylveitre, which had just appeared.] Put in it all the criticisms which occur to you. That will be very good for me. People ought to do that for each other as Balzac and I used to do. That doesn't make one person alter the other; quite the contrary, for in general, one gets more determined in one's moi, one completes it, explains it better, entirely develops it, and that is why friendship is good, even in literature, where the first condition of any worth is to be one's self. If you can not come--I shall have a thousand regrets, but then I am depending upon you Monday before dinner. Au revoir and thank you for the fraternal permission of dedication. G. Sand VIII. TO GEORGE SAND Paris, 17 or 18 May, 1866 Don't expect me at your house on Monday. I am obliged to go to Versailles on that day. But I shall be at Magny's. A thousand fond greetings from your G. Flaubert IX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 31 July, 1866 My good dear comrade, Will you really be in Paris these next few days as you led me to hope? I leave here the 2nd. What good luck if I found you at dinner on the following Monday. And besides, they are putting on a play [Footnote: Les Don Juan de village.] by my son and me, on the 10th. Could I possibly get along without you on that day? I shall feel some EMOTION this time because of my dear collaborator. Be a good friend and try to come! I embrace you with all my heart in that hope. The late Goulard, G. Sand. X. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 4 Aug., 1866 Dear friend, as I'm always out, I don't want you to come and find the door shut and me far away. Come at six o'clock and dine with me and my children whom I expect tomorrow. We dine at Magny's always at 6 o'clock promptly. You will give us 'a sensible pleasure' as used to say, as would have said, alas, the unhappy Goulard. You are an exceedingly kind brother to promise to be at Don Juan. For that I kiss you twice more. G. Sand Saturday evening. XI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT It is next THURSDAY, I wrote you last night, and our letters must have crossed. Yours from the heart, G. Sand Sunday, 5 August, 1866. XII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, Wednesday evening, 22 August, 1866 My good comrade and friend, I am going to see Alexandre at Saint- Valery Saturday evening. I shall stay there Sunday and Monday, I shall return Tuesday to Rouen and go to see you. Tell me how that strikes you. I shall spend the day with you if you like, returning to spend the night in Rouen, if I inconvenience you as you are situated, and I shall leave Wednesday morning or evening for Paris. A word in response at once, by telegraph if you think that your answer would not reach me by post before Saturday at 4 o'clock. I think that I shall be all right but I have a horrid cold. If it grows too bad, I shall telegraph that I can not stir; but I have hopes, I am already better. I embrace you. G. Sand XIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Saint-Valery, 26 August, 1866 Monday, 1 A.M. Dear friend, I shall be in Rouen on Tuesday at 1 o'clock, I shall plan accordingly. Let me explore Rouen which I don't know, or show it to me if you have the time. I embrace you. Tell your mother how much I appreciate and am touched, by the kind little line which she wrote to me. G. Sand XIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Paris, 31 August, 1866 First of all, embrace your good mother and your charming niece for me. I am really touched by the kind welcome I received in your clerical setting, where a stray animal of my species is an anomaly that one might find constraining. Instead of that, they received me as if I were one of the family and I saw that all that great politeness came from the heart. Remember me to all the very kind friends. I was truly exceedingly happy with you. And then, you, you are a dear kind boy, big man that you are, and I love you with all my heart. My head is full of Rouen, of monuments and queer houses. All of that seen with you strikes me doubly. But your house, your garden, your CITADEL, it is like a dream and it seems to me that I am still there. I found Paris very small yesterday, when crossing the bridges. I want to start back again. I did not see you enough, you and your surroundings; but I must rush off to the children, who are calling and threatening me. I embrace you and I bless you all. G. Sand Paris, Friday. On going home yesterday, I found Couture to whom I said on your behalf that HIS portrait of me was, according to you, the best that anyone had made. He was not a little flattered. I am going to hunt up an especially good copy to send you. I forgot to get three leaves from the tulip tree, you must send them to me in a letter, it is for something cabalistic. XV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 2 September, 1866 Send me back the lace shawl. My faithful porter will forward it to me wherever I am. I don't know yet. If my children want to go with me into Brittany, I shall go to fetch them, if not I shall go on alone wherever chance leads me. In travelling, I fear only distractions. But I take a good deal on myself and I shall end by improving myself. You write me a good dear letter which I kiss. Don't forget the three leaves from the tulip tree. They are asking me at the Odeon to let them perform a fairy play: la Nuit de Noel from the Theatre de Nohant, I don't want to, it's too small a thing. But since they have that idea, why wouldn't they try your fairy play? Do you want me to ask them? I have a notion that this would be the right theatre for a thing of that type. The management, Chilly and Duquesnel, wants to have scenery and MACHINERY and yet keep it literary. Let us discuss this when I return here. You still have the time to write to me. I shall not leave for three days yet. Love to your family. G. S. Sunday evening I forgot! Levy promises to send you my complete works, they are endless. You must stick them on a shelf in a corner and dig into them when your heart prompts you. XVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 21 September, 1866 I have just returned from a twelve days trip with my children, and on getting home I find your two letters. That fact, added to the joy of seeing Mademoiselle Aurore again, fresh and pretty, makes me quite happy. And you my Benedictine, you are quite alone in your ravishing monastery, working and never going out? That is what it means TO HAVE ALREADY gone out too much. Monsieur craves Syrias, deserts, dead seas, dangers and fatigues! But nevertheless he can make Bovarys in which every little cranny of life is studied and painted with mastery. What an odd person who can also compose the fight between the Sphinx and the Chimaera! You are a being quite apart, very mysterious, gentle as a lamb with it all. I have had a great desire to question you, but a too great respect for you has prevented me; for I know how to make light only of my own calamities, while those which a great mind has had to undergo so as to be in a condition to produce, seem to me like sacred things which should not be touched roughly nor thoughtlessly. Sainte-Beuve, who loves you all the same, claims that you are horribly vicious. But perhaps he may see with somewhat unclean eyes, like this learned botanist who asserts that the germander is of DIRTY yellow color. The observation was so false, that I could not refrain from writing on the margin of his book: IT IS BECAUSE YOU HAVE DIRTY EYES. I suppose that a man of intelligence may have great curiosity. I have not had it, lacking the courage. I have preferred to leave my mind incomplete, that is my affair, and every one is free to embark either on a great ship in full sail, or on a fisherman's vessel. The artist is an explorer whom nothing ought to stop, and who does neither good nor ill when turning to the right or to the left. His end justifies all. It is for him to know after a little experience, what are the conditions of his soul's health. As for me, I think that yours is in a good condition of grace, since you love to work and to be alone in spite of the rain. Do you know that, while there has been a deluge everywhere, we have had, except a few downpours, fine sunshine in Brittany? A horrible wind on the shore, but how beautiful the high surf! and since the botany of the coast carried me away, and Maurice and his wife have a passion for shellfish, we endured it all gaily. But on the whole, Brittany is a famous see-saw. However, we are a little fed up with dolmens and menhirs and we have fallen on fetes and have seen costumes which they said had been suppressed but which the old people still wear. Well! These men of the past are ugly with their home-spun trousers, their long hair, their jackets with pockets under the arms, their sottish air, half drunkard, half saint. And the Celtic relics, uncontestably curious for the archaeologist, have naught for the artist, they are badly set, badly composed, Carnac and Erdeven have no physiognomy. In short, Brittany shall not have my bones! I prefer a thousand times your rich Normandy, or, in the days when one has dramas in his HEAD, a real country of horror and despair. There is nothing in a country where priests rule and where Catholic vandalism has passed, razing monuments of the ancient world and sowing the plagues of the future. You say US a propos of the fairy play. I don't know with whom you have written it, but I still fancy that it ought to succeed at the Odeon under its present management. If I was acquainted with it, I should know how to accomplish for you what one never knows how to do for one's self, namely, to interest the directors. Anything of yours is bound to be too original to be understood by that coarse Dumaine. Do have a copy at your house, and next month I shall spend a day with you in order to have you read it to me. Le Croisset is so near to Palaiseau!--and I am in a phase of tranquil activity, in which I should love to see your great river flow, and to keep dreaming in your orchard, tranquil itself, quite on top of the cliff. But I am joking, and you are working. You must forgive the abnormal intemperance of one who has just been seeing only stones and has not perceived even a pen for twelve days. You are my first visit to the living on coming out from the complete entombment of my poor Moi. Live! There is my oremus and my benediction and I embrace you with all my heart. G. Sand XVII. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, 1866 I a mysterious being, dear master, nonsense! I think that I am sickeningly platitudinous, and I am sometimes exceedingly bored with the bourgeois which I have under my skin. Sainte-Beuve, between ourselves, does not know me at all, no matter what he says. I even swear to you (by the smile of your grandchild) that I know few men less vicious than I am. I have dreamed much and have done very little. What deceives the superficial observer is the lack of harmony between my sentiments and my ideas. If you want my confession, I shall make it freely to you. The sense of the grotesque has restrained me from an inclination towards a disorderly life. I maintain that cynicism borders on chastity. We shall have much to say about it to each other (if your heart prompts you) the first time we see each other. Here is the program that I propose to you. My house will be full and uncomfortable for a month. But towards the end of October or the beginning of November (after Bouilhet's play) nothing will prevent you, I hope, from returning here with me, not for a day, as you say, but for a week at least. You shall have "your little table and everything necessary for writing." Is it agreed? As for the fairy play, thanks for your kind offers of service. I shall get hold of the thing for you (it was done in collaboration with Bouilhet). But I think it is a trifle weak and I am torn between the desire of gaining a few piasters and the shame of showing such a piece of folly. I think that you are a little severe towards Brittany, not towards the Bretons who seem to me repulsive animals. A propos of Celtic archaeology, I published in L'Artiste in 1858, a rather good hoax on the shaking stones, but I have not the number here and I don't remember the month. I read, straight through, the 10 volumes of Histoire de ma vie, of which I knew about two thirds but only fragmentarily. What struck me most was the life in the convent. I have a quantity of observations to make to you which occurred to me. XVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 28 September, 1866 It is agreed, dear comrade and good friend. I shall do my best to be in Paris for the performance of your friend's play, and I shall do my fraternal duty there as usual; after which we shall go to your house and I shall stay there a week, but on condition that you will not put yourself out of your room. To be an inconvenience distresses me and I don't need so much bother in order to sleep. I sleep everywhere, in the ashes, or under a kitchen bench, like a stable dog. Everything shines with spotlessness at your house, so one is comfortable everywhere. I shall pick a quarrel with your mother and we shall laugh and joke, you and I, much and more yet. If it's good weather, I shall make you go out walking, if it rains continually, we shall roast our bones before the fire while telling our heart pangs. The great river will run black or grey under the window saying always, QUICK! QUICK! and carrying away our thoughts, and our days, and our nights, without stopping to notice such small things. I have packed and sent by EXPRESS a good proof of Couture's picture, signed by the engraver, my poor friend, Manceau. It is the best that I have and I have only just found it. I have sent with it a photograph of a drawing by Marchal which was also like me; but one changes from year to year. Age gives unceasingly another character to the face of people who think and study, that is why their portraits do not look like one another nor like them for long. I dream so much and I live so little, that sometimes I am only three years old. But, the next day I am three hundred, if the dream has been sombre. Isn't it the same with you? Doesn't it seem at moments, that you are beginning life without even knowing what it is, and at other times don't you feel over you the weight of several thousand centuries, of which you have a vague remembrance and a sorrowful impression? Whence do we come and whither do we go? All is possible since all is unknown. Embrace your beautiful, good mother for me. I shall give myself a treat, being with you two. Now try to find that hoax on the Celtic stones; that would interest me very much. When you saw them, had they opened the galgal of Lockmariaker and cleared away the ground near Plouharnel? Those people used to write, because there are stones covered with hieroglyphics, and they used to work in gold very well, because very beautifully made torques [Footnote: Gallic necklaces.] have been found. My children, who are, like myself, great admirers of you, send you their compliments, and I kiss your forehead, since Sainte-Beuve lied. G. Sand Have you any sun today? Here it is stifling. The country is lovely. When will you come here? XIX. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Saturday evening, ... 1866 Good, I have it, that beautiful, dear and famous face! I am going to have a large frame made and hang it on my wall, being able to say, as did M. de Talleyrand to Louis Philippe: "It is the greatest honor that my house has received"; a poor phrase, for we two are worth more than those two amiable men. Of the two portraits, I like that of Couture's the better. As for Marchal's he saw in you only "the good woman," but I who am an old Romantic, find in the other, "the head of the author" who made me dream so much in my youth. XX. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Saturday evening, 1866 Your sending the package of the two portraits made me think that you were in Paris, dear master, and I wrote you a letter which is waiting for you at rue des Feuillantines. I have not found my article on the dolmens. But I have my manuscript (entire) of my trip in Brittany among my "unpublished works." We shall have to gabble when you are here. Have courage. I don't experience, as you do, this feeling of a life which is beginning, the stupefaction of a newly commenced existence. It seems to me, on the contrary, that I have always lived! And I possess memories which go back to the Pharaohs. I see myself very clearly at different ages of history, practising different professions and in many sorts of fortune. My present personality is the result of my lost personalities. I have been a boatman on the Nile, a leno in Rome at the time of the Punic wars, then a Greek rhetorician in Subura where I was devoured by insects. I died during the Crusade from having eaten too many grapes on the Syrian shores, I have been a pirate, monk, mountebank and coachman. Perhaps also even emperor of the East? Many things would be explained if we could know our real genealogy. For, since the elements which make a man are limited, should not the same combinations reproduce themselves? Thus heredity is a just principle which has been badly applied. There is something in that word as in many others. Each one takes it by one end and no one understands the other. The science of psychology will remain where it lies, that is to say in shadows and folly, as long as it has no exact nomenclature, so long as it is allowed to use the same expression to signify the most diverse ideas. When they confuse categories, adieu, morale! Don't you really think that since '89 they wander from the point? Instead of continuing along the highroad which was broad and beautiful, like a triumphal way, they stray off by little sidepaths and flounder in mud holes. Perhaps it would be wise for a little while to return to Holbach. Before admiring Proudhon, supposing one knew Turgot? But le Chic, that modern religion, what would become of it! Opinions chic (or chiques): namely being pro-Catholicism (without believing a word of it) being pro-Slavery, being pro-the House of Austria, wearing mourning for Queen Amelie, admiring Orphee aux Enfers, being occupied with Agricultural Fairs, talking Sport, acting indifferent, being a fool up to the point of regretting the treaties of 1815. That is all that is the very newest. Oh! You think that because I pass my life trying to make harmonious phrases, in avoiding assonances, that I too have not my little judgments on the things of this world? Alas! Yes! and moreover I shall burst, enraged at not expressing them. But a truce to joking, I should finally bore you. The Bouilhet play will open the first part of November. Then in a month we shall see each other. I embrace you very warmly, dear master. XXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, Monday evening, 1 October, 1866 Dear friend, Your letter was forwarded to me from Paris. It isn't lost. I think too much of them to let any be lost. You don't speak to me of the floods, therefore I think that the Seine did not commit any follies at your place and that the tulip tree did not get its roots wet. I feared lest you were anxious and wondered if your bank was high enough to protect you. Here we have nothing of that sort to be afraid of; our streams are very wicked, but we are far from them. You are happy in having such clear memories of other existences. Much imagination and learning--those are your memories; but if one does not recall anything distinct, one has a very lively feeling of one's own renewal in eternity. I have a very amusing brother who often used to say "at the time when I was a dog. ..." He thought that he had become man very recently. I think that I was vegetable or mineral. I am not always very sure of completely existing, and sometimes I think I feel a great fatigue accumulated from having lived too much. Anyhow, I do not know, and I could not, like you, say, "I possess the past." But then you believe that one does not really die, since one LIVES AGAIN? If you dare to say that to the Smart Set, you have courage and that is good. I have the courage which makes me pass for an imbecile, but I don't risk anything; I am imbecile under so many other counts. I shall be enchanted to have your written impression of Brittany, I did not see enough to talk about. But I sought a general impression and that has served me for reconstructing one or two pictures which I need. I shall read you that also, but it is still an unformed mass. Why did your trip remain unpublished? You are very coy. You don't find what you do worth being described. That is a mistake. All that issues from a master is instructive, and one should not fear to show one's sketches and drawings. They are still far above the reader, and so many things are brought down to his level that the poor devil remains common. One ought to love common people more than oneself, are they not the real unfortunates of the world? Isn't it the people without taste and without ideals who get bored, don't enjoy anything and are useless? One has to allow oneself to be abused, laughed at, and misunderstood by them, that is inevitable. But don't abandon them, and always throw them good bread, whether or not they prefer filth; when they are sated with dirt they will eat the bread; but if there is none, they will eat filth in secula seculorum. I have heard you say, "I write for ten or twelve people only." One says in conversation, many things which are the result of the impression of the moment; but you are not alone in saying that. It was the opinion of the Lundi or the thesis of that day. I protested inwardly. The twelve persons for whom you write, who appreciate you, are as good as you are or surpass you. You never had any need of reading the eleven others to be yourself. But, one writes for all the world, for all who need to be initiated; when one is not understood, one is resigned and recommences. When one is understood, one rejoices and continues. There lies the whole secret of our persevering labors and of our love of art. What is art without the hearts and minds on which one pours it? A sun which would not project rays and would give life to no one. After reflecting on it, isn't that your opinion? If you are convinced of that, you will never know disgust and lassitude, and if the present is sterile and ungrateful, if one loses all influence, all hold on the public, even in serving it to the best of one's ability, there yet remains recourse to the future, which supports courage and effaces all the wounds of pride. A hundred times in life, the good that one does seems not to serve any immediate use; but it keeps up just the same the tradition of wishing well and doing well, without which all would perish. Is it only since '89 that people have been floundering? Didn't they have to flounder in order to arrive at '48 when they floundered much more, but so as to arrive at what should be? You must tell me how you mean that and I will read Turgot to please you. I don't promise to go as far as Holbach, ALTHOUGH HE HAS SOME GOOD POINTS, THE RUFFIAN! Summon me at the time of Bouilhet's play. I shall be here, working hard, but ready to run, and loving you with all my heart. Now that I am no longer a woman, if the good God was just, I should become a man; I should have the physical strength and would say to you: "Come let's go to Carthage or elsewhere." But there, one who has neither sex nor strength, progresses towards childhood, and it is quite otherwhere that one is renewed; WHERE? I shall know that before you do, and, if I can, I shall come back in a dream to tell you. XXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 19 October Dear friend, they write me from the Odeon that Bouilhet's play is on the 27th. I must be in Paris the 26th. Business calls me in any event. I shall dine at Magny's on that day, and the next, and the day after that. Now you know where to find me, for I think that you will come for the first performance. Yours always, with a full heart, G. Sand XXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 23 October, 1866 Dear friend, since the play is on the 29th I shall give two more days to my children and I leave here the 28th. You have not told me if you will dine with me and your friend on the 29th informally, at Magny's at whatever hour you wish. Let me find a line at 97 rue des Feuillantines, on the 28th. Then we shall go to your house, the day you wish. My chief talk with you will be to listen to you and to love you with all my heart. I shall bring what I have "ON THE STOCKS." That will GIVE ME COURAGE, as they say here, to read to you my EMBRYO. If I could only carry the sun from Nohant. It is glorious. I embrace and bless you. G. Sand XXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 10 November, 1866 On reaching Paris I learn sad news. Last evening, while we were talking--and I think that we spoke of him day before yesterday--my friend Charles Duveyrier died, a most tender heart and a most naive spirit. He is to be buried tomorrow. He was one year older than I am. My generation is passing bit by bit. Shall I survive it? I don't ardently desire to, above all on these days of mourning and farewell. It is as God wills, provided He lets me always love in this world and in the next. I keep a lively affection for the dead. But one loves the living differently. I give you the part of my heart that he had. That joined to what you have already, makes a large share. It seems to me that it consoles me to make that gift to you. From a literary point of view he was not a man of the first rank, one loved him for his goodness and spontaneity. Less occupied with affairs and philosophy, he would have had a charming talent. He left a pretty play, Michel Perrin. I travelled half the way alone, thinking of you and your mother at Croisset and looking at the Seine, which thanks to you has become a friendly GODDESS. After that I had the society of an individual with two women, as ordinary, all of them, as the music at the pantomime the other day. Example: "I looked, the sun left an impression like two points in my eyes." HUSBAND: "That is called luminous points," and so on for an hour without stopping. I shall do all sorts of errands for the house, for I belong to it, do I not? I am going to sleep, quite worn out; I wept unrestrainedly all the evening, and I embrace you so much the more, dear friend. Love me MORE than before, because I am sad. G. Sand Have you a friend among the Rouen magistrates? If you have, write him a line to watch for the NAME Amedee Despruneaux. It is a civil case which will come up at Rouen in a few days. Tell him that this Despruneaux is the most honest man in the world; you can answer for him as for me. In doing this, if the thing is feasible, you will do me a personal favor. I will do the same for any friend of yours. XXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 11 November, 1866 I send you my friend Despruneaux in person. If you know a judge or two,--or if your brother could give him a word of support, do arrange it, I kiss you three times on each eye. G. Sand Five minutes' interview and that's all the inconvenience. Paris, Sunday XXVI. TO GEORGE SAND Monday night You are sad, poor friend and dear master; it was you of whom I thought on learning of Duveyrier's death. Since you loved him, I am sorry for you. That loss is added to others. How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis. I am entirely UNDONE since your departure; it seems to me as if I had not seen you for ten years. My one subject of conversation with my mother is you, everyone here loves you. Under what star were you born, pray, to unite in your person such diverse qualities, so numerous and so rare? I don't know what sort of feeling I have for you, but I have a particular tenderness for you, and one I have never felt for anyone, up to now. We understood each other, didn't we, that was good. I especially missed you last evening at ten o'clock. There was a fire at my wood-seller's. The sky was rose color and the Seine the color of gooseberry sirup. I worked at the engine for three hours and I came home as worn out as the Turk with the giraffe. A newspaper in Rouen, le Nouvelliste, told of your visit to Rouen, so that Saturday after leaving you I met several bourgeois indignant at me for not exhibiting you. The best thing was said to me by a former sub-prefect: "Ah! if we had known that she was here ... we would have ... we would have ..." he hunted five minutes for the word; "we would have smiled for her." That would have been very little, would it not? To "love you more" is hard for me--but I embrace you tenderly. Your letter of this morning, so melancholy, reached the BOTTOM of my heart. We separated at the moment when many things were on the point of coming to our lips. All the doors between us two are not yet open. You inspire me with a great respect and I do not dare to question you. XXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Paris, 13 November, 1866 Night from Tuesday to Wednesday I have not yet read my play. I have still something to do over. Nothing pressing. Bouilhet's play goes admirably well, and they told me that my little friend Cadol's [Footnote: Edward Cadol, a dramatic author and a friend of Maurice Sand.] play would come next. And, for nothing in the world, do I want to step on the body of that child. That puts me quite a distance off and does not annoy me--NOR INJURE ME AT ALL. What style! Luckily I am not writing for Buloz. I saw your friend last evening in the foyer at the Odeon. I shook hands with him. He had a happy look. And then I talked with Duquesnel about the fairy play. He wants very much to know it. You have only to present yourself when ever you wish to busy yourself with it. You will be received with open arms. Mario Proth will give me tomorrow or next day the exact date on the transformation of the journal. Tomorrow I shall go out and buy your dear mother's shoes. Next week I am going to Palaiseau and I shall hunt up my book on faience. If I forget anything, remind me of it. I have been ill for two days. I am cured. Your letter does my heart good. I shall answer all the questions quite nicely, as you have answered mine. One is happy, don't you think so, to be able to relate one's whole life? It is much less complicated than the bourgeois think, and the mysteries that one can reveal to a friend are always the contrary of what indifferent ones suppose. I was very happy that week with you: no care, a good nesting-place a lovely country, affectionate hearts and your beautiful and frank face which has a somewhat paternal air. Age has nothing to do with it. One feels in you the protection of infinite goodness, and one evening when you called your mother "MY DAUGHTER," two tears came in my eyes. It was hard to go away, but I hindered your work, and then,--and then,--a malady of my old age is, not being able to keep still. I am afraid of getting too attached and of wearying others. The old ought to be extremely discreet. From a distance I can tell you how much I love you without the fear of repetition. You are one of the RARE BEINGS remaining impressionable, sincere, loving art, not corrupted by ambition, not drunk with success. In short you will always be twenty-five years of age because of all sorts of ideas which have become old-fashioned according to the senile young men of today. With them, I think it is decidedly a pose, but it is so stupid! If it is a weakness, it is still worse. They are MEN OF LETTERS and not MEN. Good luck to the novel! It is exquisite; but oddly enough there is one entire side of you which does not betray itself in what you do, something that you probably are ignorant of. That will come later, I am sure of it. I embrace you tenderly, and your mother too, and the charming niece! [Footnote: Madame Caroline Commanville.] Ah! I forgot, I saw Couture this evening; he told me that in order to be nice to you, he would make your portrait in crayon like mine for whatever price you wish to arrange. You see I am a good commissioner, use me. XXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 16 November, 1866 Thanks, dear friend of my heart, for all the trouble that I gave you with my Berrichon Despruneaux. They are friends from the old country, a whole adorable family of fine people, fathers, children, wives, nephews, all in the close circle at Nohant. He must have been MOVED at seeing you. He looked forward to it, all personal interest aside. And I who am not practical, forgot to tell you that the judgment would not be given for a fortnight. That in consequence any preceding within the next two weeks would be extremely useful. If he gains his suit relative to the constructions at Yport, he will settle there and I shall realize the plan formed long since of going every year to his house; he has a delicious wife and they have loved me a long time. You then are threatened with seeing me often scratching at your gate in passing, giving you a kiss on the forehead, crying courage for your labor and running on. I am still awaiting our information on the journal. It seems that it is a little difficult to be exact for '42. I have asked for the most scrupulous exactitude. For two days I have been taking out to walk my Cascaret, [Footnote: Francis Laur.] the little engineer of whom I told you. He has become very good looking, the ladies lift their lorgnons at him, and it depends only on him to attain the dignity of a negro "giraffier," but he loves, he is engaged, he has four years to wait, to work to make himself a position, and he has made a vow. You would tell him that he is stupid, I preach to him, on the contrary, my old troubadour doctrine. Morality aside, I don't think that the children of this day have sufficient force to manage at the same time, science and dissipation, cocottes and engagements. The proof is that nothing comes from young Bohemia any longer. Good night, friend, work well, sleep well. Walk a little for the love of God and of me. Tell your judges who promised me a smile, to smile on my Berrichon. XXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 16 November, 1866 Don't take any further steps. Contrary to all anticipations, Despruneaux has gained his suit during the session. Whether you have done it or not, he is none the less grateful about it and charges me to thank you with all his good and honest heart. Bouilhet goes from better to better. I have just seen the directors who are delighted. I love you and embrace you. Think sometimes of your old troubadour. Friday G. Sand XXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 18 November (?), 1866 I think that I shall give you pleasure and joy when I tell you that La Conjuration d'Ambroise, thus says my porter, is announced as a real money-maker. There was a line this evening as at Villemer, and Magny which is also a barometer, shows fair weather. So be content, if that keeps up, Bouilhet is a success. Sunday G. S. XXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Palaiseau, 22 November, 1866 I think that it will bring me luck to say good evening to my dear comrade before starting to work. I am QUITE ALONE in my little house. The gardener and his family live in the pavilion in the garden and we are the last house at the end of the village, quite isolated in the country, which is a ravishing oasis. Fields, woods, appletrees as in Normandy; not a great river with its steam whistles and infernal chain; a little stream which runs silently under the willows; a silence ... ah! it seems to me that I am in the depths of the virgin forest: nothing speaks except the little jet of the spring which ceaselessly piles up diamonds in the moonlight. The flies sleeping in the corners of my room, awaken at the warmth of my fire. They had installed themselves there to die, they come near the lamp, they are seized with a mad gaiety, they buzz, they jump, they laugh, they even have faint inclinations towards love, but it is the hour of death and paf! in the midst of the dance, they fall stiff. It is over, farewell to dancing! I am sad here just the same. This absolute solitude, which has always been vacation and recreation for me, is shared now by a dead soul [Footnote: Alexandre Manceau, the engraver, a friend of Maurice Sand.] who has ended here, like a lamp which is going out, yet which is here still. I do not consider him unhappy in the region where he is dwelling; but the image that he has left near me, which is nothing more than a reflection, seems to complain because of being unable to speak to me any more. Never mind! Sadness is not unhealthy. It prevents us from drying up. And you dear friend, what are you doing at this hour? Grubbing also, alone also; for your mother must be in Rouen. Tonight must be beautiful down there too. Do you sometimes think of the "old troubadour of the Inn clock, who still sings and will continue to sing perfect love?" Well! yes, to be sure! You do not believe in chastity, sir, that's your affair. But as for me, I say that SHE HAS SOME GOOD POINTS, THE JADE! And with this, I embrace you with all my heart, and I am going to, if I can, make people talk who love each other in the old way. You don't have to write to me when you don't feel like it. No real friendship without ABSOLUTE liberty. In Paris next week, and then again to Palaiseau, and after that to Nohant. I saw Bouilhet at the Monday performance. I am CRAZY about it. But some of us will applaud at Magny's. I had a cold sweat there, I who am so steady, and I saw everything quite blue. XXXII. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Tuesday You are alone and sad down there, I am the same here. Whence come these attacks of melancholy that overwhelm one at times? They rise like a tide, one feels drowned, one has to flee. I lie prostrate. I do nothing and the tide passes. My novel is going very badly for the moment. That fact added to the deaths of which I have heard; of Cormenin (a friend of twenty-five years' standing), of Gavarni, and then all the rest, but that will pass. You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word. Ideas come very easily with you, incessantly, like a stream. With me it is a tiny thread of water. Hard labor at art is necessary for me before obtaining a waterfall. Ah! I certainly know THE AGONIES OF STYLE. In short I pass my life in wearing away my heart and brain, that is the real TRUTH about your friend. You ask him if he sometimes thinks of his "old troubadour of the clock," most certainly! and he mourns for him. Our nocturnal talks were very precious (there were moments when I restrained myself in order not to KISS you like a big child). Your ears ought to have burned last night. I dined at my brother's with all his family. There was hardly any conversation except about you, and every one sang your praises, unless perhaps myself, I slandered you as much as possible, dearly beloved master. I have reread, a propos of your last letter (and by a very natural connection of ideas), that chapter of father Montaigne's entitled "some lines from Virgil." What he said of chastity is precisely what I believe. It is the effort that is fine and not the abstinence in itself. Otherwise shouldn't one curse the flesh like the Catholics? God knows whither that would lead. Now at the risk of repetition and of being a Prudhomme, I insist that your young man is wrong. [Footnote: Refers to Francis Laur.] If he is temperate at twenty years old, he will be a cowardly roue at fifty. Everything has its compensations. The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves. One must laugh and weep, love, work, enjoy and suffer, in short vibrate as much as possible in all his being. That is, I think, the real human existence. XXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Palaiseau, 29 November, 1866 One need not be spiritualist nor materialist, you say, but one should be a naturalist. That is a great question. My Cascaret, that is what I call the little engineer, will decide it as he thinks best. He is not stupid and he will have many ideas, deductions and emotions before realizing the prophecy that you make. I do not catechise him without reserve, for he is stronger than I am on many points, and it is not Catholic spiritualism that stifles him. But the question by itself is very serious, and hovers above our art, above us troubadours, more or less clock-bearing or clockshaped. Treat it in an entirely impersonal way; for what is good for one might be quite the reverse for another. Let us ask ourselves in making an abstract of our tendencies or of our experiences, if the human being can receive and seek its own full physical development without intellectual suffering. Yes, in an ideal and rational society that would be so. But, in that in which we live and with which we must be content, do not enjoyment and excess go hand in hand, and can one separate them or limit them, unless one is a sage of the first class? And if one is a sage, farewell temptation which is the father of real joys. The question for us artists, is to know if abstinence strengthens us or if it exalts us too much, which state would degenerate into weakness,--You will say, "There is time for everything and power enough for every dissipation of strength." Then you make a distinction and you place limits, there is no way of doing otherwise. Nature, you think, places them herself and prevents us from abusing her. Ah! but no, she is not wiser than we who are also nature. Our excesses of work, as our excesses of pleasure, kill us certainly, and the more we are great natures, the more we pass beyond bounds and extend the limits of our powers. No, I have no theories. I spend my life in asking questions and in hearing them answered in one way or another without any victoriously conclusive reply ever being given me. I await the brilliance of a new state of my intellect and of my organs in a new life; for, in this one, whosoever reflects, embraces up to their last consequences, the limits of pro and con. It is Monsieur Plato, I think, who asked for and thought he held the bond. He had it no more than we. However, this bond exists, since the universe subsists without the pro and con, which constitute it, reciprocally destroying each other. What shall one call it in material nature? EQUILIBRIUM, that will do, and for spiritual nature? MODERATION, relative chastity, abstinence from excess, whatever you want, but that is translated by EQUILIBRIUM; am I wrong, my master? Consider it, for in our novels, what our characters do or do not do, rests only on that. Will they or will they not possess the object of their ardent desires? Whether it is love or glory, fortune or pleasure, ever since they existed, they have aspired to one end. If we have a philosophy in us, they walk right according to us; if we have not, they walk by chance, and are too much dominated by the events which we put in the way of their legs. Imbued by our own ideas and ruled by fatality, they do not always appear logical. Should we put much or little of ourselves in them? Shouldn't we put what society puts in each one of us? For my part, I follow my old inclination, I put myself in the skin of my good people. People scold me for it, that makes no difference. You, I don't really know if by method or by instinct, take another course. What you do, you succeed in; that is why I ask you if we differ on the question of internal struggles, if the hero ought to have any or if he ought not to know them. You always astonish me with your painstaking work; is it a coquetry? It does not seem labored. What I find difficult is to choose out of the thousand combinations of scenic action which can vary infinitely, the clear and striking situation which is not brutal nor forced. As for style, I attach less importance to it than you do. The wind plays my old harp as it lists. It has its HIGH NOTES, its LOW NOTES, its heavy notes--and its faltering notes, in the end it is all the same to me provided the emotion comes, but I can find nothing in myself. It is THE OTHER who sings as he likes, well or ill, and when I try to think about it, I am afraid and tell myself that I am nothing, nothing at all. But a great wisdom saves us; we know how to say to ourselves, "Well, even if we are absolutely nothing but instruments, it is still a charming state and like no other, this feeling oneself vibrate." Now, let the wind blow a little over your strings. I think that you take more trouble than you need, and that you ought to let THE OTHER do it oftener. That would go just as well and with less fatigue. The instrument might sound weak at certain moments, but the breeze in continuing would increase its strength. You would do afterwards what I don't do, what I should do. You would raise the tone of the whole picture and would cut out what is too uniformly in the light. Vale et me ama. XXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND Saturday morning Don't bother yourself about the information relative to the journals. That will occupy little space in my book and I have time to wait. But when you have nothing else to do, jot down on paper whatever you can recall of '48. Then you can develop it in talking. I don't ask you for copy of course, but to collect a little of your personal memories. Do you know an actress at the Odeon who plays Macduff in Macbeth? Dugueret? She would like to have the role of Nathalie in Mont- reveche. She will be recommended to you by Girardin, Dumas and me. I saw her yesterday in Faustine, in which she showed talent. My opinion is that she has intelligence and that one could profit by her. If your little engineer has made a VOW, and if that vow does not cost him anything, he is right to keep it; if not, it is pure folly, between you and me. Where should liberty exist if not in passion? Well! no, IN MY DAY we didn't take such vows and we loved! and swaggeringly. But all participated in a great eclecticism and when one strayed FROM LADIES it was from pride, in defiance of one's self, and for effect. In short, we were Red Romantics, perfectly ridiculous to be sure, but in full bloom. The little good which remains to me comes from that epoch. XXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Palaiseau, 30 November, 1866 There would be a good deal to say on all that, my comrade. My Cascaret, that is to say, the fiance in question, keeps himself for his fiancee. She said to him, "Let us wait till you have accomplished certain definite work," and he works. She said to him, "Let us keep ourselves pure for each other," and he keeps himself pure. It is not that he is choked by Catholic spiritualism; but he has a high ideal of love, and why counsel him to go and lose it when his conscience and his honor depend on keeping it? There is an equilibrium which Nature, our ruler, herself puts in our instincts, and she sets the limit to our appetites. Great natures are not the most robust. We are not developed in all our senses by a very logical education. We are compressed in every way, and we thrust out our roots and branches when and how we can. Great artists are often weak also, and many are impotent. Some too strong in desire are quickly exhausted. In general I think that we have too intense joys and sorrows, we who work with our brains. The laborer who works his land and his wife hard by day and night is not a forceful nature. His brain is very feeble. You say to develop one's self in every direction? Come, not all at the same time, not without rest. Those who brag of that, are bluffing a bit, or IF THEY DO everything, do everything ill. If love for them is a little bread- and-butter and art a little pot-boiler, all right; but if their pleasure is great, verging on the infinite, and their work eager, verging on enthusiasm, they do not alternate these as in sleeping and waking. As for me, I don't believe in these Don Juans who are Byrons at the same time. Don Juan did not make poems and Byron made, so they say, very poor love. He must have had sometimes--one can count such emotions in one's life--a complete ecstasy of heart, mind and senses. He knew enough about them to be one of the poets of love. Nothing else is necessary for the instrument of our vibration. The continual wind of little appetites breaks them. Try some day to write a novel in which the artist (the real artist) is the hero, you will see what great, but delicate and restrained, vigor is in it, how he will see everything with an attentive eye, curious and tranquil, and how his infatuations with the things he examines and delves into, will be rare and serious. You will see also how he fears himself, how he knows that he can not surrender himself without exhaustion, and how a profound modesty in regard to the treasures of his soul prevents him from scattering and wasting them. The artist is such a fine type to do, that I have never dared really to do him. I do not consider myself worthy to touch that beautiful and very complicated figure; that is aiming too high for a mere woman. But if it could certainly tempt you some day, it would be worth while. Where is the model? I don't know, I have never REALLY known any one who did not show some spot in the sunlight, I mean some side where the artist verged on the Philistine. Perhaps you have not that spot; you ought to paint yourself. As for me I have it. I love classifications, I verge on the pedagogue. I love to sew and to care for children, I verge on the servant. I am easily distracted and verge on the idiot. And then I should not like perfection; I feel it but I shouldn't know how to show it. But one could give him some faults in his nature. What ones? We shall hunt for them some day. That is not really what you are working on now and I ought not to distract you from it. Be less cruel to yourself. Go ahead and when the afflatus shall have produced everything you must elevate the general tone and cut out what ought not to come down front stage. Can't that be done? It seems to me that it can. What you do appears so easy, so abundant! It is a perpetual overflow, I do not understand your anguish. Good night, dear brother, my love to all yours. I have returned to my solitude at Palaiseau, I love it. I leave it for Paris, Monday. I embrace you warmly. Good luck to your work. G. Sand XXXVI. Monsieur Gustave Flobert at Croisset, Rouen [The postage stamp bears the mark, Paris, 4, December, 1866] Sir the noise that you make in literature by your distinguished talent I also made in my day in the manner that my means permitted me I began in 1804 under the auspices of the celebrated Madame Saqui and bore off palms and left memories in the annals of the tight-rope and coregrafie balancer in all countries where I have been there appreciated by generals and other officers of the Empire by whom I have been solicited up to an advanced age so that wives of prefects and ministers could not have been complimented about it I have read your distinguished works notably Madame Bovarie of which I think I am capable of being a model to you when she breaks the chains of her feet to go where her heart calls her. I am well preserved for my advanced age and if you have a repugnance for an artist in misfortune, I should be content with your ideal sentiments. You can then count on my heart not being able to dispose of my person being married to a man of light character who squandered my wax cabinet wherein were all figures of celebrities, kings, emperors, ancient and modern and celebrated crimes, which if I had had your permission about it you would have been placed in the number I had then a place in the railroad substation to have charge of the cabinets which the jealousy of my rival made me lose, it is in these sentiments that I write you if you deign to write the history of my unhappy life you alone would be worthy of it and would see in it things of which you would be worthy of appreciating I shall present myself at your house in Rouen whose address I had from M. Bouilhet who knows me well having come to see me in his youth he will tell you that I have the phthisic still agreeably and always faithful to all who knew me whether in the civil or in the military and in these sentiments for life your affectionate Victoire Potelet called Marengo Lirondelle widow Dodin Rue Lanion, 47, Belleville. XXXVII. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday night, 5th December, 1866 Oh! how lovely the letter of Marengo the Swallow is! Seriously, I think it a masterpiece, not a word which is not a word of genius. I have laughed aloud many times. I thank you very dear master, you are as good as can be. You never tell me what you are doing. How far has the play gone? I am not at all surprised that you don't understand my literary agonies. I don't understand them myself. But they exist nevertheless, and violent ones. I don't in the least know how to set to work to write, and I begin by expressing only the hundredth part of my ideas after infinite gropings. Not one who seizes the first impulse, your friend, no! not at all! Thus for entire days I have polished and re-polished a paragraph without accomplishing anything. I feel like weeping at times. You ought to pity me! As for our subject under discussion (a propos of your young man), what you write me in your last letter is so my way of thinking, that I have not only practised it but preached it. Ask Theo. However, let us understand one another. Artists (who are priests) risk nothing in being chaste; on the contrary. But the bourgeois, what is the use in it for them? Of course there must be certain ones among humanity who stick to chastity. Happy indeed those who don't depart from it. I don't agree with you that there is anything worth while to be done with the character of the IDEAL ARTIST; he would be a monster. Art is not made to paint the exceptions, and I feel an unconquerable repugnance to putting on paper something from out of my heart. I even think that a novelist HASN'T THE RIGHT TO EXPRESS HIS OPINION on any subject whatsoever. Has the good God ever uttered it, his opinion? That is why there are not a few things that choke me which I should like to spit out, but which I swallow. Why say them, in fact! The first comer is more interesting than Monsieur Gustave Flaubert, because he is more GENERAL and therefore more typical. Nevertheless, there are days when I consider myself below imbecility. I have still a globe of goldfish and that amuses me. They keep me company while I dine. Is it stupid to be interested in such simple things? Adieu, it is late, I have an aching head. I embrace you. XXXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris December, 1866 "Not put one's heart into what one writes?" I don't understand at all, oh! not at all! As for me, I think that one can not put anything else into it. Can one separate one's mind from one's heart? Is it something different? Can sensation itself limit itself? Can existence divide itself? In short, not to give oneself entirely to one's work, seems to me as impossible as to weep with something else than one's eyes, and to think with something else than one's brain. What was it you meant? You must tell me when you have the time. XXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 8 December, 1866 You ask me what I am doing? Your old troubadour is content this evening. He has passed the night in re-doing a second act which did not go properly and which has turned out well, so well that my directors are delighted, and I have good hopes of making the end effective--it does not please me yet, but one must pull it through. In short, I have nothing to tell you about myself which is very interesting. When one has the patience of an ox and the wrist broken from crushing stones well or badly, one has scarcely any unexpected events or emotions to recount. My poor Manceau called me the ROAD- MENDER, and there is nothing less poetic than those beings. And you, dear friend, are you experiencing the anguish and labors of childbirth? That is splendid and youthful. Those who want them don't always get them! When my daughter-in-law brings into the world dear little children, I abandon myself to such labor in holding her in my arms that it reacts on me, and when the infant arrives, I am sicker than she is, and even seriously so. I think that your pains now react on me, and I have a headache on account of them. But alas! I cannot assist at any birth and I almost regret the time when one believed it hastened deliverances to burn candles before an image. I see that that rascal Bouilhet has betrayed me; he promised me to copy the Marengo letter in a feigned hand to see if you would be taken in by it. People have written to me seriously things like that. How good and kind your great friend is. He is adored at the Odeon, and this evening they told me that his play was going better and better. I went to hear it again two or three days ago and I was even more delighted with it than the first time. Well, well, let's keep up our heart, whatever happens, and when you go to rest remember that someone loves you. Affectionate regards to your mother, brother and niece. G. Sand XL. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Saturday night I have seen Citizen Bouilhet, who had a real ovation in his own country. His compatriots who had absolutely ignored him up to then, from the moment that Paris applauded him, screamed with enthusiasm.- -He will return here Saturday next, for a banquet that they are giving him,--80 covers, at least. As for Marengo the Swallow, he kept your secret so well, that he read the letter in question with an astonishment which duped me. Poor Marengo! she is a figure! and one that you ought to put in a book. I wonder what her memoirs would be, written in that style?-- Mine (my style) continues to give me no small annoyance. I hope, however, in a month, to have crossed the most barren tract. But at the moment I am lost in a desert; well, by the grace of God, so much the worse for me! How gladly I shall abandon this sort of thing, never to return to it to my dying day! Depicting the modern French bourgeois is a stench in my nostrils! And then won't it be time perhaps to enjoy oneself a bit in life, and to choose subjects pleasant to the author? I expressed myself badly when I said to you that "one should not write from the heart." I meant to say: not put one's personality into the picture. I think that great art is scientific and impersonal. One should, by an effort of mind, put oneself into one's characters and not create them after oneself. That is the method at least; a method which amounts to this: try to have a great deal of talent and even of genius if you can. How vain are all the poetic theories and criticisms!--and the nerve of the gentlemen who compose them sickens me. Oh! nothing restrains them, those boneheads! Have you noticed that there is sometimes in the air a current of common ideas? For instance, I have just read my friend Du Camp's new novel: Forces Perdues. It is very like what I am doing, in many ways. His book is very naive and gives an accurate idea of the men of our generation having become real fossils to the young men of today. The reaction of '48 opened a deep chasm between the two Frances. Bouilhet told me that you had been seriously ill at one of the recent Magny's, although you do pretend to be a "woman of wood." Oh! no you are not of wood, dear good great heart! "Beloved old troubadour," would it not perhaps be opportune to rehabilitate him at the Theatre Almanzor? I can see him with his toque and his guitar and his apricot tunic howling at the black-gowned students from the top of a rock. The talk would be fine. Now, good night; I kiss you on both cheeks tenderly. XLI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 7 December, 1866 Something like a week ago someone came to my house in the morning to ask me the address of the bootmaker, my maid did not want to awaken me, and it was not until noon that I read the letter; the bearer said he came from the Hotel Helder on the rue Helder. I answered at once that Simonin lived at 15 rue Richelieu, I wrote to your mother thinking that it was she who wrote to me. I see that she did not receive my note and I don't understand about it, but it is not my fault. Your old Troubadour is sick as a dog again today, but it will not prevent him from going to Magny's this evening. He could not die in better company; although he would prefer the edge of a ditch in the spring. Everything else goes well and I leave for Nohant on Saturday. I am trying hard to push the entomological work which Maurice is publishing. It is very fine. I am doing for him what I have never done for myself. I am writing to the newspaper men. I shall recommend Mademoiselle Bosquet to whom I can, but that appeals to another public, and I don't stand in as well with the literary men as I do with the scholars. But certainly Marengo the Swallow MUST BE DONE and the apricot troubadour also. All that was of the Cadios of the revolution who began to be or who wanted to be something, no matter what. I am of the last comers and you others born of us, you are between the illusions of my time and the crude deception of the new times. It is quite natural that Du Camp should go parallel with you in a series of observations and ideas, that does not mean anything. There will be no resemblance. Oh no! I have not found a title for you, it is too serious, and then I should need to know everything. In any case I am no good today to do anything except to draw up my epitaph. Et in Arcadia ego, you know, I love you, dear friend brother, and bless you with all my heart. G. Sand Monday. XLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Paris, 9 January, 1867 Dear comrade, Your old troubadour has been tempted to bite the dust. He is still in Paris. He should have left the 25th of December; his trunk was strapped; your first letter was awaiting him every day at Nohant. At last he is all ready to leave and he goes tomorrow with his son Alexandre [Footnote: Alexandre Dumas fils.] who is anxious to accompany him. It is stupid to be laid on one's back and to lose consciousness for three days and to get up as enfeebled as if one had done something painful and useful. It was nothing after all, except temporary impossibility of digesting anything whatever. Cold, or weakness, or work, I don't know. I don't think of it any longer. Sainte-Beuve is much more disquieting, somebody have written you about it. He is better also, but there will be serious trouble, and on account of that, accidents to look out for. I am very saddened and anxious about it. I have not worked for two weeks; so my task has not progressed very much, and as I don't know if I am going to be in shape very soon, I have given the Odeon A VACATION. They will take me when I am ready. I think of going a little to the south when I have seen my children. The plants of the coast are running through my head. I am prodigiously uninterested in anything which is not my little ideal of peaceful work, country life, and of tender and pure friendship. I really think that I am not going to live a long time, although I am quite cured and well. I get this warning from the great calm, CONTINUALLY CALMER, which exists in my formerly agitated soul. My brain only works from synthesis to analysis, and formerly it was the contrary. Now, what presents itself to my eyes when I awaken is the planet; I have considerable trouble in finding again there the MOI which interested me formerly, and which I begin to' call YOU in the plural. It is charming, the planet, very interesting, very curious but rather backward, and as yet somewhat unpractical; I hope to pass into an oasis with better highways and possible to all. One needs so much money and resources in order to travel here! and the time lost in order to procure. these necessaries is lost to study and to contemplation. It seems to me that there is due me something less complicated, less civilized, more naturally luxurious, and more easily good than this feverish halting-place. Will you come into the land, of my dreams, if I succeed in finding the road? Ah! who can know? And the novel, is it getting on? Your courage has not declined? Solitude does not weigh on you? I really think that it is not absolute, and that somewhere there is a sweetheart who comes and goes, or who lives near there. But there is something of the anchorite in your life just the same, and if envy your situation. As for me, I am too alone at Palaiseau, with a dead soul; not alone enough at Nohant, with the children whom I love too much to belong to myself,--and at Paris, one does not know what one is, one forgets oneself entirely for a thousand things which are not worth any more than oneself. I embrace you with all my heart, dear friend; remember me to your mother, to your dear family, and write me at Nohant, that will do me good. The cheeses? I don't know at all, it seems to me that they spoke to me of them, but I don't remember at all. I will tell you that from down there. XLIII. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Saturday night No, dear master, you are not near your end. So much the worse for you perhaps. But you will live to be old, very old, as giants live, since you are of that race: only you MUST rest. One thing astonishes me and that is that you have not died twenty times over, having thought so much, written so much and suffered so much. Do go then, since you have the desire, to the Mediterranean. Its azure sky quiets and invigorates. There are the Countries of Youth, such as the Bay of Naples. Do they make one sadder sometimes? I do not know. Life is not easy! What a complicated and extravagant affair! I know something about that. One must have money for everything! So that with a modest revenue and an unproductive profession one has to make up one's mind to have but little. So I do! The habit is formed, but the days that work does not go well are not amusing. Yes indeed! I would love to follow you into another planet. And a propos of money, it is that which will make our planet uninhabitable in the near future, for it will be impossible to live here, even for the rich, without looking after one's property; one will have to spend several hours a day fussing over one's INCOME. Charming! I continue to fuss over my novel, and I shall go to Paris when I reach the end of my chapter, towards the middle of next month. And whatever you suspect, no "lovely lady" comes to see me. Lovely ladies have occupied my mind a good deal, but have taken up very little of my time. Applying the term anchorite to me is perhaps a juster comparison than you think. I pass entire weeks without exchanging a word with a human being, and at the end of the week it is not possible for me to recall a single day nor any event whatsoever. I see my mother and my niece on Sundays, and that is all. My only company consists of a band of rats in the garret, which make an infernal racket above my head, when the water does not roar or the wind blow. The nights are black as ink, and a silence surrounds me comparable to that of the desert. Sensitiveness is increased immeasurably in such a setting. I have palpitations of the heart for nothing. All that results from our charming profession. That is what it means to torment the soul and the body. But perhaps this torment is our proper lot here below? I told you, didn't I, that I had reread Consuelo and the Comtesse de Rudolstadt; it took me four days. We must discuss them at length, when you are willing. Why am I in love with Siverain? Perhaps because I am of both sexes. XLIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT at Croissset Nohant, 15 January, 1867 Here I am at home, fairly strong except for several hours during the evening. Yet, THAT WILL PASS. THE EVIL OR HE WHO ENDURES IT, my old cure used to say, CAN NOT LAST. I received your letter this morning, dear friend of my heart. Why do I love you more than most of the others, even more than old and well-tried friends? I am asking, for my condition at this hour, is that of being THOU WHO GOEST SEEKING, AT SUNSET, FORTUNE! ... Yes, intellectual fortune, LIGHT! Oh well, here it is: one gets, being old, at the sunset of life,--which is the most beautiful hour of tones and reflections,--a new idea of everything and of affection above all. In the age of power and of personality, one tests one's friends as one tests the earth, from the point of view of reciprocity. One feels oneself solid, one wants to find that which bears one or leads one, solid. But, when one feels the intensity of the moi fleeing, one loves persons and things for what they are in themselves, for what they represent in the eyes of one's soul, and not at all for what they add further to one's destiny. It is like the picture or the statue which one would like to own, when one dreams at the same time of a beautiful house of one's own in which to put it. But one has passed through green Bohemia without gathering anything there; one has remained poor, sentimental and troubadourish. One knows very well that it will always be the same, and that one will die without a hearth or a home. Then one thinks of the statue, of the picture which one would not know what to do with and which one would not know where to place with due honor, if one owned it. One is content to know that they are in some temple not profaned by cold analysis, a little far from the eye, and one loves them so much the more. One says: I will go again to the country where they are. I shall see again and I shall love always that which has made me love and understand them. The contact of my personality will not have changed them, it will not be myself that I shall love in them. And it is thus, truly, that the ideal which one does not dream of grasping, fixes itself in one because it remains ITSELF. That is all the secret of the beautiful, of the only truth, of love, friendship, of art, of enthusiasm, and of faith. Consider it, you will see. That solitude in which you live would be delicious to me in fine weather. In winter I find it stoical, and am forced to recall to myself that you have not the moral need of locomotion AS A HABIT. I used to think that was another expenditure of strength during this season of being shut in;--well, it is very fine, but it must not continue indefinitely; if the novel has to last longer, you must interrupt it, or vary it with distractions. Really, my dear friend, think of the life of the body, which gets upset and nervous when you subdue it too much. When I was ill in Paris, I saw a physician, very mad, but very intelligent, who said very true things on that subject. He said that I SPIRITUALIZED myself in a disquieting manner, and when I told him, exactly, a propos of you, that one could abstract oneself from everything except work, and have more rather than less strength, he answered that the danger was as great in accumulating as in losing, and a propos of this, many excellent things which I wish I could repeat to you. Besides, you know them, but you never pay any attention to them. Then this work which you abuse so in words, is a passion, and a great one! Now, I shall tell you what you tell me. For our sake and for the sake of your old troubadour, do SPARE yourself a little. Consuelo, La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, what are they? Are they mine? I don't recall a single word in them. You are reading that, you? Are you really amused? Then I shall read them one of these days and I shall love myself if you love me. What is being hysterical? I have perhaps been that also, I am perhaps; but I don't know anything about it, never having profoundly studied the thing, and having heard of it without having studied it. Isn't it an uneasiness, an anguish caused by the desire of an impossible SOMETHING OR OTHER? In that case, we are all attacked by it, by this strange illness, when we have imagination; and why should such a malady have a sex? And still further, there is this for those strong in anatomy: THERE IS ONLY ONE SEX. A man and a woman are so entirely the same thing, that one hardly understands the mass of distinctions and of subtle reasons with which society is nourished concerning this subject. I have observed the infancy and the development of my son and my daughter. My son was myself, therefore much more woman, than my daughter, who was an imperfect man. I embrace you. Maurice and Lina who have tasted your cheese, send you their regards, and Mademoiselle Aurore cries to you, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT! That is all that she knows how to say while laughing like a crazy person; for, at heart she is serious, attentive, clever with her hands as a monkey and amusing herself better with games she invents, than with those one suggests to her. I think that she will have a mind of her own. If I do not get cured here, I shall go to Cannes, where some friends are urging me to come. But I can not yet mention it to my children. When I am with them it is not easy to move. There is passion and jealousy. And all my life has been like that, never my own! Pity yourself then, you who belong to yourself! XLV. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday evening I have followed your counsel, dear master, I have EXERCISED!!! Am I not splendid; eh? Sunday night, at eleven o'clock, there was such lovely moonlight along the river and on the snow that I was taken with an itch for movement, and I walked for two hours and a half imagining all sorts of things, pretending that I was travelling in Russia or in Norway. When the tide came in and cracked the cakes of ice in the Seine and the thin ice which covered the stream, it was, without any exaggeration, superb. Then I thought of you and I missed you. I don't like to eat alone. I have to associate the idea with someone with the things that please me. But this someone is rare. I too wonder why I love you. Is it because you are a great man or a charming being? I don't know. What is certain is that I experience a PARTICULAR sentiment for you and I cannot define it. And a propos of this, do you think (you who are a master of psychology), that one can love two people in the same way and that one can experience two identical sensations about them? I don't think so, since our individuality changes at every moment of its existence. You write me lovely things about "disinterested affection." That is true, so is the opposite! We make God always in our own image. At the bottom of all our loves and all our admirations we find ourselves again: ourselves or something approaching us. What is the difference if the OURSELVES is good! My moi bores me for the moment. How this fool weighs on my shoulders at times! He writes too slowly and is not bluffing at all when he complains of his work. What a task! and what a devil of an idea to have sought such a subject! You should give me a recipe for going faster: and you complain of seeking a fortune! You! I have received a little note from Saint-Beuve which reassures about his health, but it is sad. He seemed to me depressed at not being able to haunt the dells of Cyprus. He is within the truth, or at least within his own truth, which amounts to the same thing. I shall be like him perhaps, when I am his age. However, I think not. Not having had the same youth, my old age will be different. That reminds me that I once dreamed a book on Saint Perrine. Champfleury treated that subject badly. For I don't see that he is comic: I should have made him atrocious and lamentable. I think that the heart does not grow old; there are even people whose hearts grow bigger with age. I was much drier and more bitter twenty years ago than now. I am feminized and softened by wear, as others get harder, and that makes me INDIGNANT. I feel that I am becoming a COW, it takes nothing to move me; everything troubles and agitates me, everything is to me as the north wind is to the reed. A word from you, which I remembered, has made me reread now the Fair Maid of Perth. It is a good story, whatever one says about it. That fellow decidedly had an imagination. Well, adieu. Think of me. I send you my best love. XLVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 1867 Bah! zut! troulala! Well! well! I am not sick any more, or at least I am only half sick. The air of the country restores me, or patience, or THE OTHER person, the one who wants to work again and to produce. What is my illness? Nothing. Everything is all right, but I have something that they call anemia, an effect without a tangible cause, a breakdown which has been threatening for several years, and which became noticeable at Palaiseau, after my return from Croisset. An emaciation that is too rapid to be within reason, a pulse too slow, too feeble, an indolent or capricious stomach, with a sensation of stifling and a fondness for inertia. I was not able to keep a glass of water on my poor stomach for several days, and that brought me so low that I thought I was hardly curable; but, all is getting on, and I have even been working since yesterday. You, dear, you go walking in the night, in the snow. That is something which for an exceptional excursion, is rather foolish and might indeed make you ill also. Good Heavens! It is not the moon, it is the sun that I advise; we are not owls, OBVIOUSLY! We have just had three spring days. I wager that you have not climbed up to my dear orchard which is so pretty and which I love so much. If it was only in remembrance of me, you ought to climb up every fine day at noon. Your work would flow more abundantly afterward and you would regain the time you lost and more too. Then you are worrying about money? I don't know what that is, since I have not a sou in the world. I live by my day, work as does the proletarian; when I can no longer do my day's work, I shall be packed up for the other world, and then I shall have no more need of anything. But you must live. How can you live by your pen if you always let yourself be duped and shorn? It is not I who can teach you how to protect yourself But haven't you a friend who knows how to act for you? Alas, yes, the world is going to the devil in that respect; and I was talking of you, the other day, to a very dear friend, while I was showing him the artist, a personage become so rare, and cursing the necessity of thinking of the material side of life. I send you the last page of his letter; you will see that you have in him a friend whom you did not suspect, and whose name will surprise you. No, I shall not go to Cannes, in spite of a strong temptation! Imagine, I received a little box filled with flowers gathered out- doors, five or six days ago; for the package followed me to Paris and to Palaiseau. Those flowers are adorably fresh, they smell sweetly, they are as pretty as anything.--Ah! to go, go at once to the country of the sun. But I have no money, and besides I have no time. My illness has delayed me and put me off. Let us stay here. Am I not well? If I can't go to Paris next month, won't you come to see me here? Certainly, it is an eight hours' journey. You can not see this ancient nook. You owe me a week, or I shall believe that I love a big ingrate who does not pay me back. Poor Sainte-Beuve! More unhappy than we, he who has never had any great disappointments and who has no longer any material worries. He bewails what is the least regrettable and the least serious in life understood as he understood it! And then very proud, having been a Jansenist, his heart has cooled in that direction. Perhaps the intelligence was developed, but that does not suffice to make us live, and does not teach us how to die. Barbes, who has expected for a long time that a stroke would carry him off, is gentle and smiling. It does not seem to him, and it does not seem to his friends, that death will separate him from us. He who quite goes away, is he who believes he ends and does not extend a hand so that anyone can follow him or rejoin him. And good-night, dear friend of my heart. They are ringing for the performance. Maurice regales us this evening with marionettes. They are very amusing, and the theatre is so pretty! A real artist's jewel. Why aren't you here? It is horrid not to live next door to those one loves. XLVII. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday I received yesterday your son's book. I shall start it when I have gotten rid of less amusing readings, probably. Meanwhile, don't thank him any the less, dear master. First, let's talk of you; "arsenic." I am sure of it! You must drink iron, walk, and sleep, and go to the south, no matter what it costs, there! Otherwise the WOODEN WOMAN will break down. As for money, we shall find it; and as for the time, take it. You won't do anything that I advise, of course. Oh! well, you are wrong, and you hurt me. No, I have not what you call worries about money; my revenues are very small, but they are sure. Only, as it is your friend's habit to anticipate them he finds himself short at times, and he grumbles "in the silence of his closet," but not elsewhere. Unless I have extraordinary reverses, I shall have enough to feed me and warm me until the end of my days. My heirs are or will be rich (for it is I who am the poor one of the family). Then, zut! As for gaining money by my pen, that is an aspiration that I have never had, recognizing that I was radically incapable of it. I have to live as a small retired countryman, which is not very amusing. But so many others who are worth more than I am not having the land, it would be unfair for me to complain. Accusing Providence is, moreover a mania so common, that one ought to refrain from it through simple good taste. Another word about money and one that shall be quite between ourselves. I can, without being inconvenienced at all, as soon as I am in Paris, that is to say from the 20th to the 23rd of the present month, lend you a thousand francs, if you need them in order to go to Cannes. I make you this proposition bluntly, as I would to Bouilhet, or any other intimate friend. Come, don't stand on ceremony! Between people in society, that would not be correct, I know that, but between troubadours many things are allowable. You are very kind with your invitation to go to Nohant. I shall go, for I want very much to see your house. I am annoyed not to know it when I think of you. But I shall have to put off that pleasure till next summer. Now I have to stay some time in Paris. Three months are not too long for all I want to do there. I send you back the page from the letter of your friend Barbes, whose real biography I know very imperfectly. All I know of him is that he is honest and heroic. Give him a hand-shake for me, to thank him for his sympathy. Is he, BETWEEN OURSELVES, as intelligent as he is good? I feel the importance now, of getting men of that class to be rather frank with me. For I am going to start studying the Revolution of '48. You have promised me to hunt in your library at Nohant for (1) an article of yours on faience; (2) a novel by father X---, a Jesuit, on the Holy Virgin. But what sternness for the father Beuve who is neither Jesuit nor virgin! He regrets, you say, "what is the least regrettable, understood as he understood it." Why so? Everything depends upon the intensity that one puts on the thing. Men always find that the most serious thing of their existence is enjoyment. Woman for us all is the highest point of the infinite. That is not noble, but that is the real depth of the male. They exaggerate that unmercifully, God be thanked, for literature and for individual happiness also. Oh! I have missed you so much. The tides are superb, the wind groans, the river foams and overflows. It blows from the ocean, which benefits one. XLVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris Nohant, 8 February, 1867 No, I am not Catholic, but I reject monstrosities. I say that the hideous old man who buys young girls does not make love and that there is in it neither death nor birth, nor infinity, nor male nor female. It is a thing against nature; for it is not desire that drives the young girl into the arms of the ugly old man, and where there is not liberty nor reciprocity there is an attack against holy nature. Therefore that which he regrets is not regrettable, unless he thinks that his little cocottes will regret his person, and I ask you if they will regret anything else than their dirty wages? That was the gangrene in this great and admirable mind, so lucid and so wise on all other subjects. One pardons everything in those one loves, when one is obliged to defend them from their enemies. But what we say between ourselves is buried, and I can tell you that vice has quite spoiled my old friend. We must believe that we love one another a great deal, dear comrade, for we both had the same thought at the same time. You offer me a thousand francs with which to go to Cannes; you who are as hard up as I am, and, when you wrote to me that you WERE BOTHERED about money matters, I opened my letter again, to offer you half of what I have, which still amounts to about two thousand francs; it is my reserve. And then I did not dare. Why? It is quite stupid; you were better than I, you came straight to the point. Well, I thank you for that kind thought and I do not accept. But I would accept, be sure of it, if I did not have other resources. Only I tell you that if anyone ought to lend to me, it is Buloz who has bought chateaux and lands with my novels. He would not refuse me, I know. He even offers it to me. I shall take from him then, if I have to. But I am not in a condition to leave, I have had a relapse these last few days. I slept thirty-six hours together, exhausted. Now I am on my feet again, but weak. I confess to you that I have not the energy TO WISH TO LIVE. I don't care about it; moving from where I am comfortable, to seek new fatigues, working like a dog to renew a dog's life, it is a little stupid, I think, when it would be so sweet to pass away like that, still loving, still loved, at strife with no one, not discontent with oneself and dreaming of the wonders of other worlds- -this assumes that the imagination is still fresh. But I don't know why I talk to you of things considered sad, I have too much the habit of looking at them pleasantly. I forget that they appear afflicting to those who seem in the fulness of life. Don't let's talk about them any longer and let spring do the work, spring which perhaps will breathe into me the desire to take up my work again. I shall be as docile to the interior voice that tells me to walk as to that telling me to sit down. It is not I who promised you a novel on the Holy Virgin. At least I don't think so. I can not find my article on faience. Do look and see if it was printed at the end of one of my volumes to complete the last sheet. It was entitled Giovanni Freppa ou les Maioliques. Oh! what luck! While writing to you it has come back to me that there is a corner where I have not looked. I hasten there, I find it! I find something better than my article, and I send you three works which will make you as learned as I am. That of Passeri is charming. Barbes has intelligence, certainly! but he is a sugar loaf. Brain on a lofty scale, head of an Indian, with gentle instincts, almost impossible to find; all for metaphysical thought which becomes an instinct and a passion that dominates everything. Add to that a character that one can only compare to Garibaldi. A creature of incredible sanctity and perfection. Immense worth without immediate application in France. The setting of another age or another country is what this hero needs. And now good-night,--O God, what a CALF I am! I leave you the title of COW, which you give yourself in your days of weariness. Never mind, tell me when you are to be in Paris. It is probable that I shall have to go there for a few days for one thing or another. We must embrace each other and then you shall come to Nohant this summer. It is agreed, it must be! My affectionate regards to your mother and to your lovely niece. Please acknowledge the receipt of the three pamphlets; they would be a loss. XLIX. TO GEORGE SAND Dear master, You really ought to go to see the sun somewhere; it is foolish to be always suffering; do travel; rest; resignation is the worst of the virtues. I have need of it in order to endure all the stupidities that I hear! You can not imagine to what a degree they have reached. France which has been sometimes taken with St. Vitus dance (as under Charles VI), seems to me now to have a paralysis of the brain. They are mad with fear. Fear of the Prussians, fear of the strikes, fear of the Exposition which does not go well, fear of everything. We have to go back to 1849 to find such a degree of imbecility. There was at the last Magny such inane conversation that I swore to myself never to put foot inside the place again. The only subjects under discussion all the time were Bismarck and the Luxembourg. I was stuffed with it! For the rest I don't find it easy to live. Far from becoming blunted my sensibilities are sharper; a lot of insignificant things make me suffer. Pardon this weakness, you who are so strong and tolerant. The novel does not go at all well. I am deep in reading the newspapers of '48. I have had to make several (and have not yet finished) journeys to Sevres, to Creil, etc. Father Sainte-Beuve is preparing a discourse on free thought which he will read at the Senate a propos of the press law. He has been very shrewd, you know. You tell your son Maurice that I love him very much, first because he is your son and secundo because he is he. I find him good, clever, cultivated, not a poseur, in short charming, and "with talent." L. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 4 March, 1867 Dear good friend, the friend of my heart, the old troubadour is as well as ten thousand men--who are well, and he is gay as a finch, because the sun shines again and copy is progressing. He will probably go to Paris soon for the play by his son Dumas, let us try to be there together. Maurice is very proud to be declared COCK by an eagle. At this moment he is having a spree with veal and wine in honor of his firemen. The AMERICAN [Footnote: Henry Harrisse.] in question is charming. He has, literally speaking, a passion for you, and he writes me that after seeing you he loves you more, that does not surprise me. Poor Bouilhet! Give him this little note enclosed here. I share his sorrow, I knew her. Are you amused in Paris? Are you as sedentary there as at Croisset? In that case I shall hardly see you unless I go to see you. Tell me the hours when you do not receive the fair sex, and when sexagenarian troubadours do not incommode you. Cadio is entirely redone and rewritten up to the part I read to you, it is less offensive. I am not doing Montreveche. I will tell you about that. It is quite a story. I love you and I embrace you with all my heart. Your old George Sand Did you receive my pamphlets on the faience? You have not acknowledged them. They were sent to Croisset the day after I got your last letter. LI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 14 March, 1867 Your old troubadour is again prostrate. Every moment his guitar threatens to be broken. And then he sleeps forty-eight hours and is cured--but feeble, and he can not be in Paris on the 16th as he had intended. Maurice went alone a little while ago, I shall go to join him in five or six days. Little Aurore consoles me for this mischance. She twitters like a bird along with the birds who are twittering already as in full spring time. The anemone Sylvia which I brought from the woods into the garden and which I had a great deal of trouble in acclimating is finally growing thousands of white and pink stars among the blue periwinkle. It is warm and damp. One can not break one's guitar in weather like this. Good-bye, dear good friend. G. Sand LII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Friday, 22 March, 1867 Your old troubadour is here, not so badly off. He will go to dine on Monday at Magny's, we shall agree on a day for both of us to dine with Maurice. He is at home at five o'clock but not before Monday. He is running around! He embraces you. LIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 1867 (?) Then Wednesday, if you wish, my dear old fellow. Whom do you want to have with us? Certainly, the dear Beuve if that is possible, and no one if you like. We embrace you. G. S. Maurice Saturday evening. LIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 11 April, 1867 Here I am back again in my nest, and almost cured from a bad fever which attacked me in Paris, the day before my departure. Really your old troubadour has had ridiculous health for six months. March and April have been such stupid months for him. It makes no difference, however, for he is recovering again, and is seeing once more the trees and the grass grow, it is always the same thing and that is why it is beautiful and good. Maurice has been touched by the friendship that you have shown him; you have seduced and ravished him, and he is not demonstrative. He and his wife,--who is not at all an ordinary woman,--desire absolutely that you come to our house this year, I am charged to tell you so very seriously and persistently if need be And is that hateful grip gone? Maurice wanted to go to get news of you; but on seeing me so prostrated by the fever, he thought of nothing except packing me up and bringing me here like a parcel. I did nothing except sleep from Paris to Nohant and I was revived on receiving the kisses of Aurore who knows now how to give great kisses, laughing wildly all the while; she finds that very funny. And the novel? Does it go on its way the same in Paris as in Croisset? It seems to me that everywhere you lead the same hermitlike existence. When you have the time to think of friends, remember your old comrade and send him two lines to tell him that you are well and that you don't forget him. LV. TO GEORGE SAND I am worried at not having news from you, dear master. What has become of you? When shall I see you? My trip to Nohant has fallen through. The reason is this: my mother had a little stroke a week ago. There is nothing left of it, but it might come on again. She is anxious for me, and I am going to hurry back to Croisset. If she is doing well towards the month of August, and I am not worried, it is not necessary to tell you that I shall rush headlong towards your home. As regards news, Sainte-Beuve seems to me very ill, and Bouilhet has just been appointed librarian at Rouen. Since the rumours of war have quieted down, people seem to me a little less foolish. My nausea caused by the public cowardice is decreasing. I went twice to the Exposition; it is amazing. There are splendid and extraordinary things there. But man is made to swallow the infinite. One would have to know all sciences and all arts in order to be interested in everything that one sees on the Champ de Mars. Never mind; someone who had three entire months to himself, and went every morning to take notes, would save himself in consequence much reading and many journeys. One feels oneself there very far from Paris, in a new and ugly world, an enormous world which is perhaps the world of the future. The first time that I lunched there, I thought all the time of America, and I wanted to speak like a negro. LVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 9 May, 1867 Dear friend of my heart, I am well, I am at work, I am finishing Cadio. It is warm, I am alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why. In this existence so even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element that weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less melancholy. It seems to me that all those I love forget me, and that it is justice, because I live a selfish life having nothing to do for any one of them. I have lived with tremendous attachments which overwhelmed me, which exceeded my strength and which I often used to curse. And it happens that having nothing more to carry them on with, I am bored by being well. If the human race went on very well or very ill, one would reattach oneself to a general interest, would live with an idea, wise or foolish. But you see where we are now, you who storm so fiercely against cowards. That disappears, you say? But only to recommence! What kind of a society is it that becomes paralyzed in the midst of its expansions, because tomorrow can bring a storm? The thought of danger has never produced such demoralizations. Have we declined to such an extent that it is necessary to beg us to eat, telling us at the same time that nothing will happen to disturb our digestion? Yes, it is silly, it is shameful. Is it the result of prosperity, and does civilization involve this sickly and cowardly selfishness? My optimism has had a rude jolt of late. I worked up a joy, a courage at the idea of seeing you here. It was like a cure that I carefully contrived, but you are worried about your dear, old mother, and certainly I can not protest. Well, if, before your departure from Paris, I can finish Cadio, to which I am bound under pain of having nothing wherewith to pay for my tobacco and my shoes, I shall go with Maurice to embrace you. If not, I shall hope for you about the middle of the summer. My children, quite unhappy by this delay, beg to hope for you also, and we hope it so much the more because it would be a good sign for the dear mother. Maurice has plunged again into Natural History; he wants to perfect himself in the MICROS; I learn on the rebound. When I shall have fixed in my head the name and the appearance of two or three thousand imperceptible varieties, I shall be well advanced, don't you think so? Well, these studies are veritable OCTOPUSES, which entwine about you and which open to you I don't know what infinity. You ask if it is the destiny of man to DRINK THE INFINITE; my heavens, yes, don't doubt it, it is his destiny, since it is his dream and his passion. Inventing is absorbing also; but what fatigue afterwards! How empty and worn out intellectually one feels, when one has scribbled for weeks and months about that animal with two legs which has the only right to be represented in novels! I see Maurice quite refreshed and rejuvenated when he returns from his beasts and his pebbles, and if I aspire to come out from my misery, it is to bury myself also in studies, which in the speech of the Philistines, are not of any use. Still it is worth more than to say mass and to ring the bell for the adoration of the Creator. Is it true what you tell me of G----? Is it possible? I can not believe it. Is there in the atmosphere which the earth engenders nowadays, a gas, laughing or otherwise, which suddenly seizes the brain, and carries it on to commit extravagances, as there was under the first revolution a maddening fluid which inspired one to commit cruelties? We have fallen from the Hell of Dante into that of Scarron. Of what are you thinking, good head and good heart, in the midst of this bacchanal? You are wrathful, oh very well, I like that better than if you were laughing at it; but when you are calmer and when you reflect? Must one find some fashion of accepting the honor, the duty, and the fatigue of living? As for me, I revert to the idea of an everlasting journey through worlds more amusing, but it would be necessary to go there quickly and change continually. The life that one fears so much to lose is always too long for those who understand quickly what they see. Everything repeats itself and goes over and over again in it. I assure you that there is only one pleasure: learning what one does not know, and one happiness: loving the exceptions. Therefore I love you and I embrace you tenderly. Your old troubadour G. Sand I am anxious about Sainte-Beuve. What a loss that would be! I am content if Bouilhet is content. Is it really a good position? LVII. TO GEORGE SAND Paris, Friday morning I am returning to my mother next Monday, dear master. I have little hope of seeing you before then! But when you are in Paris, what is to prevent you from pushing on to Croisset where everyone, including myself, adores you? Sainte-Beuve has finally consented to see a specialist and to be seriously treated. And he is better anyway. His morale is improving. Bouilhet's position gives him four thousand francs a year and lodging. He now need not think of earning his living, which is a real luxury. No one talks of the war any more, they don't talk of anything. The Exposition alone is what "everybody is thinking about," and the cabmen exasperate the bourgeois. They were beautiful (the bourgeois) during the strike of the tailors. One would have said that SOCIETY was going to pieces. Axiom: Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of virtue. But I include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the bourgeois in coats. It is we and we alone, that is to say the literary men, who are the people, or to say it better: the tradition of humanity. Yes, I am susceptible to disinterested angers and I love you all the more for loving me for that. Stupidity and injustice make me roar,-- and I HOWL in my corner against a lot of things "that do not concern me." How sad it is not to live together, dear master, I admired you before I knew you. From the day I saw your lovely and kind face, I loved you. There you are.--And I embrace you warmly. Your old Gustave Flaubert I shall have the package of pamphlets about faience sent to the rue des Feuillantines. A good handshake to Maurice. A kiss on the four cheeks of Mademoiselle Aurore. LVIII. TO GEORGE SAND I stayed thirty-six hours in Paris at the beginning of this week, in order to be present at the Tuileries ball. Without any exaggeration, it was splendid. Paris on the whole turns to the colossal. It is becoming foolish and unrestrained. Perhaps we are returning to the ancient Orient. It seems to me that idols will come out of the earth. We are menaced with a Babylon. Why not? The INDIVIDUAL has been so denied by democracy that he will abase himself to a complete effacement, as under the great theocratic despotisms. The Tsar of Russia displeased me profoundly; I found him a rustic. On a parallel with Monsieur Floquet who cries without any danger: "Long live Poland!" We have chic people who have had themselves registered at the Elysee. Oh! what a fine epoch! My novel goes piano. The further I get on the more difficulties arise. What a heavy cart of sandstone to drag along! And you pity yourself for a labor that lasts six months! I have enough more for two years, at least (OF MINE). How the devil do you find the connection between your ideas? It is that that delays me. Moreover this book demands tiresome researches. For instance on Monday; I was at the Jockey Club, at the Cafe Anglais, and at a lawyer's in turn. Do you like Victor Hugo's preface to the Paris-Guide? Not very much, do you? Hugo's philosophy seems to me always vague. I was carried away with delight, a week ago, at an encampment of Gypsies who had established at Rouen. This is the third time that I have seen them and always with a new pleasure. The great thing is that they excite the hatred of the bourgeois, although they are as inoffensive as sheep. I appeared very badly before the crowd because I gave them a few sous, and I heard some fine words a la Prudhomme. That hatred springs from something very profound and complex. One finds it among all orderly people. It is the hatred that one feels for the bedouin, for the heretic, the philosopher, the solitary, the poet; and there is a fear in that hate. I, who am always for the minority, am exasperated by it. It is true that many things exasperate me. On the day that I am no longer outraged, I shall fall flat as the marionette from which one withdraws the support of the stick. Thus, THE STAKE that has supported me this winter, is the indignation that I had against our great national historian, M. Thiers, who had reached the condition of a demi-god, and the pamphlet Trochu, and the everlasting Changarnier coming back over the water. God be thanked that the Exposition has delivered us momentarily from these GREAT MEN. LIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 30 May, 1867 Here you are at home, old friend of my heart, and I and Maurice must go to embrace you. If you are still buried in work, we shall only come and go. It is so near to Paris, that you must not hesitate to tell us. I have finished Cadio, hurray! I have only to POLISH it a little. It is like an illness, carrying this great affair for so long in one's HEAD. I have been so interrupted by real illnesses that I have had great trouble in setting to work again at it. But I am wonderfully well since the fine weather and I am going to take a bath of botany. Maurice will take one of entomology. He walks three leagues with a friend of like energy in order to hunt in a great plain for an animal which has to be looked at with a magnifying glass. That is happiness! That is being really infatuated. My gloom has disappeared in making Cadio; at present I am only fifteen years old, and everything to me appears for the best in the best possible of worlds. That will last as long as it can. These are the intervals of innocence in which forgetfulness of evil compensates for the inexperience of the golden age. How is your dear mother? She is fortunate to have you again near her! And the novel? Good heavens! it must get on! Are you walking a little? Are you more reasonable? The other day, some people not at all stupid were here who spoke highly of Madame Bovary, but with less zest of Salammbo. Lina got into a white heat, not being willing that those wretches should make the slightest objection to it; Maurice had to calm her, and moreover he criticised the work very well, as an artist and as a scholar; so well that the recalcitrants laid down their arms. I should like to have written what he said. He speaks little and often badly; but that time he succeeded extraordinarily well. I shall then not say adieu, but au revoir, as soon as possible. I love you much, much, my dear old fellow, you know it. My ideal would be to live a long life with a good and great heart like yours. But then, one would want never to die, and when one is really OLD, like me, one must hold oneself ready for anything. I embrace you tenderly, so does Maurice. Aurore is the sweetest and the most ridiculous person. Her father makes her drink while he says: Dominus vobiscum! then she drinks and answers: Amen! How she is getting on! What a marvel is the development of a little child! No one has ever written about that. Followed day by day, it would be precious in every respect. It is one of those things that we all see without noticing. Adieu again; think of your old troubadour who thinks unceasingly of you. G. Sand LX. TO Gustave Flaubert Nohant, 14 June, 1867 Dear friend of my heart, I leave with my son and his wife the 20th of the month to stay two weeks in Paris, perhaps more if the revival of Villemer delays me longer. Therefore your dear good mother, whom I do not want to miss, has all the time she needs to go to see her daughters. I shall wait in Paris until you tell me if she has returned, or rather, if I make you a real visit, you shall tell me the time that suits you best. My intention, for the moment, was quite simply to go to pass an hour with you, and Lina was tempted to accompany me; I should have shown her Rouen, and then we should have embraced you in time to return in the evening to Paris; for the dear little one has always her ear and her heart listening when she is away from Aurore, and her holidays are marked by a continual uneasiness which I quite understand. Aurore is a treasure of gentleness which absorbs us all. If it can be arranged, we shall then go on the run to grasp your hands. If it can not, I shall go alone later when your heart says so, and, if you are going south, I shall put it off until everything can be arranged without disturbing whatever may be the plans of your mother or yourself. I am very free. So, don't disturb yourself, and arrange your summer without bothering about me. I have thirty-six plans also, but I don't incline to any one; what amuses me is what seizes me and takes me off suddenly. It is with a journey as with a novel: those who travel are those who command. Only when one is in Paris, Rouen is not a journey, and I shall always be ready when I am there, to respond to your call. I am a little remorseful to take whole days from your work, I who am never bored with loafing, and whom you could leave for whole hours under a tree, or before two lighted logs, with the assurance that I should find there something interesting. I know so well how to live OUTSIDE OF MYSELF! It hasn't always been like that. I also was young and subject to indignations. It is over! Since I have dipped into real nature, I have found there an order, a system, a calmness of cycles which is lacking in mankind, but which man can, up to a certain point, assimilate when he is not too directly at odds with the difficulties of his own life. When these difficulties return he must endeavor to avoid them; but if he has drunk the cup of the eternally true, he does not get too excited for or against the ephemeral and relative truth. But why do I say this to you? Because it comes to my pen-point; for in considering it carefully, your state of overexcitement is probably truer, or at least more fertile and more human than my SENILE tranquillity. I would not like to make you as I am, even if by a magical operation I could. I should not be interested in myself if I had the honor to meet myself. I should say that one troubadour is enough to manage and I should send the other to Chaillot. A propos of gypsies, do you know that there are gypsies of the sea? I discovered in the outskirts of Tamaris, among the furthest rocks, great boats well sheltered, with women and children, a coast settlement, very restricted, very tanned; fishing for food without trading; speaking a language that the people of the country do not understand; living only in these great boats stranded on the sand, when the storms troubled them in their rocky coves; intermarrying, inoffensive and sombre, timid or savage; not answering when any one speaks to them. I don't even know what to call them. The name that I have been told has escaped me but I could get some one to tell me again. Naturally the country people hate them and that they have no religion; if that is so they ought to be superior to us. I ventured all alone among them. "Good day, sirs." Response, a slight bend of the head. I looked at their encampment, no one moved. It seemed as if they did not see me. I asked them if my curiosity annoyed them. A shrug of the shoulders as if to say, "What do we care?" I spoke to a young man who was mending the meshes in a net very cleverly; I showed him a piece of five francs in gold. He looked the other way. I showed him one in silver. He deigned to look at it. "Do you want it?" He bent his head on his work. I put it near him, he did not move. I went away, he followed me with his eyes. When he thought that I could not see him any longer, he took the piece and went to talk with a group. I don't know what happened. I fancy that they put it in the common exchequer. I began botanizing at some distance within sight to see if they would come to ask me something or to thank me. No one moved. I returned as if by chance towards them; the same silence, the same indifference. An hour later, was at the top of the cliff, and I asked the coast-guard who those people were who spoke neither French, nor Italian, nor patois. He told me their name, which I have not remembered. He thought that they were Moors, left on the coast since the time of the great invasions from Provence, and perhaps he is not mistaken. He told me that he had seen me among them from his watch tower, and that I was wrong, for they were a people capable of anything; but when I asked him what harm they did he confessed to me that they had done none. They lived by their fishing and above all on the things cast up by the sea which they knew how to gather up before the most alert. They were an object of perfect scorn. Why? Always the same story. He who does not do as all the world does can only do evil. If you go into the country, you might perhaps meet them at the end of the Brusq. But they are birds of passage, and there are years when they do not appear at all. I have not even seen the Paris Guide. They owe me a copy, however; for I gave something to it without receiving payment. It is because of that no doubt that they have forgotten me. To conclude, I shall be in Paris from the 20th of June to the 5th of July. Send me a word always to 97 rue des Feuillantines. I shall stay perhaps longer, but I don't know. I embrace you tenderly, my splendid old fellow. Walk a little, I beg of you. I don't fear anything for the novel; but I fear for the nervous system taking too much the place of the muscular system. I am very well, except for thunder bolts, when I fall on my bed for forty-eight hours and don't want any one to speak to me. But it is rare and if I do not relent so that they can nurse me, I get up perfectly cured. Maurice's love. Entomology has taken possession of him this year; he discovers marvels. Embrace your mother for me, and take good care of her. I love you with all my heart. G. Sand LXI. To GUSTAVE FLATUBERT Nohant, 24 July, 1867 Dear good friend, I spent three weeks in Paris with my children, hoping to see you arriving or to receive a line from you which would tell me to come and embrace you. But you were HEAD OVER HEELS and I respect these crises of work; I know them! Here am I back again in old Nohant, and Maurice at Nerac terminating by a compromise the law-suit which keeps him from his inheritance. His agreeable father stole about three hundred thousand francs from his children in order to please his cook; happily, although Monsieur used to lead this edifying life, I used to work and did not cut into my capital. I have nothing, but I shall leave the daily bread assured. They write me that Villemer goes well. Little Aurore is as pretty as anything and does a thousand gracious tricks. My daughter Lina is always my real daughter The OTHER is well and is beautiful, that is all that I ask of her. I am working again; but I am not strong. I am paying for my energy and activity in Paris. That does not make any difference, I am not angry against life, I love you with all my heart. I see, when I am gloomy, your kind face, and I feel the radiant power of your goodness. You are a charm in the Indian summer of my sweet and pure friendships, without egoisms, and without deceptions in consequence. Think of me sometimes, work well and call me when you are ready to loaf. If you are not ready, never mind. If your heart told you to come here, there would be feasting and joy in the family. I saw Sainte-Beuve, I am content and proud of him. Good night, friend of my heart. I embrace you as well as your mother. G. Sand LXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris Nohant, 6 August, 1867 When I see how hard my old friend has to work in order to write a novel, it discourages my facility, and I tell myself that I write BOTCHED literature. I have finished Cadio; it has been in Buloz' hands a long time. I am writing another thing,[Footnote: Mademoiselle Merquem.] but I don't see it yet very clearly; what can one do without sun and without heat? I ought to be in Paris now, to see the Exposition again at my leisure, and to take your mother to walk with you; but I really must work, since I have only that to live on. And then the children; that Aurore is a wonder. You really must see her, perhaps I shall not see her long, If I don't think I am destined to grow very old; I must lose no time in loving! Yes, you are right, it is that that sustains me. This hypocritical fit has a rough disillusionment in store for it, and one will lose nothing by waiting. On the contrary, one will gain. You will see that, you who are old though still quite young. You are my son's age. You will laugh together when you see this heap of rubbish collapse. You must not be a Norman, you must come and see us for several days, you will make us happy; and it will restore the blood in my veins and the joy in my heart. Love your old troubadour always and talk to him of Paris; a few words when you have the time. Outline a scene for Nohant with four or five characters, we shall enjoy it. We embrace you and summon you. G. Sand LXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 18 August, 1867 Where are you, my dear old fellow? If by chance you should be in Paris, during the first few days of September, let us try to see each other. I shall stay there three days and I shall return here. But I do not hope to meet you there. You ought to be in some lovely country, far from Paris and from its dust. I do not know even if my letter will reach you. Never mind, if you can give news of yourself, do so. I am in despair. I have lost suddenly, without even knowing that he was ill, my poor dear, old friend, Rollinat, an angel of goodness, of courage, of devotion. It is a heavy blow for me. If you were here you would give me courage; but my poor children are as overwhelmed as I am. We adored him, all the countryside adored him. Keep well, and think sometimes of your absent friends. We embrace you affectionately. The little one is very well, she is charming. LXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris Nohant, August, 1867 I bless you, my dear old fellow, for the kind thought that you had of coming; but you were right not to travel while you were ill. Ah! my God, I dream of nothing but illness and unhappiness: take care of yourself, my old comrade. I shall go to see you if I can pull myself together; for, since this new dagger-thrust, I am feeble and crushed and I have a sort of fever. I shall write you a line from Paris. If you are prevented, you must answer me by telegram. You know that with me there is no need of explanation: I know every hindrance in life and I never blame the hearts that I know.--I wish that, right away, if you have a moment to write, you would tell me where I should go for three days to see the coast of Normandy without striking the neighborhood where "THE WORLD" goes. In order to go on with my novel, I must see a countryside near the Channel, that all the world has not talked about, and where there are real natives at home, peasants, fisherfolk, a real village in a corner of the rocks. If you are in the mood we will go there together. If not, don't bother about me. I go everywhere and I am not disturbed by anything. You told me that the population of the coasts was the best in the country, and that there were real dyed-in-the-wool simple-hearted men there. It would be good to see their faces, their clothes, their houses, and their horizons. That is enough for what I want to do, I need only accessories; I hardly want to describe; SEEING it is enough in order not to make a false stroke. How is your mother? Have you been able to take her to walk and to distract her a little? Embrace her for me as I embrace you. G. Sand Maurice embraces you; I shall go to Paris without him: he is drawn on the jury for the 2 September till...no one knows. It is a tiresome task. Aurore is very cunning with her arms, she offers them to you to kiss; her hands are marvels and they are incredibly clever for her age. Au revoir, then, if I can only pull myself out of the state I am now in. Insomnia is the devil; in the daytime one makes a lot of effort not to sadden others. At night one falls back on oneself. LXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 10 September, 1867 Dear old fellow, I am worried at not having news of you since that illness of which you spoke. Are you well again? Yes, we shall go to see the rollers and the beaches next month if you like, if your heart prompts you. The novel goes on apace; but I shall besprinkle it with local color afterwards. While waiting, I am still here, stuck up to my chin in the river every day, and regaining my strength entirely in this cold and shady stream which I adore, and where I have passed so many hours of my life reviving myself after too long sessions in company with my ink- well. I go definitely to Paris, the 16th; the 17th at one o'clock, I leave for Rouen and Jumieges, where my friend Madame Lebarbier de Tinan awaits me at the house of M. Lepel-Cointet, the landowner; I shall stay there the 18th so as to return to Paris the 19th. Will it be inconvenient if I come to see you? I am sick with longing to do so; but I am so absolutely forced to spend the evening of the 19th in Paris that I do not know if I shall have the time. You must tell me. I can get a word from you the 16th in Paris, 97 rue des Feuillantines. I shall not be alone; I have as a travelling companion a charming young literary woman, Juliette Lamber. If you were lovely, lovely, you would walk to Jumieges the 19th. We would return together so that I could be in Paris at six o'clock in the evening at the latest. But if you are even a little bit ill still, or are PLUNGED in ink, pretend that I have said nothing, and prepare to see us next month. As for the WINTER walk on the Norman coast, that gives me a cold in my back, I who plan to go to the Gulf of Juan at that time. I have been sick over the death of my friend Rollinat. My body is cured, but my soul! I should have to stay a week with you to refresh myself in your affectionate strength; for cold and purely philosophical courage to me, is like cauterizing a wooden leg. I embrace you and I love you (also your mother). Maurice also, what French! One is happy to forget it, it is a tiresome thing. Your troubadour G. Sand LXVI. TO GEORGE SAND Dear master, What, no news? But you will answer me since I ask you a service. I read this in my notes: "National of 1841. Bad treatments inflicted on Barbes, kicks on his breast, dragged by the beard and hair in order to put him in an in-pace. Consultation of lawyers signed: E. Arago, Favre, Berryer, to complain of these abominations." Find out from him if all that is true; I shall be obliged. LXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Paris, Tuesday, 1st October, 1867 Dear friend, you shall have your information. I asked Peyrat last evening, I am writing today to Barbes who will answer directly to you. Where do you think I have come from? From Normandy. A charming opportunity took me there six days ago. I had been enchanted with Jumieges. This time I saw Etretat, Yport, the prettiest of all the villages, Fecamp, Saint-Valery, which I knew, and Dieppe, which dazzled me; the environs, the chateau d'Arques, Limes, what a country! And I went back and forth twice within two steps of Croisset and I sent you some big kisses; always ready to return with you to the seaside or to talk with you at your house when you are free. If I had been alone, I should have bought an old guitar and should have sung a ballad under your mother's window. But I could not take a large family to you. I am returning to Nohant and I embrace you with all my heart. G. Sand I think that the Bois-Dore is going well, but I don't know anything about it. I have a way of my own of being in Paris, namely, being at the seaside, which does not keep me informed of what is going on. But I gathered gentians in the long grass of the immense Roman fort of Limes where I had quite a STUNNING view of the sea. I walked out like an old horse, but I am returning quite frisky. LXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND At last, at last, I have news of you, dear master, and good news, which is doubly agreeable. I am planning to return to my home in the country with Madame Sand, and my mother hopes that will be the case. What do you say? For, with all that goes on, we never see each other, confound it! As for my moving, it is not that I lack the desire of being free to move about. But I should be lost if I stirred before I finish my novel. Your friend is a man of wax; everything gets imprinted on him, is encrusted on him, penetrates him. If I should visit you, I should think of nothing but you and yours, your house, your country, the appearance of the people I had met, etc. I require great efforts to gather myself together; I always tend to scatter myself. That is why, dear adored master, I deprive myself of going to sit down to dream aloud in your house. But, in the summer or autumn of 1869, you shall see what a fine commercial traveller I am, once let loose to the open air. I am abject, I warn you. As to news, there is a quiet once more since the Kerveguen incident has died its beautiful death. Was it not a farce? and silly? Sainte-Beuve is preparing a lecture on the press law. He is better, decidedly. I dined Tuesday with Renan. He was marvellously witty and eloquent, and artistic! as I have never seen him. Have you read his new book? His preface causes talk. My poor Theo worries me. I do not think him strong. LXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris Nohant, 12 October, 1867 I have sent your letter to Barbes; it is fine and splendid, as you are. I know that the worthy man will be glad of it. But as for me, I want to throw myself out of the window; for my children are unwilling to hear of my leaving so soon. Yes, it is horrid to have seen your house four times without going to see you. But I am cautious to the point of fear. To be sure the idea of summoning you to Rouen for twenty minutes did occur to me. But you are not, as I am, on tiptoe, all ready to start off. You live in your dressing gown, the great enemy of liberty and activity. To force you to dress, to go out, perhaps in the middle of an absorbing chapter, and only to see someone who does not know how to say anything quickly, and who, the more he is content, the stupider he is,--I did not dare to. Here I am obliged to finish something which drags along, and before the final touch I shall probably go to Normandy. I should like to go by the Seine to Honfleur. It will be next month, if the cold does not make me ill, and I shall try this time to carry you away in passing. If not, I shall see you at least, and then I shall go to Provence. Ah! if I could only take you there! And if you could, if you would, during the second week in October when you are going to be free, come to see me here! You promised, and my children would be so happy if you would! But you don't love us enough for that, scoundrel that you are! You think that you have a lot of better friends: you are very much mistaken; it is always one's best friends whom one neglects or ignores. Come, a little courage; you can leave Paris at a quarter past nine in the morning, and get to Chateauroux at four, there you would find my carriage and be here at six for dinner. It is not bad, and once here, we all laugh together like good-natured bears; no one dresses; there is no ceremony, and we all love one another very much. Say yes! I embrace you. And I too have been bored at not seeing you, FOR A YEAR. Your old troubadour LXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 27 October, 1867 I have just made a resume in a few pages of my impressions as a landscape painter, gathered in Normandy: it has not much importance, but I was able to quote three lines from Salammbo, which seemed to me to depict the country better than all my phrases, and which had always struck me as a stroke from a master brush. In turning over the pages to find these lines, I naturally reread almost all, and I remain convinced that it is one of the most beautiful books that have been made since they began to make books. I am well, and I am working quickly and much, so as to live on my INCOME this winter in the South. But what will be the delights of Cannes and where will be the heart to engage in them? My spirits are in mourning while thinking that at this hour people arc fighting for the pope. Ah! ISIDORE! [Footnote: Name applied to Napoleon III.] I have tried in vain this month to go again to see ma Normandie, that is to say, my great, dear heart's friend. My children have threatened me with death if I leave them so soon. Just at present friends are coming. You are the only one who does not talk of coming on. Yet, that would be so fine! Next month I shall move heaven and earth to find you wherever you are, and meanwhile I love you tremendously. And you. Your work? your mother's health? I am worried at not having news of you. G. Sand LXXI. TO GEORGE SAND 1st November, 1867 Dear master, I was as much ashamed as touched, last evening, when I received your "very nice" letter. I am a wretch not to have answered the first one. How did that happen? For I am usually prompt. My work does not go very well. I hope that I shall finish my second part in February. But in order to have it all finished in two years, I must not budge from my arm-chair till then. That is why I am not going to Nohant. A week of recreation means three months of revery for me. I should do nothing but think of you, of yours in Berry, of all that I saw. My unfortunate spirit would navigate in strange waters. I have so little resistance. I do not hide the pleasure that your little word about SALAMMBO gives me. That old book needs to be relieved from a few inversions, there are too many repetitions of ALORS, MAIS and ET. The labor is too evident. As for the one I am doing, I am afraid that the idea is defective, an irremediable fault; will such weak characters be interesting? Great effects are reached only through simple means, through positive passions. But I don't see simplicity anywhere in the modern world. A sad world! How deplorable and how lamentably grotesque are affairs in Italy! All these orders, counter-orders of counter-orders of the counter-orders! The earth is a very inferior planet, decidedly. You did not tell me if you were satisfied with the revivals at the Odeon. When shall you go south? And where shall you go in the south? A week from today, that is to say, from the 7th to the 10th of November, I shall be in Paris, because I have to go sauntering in Auteuil in order to discover certain little nooks. What would be nice would be for us to come back to Croisset together. You know very well that I am very angry at you for your two last trips in Normandy. Then, I shall see you soon? No joking? I embrace you as I love you, dear master, that is to say, very tenderly. Here is a bit that I send to your dear son, a lover of this sort of fluff: "One evening, expected by Hortense, Having his eyes fixed on the clock, And feeling his heart beat with eager throbs, Young Alfred dried up with impatience." (Memoires de l'Academie de Saint-Quentin.) LXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 5 December, 1867 Your old troubadour is no good, I admit it. He has been working like an ox to have the money to go away with this winter to the gulf of Juan, and at the moment of leaving he would like to stay behind. He is worried at leaving his children and the little Aurore, but he suffers with the cold, he fears anemia, and he thinks he is doing his duty in going to find a land which the snow does not render impracticable, and a sky under which one can breathe without having dagger-thrusts in one's lungs. So you see. He has thought of you, probably much more than you think of him; for he has stupid and easy work, and his thoughts run elsewhere very far from him, and from his task, when his hand is weary of writing. As for you, you work for truth, and you become absorbed, and you have not heard my spirit, which more than once has TAPPED at your study door to say to you: "It is I." Or else you have said: "It is a spirit tapping let him go to the devil!" Aren't you coming to Paris? I am going there between the 15th and the 20th. I shall stay there only a few days, and then flee to Cannes. Will you be there? God grant it! On the whole I am pretty well; I am furious with you for not wanting to come to Nohant; I won't reproach you for I don't know how. I have scribbled a lot; my children are always good and kind to me in every sense of the word. Aurore is a love. We have RAVED politically; now we try not to think of it any more and to have patience. We often speak of you and we love you. Your old troubadour especially who embraces you with all his heart, and begs to be remembered to your good mother. G. Sand LXXIII. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday night Dear master, dear friend of the good God, "let us talk a little of Dozenval," let us roar at M. Thiers! Can a more triumphant imbecile, a more abject dabster, a more stercoraceous bourgeois be found! No, nothing can give the idea of the puking with which this old diplomatic idiot inspires me in piling up his stupidity on the dung- hill of bourgeoisie! Is it possible to treat philosophy, religion, peoples, liberty, the past and future, history, and natural history, everything and more yet, with an incoherence more inept and more childish! He seems to me as everlasting as mediocrity! He overwhelms me! But the fine thing is the brave national guards whom he stuffed in 1848, who are beginning to applaud him again! What infinite madness! That proves that everything consists of temperament. Prostitutes,-- like France,--always have a weakness for old buffoons. Furthermore, I shall try in the third part of my novel (when I reach the reaction that followed the days of June) to insert a panegyric about him a propos of his book: De la propriete, and I hope that he will be pleased with me. What form should one take to express occasionally one's opinion on the things of this world, without the risk of passing later for an imbecile? It is a tough problem. It seems to me that the best thing is simply to depict the things which exasperate one. To dissect is to take vengeance. Well! it is not he with whom I am angry, nor with the others but with OURS. If they had paid more attention to the education of the SUPERIOR classes, delaying till later the agricultural meetings; in short, if the head had been put above the stomach, should we have been likely to be where we are now? I have just read, this week, Buchez' Preface to his Histoire parlementaire. Many inanities which burden us today come from that among other things. And now, it is not good of you to say that I do not think of "my old Troubadour"; of whom then, do I think? perhaps of my wretched book? but that is more difficult and less agreeable. How long do you stay at Cannes? After Cannes shan't you return to Paris? I shall be their towards the end of January. In order to finish my book in the spring of 1869, I must not give myself a week of holiday; that is why I do not go to Nohant. It is always the story of the Amazons. In order to draw the bow better they crushed their breast. It is a fine method after all. Adieu, dear master, write to me, won't you? I embrace you tenderly. LXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 31 December, 1867 I don't agree with you at all that it is necessary to destroy the breast to draw a bow. I have quite a contrary belief which I follow, and I think that it is good for many others, probably for the majority. I have just developed my idea on that subject in a novel which has been sent to the Revue and will appear after About's. I think that the artist ought to live according to his nature as much as possible. To him who loves struggle, warfare; to him who loves women, love; to an old fellow like me who loves nature, travel and flowers, rocks, fine landscapes, children also, the family, all that stirs the emotions, that combats moral anemia. I think that art always needs a palette overflowing with soft or striking colors according to the subject of the picture; the artist is an instrument on which everything ought to play before he plays on others; but all that is perhaps not applicable to a mind like yours which has acquired much and now has only to digest. I shall insist on one point only, that the physical being is necessary to the moral being and that I fear for you some day a deterioration of health which will force you to suspend your work and let it grow cold. Well, you are coming to Paris the beginning of January and we shall see each other; for I shall not go until after the New Year. My children have made me promise to spend that day with them, and I could not resist, in spite of the great necessity of moving. They are so sweet! Maurice has an inexhaustible gaiety and invention. He has made for his marionette theatre, marvelous scenery, properties, and machinery and the plays which they give in that ravishing box are incredibly fantastic. The last one was called 1870. One sees in it, Isidore with Antonelli commanding the brigands of Calabria, trying to regain his throne and to re-establish the papacy. Everything is in the future; at the end the widow Euphemia marries the Grand Turk, the only remaining sovereign. It is true that he is a former DEMOCRAT and is recognized as none other than the great tumbler Coquenbois when unmasked. These plays last till two o'clock in the morning and we are crazy on coming out of them. We sup till five o'clock. There is a performance twice a week, and the rest of the time they make the properties, and the play continues with the same characters, going through the most incredible adventures. The public is composed of eight or ten young people, my three great nephews, and sons of my old friends. They get excited to the point of yelling. Aurore is not admitted; the plays are not suited to her age. As for me, I am so amused that I become exhausted. I am sure that you would be madly amused by it also; for there is a splendid fire and abandon in these improvisations; and the characters done by Maurice have the appearance of living beings, of a burlesque life that is real and impossible at the same time; it seems like a dream. That is how I have been living for the ten days that I have not been working. Maurice gives me this recreation in my intervals of repose that coincide with his. He brings to it as much ardor and passion as to his science. He has a truly charming nature and one never gets bored with him. His wife is also charming, quite large just now, always moving, busying herself with everything, lying down on the sofa twenty times a day, getting up to run after her child, her cook, her husband, who demands a lot of things for his theatre, coming back to lie down again; crying out that she feels ill and bursting into shrieks of laughter at a fly that circles about; sewing layettes, reading the papers with fervor, reading novels which make her weep; weeping also at the marionettes when there is a little sentiment, for there is some of that too. In short a personality and a type: she sings ravishingly, she gets angry, she gets tender, she makes succulent dainties TO SURPRISE US WITH, and every day of our vacation there is a little fete which she organizes. Little Aurore promises to be very sweet and calm, understanding in a marvelous manner what is said to her and YIELDING TO REASON at two years of age. It is very extraordinary and I have never seen it before. It would be disquieting if one did not feel a great serenity in that little brain. But how I am gossiping with you! Does all this amuse you? I should like this chatty letter to substitute for one of those suppers of ours which I too regret, and which would be so good here with you, if you were not a stick-in-the-mud, who won't let yourself be dragged away to LIFE FOR LIFE'S SAKE. Ah! when one is on a vacation, how work, logic, reason seem strange CONTRASTS! One asks whether one can ever return to that ball and chain. I tenderly embrace you, my dear old fellow, and Maurice thinks your letter so fine that he is going to put the phrases and words at once in the mouth of his first philosopher. He bids me embrace you for him. Madame Juliette Lambert [Footnote: Afterwards, Madame Edmond Adam.] is really charming; you would like her a great deal, and then you have it 18 degrees above zero down there, and here we are in the snow. It is severe; moreover, I rarely go out, and my dog himself doesn't want to go out. He is not the least amazing member of society. When he is called Badinguet, he lies on the ground ashamed and despairing, and sulks all the evening. LXXV. TO GEORGE SAND 1st January, 1868 It is unkind to sadden me with the recital of the amusements at Nohant, since I cannot share them. I need so much time to do so little that I have not a minute to lose (or gain), if I want to finish my dull old book by the summer of 1869. I did not say it was necessary to suppress the heart, but to restrain it, alas! As for the regime that I follow which is contrary to the laws of hygiene, I did not begin yesterday. I am accustomed to it. I have, nevertheless, a fairly seasoned sense of fatigue, and it is time that my second part was finished, after which I shall go to Paris. That will be about the end of the month. You don't tell me when you return from Cannes. My rage against M. Thiers is not yet calmed, on the contrary! It idealizes itself and increases. LXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 12 January, 1868 No, it is not silly to embrace each other on New Year's day: on the contrary, it is good and it is nice. I thank you for having thought of it and I kiss you on your beautiful big eyes. Maurice embraces you also. I am housed here by the snow and the cold, and my trip is postponed. We amuse ourselves madly at home so as to forget that we are prisoners, and I am prolonging my holidays in a ridiculous fashion. Not an iota of work from morning till night. What luck if you could say as much!--But what a fine winter, don't you think so? Isn't it lovely, the moonlight on the trees covered with snow? Do you look at that at night while you are working?--If you are going to Paris the end of the month, I shall still have a chance to meet you. From far, or from near, dear old fellow, I think of you and I love you from the depth of my old heart which does not know the flight of years. G. Sand My love to your mother always. I imagine that she is in Rouen during this severe cold. LXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 10 May, 1868 Yes, friend of my heart, am I not in the midst of terrible things; that poor little Madame Lambert [Footnote: Madame Eugene Lambert, the wife of the artist] is severely threatened. I saw M. Depaul today. One must be prepared for anything!--If the crisis is passed or delayed, for there is question of bringing on the event, I shall be happy to spend two days with my old troubadour, whom I love tenderly. G. Sand. LXXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 11 May, 1868 If you were to be at home Wednesday evening, I should go to chat an hour alone with you after dinner in your quarters. I despair somewhat of going to Croisset; it is tomorrow that that they decide the fate of my poor friend. A word of response, and above all do not change any plan. Whether I see you or not, I know that two old troubadours love each other devotedly! G. Sand Monday evening. LXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 17 May, 1868 I have a little respite, since they are not going to bring on the confinement. I hope to go to spend two days at that dear Croisset. But then don't go on Thursday, I am giving a dinner for the prince [Footnote: Prince Jerome Napoleon.] at Magny's and I told him that I would detain you by force. Say yes, at once. I embrace you and I love you. G. Sand LXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT I shall not go with you to Croisset, for you must sleep, and we talk too much. But on Sunday or Monday if you still wish it; only I forbid you to inconvenience yourself. I know Rouen, I know that there are carriages at the railway station and that one goes straight to your house without any trouble. I shall probably go in the evening. Embrace your dear mamma for me, I shall be happy to her again. G. Sand If those days do not suit you, a word, and I shall communicate with you again. Have the kindness to put the address on the ENCLOSED letter and to put it in the mail. LXXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 21 Thursday--May, 1868 I see that the day trains are very slow, I shall make a great effort and shall leave at eight o'clock Sunday, so as to lunch with you; if it is too late don't wait for me, I lunch on two eggs made into an omelet or shirred, and a cup of coffee. Or dine on a little chicken or some veal and vegetables. In giving up trying to eat REAL MEAT, I have found again a strong stomach. I drink cider with enthusiasm, no more champagne! At Nohant, I live on sour wine and galette, and since I am not trying any more to THOROUGHLY NOURISH myself, no more anemia; believe then in the logic of physicians! In short you must not bother any more about me than about the cat and not even so much. Tell your little mother, just that. Then I shall see you at last, all I want to for two days. Do you know that you are INACCESSIBLE in Paris? Poor old fellow, did you finally sleep like a dormouse in your cabin? I would like to give you a little of my sleep that nothing, not even a cannon, can disturb. But I have had bad dreams for two weeks about my poor Esther, and now at last, here are Depaul, Tarnier, Gueniaux and Nelaton who told us yesterday that she will deliver easily and very well, and that the child has every reason to be superb. I breathe again, I am born anew, and I am going to embrace you so hard that you will be scandalised. I shall see you on Sunday then, and don't inconvenience yourself. G. Sand LXXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 26 May, 1868 Arrived while dozing. Dined with your delightful and charming friend Du Camp. We talked of you, only of you and your mother, and we said a hundred times that we loved you. I am going to sleep so as to be ready to move tomorrow morning. I am charmingly located on the Luxembourg garden. I embrace you, mother and son, with all my heart which is entirely yours. G. Sand Tuesday evening, rue Gay-Lussac, 5. LXXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 28 May, 1868 My little friend gave birth this morning after two hours of labor, to a boy who seemed dead but whom they handled so well that he is very much alive and very lovely this evening. The mother is very well, what luck! But what a sight! It was something to see. I am very tired, but very content and tell you so because you love me. G. Sand Thursday evening. I leave Tuesday for Nohant. LXXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 21 June, 1868 Here I am again, BOTHERING you for M. Du Camp's address which you never gave me, although you forwarded a letter for me to him, and from WHOM I never thought of asking for it when I dined with him in Paris. I have just read his Forces Perdues; I promised to tell him my opinion and I am keeping my word. Write the address, then give it to the postman and thank you. There you are alone at odds with the sun in your charming villa! Why am I not the...river which cradles you with its sweet MURMURING and which brings you freshness in your den! I would chat discreetly with you between two pages of your novel, and I would make that fantastic grating of the chain [Footnote: The chain of the tug-boat going up or coming down the Seine.] which you detest, but whose oddity does not displease me, keep still. I love everything that makes up a milieu, the rolling of the carriages and the noise of the workmen in Paris, the cries of a thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships on the waters; I love also absolute, profound silence, and in short, I love everything that is around me, no matter where I am; it is AUDITORY IDIOCY, a new variety. It is true that I choose my milieu and don't go to the Senate nor to other disagreeable places. Everything is going on well at our house, my troubadour. The children are beautiful, we adore them; it is warm, I adore that. It is always the same old story that I have to tell you and I love you as the best of friends and comrades. You see that is not new. I have a good and strong impression of what you read to me; it seemed to me so beautiful that it must be good. As for me, I am not sticking to anything. Idling is my dominant passion. That will pass, what does not pass, is my friendship for you. G. Sand Our affectionate regards. LXXXV. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Sunday, 5 July, 1868 I have sawed wood hard for six weeks. The patriots won't forgive me for this book, nor the reactionaries either! What do I care! I write things as I feel them, that is to say, as I think they are. Is it foolish of me? But it seems to me that our unhappiness comes exclusively from people of our class. I find an enormous amount of Christianity in Socialism. There are two notes which are now on my table. "This system (his) is not a system of disorder, for it has its source in the Gospels, and from this divine source, hatred, warfare, the clashing of every interest, CAN NOT PROCEED! for the doctrine formulated from the Gospel, is a doctrine of peace, union and love." (L. Blanc). "I shall even dare to advance the statement that together with the respect for the Sabbath, the last spark of poetic fire has been extinguished in the soul of our rhymesters. It has been said that without religion, there is no poetry!" (Proudhon). A propos of that, I beg of you, dear master, to read at the end of his book on the observance of the Sabbath, a love-story entitled, I think, Marie et Maxime. One must know that to have an idea of the style of les Penseurs. It should be placed on a level with Le Voyage en Bretagne by the great Veuillot, in Ca et La. That does not prevent us from having friends who are great admirers of these two gentlemen. When I am old, I shall write criticism; that will console me, for I often choke with suppressed opinions. No one understands better than I do, the indignation of the great Boileau against bad taste: "The senseless things which I hear at the Academy hasten my end." There was a man! Every time now that I hear the chain of the steam-boats, I think of you, and the noise irritates me less, when I say to myself that it pleases you. What moonlight there is tonight on the river! LXXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 31 July, 1868 I am writing to you at Croisset in any case, because I doubt if you are in Paris during this Toledo-like heat; unless the shade of Fontainebleau has kept you. What a lovely forest, isn't it? but it is especially so in winter, without leaves, with its fresh moss, which has chic. Did you see the sand of Arbonne? There is a little Sahara there which ought to be lovely now. We are very happy here. Every day a bath in a stream that is always cold and shady; in the daytime four hours of work, in the evening, recreation, and the life of Punch and Judy. A TRAVELLING THEATRICAL COMPANY came to us; it was part of a company from the Odeon, among whom were several old friends to whom we gave supper at La Chatre, two successive nights with all their friends, after the play;-- songs, laughter, with champagne frappe, till three o'clock in the morning to the great scandal of the bourgeois, who would have committed any crime to have been there. There was a very comic Norman, a real Norman, who sang real peasant songs to us, in the real language. Do you know that they have quite a Gallic wit and mischief? They contain a mine of master-pieces of genre. That made me love Normandy still more. You may know that comedian. His name is Freville. It is he who is charged in the repertory with the parts of the dull valets, and with being kicked from behind. He is detestable, impossible, but out of the theatre, he is as charming as can be. Such is fate! We have had some delightful guests at our house, and we have had a joyous time without prejudice to the Lettres d'un Voyageur in the Revue, or to botanical excursions in some very surprising wild places. The little girls are the loveliest thing about it all. Gabrielle is a big lamb, sleeping and laughing all day; Aurore, more spiritual, with eyes of velvet and fire, talking at thirty months as others do at five years, and adorable in everything. They are keeping her back so that she shall not get ahead too fast. You worry me when you tell me that your book will blame the patriots for everything that goes wrong. Is that really so? and then the victims! it is quite enough to be undone by one's own fault without having one's own foolishness thrown in one's teeth. Have pity! There are so many fine spirits among them just the same! Christianity has been a fad and I confess that in every age it is a lure when one sees only the tender side of it; it wins the heart. One has to consider the evil it does in order to get rid of it. But I am not surprised that a generous heart like Louis Blanc dreamed of seeing it purified and restored to his ideal. I also had that illusion; but as soon as one takes a step in this past, one sees that it can not be revived, and I am sure that now Louis Blanc smiles at his dream. One should think of that also. One must remind oneself that all those who had intelligence have progressed tremendously during the last twenty years and that it would not be generous to reproach them with what they probably reproach themselves. As for Proudhon, I never thought him sincere. He is a rhetorician of GENIUS, as they say. But I don't understand him. He is a specimen of perpetual antithesis, without solution. He affects one like one of the old Sophists whom Socrates made fun of. I am trusting you for GENEROUS sentiments. One can say a word more or less without wounding, one can use the lash without hurting, if the hand is gentle in its strength. You are so kind that you cannot be cruel. Shall I go to Croisset this autumn? I begin to fear not, and to fear that Cadio is not being rehearsed. But I shall try to escape from Paris even if only for one day. My children send you their regards. Ah! Heavens! there was a fine quarrel about Salammbo; some one whom you do not know, went so far as not to like it, Maurice called him BOURGEOIS, and to settle the affair, little Lina, who is high tempered, declared that her husband was wrong to use such a word, for he ought to have said IMBECILE. There you are. I am well as a Turk. I love you and I embrace you. Your old Troubadour, G. Sand LXXXVII. TO GEORGE SAND Dieppe, Monday But indeed, dear master, I was in Paris during that tropical heat (trop picole, as the governor of the chateau of Versailles says), and I perspired greatly. I went twice to Fontainebleau, and the second time by your advice, saw the sands of Arboronne. It is so beautiful that it made me almost dizzy. I went also to Saint-Gratien. Now I am at Dieppe, and Wednesday I shall be in Croisset, not to stir from there for a long time, the novel must progress. Yesterday I saw Dumas: we talked of you, of course, and as I shall see him tomorrow we shall talk again of you. I expressed myself badly if I said that my book "will blame the patriots for everything that goes wrong." I do not recognize that I have the right to blame anyone. I do not even think that the novelist ought to express his own opinion on the things of this world. He can communicate it, but I do not like him to say it. (That is a part of my art of poetry.) I limit myself, then, to declaring things as they appear to me, to expressing what seems to me to be true. And the devil take the consequences; rich or poor, victors or vanquished, I admit none of all that. I want neither love, nor hate, nor pity, nor anger. As for sympathy, that is different; one never has enough of that. The reactionaries, besides, must be less spared than the others, for they seem to be more criminal. Is it not time to make justice a part of art? The impartiality of painting would then reach the majesty of the law,--and the precision of science! Well, as I have absolute confidence in your great mind, when my third part is finished, I shall read it to you, and if there is in my work, something that seems MEAN to you, I will remove it. But I am convinced beforehand that you will object to nothing. As for allusions to individuals, there is not a shadow of them. Prince Napoleon, whom I saw at his sister's Thursday, asked for news of you and praised Maurice. Princess Matilde told me that she thought you "charming," which made me like her better than ever. How will the rehearsals of Cadio prevent you from coming to see your poor old friend this autumn? It is not impossible. I know Freville. He is an excellent and very cultivated man. LXXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Wednesday evening, 9 September, 1868 Is this the way to behave, dear master? Here it is nearly two months since you have written to your old troubadour! you in Paris, in Nohant, or elsewhere? They say that Cadio is now being rehearsed at the Porte Saint-Martin (so you have fallen out with Chilly?) They say that Thuillier will make her re-appearance in your play. (But I thought she was dying). And when are they to play this Cadio? Are you content? etc., etc. I live absolutely like an oyster. My novel is the rock to which I attach myself, and I don't know anything that goes on in the world. I do not even read, or rather I have not read La Lanterne! Rochefort bores me, between ourselves. It takes courage to venture to say even hesitatingly, that possibly he is not the first writer of the century. O Velches! Velches! as M. de Voltaire would sigh (or roar)! But a propos of the said Rochefort, have they been somewhat imbecilic? What poor people! And Sainte-Beuve? Do you see him? As for me, I am working furiously. I have just written a description of the forest of Fontainebleau that made me want to hang myself from one of its trees. As I was interrupted for three weeks, I am having terrible trouble in getting back to work. I am like the camels, which can't be stopped when they are in motion, nor started when they are resting. It will take me a year to finish the book. After that I shall abandon the bourgeois definitely. He is too difficult and on the whole too ugly. It will be high time to do something beautiful and that I like. What would please me well for the moment, would be to embrace you. When will that be? Till then, a thousand affectionate thoughts. LXXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Paris, 10 September, 1868 Just at present, dear friend, there is a truce to my correspondence. On all sides I am reproached, WRONGLY, for not answering letters. I wrote you from Nohant about two weeks ago that I was going to Paris, on business about Cadio:--and now, I am returning to Nohant tomorrow at dawn to see my Aurore. I have written during the last week, four acts of the play, and my task is finished until the end of the rehearsals which will be looked after by my friend and collaborator, Paul Meurice. All his care does not prevent the working out of the first part from being a horrible bungle. One needs to see the putting-on of a play in order to understand that, and if one is not armed with humor and inner zest for the study of human nature in the actual individuals whom the fiction is to mask, there is much to rage about. But I don't rage any more, I laugh; I know too much of all that to get excited about it, and I shall tell you some fine stories about it when we meet. However, as I am an optimist just the same, I look at the good side of things and people; but the truth is that everything is bad and everything is good in this world. Poor Thuillier has not sparkling health; but she hopes to carry the burden of the work once more. She needs to earn her living, she is cruelly poor. I told you in my lost letter that Sylvanie [Footnote: Madame Arnould-Plessy.] had been several days at Nohant. She is more beautiful than ever and quite well again after a terrible illness. Would you believe that I have not seen Sainte-Beuve? That I have had only the time here to sleep a little, and to eat in a hurry? It is just that. I have not heard anyone whatsoever talked about outside of the theatre and of the players. I have had mad desires to abandon everything and to go to surprise you for a couple of hours; but I have not been a day without being kept at FORCED LABOR. I shall return here the end of the month, and when they play Cadio, I shall beg you to spend twenty-four hours here for me. Will you do it? Yes, you are too good a troubadour to refuse me. I embrace you with all my heart, and your mother too. I am happy that she is well. G. Sand XC. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 18 September, 1868 It will be, I think, the 8th or 10th of October. The management announces it for the 26th of September. But that seems impossible to everyone. Nothing is ready; I shall be advised, I shall advise you. I have come to spend the days of respite that my very conscientious and very devoted collaborator allows me. I am taking up again a novel on the THEATRE, the first part of which I had left on my desk, and I plunge every day in a little icy torrent which tumbles me about and makes me sleep like a top. How comfortable one is here with these two little children who laugh and chatter from morning till night like birds, and how foolish it is to go to compose and to put on MADE UP THINGS when the reality is so easy and so fine! But one gets accustomed to regarding all that as a military order, and goes to the front without asking oneself if it means wounds or death. Do you think that that bothers me? No, I assure you; but it does not amuse me either. I go straight ahead, stupid as a cabbage and patient as a Berrichon. Nothing is interesting in my life except OTHER PEOPLE. Seeing you soon in Paris will be more of a pleasure than my business will be an annoyance to me. Your novel interests me more than all mine. Impersonality, a sort of idiocy which is peculiar to me, is making a noticeable progress. If I were not well, I should think that it was a malady. If my old heart did not become each day more loving, I should think it was egotism; in short, I don't know what it is, and there you are. I have had trouble recently. I told you of it in the letter which you did not receive. A person whom you know, whom I love greatly, Celimene, [Footnote: Madame Arnould-Plessy.] has become a religious enthusiast, oh! indeed, an ecstatic, mystic, molinistic religious enthusiast, I don't know what, imbecile! I have exceeded my limits. I have raged, I have said the hardest things to her, I have laughed at her. Nothing made any difference, it was all the same to her. Father Hyacinthe replaces for her every friendship, every good opinion; can you understand that? Her very noble mind, a real intelligence, a worthy character! and there you are! Thuillier is also religious, but without being changed; she does not like priests, she does not believe in the devil, she is a heretic without knowing it. Maurice and Lina are furious against THE OTHER. They don't like her at all. As for me, it gives me much sorrow not to love her any more. We love you, we embrace you. I thank you for coming to see Cadio. G. Sand XCI. TO GEORGE SAND Does that astonish you, dear master? Oh well! it doesn't me! I told you so but you would not believe me. I am sorry for you. For it is sad to see the friends one loves change. This replacement of one soul by another, in a body that remains the same as it was, is a distressing sight. One feels oneself betrayed! I have experienced it, and more than once. But then, what idea have you of women, O, you who are of the third sex? Are they not, as Proudhon said, "the desolation of the Just"? Since when could they do without delusions? After love, devotion; it is in the natural order of things. Dorine has no more men, she takes the good God. That is all. The people who have no need of the supernatural, are rare. Philosophy will always be the lot of the aristocrats. However much you fatten human cattle, giving them straw as high as their bellies, and even gilding their stable, they will remain brutes, no matter what one says. All the advance that one can hope for, is to make the brute a little less wicked. But as for elevating the ideas of the mass, giving it a larger and therefore a less human conception of God, I have my doubts. I am reading now an honest book (written by one of my friends, a magistrate), on the Revolution in the Department of Eure. It is full of extracts from writings of the bourgeois of the time, simple citizens of the small towns. Indeed I assure you that there is now very little of that strength! They were literary and fine, full of good sense, of ideas, and of generosity. Neo-catholicism on the one hand, and Socialism on the other, have stultified France. Everything moves between the Immaculate Conception and the dinner pails of the working people. I told you that I did not flatter the democrats in my book. But I assure you that the conservatives are not spared. I am now writing three pages on the abominations of the national guard in June, 1848, which will cause me to be looked at favorably by the bourgeois. I am rubbing their noses in their own dirt as much as I can. But you don't give me any details about Cadio. Who are the actors, etc.? I mistrust your novel about the theatre. You like those people too much! Have you known any well who love their art? What a quantity of artists there are who are only bourgeois gone astray! We shall see each other in three weeks at the latest. I shall be very glad of it and I embrace you. And the censorship? I really hope for you that it will make some blunders. Besides, I should be distressed if it was wanting in its usual habits. Have you read this in the paper? "Victor Hugo and Rochefort, the greatest writers of the age." If Badinguet now is not avenged, it is because he is hard to please in the matter of punishments. XCII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT The halcyons skim over the water and are common every where. The name is pretty and sufficiently well known. I embrace you. Your troubadour. Paris, Friday evening, 28 August or 4 September, 1868. In October, yes, I will try! XCIII. TO GEORGE SAND Saturday evening I received your two notes, dear master. You send me "halcyon" to replace the word, "dragonfly." Georges Pouchet suggested gerre of the lakes (genus, Gerris). Well! neither the one nor the other suits me, because they do not immediately make a picture for the ignorant reader. Must I then describe that little creature? But that would retard the movement! That would fill up all the landscape I shall put "insects with large feet" or "long insects." That would be clear and short. Few books have gripped me more than Cadio, and I share entirely Maxime's [Footnote: Maxime Du Camp.] admiration. I should have told you of it sooner if my mother and my niece had not taken my copy. At last, this evening, they gave it back to me; it is here on my table, and I am turning the pages as I write you. In the first place, it seems to me as if IT OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN THE WAY IT IS! It is plain, it gets you and thrills you. How many people must be like Saint-Gueltas, like Count de Sauvieres, like Rebec! and even like Henri, although the models are rarer. As for the character of Cadio, which is more of an invention than the others, what I like best in him is his ferocious anger. In it is the special truth of the character. Humanity turned to fury, the guillotine become mystic, life only a sort of bloody dream, that is what must take place in such heads. I think you have one Shakespearean scene: that of the delegate to the Convention with his two secretaries, is of an incredible strength. It makes one cry out! There is one also which struck me very much at the first reading: the scene where Saint-Gueltas and Henri each have the pistols in their pockets: and many others. What a fine page (I open by chance) is page 161! In the play won't you have to give a longer role to the wife of the good Saint-Gueltas? The play ought not to be very hard to cut. It is only a question of condensing and shortening it. If it is played, I'll guarantee a terrific success. But the censorship? Well, you have written a masterpiece, that's true! and a very amusing one. My mother thinks it recalls to her stories that she heard while a child. A propos of Vendee, did you know that her paternal grandfather was, after M. Lescure, the head of the Vendee army? The aforesaid head was named M. Fleuriot d'Argentan. I am not any the prouder for that; besides the thing is doubtful, for my grandfather, a violent republican, hid his political antecedents. My mother is going in a few days to Dieppe, to her grandchild's. I shall be alone a good part of the summer, and I plan to grub. "I labor much and shun the world. It is not at balls that the future is founded." (Camilla Doucet.) But my everlasting novel bores me sometimes in an incredible manner! These tiny details are stupid to bother with! Why annoy oneself about such a miserable subject? I would write you at length about Cadio; but it is late and my eyes are smarting. So, thank you, very kindly, my dear master. XCIV. To M. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Paris, end of September, 1868 Dear friend, It is for Saturday next, 3rd October. I am at the theatre every evening from six o'clock till two in the morning. They talk of putting mattresses behind the scenes for the actors who are not in front. As for me, as used to wakefulness as you are, I experience no fatigue; but I should be very much bored if I had not the resource that one has always, of thinking of other things. I am sufficiently accustomed to it to be writing another play while they are rehearsing, and there is something quite exciting in these great dark rooms where mysterious characters move, talking in low tones, in unexpected costumes; nothing is more like a dream, unless one imagines a conspiracy of patients escaped from Bicetre. I don't at all know what the performance will be. If one did not know the prodigies of harmony and of vim which occur at the last moment, one would judge it all impossible, with thirty-five or forty speaking actors of whom only five or six speak well. One spends hours over the exits and entrances of the characters in blue or white blouses who are to be the soldiers or the peasants, but who, meanwhile perform incomprehensible manoeuvres. Still the dream. One has to be a madman to put on these things. And the frenzy of the actors, pale and worn out, who drag themselves to their place yawning, and suddenly start like crazy people to declaim their tirade; continually the assembling of insane people. The censorship has left us alone as regards the manuscript; tomorrow these gentlemen will inspect the costumes, which perhaps will frighten them. I left my dear world very quiet at Nohant. If Cadio succeeds, it will be a little DOT for Aurore; that is all my ambition. If it does not succeed, I shall have to begin over again, that is all. I shall see you. Then, in any case, that will be a happy day. Come to see me the night before, if you arrive the night before, or even the same day. Come to dine with me the night before or the same day; I am at home from one o'clock to five. Thank you; I embrace you and I love you. G. Sand XCV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 5 October, 1868 Dear good friend, I recommend again to your good offices, my friend Despruneaux, so that you will again do what you can to be of use to him in a very just suit which has already been judged in his favor. Yours, G. Sand XCVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 15 October, 1868 Here I am "ter hum" where, after having hugged my children and my grandchildren, I slept thirty-six hours at one stretch. You must believe that I was tired and did not notice it. I am waking from that animal-hibernation and you are the first person to whom I want to write. I did not thank you enough for coming to Paris for my sake, you who go about so little: and I did not see you enough either; when I knew that you had supped with Plauchut, [Footnote: Edmond Plauchut, a writer and a friend of George Sand.] I was angry at having stayed to take care of my sickly Thuillier, to whom I was of no use, and who was not particularly pleased about it. Artists are spoiled children and the best are great egoists. You say that I like them too well; I like them as I like the woods and the fields, everything, every one that I know a little and that I study continually. I make my life in the midst of all that, and as I like my life I like all that nourishes it and renews it. They do me a lot of ill turns which I see, but which I no longer feel. I know that there are thorns in the hedges, but that does not prevent me from putting out my hands and finding flowers there. If all are not beautiful, all are interesting. The day you took me to the Abbey of Saint-Georges I found the scrofularia borealis, a very rare plant in France. I was enchanted; there was much...in the neighborhood where I gathered it. Such is life! And if one does not take life like that, one cannot take it in any way, and then how can one endure it? I find it amusing and interesting, and since I accept EVERYTHING, I am so much happier and more enthusiastic when I meet the beautiful and the good. If I did not have a great knowledge of the species, I should not have quickly understood you, or known you or loved you. I can have an enormous indulgence, perhaps banal, for I have had to practice it so much; but appreciation is quite another thing, and I do not think that it is entirely worn out in your old troubadour's mind. I found my children still very good and very tender, my two little grandchildren still pretty and sweet. This morning I dreamed, and I woke up saying this strange sentence: "There is always a youthful great first part in the drama of life. First part in mine: Aurore." The fact is that it is impossible not to idolize that little one. She is so perfect in intelligence and goodness, that she seems to me like a dream. You also, without knowing it, YOU ARE A DREAM ... like that. Plauchut saw you once, and he adored you. That proves that he is not stupid. When he left me in Paris, he told me to remember him to you. I left Cadio in doubt between good and average receipts. The cabal against the new management relaxed after the second day. The press was half favorable, half hostile. The good weather is against it. The hateful performance of Roger is also against it. So that we don't know yet if we shall make money or not. As for me, when money comes, I say, "So much the better," without excitement, and if it does not come, I say, "So much the worse," without any chagrin. Money not being the aim, ought not to be the preoccupation. It is, moreover, not the real proof of success, since so many vapid or poor things make money. Here I am with another play already underway, so as to keep my hand in. I have a novel also on the stocks, on the STROLLING PLAYERS. I have studied them a good deal this time without learning anything new. I already had the plot. It is not complicated and is very logical. I embrace you tenderly as well as your little mother. Give me some sign of life. Does the novel get on? G. Sand XCVII. TO GEORGE SAND Saturday evening I am remorseful for not having answered at length your last letter, my dear master. You told me of the "ill turns" that people did you. Did you think that I did not know it? I confess to you even (between ourselves), that I was hurt on account of them more because of my good taste, than because of my affection for you. I did not think that several of your friends were warm enough towards you. "My God! my God! how mean literary men are!" A bit out of the correspondence of the first Napoleon. What a nice bit, eh? Doesn't it seem to you that they belittle him too much? The infinite stupidity of the masses makes me indulgent to individualities, however odious they may be. I have just gulped down the first six volumes of Buchez and Roux. The clearest thing I got out of them is an immense disgust for the French. My Heavens! Have we always been bunglers in this fair land of ours? Not a liberal idea which has not been unpopular, not a just thing that has not caused scandal, not a great man who has not been mobbed or knifed! "The history of the human mind is the history of human folly!" as says M. de Voltaire. And I am convinced more and more of this truth: the doctrine of grace has so thoroughly permeated us that the sense of justice has disappeared. What terrified me so in the history of '48 has quite naturally its origins in the Revolution, which had not liberated itself from the middle ages, no matter what they say. I have re- discovered in Marat entire fragments of Proudhon (sic) and I wager that they would be found again in the preachers of the League. What is the measure that the most advanced proposed after Varennes? Dictatorship and military dictatorship. They close the churches, but they raise temples, etc. I assure you that I am becoming stupid with the Revolution. It is a gulf which draws me in. However, I work at my novel like a lot of oxen. I hope on New Year's Day not to have over a hundred pages more to write, that is to say, still six good months of work. I shall go to Paris as late as possible. My winter is to pass in complete solitude, good way of making life run along rapidly. XCVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 20 November, 1868 You say to me, "When shall we see each other?" About the 15th of December, we are baptizing here our two little girls as Protestants. It is Maurice's idea; he was married before the pastor, and does not want the persecution and influence of the Catholic church about his children. Our friend Napoleon is the godfather of Aurore, and I am the godmother. My nephew is the godfather of the other. All that takes place just among ourselves, in the family. You must come, Maurice wants you to, and if you say no, you will disappoint him greatly. You shall bring your novel, and in a free moment, you shall read it to me; it will do you good to read it to one who listens well. One gets a perspective and judges one's work better. I know that. Say yes to your old troubadour, he will be EXCEEDINGLY GRATEFUL to you for it. I embrace you six times if you say yes. G. Sand XCIX. TO GEORGE SAND Tuesday Dear master, You cannot imagine the sorrow you give me! In spite of the longing I have, I answer "no." Yet I am distracted with my desire to say "yes." It makes me seem like a gentleman who cannot be disturbed, which is very silly. But I know myself: if I go to your house at Nohant, I shall have a month of dreaming about my trip. Real pictures will replace in my brain the fictitious pictures which I compose with great difficulty. All my house of cards will topple over. Three weeks ago because I was foolish enough to accept an invitation to dinner at a country place nearby, I lost four days (sic). What would it be on leaving Nohant? You do not understand that, you strong Being! I think that you will be a little vexed with your old troubadour for not coming to the baptism of the two darlings of his friend Maurice? The dear master must write to me if I am wrong, and to give me the news! Here is mine! I work immoderately and am absolutely ENCHANTED by the prospect of the end which begins to be visible. So that it may arrive more quickly, I have made the resolution to live here all winter, probably until the end of March. Even admitting that everything goes perfectly, I shall not have finished all before the end of May. I don't know anything that goes on and I read nothing, except a little of the French Revolution, after my meals, to aid digestion. I have lost my former good habit of reading every day in Latin. Therefore I don't know a word of it any more! I shall polish it up again when I am freed from my odious bourgeois, and I am nowhere near it. My only excitement consists in going to dine on Sundays at Rouen with my mother. I leave at six o'clock, and I am home at ten. Such is my life. Did I tell you that I had a visit from Tourgueneff? How you would love him! Sainte-Beuve gets along. Anyway, I shall see him next week when I am in Paris for two days, to get necessary information What is the information about? The national guard!!! Listen to this: le Figaro not knowing with what to fill its columns, has had the idea of saying that my novel tells the life of Chancellor Pasquier. Thereupon, fear of the aforesaid family, which wrote to another part of the same family living in Rouen, which latter has been to find a lawyer from whom my brother received a visit, so that ... in short, I was very stupid not to "get some benefit from the opportunity." Isn't it a fine piece of idiocy, eh? C. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, AT CEOISSET Nohant, 21 December, 1868 Certainly, I am cross with you and angry with you, not from unreasonableness nor from selfishness, but on the contrary, because we were joyous and HILARIOUS and you would not distract yourself and amuse yourself with us. If it was to amuse yourself elsewhere, you would be pardoned in advance; but it was to shut yourself up, to get all heated up, and besides for a work which you curse, and which-- wishing to do and being obliged to do anyhow,--you ought to be able to do at your ease and without becoming too absorbed in it. You tell me that you are like that. There is nothing more to say; but one may well be distressed at having an adored friend, a captive in chains far away, whom one may not free. It is perhaps a little coquettish on your part, so as to make yourself pitied and loved the more. I, who have not buried myself alive in literature, have laughed and lived a great deal during these holidays, but always thinking of you and talking of you with our friend of the Palais Royal, [Footnote: Jerome Napoleon.] who would have been happy to see you and who loves you and appreciates you a great deal. Tourgueneff has been more fortunate than we, since he was able to snatch you from your ink-well. I know him personally very little, but I know his work by heart. What talent! and how original and polished! I think that the foreigners do better than we do. They do not pose, while we either put on airs or grovel: the Frenchman has no longer a social milieu, he has no longer an intellectual milieu. I except you, you who live a life of exception, and I except myself, because of the foundation of careless unconventionally which was bestowed upon me; but I, I do not know how to be "careful" and to polish, and I love life too much, and I am amused too much by the mustard and all that is not the real "dinner," to ever be a litterateur. I have had flashes of it, but they have not lasted. Existence where one ignores completely one's "moi" is so good, and life where one does not play a role is such a pretty performance to watch and to listen to! When I have to give of myself, I live with courage and resolution, but I am no longer amused. You, oh! fanatical troubadour, I suspect you of amusing yourself at your profession more than at anything in the world. In spite of what you say about it, art could well be your sole passion, and your shutting yourself up, at which I mourn like the silly that I am, your state of pleasure. If it is like that then, so much the better, but acknowledge it to console me. I am going to leave you in order to dress the marionettes, for the plays and the laughter have been resumed with the bad weather, and that will keep us busy for a part of the winter, I fancy. Behold! here I am, the imbecile that you love, and that you call MASTER. A fine master who likes to amuse himself better than to work! Scorn me profoundly, but love me still. Lina tells me to tell you that you are not much, and Maurice is furious too; but we love you in spite of ourselves and embrace you just the same. Our friend Plauchut wants to be remembered to you; he adores you too. Yours, you huge ingrate, G. Sand I had read the hoax of le Figaro and had laughed at it. It turns out to have assumed grotesque proportions. As for me, they gave me a grandson instead of two granddaughters, and a Catholic baptism instead of a Protestant. That does not make any difference. One really has to lie a little to divert oneself. CI. TO GEORGE SAND Saint Sylvester's night, one o'clock, 1869 Why should I not begin the year of 1869 in wishing to you and to yours "Happy New Year and many of them"? It is rococo, but it pleases me. Now, let us talk. No, I don't get into a heat, for I have never been better. They thought me, in Paris, "fresh as a young girl," and those people who don't know my life attributed that appearance of health to the air of the country. That is what conventional ideas are. Every one has his system. For my part, when I am not hungry, the only thing I can eat is dry bread. And the most indigestible food, such as apples in sour cider, and bacon, are what cure me of the stomach-ache. And so on. A man who has no common sense ought not to try to live according to common-sense rules. As for my frenzy for work, I will compare it to an attack of herpes. I scratch myself while I cry. It is both a pleasure and a torture at the same time. And I am doing nothing that I want to! For one does not choose one's subjects, they force themselves on one. Shall I ever find mine? Will an idea fall from Heaven suitable to my temperament? Can I write a book to which I shall give myself heart and soul? It seems to me in my moments of vanity, that I am beginning to catch a glimpse of what a novel ought to be. But I still have three or four of them to write before that one (which is, moreover, very vague), and at the rate I am going, if I write these three or four, that will be the most I can do. I am like M. Prudhomme, who thinks that the most beautiful church would be one which had at the same time the spire of Strasbourg, the colonnade of Saint Peter's, the portico of the Parthenon, etc. I have contradictory ideals. Thence embarrassment, hesitation, impotence. As to whether the "claustration" to which I condemn myself may be a "state of joy," no. But what can I do? To get drunk with ink is more worth while than to get drunk with brandy. The muse, cross-grained as she is, gives less trouble than a woman. I cannot harmonize the one with the other. I must choose. My choice was made a long time ago. There remains the matter of the senses. They have always been my servants. Even at the time of my earliest youth, I did exactly as I wanted with them. I have reached my fiftieth year, and it is not their ardor that troubles me. This regime is not amusing, I agree to that. There are moments of empty and horrible boredom. But they become more and more rare in proportion as one grows older. In short, LIVING seems to me a business for which I was not made, and yet...! I stayed in Paris for three days, which I made use of in hunting up information, and in doing errands about my book. I was so worn out last Friday, that I went to bed at seven o'clock in the evening. Such are my mad orgies at the capital. I found the Goncourts in a frenzied (sic) admiration over a book entitled Histoire de ma vie by George Sand. Which proves more good taste than learning on their part. They even wanted to write to you to express all their admiration. (In return I found ***** stupid. He compares Feydeau to Chateaubriand, admires very much the Lepreux de la cite d'Aoste, finds Don Quichotte tedious, etc.). Do you notice how rare literary sense is? The knowledge of language, archeology, history, etc., all that should be useful however! Well! well! not at all! The so-called enlightened people are becoming more and more incompetent in the matter of art. Even what art means escapes them. The glosses for them are more important than the text. They pay more attention to the crutches than to the legs themselves. CII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 1st January, 1869 It is one o'clock, I have just embraced my children. I am tired from having spent the night in making a complete costume for a large doll for Aurore; but I don't want to turn in without embracing you also, my great friend, and my dear, big child. May '69 be easy for you, and may it see the end of your novel. May you keep well and be always yourself! I don't know anything better, and I love you. G. Sand I have not the address of the Goncourts. Will you put the enclosed answer in the mail? CIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 17 January, 1869 The individual named George Sand is well: he is enjoying the marvelous winter which reigns in Berry, gathering flowers, noting interesting botanical anomalies, making dresses and mantles for his daughter-in-law, costumes for the marionettes, cutting out scenery, dressing dolls, reading music, but above all spending hours with the little Aurore who is a marvelous child. There is not a more tranquil or a happier individual in his domestic life than this old troubadour retired from business, who sings from time to time his little song to the moon, without caring much whether he sings well or ill, provided he sings the motif that runs in his head, and who, the rest of the time, idles deliciously. It has not always been as nice as this. He had the folly to be young; but as he did no evil nor knew evil passions, nor lived for vanity, he is happy enough to be peaceful and to amuse himself with everything. This pale character has the great pleasure of loving you with all his heart, and of not passing a day without thinking of the other old troubadour, confined in his solitude of a frenzied artist, disdainful of all the pleasures of this world, enemy of the magnifying glass and of its attractions. We are, I think, the two most different workers that exist; but since we like each other that way, it is all right. The reason each of us thinks of the other at the same hour, is because each of us has a need of his opposite; we complete ourselves, in identifying ourselves at times with what is not ourselves. I told you, I think, that I had written a play on returning from Paris. They liked it; but I don't want them to play it in the spring, and the end of the winter is filled up, unless the play they are rehearsing fails. As I do not know how to WISH my colleagues ill luck, I am in no hurry and my manuscript is on the shelf. I have the time. I am writing my little annual novel, when I have one or two hours a day to get to work on it; I am not sorry to be prevented from thinking of it. That develops it. Always before going to sleep, I have an agreeable quarter of an hour to continue it in my head; there you have it. I know nothing, nothing at all of the Sainte-Beuve incident. I get a dozen newspapers, whose wrappers I respect to such an extent that without Lina, who tells me the chief news from time to time, I would not know if Isidore were still among us. Sainte-Beuve is very high tempered, and, as regards opinions, so perfectly skeptical, that I should never be astonished at anything he did, in one sense or the other. He was not always like that, at least not so much so. I have known him to be more credulous and more republican than I was then. He was thin and pale, and gentle; how people change! His talent, his knowledge, his mind have increased enormously, but I used to like his character better. Just the same, there is still much good in him. There is still love and reverence for letters--and he will be the last of the critics. Criticism rightly so-called, will disappear. Perhaps there is no longer any reason for its existence. What do you think about it? It appears that you are studying the boor (pignouf). As for me, I avoid him. I know him too well. I love the Berrichon peasant who is not, who never is, a boor, even when he is of no great account; the word pignouf has its depths; it was created exclusively for the bourgeois, wasn't it? Ninety out of a hundred provincial middle- class women are boorish (pignouf lardes) to a high degree, even with pretty faces that ought to give evidence of delicate instincts. One is surprised to find a basis of gross self-sufficiency in these false ladies. Where is the woman now? She is becoming a freak in society. Good night, my troubadour: I love you, and I embrace you warmly; Maurice also. G. Sand CIV. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Tuesday, 2 February, 1869 My dear master, You see in your troubadour a worn-out man. I have spent a week in Paris, looking up wearisome information (from seven to nine hours in fiacres every day, which is a fine way to make money out of literature). Oh, well! I have just reread my outline. All that I have still to write horrifies me, or rather disgusts me, so that I want to vomit. It is always so, when I get to work. It is then that I am bored, bored, bored! But this time exceeds all others. That is why I dread so much interruptions in the daily grind. I could not do otherwise, however. I dragged about at funerals at Pere-Lachaise, in the valley of Montmorency, through shops of religious objects, etc. In short, I have enough material for four or five months now. What a big "Hooray" I shall utter, when it is finished, and when I am not in the midst of remaking the bourgeois! It is high time that I enjoyed life. I saw Sainte-Beuve and the Princess Mathilde, and I know thoroughly the story of their break, which seems to me irrevocable. Sainte- Beuve was outraged against Dalloz and has gone to le Temps. The princess begged him not to do anything about it. He did not listen to her. That is all. My opinion on it, if you wish to know it, is this. The first wrong was done by the princess, who was hasty; but the second and the worst was by pere Beuve, who did not behave as a courteous man. If one has a friend, a rather good fellow, and that friend has given one thirty thousand francs a year income, one owes him some consideration. It seems to me that in Sainte-Beuve's place I should have said, "That displeases you, let us talk no more about it." He lacked manners and poise. What disgusted me a little, between ourselves, was the way he praised the emperor to me! yes, he praised Badinguet, to me!--And we were alone! The princess had taken the thing too seriously from the beginning. I wrote to her, saying that Sainte-Beuve was right; he, I am sure, found me rather cold. It was then, in order to justify himself to me, that he made these protestations of isidorian love, which humiliated me a little; for it was as if he took me for a complete imbecile. I think that he is preparing for a funeral like Beranger's, and that Hugo's popularity makes him jealous. Why write for the papers, when one can make books, and when one is not perishing of hunger? He's no sage, Sainte-Beuve. Not like you! Your strength charms me and amazes me. I mean the strength of your entire being, not only that of your brain. You speak of criticism in your last letter to me, telling me that it will soon disappear. I think, on the contrary, that it is, at most, only at its dawning. They are on a different tack from before, but nothing more. At the time of La Harpe, they were grammarians; at the time of Sainte-Beuve and of Taine, they are historians. When will they be artists, only artists, but really artists? Where do you know a criticism? Who is there who is anxious about the work in itself, in an intense way? They analyze very keenly the setting in which it was written, and the causes that produced it; but the UNCONSCIOUS poetic expression? Where it comes from? its composition, its style? the point of view of the author? Never. That criticism would require great imagination and great sympathy. I mean a faculty of enthusiasm that is always ready, and then TASTE, a rare quality, even among the best, so much so that one does not talk about it any longer. What irritates me every day, is to see a master-piece and a disgrace put on the same level. They exalt the little, and they lower the great, nothing is more imbecile nor more immoral. At Pere-Lachaise I was seized with a profound and sorrowful disgust for humanity. You can not imagine the fetichism of the tombs. The real Parisian is more of an idolater than a negro is! It made me long to lie down in one of the graves. And the PROGRESSIVES think that there is nothing better than to rehabilitate Robespierre! Note Hamel's book! If the Republic returned they would bless the liberty poles out of policy and believing that measure strong. When shall I see you? I plan to be in Paris from Easter to the end of May, This spring I shall go to see you at Nohant, I swear it. CV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 11 February, 1869 While you are running around to get material for your novel, I am inventing all sorts of pretexts not to write mine. I let myself be distracted by guilty fancies, something I am reading fascinates me and I set myself to scribbling on paper that will be left in my desk and bring me no return. That has amused me, or rather that has compelled me, for it would be in vain for me to struggle against these caprices; they interrupt me and force me...you see that I have not the strength of mind that you think. As for our masculine friend, he is ungrateful, while our feminine friend is too exacting. You were right; they are both wrong and it is not their fault, it is the social machinery which insists on it. The kind of recognition, that is to say, submission that she exacts, depends on a tradition that the present time still profits by (there lies the evil); but does not accept any longer as a duty. The notions of the obliged are changed, those of the obliger ought to change also. It must be said that one does not buy moral liberty by any kindness,--and as for him, he should have foreseen that he would be considered enchained. The simplest thing would have been not to care about having thirty thousand francs a year. It is so easy to do without it. Let him extricate himself. They won't entangle us in it: we aren't so foolish! You say very good things about criticism. But in order to do as you say, there must be artists, and the artist is too much occupied with his own work, to forget himself in estimating that of others. Heavens, what fine weather! Don't you enjoy it, at least from your window? I'll wager that the tulip tree is in bud. Here, the peaches and the apricots are in flower. It is said that they will be ruined; that does not stop them from being pretty and not tormenting themselves about it. We have had our family carnival: my niece, my grandchildren, etc. We all put on fancy dress; it is not difficult here, one only has to go to the wardrobe and one comes down again as Cassandra, Scapin, Mezzetin, Figaro, Basile, etc., all that is very pretty. The pearl was Lolo as a little Louis XIII in crimson satin, trimmed with white satin fringed and laced with silver. I spent three days in making this costume, which was very chic; it was so pretty and so funny on that little girl of three years, that we were all amazed in looking at her. Then we played charades, had supper, and frolicked till daylight. You see that banished to a desert, we keep up a good deal of vitality. And that I delay all I can, the trip to Paris and the chapter of business. If you were there, I would not need to be urged. But you are going there the end of March if and I can not afford to wait till then. To conclude, you swear to come this summer and we count on it absolutely. Sooner than not have you come I shall go to drag you here by the hair. I embrace you most warmly on this good hope. G. Sand CVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 24 February, 1869 I am all alone at Nohant as you are all alone at Croisset. Maurice and Lina have gone to Milan, to see Calamatta who is dangerously ill. Should they have the misfortune to lose him, they will have to go to Rome to settle his estate, an irksome task added to a sorrow, it is always like that. That sudden separation was sad, my poor Lina weeping at leaving her daughters and weeping at not being with her father. They left me the care of the children whom I rarely leave and who only let me work when they sleep; but I am happier at having this care on my shoulders to console me. I have, every day, in two hours news from Milan by telegram. The patient is better; my children are only as far as Turin today and do not know yet what I know. How this telegraph changes one's idea of life, and when the formalities and formulas are still more simplified, how full existence will be of facts and how free from uncertainties. Aurore, who lives on adorations in the lap of her father and mother and who weeps every day when I am away, has not asked a single time where they are. She plays and laughs, then she stops; her great eyes stare, she says: MY FATHER? another time she says: MAMMA? I distract her, she thinks no more of it, and then she begins again. They are very mysterious, children! They think without understanding. Only one sad word is needed to bring out their sorrow. She carries it unconsciously. She looks in my eyes to see if I am sad or anxious; I laugh and she laughs, I think that we must keep her sensitiveness asleep as long as possible, and that she never would weep for me if they did not speak of me. What is your advice, you who have brought up an intelligent and charming niece? Is it wise to make them loving and affectionate early? I thought so formerly: I was afraid when I saw Maurice too impressionable and Solange too much the opposite, and resisting affection. I would like little ones to be shown only the sweet and the good of life, until the time when reason can help them to accept or to fight the bad. What do you say? I embrace you and ask you to tell me when you are going to Paris, my trip is delayed as my children may be absent a month; I shall be able, perhaps, to meet you in Paris. Your old solitary, G. Sand What an admirable definition I rediscover with surprise in the fatalist Pascal! "Nature acts progressively, itus et reditus. It goes on and returns, then it goes still further, then half as far, then further than ever." [Footnote: George Sand had copied this and fastened it over her work table at Nohant.] What a way of speaking, eh? How the language turns, is twisted, made supple, is condensed under this grandiose "hand." CVII. TO GEORGE SAND Tuesday night What do I say about it, dear master? Should one excite or repress the sensitiveness of children? It seems to me that one should not have any set rule about it. It is according as they have a tendency to too much or too little. Moreover, the basis isn't changed. There are tender natures and hard natures, irremediably so. And then the same sight, the same lesson can produce opposite effects. Could anything have hardened me more than having been brought up in a hospital and having played, as a child, in a dissecting amphitheatre? But no one is more sensitive than I am to physical suffering. It is true that I am the son of an extremely humane man, sensitive in the true meaning of the word. The sight of a suffering dog made tears come to his eyes. He did his surgical operations none the less well, and he invented some dreadful ones. "Show little ones only the sweet and the good of life until the time when reason can help them to accept or to fight the bad." Such is not my opinion. For then something terrible, an infinite disenchantment is bound to be produced in their hearts. And then, how could reason form itself, if it does not apply itself (or if one does not apply it daily) to distinguish good from evil? Life ought to be a continual education; one must learn everything--from talking to dying. You tell me very true things about the unconsciousness of children. He who could read clearly in these little brains would grasp in them the roots of the human race, the origin of the gods, the sap which produces actions later on, etc. A negro who talks to his idol, and a child who talks to her doll seem to me close together. The child and the savage (the primitive) do not distinguish the real from the fantastic. I remember very clearly that at five or six years of age I wanted to "send my heart" to a little girl with whom I was in love (I mean my material heart). I could see it in the middle of straw, in a basket, an oyster basket. But no one has been so far as you in these analyses. There are some infinitely profound pages about it in the Histoire de ma vie. What I say is true, since minds quite opposite to yours have been amazed at them. For instance, the Goncourts. The good Tourgueneff ought to be in Paris at the end of March. What would be fine, would be for us all three to dine together. I am thinking again of Sainte-Beuve. Without doubt one can get along without thirty thousand francs a year. But there is something easier yet: that is, when one has them, not to launch into abuse, every week, in the papers. Why doesn't he write books, since he is rich and has talent? I am just now reading Don Quichotte again. What a tremendous old book! Is there any more beautiful? CVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 7 March, 1869 Still alone with my grandchildren; my nephews and friends come to spend two out of every three days with me, but I miss Maurice and Lina. Poor Calamatta is at the last gasp. Give me the address of the Goncourts, you have never given it to me. Shall I never know it? My letter is still waiting there for them. I love you and embrace you. I love you much, much, and I embrace you very warmly. G. Sand CIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 12 March, 1869 Poor Calamatta died the 9th, my children are coming back. My Lina must be distressed. I have news from them only by telegraph. From Milan here in an hour and a half. But there are no details, and I am anxious. I embrace you tenderly, G. Sand Thank you for the address. CX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 2 April, 1869 Dear friend of my heart, here we are once more calm again. My children returned to me very exhausted. Aurore has been a little ill. Lina's mother has come to get into touch with her about their affairs. She is a loyal and excellent woman, very artistic, and very amiable. I too have had a bad cold, but everything is getting better now, and our charming little girls console their little mother. If it were less bad weather, and I had a less bad cold, I would go at once to Paris, for I want to see you there. How long do you stay there? Tell me quickly. I shall be very glad to renew my acquaintance with Tourgueneff, whom I knew a little without having read him, and whom I have since read with a whole-hearted admiration. You seem to me to love him a great deal; then I love him too, and I wish when your novel is finished, that you would bring him to our house. Maurice also knows him and appreciates him greatly, he who likes whatever does not resemble anything else. I am working at my novel about TRAVELING ACTORS [Footnote: Pierre qui roule.] like a convict. I am trying to have it amusing and to explain art; it is a new form for me and amuses me. Perhaps it will not have any success. The taste of the day is for marquises and courtesans; but what difference does that make?--You must find me a title, which is a resume of that idea: THE MODERN ROMAN COMIQUE. My children send you affectionate greetings; your old troubadour embraces his old troubadour. G. Sand Answer quickly how long you expect to stay in Paris. You say that you are paying bills and that you are vexed. If you have need of quibus, I have at the moment a few sous I can lend you. You know that you offered once to lend me some. If I had been in a hole I would have accepted. Give all my regards to Maxime Du Camp and thank him for not forgetting me. CXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 17 April, 1869 I am well, I am finishing (today, I hope) my modern Roman comique which will be called I don't know what. I am a little tired, for I have done a lot of other things. But I am going to Paris in eight or ten days to rest, to embrace you, to talk of you, of your work, to forget mine, God be thanked! and to love you as always very much and very tenderly. G. Sand Regards from Maurice and his wife. CXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Monday, 26 April, 1869 I arrived last night, I am running around like a rat, but every day at 6 o'clock one is sure of finding me at Magny's, and the first day that you are free, come to dine with your old troubadour who loves you and embraces you. Send word ahead to me, however, so that by an exceptional chance, I do not have the ill luck to miss you. Monday. CXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Thursday evening, 29 April, 1869 I am back from Palaiseau and I find your letter. Saturday I am not sure of being free; I have to read my play with Chilly on account of some objections of detail, and I had told you so. But I see him tomorrow evening, and I shall try to get him to give me another day. I shall write you then, tomorrow evening, Friday, and if he frees me, I shall go to your house about three o'clock on Saturday so that we can read before and after dinner; I dine on a little fish, a chicken wing, an ice and a cup of coffee, never anything else, by which means my stomach keeps well. If I am kept by Chilly, we shall postpone till next week after Friday. I sold Palaiseau today to a master shoemaker who has a LEATHER plaster on his right eye, and who calls the sumachs of the garden, the schumakre. Then Saturday morning you shall have word from your old comrade. G. Sand CXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 30 April, 1869 No way of going out today. This slavery to one's profession is horrid, isn't it? Between now and Friday I shall write to you so that we can again settle on a day. I embrace you, my old beloved troubadour. G. Sand CXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 3 May, 1869 They are encroaching upon my time more and more. All my days are full until and including next Sunday.--Tell me quickly if you want me Monday, a week from today--or if it is another day. Let us fix it for it is a fact that I don't really know whom to listen to. Your troubadour who does not want THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS to continue! G. Sand Monday. CXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 4 May, 1869 On Monday then, and if I have an hour free I shall try to embrace my troubadour before that. But don't disturb yourself, I know very well that one does nothing here that one would like to do. Anyway, on Monday between three and four, clear out your windpipe so as to read me a part before dinner. G. Sand Tues. evening. CXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Sunday, 9 May, 1869 Tomorrow, your reverence, I shall go to dine at your house. I shall be at home every day at five o'clock, but you might meet some guys whom you dislike. You would much better come to Magny's where you would find me alone, or with Plauchut, or with friends who are also yours. I embrace you. I received today the letter which you wrote to me at Nohant. G. Sand CXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 18 May, 1869 I saw Levy today, I tested him at first; I saw that he would not give up his contract at any price. I then said to him many good things about the book and made the remark that he had gotten it very cheap. But he said to me, if the book is in two volumes, it will be 20,000 francs, that is agreed. So I suppose that you will have two volumes, won't you? However, I persisted and he said to me: If the book is a success, I shall not begrudge two or three thousand francs more. I said that you would not demand anything, that it was not your way of acting, but that for MY PART, I should insist for you without your knowledge, and he left me saying: Be easy, I don't say no. Should the book succeed I will make the author profit by it. That is all that I have been able to do now, but I will take it up again at the proper time and place. Leave that to me, I will return your contract. What day next week will you dine with me at Magny's? I am a little weary. You would be very kind to come to read at my house, we should be alone and one evening will be enough for the rest. Set the day, and AT SIX THIRTY if that does not bother you. My stomach is beginning to suffer a little from Paris habits. Your troubadour who loves you, G. Sand The rest of the week will finish up Palaiseau, but Sunday if you like, I am free. Answer if you want Sunday at Magny's at half past six. CXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Then Monday, I count on you, at half past six; but as I am going to Palaiseau, I may be a few minutes late or early. The first one at Magny's must wait for the other. I am looking forward with pleasure to hearing THE REST. Don't forget the manuscript. Your troubadour Thursday evening, 20 May, 1869. CXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 29 May, 1869 Yes, Monday, my dear good friend, I count on you and I embrace you. G. Sand I am off for Palaiseau AND IT IS TEN O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING! CXXI. TO GEORGE SAND My prophecy is fulfilled; My friend X----has gained only ridicule with his candidacy. That serves him right. When a man of style debases himself to practical life, he loses caste and should be punished. And then, is it a question of politics, now! The citizens who are excited for or against the Empire or the Republic seem to me as useful as those who discuss efficacious or efficient grace. Politics are as dead as theology! They have had three hundred years of existence, that is quite enough. Just now I am lost in the Church Fathers. As for my novel l'Education sentimentale, I am paying no more attention to it, God be thanked! It is recopied. Other hands have gone over it. So, the thing is no longer mine. It does not exist any longer, good night. I have taken up again my old hobby of Saint Antoine. I have reread my notes, I am making another new plan and I am devouring the ecclesiastical memoirs of the Nain de Tillemont. I hope to succeed in finding a logical connection (and therefore a dramatic interest) between the different hallucinations of the Saint. This extravagant setting pleases me and I am absorbed in it, there you are! My poor Bouilhet bothers me. He is in such a nervous state that they have advised him to take a little trip to the south of France. He is overwhelmed by an unconquerable melancholy. Isn't it queer! He who was so gay, formerly! My Heavens! What a beautiful and farcical thing is the life of the desert Fathers! But without doubt they were all Buddhists. That is a stylish problem to work at, and its solution would be more important than the election of an academician. Oh! ye men of little faith! Long live Saint Polycarp! Fangeat, who has reappeared recently, is the citizen who, on the 25th day of February, 1848, demanded the death of Louis-Philippe "without a trial." That is the way one serves the cause of progress. CXXII. TO GEORGE SAND What a good and charming letter was yours, adored master! There is no one but you! upon my word of honor! I am ending by believing it. A wind of stupidity and folly is now blowing over the world. Those who stand up firm and straight against it are rare. This is what I meant when I wrote that the times of politics were over. In the 18th century the chief business was diplomacy. "The secrecy of the cabinets" really existed. The peoples still were sufficiently amenable to be separated and to be combined. That order of things seems to me to have said its last word in 1815. Since then, one has hardly done anything except dispute about the external form that it is fitting to give the fantastic and odious being called the State. Experience proves (it seems to me) that no form contains the best in itself; orleanism, republic, empire do not mean anything anymore, since the most contradictory ideas can enter into each one of these pigeon holes. All the flags have been so soiled with blood and with filth that it is time not to have any at all. Down with words! No more symbols nor fetiches! The great moral of this reign will be to prove that universal suffrage is as senseless as the divine right although a little less odions! The question is then out of place. One is concerned no longer with dreaming of the best form of government, since all are equal, but with making science prevail. That is the most important. The rest will follow inevitably. Purely intellectual men have rendered more service to the human race than all the Saint Vincent de Pauls in the world! And politics will be an everlasting folly so long as it is not subordinate to science. The government of a country ought to be a section of the Institute, and the last section of all. Before concerning yourself with relief funds, and even with agriculture, send to all the villages in France, Robert Houdins to work miracles! The greatest crime of Isidore is the wretched condition in which he leaves our beautiful country. Dixi. I admire Maurice's occupations and his healthy life. But I am not capable of imitating him. Nature, far from fortifying me, drains my strength. When I lie on the grass I feel as if I am already under the earth and that the roots of green things are beginning to grow in my belly. Your troubadour is naturally an unhealthy man. I do not like the country except when travelling, because then the independence of my individuality causes me to rise above the knowledge of my nothingness. CXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 6 August, 1869 Well, dear good friend, here it is August, and you have promised to come. We don't forget it, we count on it, we dream of it, and we talk of it every day. You were to take a trip to the seashore first if I am not mistaken. You must need to shake up your gloom. That does not dispel it, but it does force it to live with us and not be too oppressive. I have thought a great deal about you lately, I would have hastened to see you if I had not thought I should find you surrounded by older and better friends than I am. I wrote you at the same time that you wrote me, our letters crossed. Come to see us, my dear old friend, I shall not go to Paris this month, I do not want to miss you. My children will be happy to spoil you and to try to distract you. We all love you, and I love you PASSIONATELY, as you know. CXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 14 August, 1869 Your change of plans distresses us, dear friend, but we do not dare to complain in the face of your anxieties and sorrows. We ought to wish you to do what would distract you the most, and take the least out of you. I am in hopes of finding you in Paris, as you are staying there some time and I always have business there. But it is so hard to see friends in Paris and one is so overwhelmed by so many tedious duties! Well, it is a real sorrow to me not to have to expect you any more at our house, where each one of us would have tried to love you better than the others and where you would have been at home; sad when you wanted to be, busy if you liked. I resign myself on condition that you will be better off somewhere else and that you will make it good to us when you can. Have you at least arranged your affairs with Levy? Is he paying you for two volumes? I would like you to have something on which to live independently and as master of your time. Here there is repose for the mind in the midst of the exuberant activities of Maurice, and of his brave little wife who sets herself to love all he loves and to help him eagerly in all he undertakes. As for me, I have the appearance of incarnate idleness in the midst of this hard work. I botanize and I bathe in a little icy torrent. I teach my servant to read, I correct proof and I am well. That is my life and nothing bores me in this world where I think that AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED all is for the best. But I am afraid of becoming more of a bore than I used to be. People don't like such as I am very much. We are too inoffensive. However, love me still a little, for I feel by the disappointment of not seeing you, that it would have gone hard with me if you had meant to break your word. And I embrace you tenderly, dear old friend. G. Sand CXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Thursday I know nothing either of Chilly or la petite Fadette. In a few days I am going to make a tour of Normandy. I shall go through Paris. If you want to come around with me,--oh! but no, you don't travel about; well, we shall see each other in passing. I have certainly earned a little holiday. I have worked like a beast of burden. I need too to see some blue, but the blue of the sea will do, and you would like the blue of the artistic and literary firmament over our heads. Bah! that doesn't exist. Everything is prose, flat prose in the environment in which mankind has settled itself. It is only in isolating oneself a little that one can find in oneself the normal being again. I am resuming my letter interrupted for two days by my wounded hand which inconveniences me a good deal. I am not going to Normandy at all, my Lamberts whom I was going to see in Yport came back to Paris and my business calls me there too. I shall then see you next week probably, and I shall embrace you as if you were my dear big child. Why can't I put the rosy, tanned face of Aurore in the place of mine! She is not what you would call pretty, but she is adorable and so quick in comprehending that we all are astonished. She is as amusing in her chatter as a person,--who might be amusing. So I am going to be forced to start thinking about my business! It is the one thing of which I have a horror and which really troubles my serenity. You must console me by joking with me a little when you have the time. I shall see you soon, have courage in the sickening work of proof- reading. As for me I hurry over it quickly and badly, but you must not do as I do. My children send you their love and your troubadour loves you. G. Sand Saturday evening I have just received news from the Odeon. They are at work putting on my play and do not speak of anything else. CXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 6 September, 1869 They wrote me yesterday to come because they wanted me at the Opera- Comique. Here I am rue Gay-Lussac. When shall we meet? Tell me. All my days, are still free. I embrace you. G. Sand CXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 8 September, 1869 I send you back your handkerchief which you left in the carriage. It is surely tomorrow THURSDAY that we dine together? I have written to the big Marchal to come to Magny's too. Your troubadour G. Sand Wednesday morning. CXXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, Tuesday, 5 October, 1869 Where are you now, my dear troubadour? I am still writing to you at the boulevard du Temple, but perhaps you have taken possession of your delightful lodgings. I don't know the address although I have seen the house, the situation and the view.--I have been twice in the Ardennes and in a week or ten days, if Lina or Maurice does not come to Paris, as they have a slight desire to do, I shall leave again for Nohant. We must then meet and see each other. Here am I a little sfogata (eased) from my need for travel, and enchanted with what I have seen. Tell me what day except tomorrow, Wednesday, you can give me for dinner at Magny's or elsewhere with or without Plauchut, with whomever you wish provided I see you and embrace you. Your old comrade who loves you. G. Sand CXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND Dear good adored master, I have wanted for several days to write you a long letter in which I should tell you all that I have felt for a month. It is funny. I have passed through different and strange states. But I have neither the time nor the repose of mind to gather myself together enough. Don't be disturbed about your troubadour. He will always have "his independence and his liberty" because he will always do as he has always done. He has left everything rather than submit to any obligation whatsoever, and then, with age, one's needs lessen. I suffer no longer from not living in the Alhambra. What would do me good now, would be to throw myself furiously into Saint-Antoine, but I have not even the time to read. Listen to this: in the very beginning, your play was to come after Aisse; then it was agreed that it should come BEFORE. Now Chilly and Duquesnel want it to come after, simply and solely "to profit by the occasion," to profit by my poor Bouilhet's death. They will give you a "sort of compensation." Well, I am the owner and the master of Aisse just as if I were the author, and I do not want that. You understand, I do not want you to inconvenience yourself in anything. You think that I am as sweet as a lamb! Undeceive yourself, and act as if Aisse had never existed; and above all no sensitiveness? That would offend me. Between simple friends, one needs manners and politenesses; but between you and me, that would not seem at all suitable; we do not owe each other anything at all except to love each other. I think that the directors of the Odeon will regret Bouilhet in every way. I shall be less easy than he was at rehearsals. I should very much like to read Aisse to you so as to talk a little about it; some of the actors whom they propose are, to my way of thinking, impossible. It is hard to have to do with uneducated people. CXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Wednesday evening, 13 October, 1869 Our poor friend is not to be buried till the day after tomorrow, they will let me know where and when we ought to be there, I shall tell you by telegram. I have seen the directors twice. It was agreed this morning with Duquesnel that they should make an attempt with de la T(our) Saint- Y(bars). I yielded my turn to Aisse. I was not to come till March. I went back there this evening, Chilly IS UNWILLING, and Duquesnel, better informed than this morning, regards the step as useless and harmful. I then quoted my contract, my right. What a fine thing, the theatre! M. Saint-Ybars' contract antedates mine. They had thought le Batard would last two weeks and it will last forty days longer. Then La Tour Saint-Ybars precedes us [Footnote: This refers to l'Affranchi.] and I can not give up my turn to Aisse without being postponed till next year, which I'll do if you want me to; but it would do me a good deal of harm, for I have gotten into debt with the Revue and I must refill my purse.--Are directors rascals in all that? No, but incompetents who are always afraid of not having enough plays, and accept too many, foreseeing that they will have failures.--When they are successful, if the authors contracted for are ANGRY they have to go to court. I have no taste for disputes and the scandals of the side-scenes and the newspapers; and neither have you. What would be the result? Inadequate compensation and a deal of uproar for nothing. One needs patience in any event, I have it, and I tell you again if you are really upset at this delay, I am ready to sacrifice myself. With this I embrace you and I love you. G. Sand CXXXI. TO GEORGE SAND 14 October, 1869 Dear master, No! no sacrifices! so much the worse! If I did not look at Bouilhet's affairs as mine absolutely, I should have at once accepted your proposition. But: (1) it is my affair, (2) the dead must not hurt the living. But I am angry at these gentlemen, I do not hide it from you, for not having said anything to us about Latour Saint-Ybars. For the aforesaid Latour was engaged a long time ago. Why did we not know anything about him? In short, let Chilly write me the letter on which we agreed Wednesday, and let there be no more discussion about it. It seems to me that your play can be given the 15th of December, if l'Affranchi begins about the 20th of November. Two and a half months are about fifty performances; if you go beyond that, Aisse will not be presented till next year. Then, it is agreed, since we can not suppress Latour Saint-Ybars; you shall go after him and Aisse next, if I think it suitable. We shall meet Saturday at poor Sainte-Beuve's funeral. How the little band diminishes! How the few survivors of the Medusa's raft are disappearing! A thousand affectionate greetings. CXXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 20 or 21 October, 1869 Impossible, dear old beloved. Brebant is too far, I have so little time. And then I have made an engagement with Marchal and Berton at Magny's to say farewell. If you can come, I shall be very happy and on the other hand if it is going to make you ill, don't come, I know very well that you love me and shall not be angry with you about anything. G. Sand CXXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 15 Nov., 1869 What has become of you, my dear old beloved troubadour? are you correcting proof like a galley slave, up to the last minute? For the last two days they have been announcing your book FOR TOMORROW. I am looking for it with impatience, for you are not going to forget me, are you? You will be praised and condemned; you expect that. You are too truly superior not to arouse envy and you don't care, do you? Nor I either for you. You have the strength to be stimulated by what discourages others. There will certainly be a rumpus; your subject will be quite opportune in this time of REVOLUTIONISTS. The good progressives, the true democrats will approve of you. The idiots will be furious, and you will say: "Come weal, come woe!" I am also correcting proof of Pierre qui roule and I have half finished a new novel which will not make much of a stir; that is all that I ask for at the moment. I work alternately on MY novel, the one that I like, and on the one that the Revue does not dislike as much, but which I like very little. It is arranged that way; I don't know if I am making a mistake. Perhaps those which I like are the worst. But I have stopped worrying about myself, so far as I have ever done so. Life has always taken me out of myself, and so it will to the end. My heart is always affected to the detriment of my head. At present it is my little children who devour all my intellect; Aurore is a jewel, a nature before which I bow in admiration; will it last like that? You are going to spend the winter in Paris, and I, I don't know when I shall go. The success of le Batard continues; but I am not impatient, you have promised to come as soon as you are free, at Christmas at the very latest, to keep revel with us. I think only of that, and if you break your word we shall be in despair here. With this I embrace you with a full heart as I love you. G. Sand CXXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris Nohant, 30 November, 1869 Dear friend of my heart, I wanted to reread your book [Footnote: l'Education sentimentale.]; my daughter-in-law has read it too, and some of my young people, all readers in earnest and of the first rank and not stupid at all. We are all of the same opinion, that it is a beautiful book, equal in strength to the best ones of Balzac and truer, that is to say more faithful to the truth from one end to the other. One needs the great art, the exquisite form and the severity of your work to do without flowers of fancy. However, you throw poetry with a full hand on your picture, whether your characters understand it or not. Rosanette at Fontainebleau does not know on what grass she walks and nevertheless she is poetic. All that issues from a master's hand, and your place is well won for always. Live then as calmly as possible in order to last a long time and to produce a great deal. I have seen two short articles which did not seem to me to rebel against your success; but I hardly know what is going on, politics seems to me to absorb everything. Keep me posted. If they did not do justice to you I should be angry and should say what I think. It is my right. I don't know exactly when, but during the month, I shall go without doubt to embrace you and to get you, if I can pry you loose from Paris. My children still count on it, and all of us send you our praises and our affectionate greetings. Yours, your old troubadour G. Sand CXXXV. TO GEORGE SAND Dear good master, Your old troubadour is vehemently slandered by the papers. Read the Constitutionnel of last Monday, the Gaulois of this morning, it is blunt and plain. They call me idiotic and common. Barbey d'Aurevilly's article (Constitutionnel) is a model of this character, and the good Sarcey's, although less violent, is in no way behind it. These gentlemen object in the name of morality and the Ideal! I have also been annihilated in le Figaro and in Paris, by Cesana and Duranty. I most profoundly don't care a fig! but that does not make me any the less astonished by so much hatred and bad faith. La Tribune, le Pays and l'Opinion nationale on the other hand have highly praised me...As for the friends, the persons who received a copy adorned by my hand, they have been afraid of compromising themselves and have talked to me of other things. The brave are few. The book is selling very well nevertheless, in spite of politics, and Levy appears satisfied. I know that the bourgeois of Rouen are furious with me "because of pere Roque and the cancan at the Tuileries." They think that one ought to prevent the publication of books like that (textual), that I lend a hand to the Reds, that I am capable of inflaming revolutionary passions, etc., etc. In short, I have received very few laurels, up to now, and no rose leaf hurts me. I told you, didn't I, that I was working over the fairy play? I am doing now a description of the races and I have cut out all that seemed to me hackneyed. Raphael Felix didn't seem to me eager to become acquainted with it. Problem! All the papers cite as a proof of my depravity, the episode of the Turkish woman, which they misrepresent, naturally; and Sarcey compares me to Marquis de Sade, whom he confesses he has not read! All that does not upset me at all. But I wonder what use there is in printing my book? CXXXVI. TO GEORGE SAND Tuesday, 4 o'clock, 7 December, 1869 Dear master, Your old troubadour is being jumped on in an unheard of manner. Those people who have read my novel are afraid to talk to me of it lest they compromise themselves or out of pity for me. The more indulgent declare I have made only pictures and that both composition and plan are quite lacking. Saint-Victor, who puffs the books of Arsene Houssaye, won't write articles on mine, finding it too bad. There you are. Theo is away, and no one, absolutely no one takes my defense. Another story: yesterday Raphael and Michel Levy listened to the reading of the fairy play. Applause, enthusiasm. I saw the moment during the reading in which the contract was going to be signed. Raphael so well understood the play that he gave me two or three EXCELLENT criticisms. I found him in other ways a charming boy. He asked me until Saturday to give me a definite answer. Then a little while ago, a letter (very polite) from the aforesaid Raphael in which he declares that the fairy play would entail expenses that would be too much for him. Ditched again. I must look elsewhere. Nothing new at the Odeon. Sarcey has published a second article against me. Barbey d'Aurevilly claims that I dirty a stream by washing myself in it (sic). All that does not bother me at all. CXXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Thursday, two o'clock in the morning, December 9, 1869 My comrade, it is finished, the article shall go tomorrow. I address it to whom? Answer by telegram. I have a mind to send it to Girardin. But perhaps you have a better idea, I really don't know the importance and the credit of the various papers. Send me a suitable name and ADDRESS by telegram; I have Girardin's. I am not content with my prose, I have had the fever and a sort of sprain for two days. But we must make haste. I embrace you. G. Sand CXXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND 10 December, Friday, 10 o'clock in the evening, 1869 Dear master, good as good bread, I have just sent you by telegraph this message: "To Girardin." La Liberte will publish your article, at once. What do you think of my friend Saint-Victor, who has refused to write an article about it because he finds "the book bad"? you have not such a conscience as that, have you? I continue to be rolled in the mud. La Gironde calls me Prudhomme. That seems new to me. How shall I thank you? I feel the need of saying affectionate things to you. I have so many in my heart that not one comes to the tips of my fingers. What a splendid woman you are and what a splendid man! To say nothing of all the other things! CXXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, Friday to Saturday during the night, 10 to 11 December, 1869 I have rewritten my article [Footnote: The article, Sur l'Education sentimentale, de Flaubert, was printed in the Questions d'art et de litterature, Calmann-Levy, p. 415.] today and this evening, I am better, it is clearer. I am expecting your telegram tomorrow. If you do not put your veto on it, I shall send the article to Ulbach, who begins his paper the 15th of this month; he wrote to me this morning to beg me urgently for any article I would send him. I think this first number will be widely read, and it would be good publicity. Michel Levy would be a better judge than we as to what is the best to do: consult him. You seem astonished at the ill will. You are too simple. You do not know how original your book is, and how many personal feelings must be offended by the force it contains. You think you are doing things that will pass as a letter in the mail; ah! well, yes! I have insisted on the PLAN of your book; that is what they understand the least and it is what is the most important. I tried to show the ordinary people how they should read; for it is the ordinary people who make successes. The clever ones don't like the successes of others. I don't pay attention to the malicious; it would honor them too much. G. S. My mother has your telegram and is sending her manuscript to Girardin. 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Lina CXL. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 14 December, 1869 I do not see my article coming out, but others are appearing which are bad and unjust. One's enemies are always better served than one's friends. And then, when one frog begins to croak, all the others follow suit. After a certain reverence has been violated every one tries to see who can best jump on the shoulders of the statue; it is always like that. You are undergoing the disadvantages of having a style that is not yet familiar through repetition, and all are making idiots of themselves so as not to see it. ABSOLUTE IMPERSONALITY is debatable, and I do not accept it ABSOLUTELY; but I wonder that Saint-Victor who has preached it so much and has criticised my plays because they were not IMPERSONAL, should abandon you instead of defending you. Criticism is in a sad way; too much theory! Don't be troubled by all that and keep straight on. Don't attempt a system, obey your inspiration. What fine weather, at least with us, and we are getting ready for our Christmas festivals with the family at home. I told Plauchut to try to carry you off; we are expecting him. If you can't come with him, come at least for the Christmas Eve revels and to escape from Paris on New Year's day; it is so boring there then! Lina charges me to say to you that you are authorized to wear your wrapper and slippers continually. There are no ladies, no strangers. In short you will make us very happy and you have promised for a long time. I embrace you and I am still more angry than you at these attacks, but I am not overcome, and if I had you here we should stimulate each other so well that you would start off again at once on the other leg to write a new novel. I embrace you. Your old troubadour, G. Sand CXLI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 17 December, 1869 Plauchut writes us that YOU PROMISE to come the 24th. Do come the 23d in the evening, so as to be rested for the night of the 24th to the 25th and join in our Christmas Eve revels. Otherwise you will arrive from Paris tired and sleepy and our follies will not amuse you. You are coming to the house of children, I warn you, and as you are kind and affectionate, you love children. Did Plauchut tell you to bring a wrapper and slippers, for we do not want to sentence you to dressing up? I add that I am counting on your bringing some manuscript. The FAIRY PLAY re-done, Saint-Antoine, whatever you have finished. I hope indeed that you are in the mood for work. Critics are a challenge that stimulates. Poor Saint-Rene Taillandier is as asininely pedantic as the Revue. Aren't they prudish in that set? I am in a pet with Girardin. I know very well that I am not strong in letters; I am not sufficiently cultivated for these gentlemen; but the good public reads me and listens to me all the same. If you did not come, we should be unhappy and you would be a big ingrate. Do you want me to send a carriage for you to Chateauroux on the 23d at four o'clock? I am afraid that you may be uncomfortable in that stage-coach which makes the run, and it is so easy to spare you two and a half hours of discomfort! We embrace you full of hope. I am working like an ox so as to have my novel finished and not to have to think of it a minute when you are here. G. Sand CXLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 19 December, 1869 So women are in it too? Come, forget that persecution here, at a hundred thousand leagues from Parisian and literary life, or rather come be glad of it, for these great slatings are the sure proof of great worth. Tell yourself indeed that those who have not gone through that are GOOD FOR THE ACADEMY. Our letters crossed. I begged you and I beg you again not to come Christmas Eve, but the night before so as to join in the revels the next night, the Eve, that is to say, the 24th. This is the program: we dine promptly at six o'clock, we have the Christmas tree and the marionettes for the children, so, that they can go to bed at nine o'clock. After that we chatter, and sup at midnight. But the diligence gets here at the earliest at half past six, and we should not dine till seven o'clock, which would make impossible the great joy of our little ones who would be kept up too late. So you must start Thursday 23d at nine o'clock in the morning, so that everyone may be perfectly comfortable, so that everyone may have time to embrace everyone else, and so that no one may be interrupted in the joy of your arrival on account of the imperious and silly darlings. You must stay with us a very long time, a very long time, we shall have some more follies for New Year's day, and for Twelfth Night. This is a crazy happy house and it is the time of holiday after work. I am finishing tonight my year's task. Seeing you, dear old well-beloved friend, would be my recompense: do not refuse me. G. Sand Plauchut is hunting today with the prince, and perhaps will not return till Tuesday. I am writing him to wait for you till Thursday, you will be less bored on the way. I have just written to Girardin to complain. CXLIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 31 December, 1869 We hoped to have a word from you this morning. This sudden cold is so severe, I dreaded it for your trip. We know you got to Chateauroux all right. But did you find a compartment, and didn't you suffer on the way? Reassure us. We were so happy to have you with us that we should be distressed if you had to suffer for this WINTER escapade. All goes well here and all of us adore one another. It is New Year's Eve. We send your share of the kisses that we are giving one another. G. Sand CXLIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 9 January, 1870 I have had so much proof to correct that I am stupefied with it. I needed that to console me for your departure, troubadour of my heart, and for another departure also, that of my drudge of a Plauchmar--and still another departure, that of my grand-nephew Edme, my favorite, the one who played the marionettes with Maurice. He has passed his examinations for collector and goes to Pithiviers- -unless by pull, we could get him as substitute at La Chatre. Do you know M. Roy, the head of the management of the domains? If by chance the princess knew him and would be willing to say a word to him in favor of young Simonnet? I should be happy to owe her this joy for his family and this economy for his mother who is poor. It appears that it is very easy to obtain and that no rule opposes it. But one must HAVE PULL; a word to the princess, a line from M. Roy and our tears would change to joy. That child is very dear to me. He is so loving and so good! They had hard work to bring him up, he was always ill, always dandled on the knees and always gentle and sweet. He has a great deal of intelligence and he works well at La Chatre, where his chief the collector adores him and mourns for him also. Well, do what you can, if you can do anything at all. They continue to damn your book. That doesn't prevent it from being a fine and good book. Justice will come later, JUSTICE IS ALWAYS DONE. Apparently it did not come at the right moment, or rather it came too soon. It has demonstrated too well the disorder that reigns in people's minds. It has rubbed the open wound, people recognize themselves too well in it. Everyone adores you here and our consciences are too pure to be upset at the truth: we talk of you every day. Yesterday, Lina said to me that she admired very much all you do, but that she preferred Salammbo to your modern descriptions. If you had been in a corner, this is what you would have heard from her, from me, and from THE OTHERS: "He is taller and larger than the average person. His mind is like him, beyond ordinary proportions. In that he is like Victor Hugo, at least as much as like Balzac, but he has the taste and discernment that Hugo lacks, and he is an artist which Balzac was not.--Is he then more than both? Chi lo sa?--He hasn't let himself out yet. The enormous volume of his brain troubles him. He doesn't know if he is a poet or a realist; and the fact that he is both, hinders him.--He must get straightened out in his different lines of effort. He sees everything and wants to grasp everything at once.--He is not the cut of the public that wants to eat in little mouthfuls, whom large pieces choke. But the public will go to him, just the same, when it understands.--It will even go rather quickly if the author CONDESCENDS to be willing to be quite understood.--For that, perhaps there will have to be asked some concessions to the indolence of its mind. One ought to reflect before daring to give this advice." That sums up what we said. It is not useless to know the opinion of good people and of young people. The youngest say that l'Education sentimentale made them sad. They did not come across themselves in it, they who have not yet lived; but they have illusions and they say: "Why does this man, so good, so kind, so gay, so simple, so sympathetic, wish to discourage us from living?" What they say is poorly reasoned out, but as it is instinctive, perhaps it ought to be taken into account. Aurore talks of you and still cradles her baby in her lap; Gabrielle calls Punch, HER LITTLE ONE, and will not eat her dinner unless he is opposite her. They are our continual idols, these brats. Yesterday, I received, after your letter of the day before, a letter from Berton, who thinks that they will not play l'Affranchi longer than the 18th or the 20th. Wait for me, since you can delay your departure a little. It is too bad weather to go to Croisset; it is always an effort for me to leave my dear nest to go to attend to my miserable profession; but the effort is less when I hope to find you in Paris. I embrace you for myself and for all my brood. G. Sand CXLV. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday afternoon. Dear master, Your commission was done yesterday at one o'clock. The princess in my presence took some notes on what you wanted, in order to look after it at once. She seemed to me very glad to do you a service. People talk of nothing but the death of Noir! The general sentiment is fear, nothing else! Into what miserable ways we are plunged! There is so much imbecility in the air that one gets ferocious. I am less indignant than disgusted! What do you think of these gentlemen who come to confer armed with pistols and sword canes! And of this person, of this prince, who lives in the midst of an arsenal and makes use of it? Pretty! Pretty! What a sweet letter you wrote me day before yesterday! But your friendship blinds you, dear good master. I do not belong to the tribe you mention. I am acquainted with myself, I know what I lack! And I am enormously lacking. In losing my poor Bouilhet, I lost my midwife, it was he who saw into my thought more clearly than I did myself. His death has left a void that I notice more each day. What is the use of making concessions? Why force oneself? I am quite resolved, on the contrary, to write in future for my personal satisfaction, and without any constraint. Come what may! CXLVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 15 January, 1870 L'Affranchi is for Tuesday. I am working hurriedly to finish my corrections and I leave Tuesday morning. Come to dine with me at Magny's at six o'clock. Can you? If not, am I to keep a seat for you in my box? A word during the day of Tuesday, to my lodgings. You won't be forced to swallow down the entire performance if it bores you. I love you and I embrace you for myself and for my brood. Thank you for Edme. G. Sand CXLVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 19 January, 1870 Dear friend of my heart, I did not see you in the theatre. The play applauded and hissed, more applauded than hissed. Barton very beautiful, Sarah very pretty, but no interest in the characters and too many second-rate actors, not good.--I do not think that it is a success. I am better. Yet I am not bold enough to go to your house Saturday and to return from such a distance in this severe cold. I saw Theo this evening, I told him to come to dine with us both on Saturday at Magny's. Do say yes, it is I who invite you, and we shall have a quiet private room. After that we will smoke at my place. Plauchut would not be able to go to you. He was invited to the prince's. A word if it is NO. Nothing if it is yes. So I don't want you to write to me. I saw Tourgueneff and I told him all that I think of him. He was as surprised as a child. We spoke ill of you. Wednesday evening. CXLVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT The 5th or the 6th February, 1870 (On the back of a letter from Edme Simonnet) I don't see you, you come to the Odeon and when they tell me that you are there, I hurry and don't find you. Do set a day then when you will come to eat a chop with me. Your old exhausted troubadour who loves you. CXLIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 15 February, 1870 My troubadour, we are two old rattle traps. As for me, I have had a bad attack of bronchitis and I am just out of bed. Now I am recovered but not yet out of my room. I hope to resume my work at the Odeon in a couple of days. Do get well, don't go out, at least unless the thaw is not very bad. My play is for the 22d. [Footnote: This refers to L'Autre.] I hope very much to see you on that day. And meanwhile, I kiss you and I love you, G. Sand Tuesday evening CL. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Sunday evening, 20th February, 1870 I went out today for the first time, I am better without being well. I am anxious at not having news about that reading of the fairy play. Are you satisfied? Did they understand? L'Autre will take place on Thursday, or Friday at the latest. Will your nephew and niece go to the gallery or the balcony seats? Impossible to have a box. If yes, a word and I will send these seats out of my allotment--which, as usual, will not be grand. Your old troubadour. CLI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, February, 1870 It is for Friday. Then I am disposing of the two seats that I intended for your niece. If you have a moment free, and come to the Odeon that night, you will find me in the manager's box, proscenium, ground floor. I am heavy-hearted about all you tell me. Here you are again in gloom, sorrow and chagrin. Poor dear friend! Let us continue to hope that you will save your patient, but you are ill too, and I am very anxious about you, I was quite overwhelmed by it this evening, when I got your note, and I have no more heart for anything. A word when you can, to give me news. G. Sand CLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 2d March, 1870 Poor dear friend, your troubles distress me, you have too many blows in quick succession, and I am going away Saturday morning leaving you in the midst of all these sorrows! Do you want to come to Nohant with me, for a change of air, even if only for two or three days? I have a compartment, we should be alone and my carriage is waiting for me at Chateauroux. You could be sad without constraint at our house, we also have mourning in the family. A change of lodging, of faces, of habits, sometimes does physical good. One does not forget one's sorrow, but one forces one's body to endure it. I embrace you with all my soul. A word and I expect you. Wednesday evening. CLIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 11 March, 1870 How are you, my poor child? I am glad to be here in the midst of my darling family, but I am unhappy all the same at having left you melancholy, ill and upset. Send me news, a word at least, and be assured that we all are unhappy over your troubles and sufferings. G. Sand CLIV. TO GEORGE SAND 17 March, 1870 Dear master, I received a telegram yesterday evening from Madame Cornu containing these words: "Come to me, urgent business." I therefore hurried to her today, and here is the story. The Empress maintains that you made some very unkind allusions to her in the last number of the Revue! "What about me, whom all the world is attacking now! I should not have believed that! and I wanted to have her nominated for the Academy! But what have I done to her? etc., etc." In short, she is distressed, and the Emperor too! He is not indignant but prostrated (sic). [Footnote: Malgre tout, Calmann-Levy, 1870.] Madame Cornu explained to her that she was mistaken and that you had not intended to make any allusion to her. Hereupon a theory of the manner in which novels are written. --Oh well, then, let her write in the papers that she did not intend to wound me. --But she will not do that, I answered. --Write to her to tell you so. --I will not allow myself to take that step. --But I would like to know the truth, however! Do you know someone who...then Madame Cornu mentioned me. --Oh, don't say that I spoke to you of it! Such is the dialogue that Madame Cornu reported to me. She wants you to write me a letter in which you tell me that the Empress was not used by you as a model. I shall send that letter to Madame Cornu who will have it given to the Empress. I think that story stupid and those people are very sensitive! Much worse things than that are told to us. Now dear master of the good God, you must do exactly what you please. The Empress has always been very kind to me and I should not be sorry to do her a favor. I have read the famous passage. I see nothing in it to hurt her. But women's brains are so queer! I am very tired in mine (my brain) or rather it is very low for the moment! However hard I work, it doesn't go! Everything irritates me and hurts me; and since I restrain myself before people, I give way from time to time to floods of tears when it seems to me as if I should burst. At last I am experiencing an entirely new sensation: the approach of old age. The shadow invades me, as Victor Hugo would say. Madame Cornu has spoken to me enthusiastically of a letter you wrote her on a method of teaching. CLV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 17 March, 1870 I won't have it, you are not getting old. Not in the crabbed and MISANTHROPIC sense. On the contrary, when one is good, one becomes better, and, as you are already better than most others, you ought to become exquisite. You are boasting, moreover, when you undertake to be angry against everyone and everything. You could not. You are weak before sorrow, like all affectionate people. The strong are those who do not love. You will never be strong, and that is so much the better. You must not live alone any more; when strength returns you must really live and not shut it up for yourself alone. For my part, I am hoping that you will be reborn with the springtime. Today we have rain which relaxes, tomorrow we shall have the animating sun. We are all just getting over illnesses, our children had very bad colds, Maurice quite upset by lameness with a cold, I taken again by chills and anemia: I am very patient and I prevent the others as much as I can from being impatient, there is everything in that; impatience with evil always doubles the evil. When shall we be WISE as the ancients understood it? That, in substance, meant being PATIENT, nothing else. Come, dear troubadour, you must be a little patient, to begin with, and then you can get accustomed to it; if we do not work on ourselves, how can we hope to be always in shape to work on others? Well, in the midst of all that, don't forget that we love you and that the hurt you give yourself hurts us too. I shall go to see you and to shake you as soon as I have regained my feet and my will, which are both backward; I am waiting, I know that they will return. Affectionate greetings from all our invalids. Punch has lost only his fiddle and he is still smiling and well gilded. Lolo's baby has had misfortunes, but its clothes dress other dolls. As for me, I can flap only one wing, but I kiss you and I love you. G. Sand CLVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 19 March, 1870 I know, my friend, that you are very devoted to her. I know that she [Footnote: Letter written about the rumour current, that George Sand had meant to depict the Empress in one of the chief characters of her novel, Malgre tout; the letter was sent by Flaubert to Madame Cornu, god-child of Queen Hortense, and foster-sister of Napoleon III.] is very kind to unfortunates who have been recommended to her; that is all that I know of her private life. I have never had any revelation nor document about her, NOT A WORD, NOT A DEED, which would authorize me to depict her. So I have drawn only a figure of fancy, I swear it, and those who pretended to recognize her in a satire would be, in any case, bad servants and bad friends. But I don't write satires: I am ignorant even of the meaning of the word. I don't write PORTRAITS either; it is not my style. I invent. The public, who does not know in what invention consists, thinks it sees everywhere models. It is mistaken and it degrades art. This is my SINCERE answer, I have only enough time to mail it. G. Sand CLVII. To MADAME HORTENSE CORNU Your devotion was alarmed wrongly, dear madame, I was sure of it! Here is the answer that came to me by return mail. People in society, I reiterate, see allusions where there are none. When I did Madame Bovary I was asked many times: "Is it Madame X. whom you meant to depict?" and I received letters from perfectly unknown people, among others one from a gentleman in Rheims who congratulated me on HAVING AVENGED HIM! (against a faithless one). Every pharmacist in Seine-Inferieure recognizing himself in Homais, wanted to come to my house to box my ears. But the best (I discovered it five years later) is that there was then in Africa the wife of an army doctor named Madame Bovaries who was like Madame Bovary, a name I had invented by altering that of Bouvaret. The first sentence of our friend Maury in talking to me about l'Education sentimentale was this: "Did you know X, an Italian, a professor of mathematics? Your Senecal is his physical and moral portrait! Everything is exact even to the cut of his hair!" Others assert that I meant to depict in Arnoux, Bernard Latte (the former editor), whom I have never seen, etc., etc. All that is to tell you, dear madame, that the public is mistaken in attributing to us intentions which we do not have. I was very sure that Madame Sand had not intended to make any portrait; (1) because of her loftiness of mind, her taste, her reverence for art, and (2) because of her character, her feeling for the conventions--and also FOR JUSTICE. I even think, between ourselves, that this accusation has hurt her a little. The papers roll us in the dirt every day without our ever answering them, we whose business it is, however, to wield the pen, and they think that in order to MAKE AN EFFECT, to be applauded, we are going to attack such and such a one. Oh! no! not so humble! our ambition is higher, and our courtesy greater.--When one thinks highly of one's mind one does not choose the necessary means to please the crowd. You understand me, don't you? But enough of this. I shall come to see you one of these days. Looking forward to that with pleasure, dear madame, I kiss your hands and am entirely yours, Gustave Flaubert Sunday evening. CLVIII. TO GEORGE SAND March, 1870 Dear master, I have just sent your letter (for which I thank you) to Madame Cornu, enclosing it in a letter from your troubadour, in which I permitted myself to give bluntly my conception of things. The two letters will be placed under the eyes of the LADY and will teach her a little about aesthetics. I saw l'Autre last evening, and I wept several times. It did me good, really! How tender and exalting it is! What a charming work and how they love the author! I missed you. I wanted to give you a kiss like a little child. My oppressed heart is easier, thank you. I think that it will get better! There were a lot of people there. Berton and his son were recalled twice. CLIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 3 April, 1870 Your old troubadour has passed through cruel anguish, Maurice has been seriously, dangerously ill.[Footnote: With diptheria.] Favre, MY OWN doctor, the only one in whom I have confidence, hastened to us in time. After that Lolo had violent attacks of fever, other terrors! At last our savior went off this morning leaving us almost tranquil and our invalids went out to walk in the garden for the first time.--But they still want a great deal of care and oversight, and I shall not leave them for two or three weeks. If then you are awaiting me in Paris, and the sun calls you elsewhere, have no regret about it. I shall try to go to see you in Croisset from Paris between the dawn and the dusk sometime. At least tell me how you are, what you are doing, if you are on your feet in every way. My invalids and my well ones send you their affectionate regards, and I kiss you as I love you; it is not little. G. Sand My friend Favre has quite a FANCY for you and wants to know you. He is not a physician who seeks practice, he only practices for his friends, and he is offended if they want to pay him. YOUR PERSONALITY interests him, that is all, and I have promised to present him to you, if you are willing. He is something more than a physician, I don't know what exactly, A SEEKER--after what?-- EVERYTHING. He is amusing, original and interesting to the utmost degree. You must tell me if you want to see him, otherwise I shall manage for him not to think of it any more. Answer about this matter. CLX. TO GEORGE SAND Monday morning, 11 o'clock I felt that something unpleasant had happened to you, because I had just written to you for news when your letter was brought to me this morning. I fished mine back from the porter; here is a second one. Poor dear master! How uneasy you must have been and Madame Maurice also. You do not tell me what he had (Maurice). In a few days before the end of the week, write to confirm to me that everything has turned out well. The trouble lies, I think, with the abominable winter from which we are emerging! One hears of nothing but illnesses and funerals! My poor servant is still at the Dubois hospital, and I am distressed when I go to see him. For two months now he has been confined to his bed suffering horribly. As for me, I am better. I have read prodigiously. I have overworked, but now I am almost on my feet again. The mass of gloom that I have in the depths of my heart is a little larger, that is all. But, in a little while, I hope that it will not be noticed. I spend my days in the library of the Institute. The Arsenal library lends me books that I read in the evening, and I begin again the next day. I shall return home to Croisset the first of May. But I shall see you before then. Everything will get right again with the sun. The lovely lady in question made to me, for you, the most proper excuses, asserting to me that "she never had any intention of insulting genius." Certainly, I shall be glad to meet M. Favre; since he is a friend of yours I shall like him. CLXI. TO GEORGE SAND Tuesday morning Dear master, It is not staying in Paris that wears me out, but the series of misfortunes that I have had during the last eight months! I am not working too much, for what would become of me without work? However, it is very hard for me to be reasonable. I am overwhelmed by a black melancholy, which returns a propos of everything and nothing, many times a day. Then, it passes and it begins again. Perhaps it is because it is too long since I have written anything. Nervous reservoirs are exhausted. As soon as I am at Croisset, I shall begin the article about my poor Bouilhet, a painful and sad task which I am in a hurry to finish, so as to set to work at Saint- Antoine. As that is an extravagant subject, I hope it will divert me. I have seen your physician, M. Favre, who seemed to me very strange and a little mad, between ourselves. He ought to like me for I let him talk all the time. There are high lights in his talk, things which sparkle for a moment, then one sees not a ray. CLXII. TO GEORGE SAND Paris, Thursday M. X.----sent me news of you on Saturday: so now I know that everything is going well with you, and that you have no more uneasiness, dear master. But you, personally, how are you? The two weeks are almost up, and I do not see you coming. My mood continues not to be sportive. I am still given up to abominable readings, but it is time that I stopped for I am beginning to be disgusted with my subject. Are you reading Taine's powerful book? I have gobbled it down, the first volume with infinite pleasure. In fifty years perhaps that will be the philosophy that will be taught in the colleges. And the preface to the Idees de M. Aubray? How I long to see you and to jabber with you! CLXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 16 April, 1870 What ought I to say to Levy so that he will take the first steps? Tell me again how things are, for my memory is poor. You had sold him one volume for ten thousand;--there are two, he himself told me that that would be twenty thousand. What has he paid you up to now? What words did you exchange at the time of this payment? Answer, and I act. Things are going better and better here, the little ones well again, Maurice recovering nicely, I tired from having watched so much and from watching yet, for he has to drink and wash out his mouth during the night, and I am the only one in the house who has the faculty of keeping awake. But I am not ill, and I work a little now and then while loafing about. As soon as I can leave, I shall go to Paris. If you are still there, it will be A PIECE OF GOOD LUCK, but I do not dare to wish you to prolong your slavery there, for I can see that you are still ill and that you are working too hard. Croisset will cure you if you consent to take care of yourself. I embrace you tenderly for myself and for all the family which adores you. G. Sand CLXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 20 May, 1870 It is a very long time since I have had news of my old troubadour. You must be in Croisset. If it is as warm there as it is here, you must be suffering; here it is 34 degrees in the shade, and in the night, 24. Maurice has had a bad relapse of sore throat, without membranes this time, and without danger. But the inflammation was so bad that for three days he could hardly swallow even a little water and wine. Bouillon did not go down. At last this excessive heat has cured him, it suits us all here, for Lina went to Paris this morning vigorous and strong. Maurice gardens all day. The children are gay and get prettier while you look at them. As for me, I am not accomplishing anything; I have too much to do taking care of and watching my boy, and now that the little mother is away, the little children absorb me. I work, however, planning and dreaming. That will be so much done when I can scribble. I am still ON MY FEET, as Doctor Favre says. No old age yet, or rather normal old age, the calmness ... OF VIRTUE, that thing that people ridicule, and that I mention in mockery, but that corresponds by an emphatic and silly word, to a condition of forced inoffensiveness, without merit in consequence, but agreeable and good to experience. It is a question of rendering it useful to art when one believes in that, to the family and to friendship when one cares for that; I don't dare to say how very simple and primitive I am in this respect. It is the fashion to ridicule it, but let them. I do not want to change. There is my SPRING examination of my conscience, so as not to think all summer about anything except what is not myself. Come, you, your health first? And this sadness, this discontent that Paris has left with you, is it forgotten? Are there no longer any painful external circumstances? You have been too much shaken also. Two of your dearest friends gone one after the other. There are periods in life when destiny is ferocious to us. You are too young to concentrate on the idea of REGAINING your affections in a better world, or in this world made better. So you must, at your age (and at mine I still try to), become more attached to what remains. You wrote that to me when I lost Rollinat, my double in this life, the veritable friend whose feeling for the differences between the sexes had never hurt our pure affection, even when we were young. He was my Bouilhet and more than that; for to my heart's intimacy was joined a religious reverence for a real type of moral courage, which had undergone all trials with a sublime SWEETNESS. I have OWED him everything that is good in me, I am trying to keep it for love of him. Is there not a heritage that our beloved dead leave us? The despair that would make us abandon ourselves would be a treason to them and an ingratitude. Tell me that you are calm and soothed, that you are not working too much and that you are working well. I am not without some anxiety because I have not had a letter from you for a long time. I did not want to ask for one till I could tell you that Maurice was quite well again; he embraces you, and the children do not forget you. As for me, I love you. G. Sand CLXV. TO GEORGE SAND No, dear master! I am not ill, but I have been busy with moving from Paris and with getting settled in Croisset. Then my mother has been very much indisposed. She is well now; then I have had to set in order the rest of my poor Bouilhet's papers, on whom I have begun the article. I wrote this week nearly six pages, which was very good for me; this work is very painful in every way. The difficulty is in knowing what not to say. I shall console myself a little in blurting out two or three dogmatic opinions on the art of writing. It will be an opportunity to express what I think; a sweet thing and one I am always deprived of. You say very lovely and also good things to me to restore my courage. I have hardly any, but I am acting as if I had, which perhaps comes to the same thing. I feel no longer the need of writing, for I used to write especially for one person alone, who is no more. That is the truth! And yet I shall continue to write. But I have no more liking for it; the fascination is gone. There are so few people who like what I like, who are anxious about what I am interested in! Do you know in this Paris, which is so large, one SINGLE house where they talk about literature? And when it happens to be touched on incidentally, it is always on its subordinate and external sides, such as the question of success, of morality, of utility, of its timeliness, etc. It seems to me that I am becoming a fossil, a being unrelated to the surrounding world. I would not ask anything better than to cast myself on some new affection. But how? Almost all my old friends are married officials, thinking of their little business the entire year, of the hunt during vacation and of whist after dinner. I don't know one of them who would be capable of passing an afternoon with me reading a poet. They have their business; I, I have none. Observe that I am in the same social position that I was at eighteen. My niece whom I love as my daughter, does not live with me, and my poor good simple mother has become so old that all conversation with her (except about her health) is impossible. All that makes an existence which is not diverting. As for the ladies, "my little locality" furnishes none of them, and then,--even so! I have nevver been able to put Venus an Apollo in the same coop. It is one or the other, being a man of excess, a gentleman entirely given over to what he does. I repeat to myself the phrase of Goethe: "Go forward beyond the tombs," and I hope to get used to the emptiness, but nothing more. The more I know you, yourself, the more I admire you; how strong you are! Aside from a little Spinoza and Plutarch, I have read nothing since my return, as I am quite occupied by my present work. It is a task that will take me up to the end of July. I am in a hurry to be through with it, so as to abandon myself to the extravagances of the good Saint-Antoine, but I am afraid of not being SUFFICIENTLY IN THE MOOD. That is a charming story, Mademoiselle Hauterive, isn't it? This suicide of lovers to escape misery ought to inspire fine moral phrases from Prudhomme. As for me, I understand it. What they did is not American, but how Latin and antique it is! They were not strong, but perhaps very sensitive. CLXVI. TO GEORGE SAND Sunday, 26 June, 1870 You forget your troubadour who has just buried another friend! From the seven that we used to be at the beginning of the dinners at Magny's, we are only three now! I am gorged with coffins like an old cemetery! I am having enough of them, frankly. And in the midst of all that I keep on working! I finished yesterday, such as it is, the article on my poor Bouilhet. I am going to see if there is not some way of reviving one of his comedies in prose. After that I shall set to work on Saint-Antoine. And you, dear master, what is happening to you and all your family? My niece is in the Pyrenees, and I am living alone with my mother, who is becoming deafer and deafer, so that my existence lacks diversion absolutely. I should like to go to sleep on a warm beach. But for that I lack time and money. So I must push on my scratches and grub as hard as possible. I shall go to Paris at the beginning of August. Then I shall spend all the month of October there for the rehearsals of Aisse. My vacation will be confined to a week spent in Dieppe towards the end of August. There are my plans. It was distressing, the funeral of Jules Goncourt. Theo wept buckets full. CLXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 27 June, 1870 Another grief for you, my poor old friend. I too have a great one, I mourn for Barbes, one of my religions, one of those beings who make one reconciled with humanity. As for you, you miss poor Jules [Footnote: De Goncourt.] and you pity the unhappy Edmond. You are perhaps in Paris, so as to try to console him. I have just written him, and I feel that you are struck again in your affections. What an age! Every one is dying, everything is dying, and the earth is dying also, eaten up by the sun and the wind. I don't know where I get the courage to keep on living in the midst of these ruins. Let us love each other to the end. You write me very little, I am worried about you. G. Sand CLXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND Saturday evening, 2 July, 1870 Dear good master, Barbes' death has saddened me because of you. We, both of us, have our mourning. What a succession of deaths during a year! I am as dazed by them as if I had been hit on the head with a stick. What troubles me (for we refer everything to ourselves), is the terrible solitude in which I live. I have no longer anyone, I mean anyone with whom to converse, "who is interested today in eloquence and style." Aside from you and Tourgueneff, I don't know a living being to whom to pour out my soul about those things which I have most at heart; and you live far away from me, both of you! However, I continue to write. I have resolved to start at my Saint- Antoine tomorrow or the day after. But to begin a protracted effort I need a certain lightness which I lack just now. I hope, however, that this extravagant work is going to get hold of me. Oh! how I would like not to think any more of my poor Moi, of my miserable carcass! It is getting on very well, my carcass. I sleep tremendously! "The coffer is good," as the bourgeois say. I have read lately some amazing theological things, which I have intermingled with a little of Plutarch and Spinoza. I have nothing more to say to you. Poor Edmond de Goncourt is in Champagne at his relatives'. He has promised to come here the end of this month. I don't think that the hope of seeing his brother again in a better world consoles him for having lost him in this one. One juggles with empty words on this question of immortality, for the question is to know if the moi persists. The affirmative seems to me a presumption of our pride, a protest of our weakness against the eternal order. Has death perhaps no more secrets to reveal to us than life has? What a year of evil! I feel as if I were lost in the desert, and I assure you, dear master, that I am brave, however, and that I am making prodigious efforts to be stoical. But my poor brain is enfeebled at moments. I need only one thing (and that is not given me), it is to have some kind of enthusiasm! Your last letter but one was very sad. You also, heroic being, you feel worn out! What then will become of us! I have just reread the conversations between Goethe and Eckermann. There was a man, that Goethe! But then he had everything on his side, that man. CLXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 29 June, 1870 Our letters are always crossing, and I have now the feeling that if I write to you in the evening I shall receive a letter from you the next morning; we could say to each other: "You appeared to me in my sleep, looking a little sad." What preoccupies me most about poor Jules' (de Goncourt) death, is the survivor. I am sure that the dead are well off, that perhaps they are resting before living again, and that in all cases they fall back into the crucible so as to reappear with what good they previously had and more besides. Barbes only suffered all his life. There he is now, sleeping deeply. Soon he will awaken; but we, poor beasts of survivors, we see them no longer. A little while before he died, Duveyrier, who seemed to have recovered, said to me: "Which one of us will go first?" We were exactly the same age. He complained that those who went first could not let those who were left know that they were happy, and that they remembered their friends. I said, WHO KNOWS? Then we promised each other that the first one to die should appear to the survivor, and should at least try to speak to him. He did not come, I have waited for him, he has said nothing to me. He had one of the tenderest hearts, and a sincere good will. He was not able to; it was not permitted, or perhaps, it was I; I did not hear or understand. It is, I say, this poor Edmond who is on my mind. That life lived together, quite ended. I cannot think why the bond was broken, unless he too believes that one does not really die. I would indeed like to go to see you; apparently you have COOL WEATHER in Croisset since you want to sleep ON A WARM BEACH. Come here, you will not have a beach, but 36 degrees in the shade and a stream cold as ice, is not to be despised. I go there to dabble in it every day after my work; for I must work, Buloz advances me too much money. Here I am DOING MY BUSINESS, as Aurore says, and not being able to budge till autumn. I was too lazy after my fatigues as sick-nurse. Little Buloz recently came to stir me up again. Now here I am hard at it. Since you are to be in Paris in August, you must come to spend several days with us. You did laugh here anyhow; we will try to distract you and to shake you up a bit. You will see the little girls grown and prettier; the little one is beginning to talk. Aurore chatters and argues. She calls Plauchut, OLD BACHELOR. And a propos, accept the best regards of that fine and splendid boy along with all the affectionate greetings of the family. As for me, I embrace you tenderly and beg you to keep well. G. Sand CLXX. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Wednesday evening...1870 What has become of you, dear master, of you and yours? As for me, I am disheartened, distressed by the folly of my compatriots. The hopeless barbarism of humanity fills me with a black melancholy. That enthusiasm which has no intelligent motive makes me want to die, so as not to see it any longer. The good Frenchman wants to fight: (1) because he thinks he is provoked to it by Prussia; (2) because the natural condition of man is savagery; (3) because war in itself contains a mystic element which enraptures crowds. Have we returned to the wars of races? I fear so. The terrible butchery which is being prepared has not even a pretext. It is the desire to fight for the sake of fighting. I bewail the destroyed bridges, the staved-in tunnels, all this human labor lost, in short a negation so radical. The Congress of Peace is wrong at present. Civilization seems to me far off. Hobbes was right: Homo homini lupus. I have begun Saint-Antoine, and it would go perhaps rather well, if I did not think of the war. And you? The bourgeois here cannot contain himself. He thinks Prussia was too insolent and wants to "avenge himself." Did you see that a gentleman has proposed in the Chamber the pillage of the duchy of Baden! Ah! why can't I live among the Bedouins! CLXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 26 July, 1870 I think this war is infamous; that authorized Marseillaise, a sacrilege. Men are ferocious and conceited brutes; we are in the HALF AS MUCH of Pascal; when will come the MORE THAN EVER! It is between 40 and 45 degrees IN THE SHADE here. They are burning the forests; another barbarous stupidity! The wolves come and walk into our court, and we chase them away at night, Maurice with a revolver and I with a lantern. The trees are losing their leaves and perhaps their lives. Water for drinking is becoming scarce; the harvests are almost nothing; but we have war, what luck! Farming is going to nought, famine threatens, poverty is lurking about while waiting to transform itself into Jacquerie; but we shall fight with the Prussians. Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre! You said rightly that in order to work, a certain lightness was needed; where is it to be found in these accursed times? Happily, we have no one ill at our house. When I see Maurice and Lina acting, Aurore and Gabrielle playing, I do not dare to complain for fear of losing all. I love you, my dear old friend, we all love you. Your troubadour, G. Sand CLXXII. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Wednesday, 3 August, 1870 What! dear master, you too are demoralized, sad? What will become of the weak souls? As for me, my heart is oppressed in a way that astonishes me, and I wallow in a bottomless melancholy, in spite of work, in spite of the good Saint-Antoine who ought to distract me. Is it the consequence of my repeated afflictions? Perhaps. But the war is a good deal responsible for it. I think that we are getting into the dark. Behold then, the NATURAL MAN. Make theories now! Boast the progress, the enlightenment and the good sense of the masses, and the gentleness of the French people! I assure you that anyone here who ventured to preach peace would get himself murdered. Whatever happens, we have been set back for a long time to come. Are the wars between races perhaps going to begin again? One will see, before a century passes, several millions of men kill one another in one engagement. All the East against all Europe, the old world against the new! Why not? Great united works like the Suez Canal are, perhaps, under another form, outlines and preparations for these monstrous conflicts of which we have no idea. Is Prussia perhaps going to have a great drubbing which entered into the schemes of Providence for reestablishing European equilibrium? That country was tending to be hypertrophied like France under Louis XIV and Napoleon. The other organs are inconvenienced by it. Thence universal trouble. Would formidable bleedings be useful? Ah! we intellectuals! Humanity is far from our ideal! and our immense error, our fatal error, is to think it like us and to want to treat it accordingly. The reverence, the fetichism, that they have for universal suffrage revolts me more than the infallibility of the pope (which has just delightfully missed its point, by the way). Do you think that if France, instead of being governed on the whole by the crowd, were in the power of the mandarins, we should be where we are now? If, instead of having wished to enlighten the lower classes, we had busied ourselves with instructing the higher, we should not have seen M. de Keratry proposing the pillage of the duchy of Baden, a measure that the public finds very proper! Are you studying Prudhomme now? He is gigantic! He admires Musset's Rhin, and asks if Musset has done anything else. Here you have Musset accepted as the national poet and ousting Beranger! What immense buffoonery is...everything! But a not at all gay buffoonery. Misery is very evident. Everyone is in want, beginning with myself! But perhaps we were too accustomed to comfort and tranquillity. We buried ourselves in material things. We must return to the great tradition, hold no longer to life, to happiness, to money nor to anything; be what our grandfathers were, light, effervescing people. Once men passed their life in starving. The same prospect is on the horizon. What you tell me about poor Nohant is terrible. The country has suffered less here than with you. CLXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset. Nohant, 8 August, 1870 Are you in Paris in the midst of all this torment? What a lesson the people are getting who want absolute masters! France and Prussia are cutting each other's throats for reasons that they don't understand! Here we are in the midst of great disasters, and what tears at the end of it all, even should we be the victors! One sees nothing but poor peasants mourning for their children who are leaving. The mobilization takes away those who were left with us and how they are being treated to begin with! What disorder, what disarray in that military administration, which absorbed everything and had to swallow up everything! Is this horrible experience going to prove to the world that warfare ought to be suppressed or that civilization has to perish? We have reached the point this evening of knowing that we are beaten. Perhaps tomorrow we shall know that we have beaten, and what will there be good or useful from one or the other? It has rained here at last, a horrible storm which destroyed everything. The peasant is working and ploughing his fields; digging hard always, sad or gay. He is imbecile, people say; no, he is a child in prosperity, a man in disaster, more of a man than we who complain; he says nothing, and while people are killing, he is sowing, repairing continually on one side what they are destroying from the other. We are going to try to do as he, and to hunt a bubbling spring fifty or a hundred yards below ground. The engineer is here, and Maurice is explaining to him the geology of the soil. We are trying to dig into the bowels of the earth to forget all that is going on above it. But we cannot distract ourselves from this terror! Write me where you are; I am sending this to you on the day agreed upon to rue Murillo. We love you, and we all embrace you. G. Sand Nohant, Sunday evening. CLXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND. Croisset, Wednesday, 1870 I got to Paris on Monday, and I left it again on Wednesday. Now I know the Parisian to the very bottom, and I have excused in my heart those most ferocious politics of 1793. Now, I understand them! What imbecility! what ignorance! what presumption! My compatriots make me want to vomit. They are fit to be put in the same sack with Isidore! This people deserves to be chastised, and I fear that it will be. It is impossible for me to read anything whatever, still more so to write anything. I spend my time like everyone else in waiting for news. Ah! if I did not have my mother, I would already be gone! CLXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset. Nohant, 15 August, 1870 I wrote to you to Paris according to your instructions the 8th. Weren't you there then? Probably so: in the midst of all this confusion, to publish Bouilhet, a poet! this is not the moment. As for me, my courage is weak. There is always a woman under the skin of the old troubadour. This human butchery tears my poor heart to pieces. I tremble too for all my children and friends, who perhaps are to be hacked to pieces. And YET, in the midst of all that, my soul exults and has ecstasies of faith; these terrific lessons which are necessary for us to understand our imbecility, must be of use to us. We are perhaps making our last return to the ways of the old world. There are sharp and clear principles for everyone today that ought to extricate them from this torment. Nothing is useless in the material order of the universe. The moral order cannot escape the law. Bad engenders good. I tell you that we are in the HALF AS MUCH of Pascal, so as to get TO THE MORE THAN EVER! That is all the mathematics that I understand. I have finished a novel in the midst of this torment, hurrying up so as not to be worn out before the end. I am as tired as if I had fought with our poor soldiers. I embrace you. Tell me where you are, what you are thinking. We all love you. What a fine St. Napoleon we have! G. Sand CLXXVI. TO GEORGE SAND. Saturday, 1870 Dear master, Here we are in the depths of the abyss! A shameful peace will perhaps not be accepted! The Prussians intend to destroy Paris! That is their dream. I don't think the siege of Paris is very imminent. But in order to force Paris to yield, they are going to (1) terrify her by the sight of cannon, and (2) ravage the surrounding country. We expect the visit of these gentlemen at Rouen, and as I have been (since Sunday) lieutenant of my company, I drill my men and I am going to Rouen to take lessons in military tactics. The most deplorable thing is that opinions are divided, some for defence to the utmost, and others for peace at any price. I AM DYING OF HUMILIATION. What a house mine is! Fourteen persons who sigh and unnerve me! I curse women! It is because of them that we perish. I expect that Paris will have the fate of Warsaw, and you distress me, you with your enthusiasm for the Republic. At the moment when we are overcome by the plainest positivism, how can you still believe in phantoms? Whatever happens, the people who are now in power will be sacrificed, and the Republic will follow their fate. Observe that I defend that poor Republic; but I do not believe in it. That is all that I have to say to you. Now I should have many more things to say, but my head is not clear. It is as if cataracts, floods, oceans of sadness, were breaking over me. It is not possible to suffer more. Sometimes I am afraid of going mad. The face of my mother, when I turn my eyes toward her, takes away all my strength. This is where our passion for not wanting to see the truth has taken us! Love of pretence and of flap-doodle. We are going to become a Poland, then a Spain. Then it will be the turn of Prussia who will be devoured by Russia. As for me, I consider myself a man whose career is ended. My brain is not going to recover. One can write no longer when one does not think well of oneself. I demand only one thing, that is to die, so to be at rest. CLXXVII. TO GEORGE SAND Sunday evening I am still alive, dear master, but I am hardly any better, for I am so sad! I didn't write you any sooner, for I was waiting, for news from you. I didn't know where you were. Here it is six weeks that we have been expecting the coming of the Prussians from day to day. We strain our ears, thinking we can hear the sound of the cannon from a distance. They are surrounding Seine- Inferieure in a radius of from fourteen to twenty leagues. They are even nearer, since they are occupying Vexin, which they have completely destroyed. What horrors! It makes one blush for being a man! If we have had a success on the Loire, their appearance will be delayed. But shall we have it? When the hope comes to me, I try to repel it, and yet, in the very depths of myself, in spite of all, I cannot keep myself from hoping a little, a very little bit. I don't think that there is in all France a sadder man than I am! (It all depends on the sensitiveness of people.) I am dying of grief. That is the truth, and consolations irritate me. What distresses me is: (1) the ferocity of men; (2) the conviction that we are going to enter upon a stupid era. People will be utilitarian, military, American and Catholic! Very Catholic! You will see! The Prussian War ends the French Revolution and destroys it. But supposing we were conquerors? you will say to me. That hypothesis is contrary to all historical precedents. Where did you ever see the south conquer the north, and the Catholics dominate the Protestants? The Latin race is agonizing. France is going to follow Spain and Italy, and boorishness (pignouflism) begins! What a cataclysm! What a collapse! What misery! What abominations! Can one believe in progress and in civilization in the face of all that is going on? What use, pray, is science, since this people abounding in scholars commits abominations worthy of the Huns and worse than theirs, because they are systematic, cold-blooded, voluntary, and have for an excuse, neither passion nor hunger? Why do they abhor us so fiercely? Don't you feel overwhelmed by the hatred of forty millions of men? This immense infernal chasm makes me giddy. Ready-made phrases are not wanting: France will rise again! One must not despair! It is a salutary punishment! We were really too immoral! etc. Oh! eternal poppycock! No! one does not recover from such a blow! As for me, I feel myself struck to my very marrow! If I were twenty years younger, I should perhaps not think all that, and if I were twenty years older I should be resigned. Poor Paris! I think it is heroic. But if we do find it again, it will not be our Paris any more! All the friends that I had there are dead or have disappeared. I have no longer any center. Literature seems to me to be a vain and useless thing! Shall I ever be in a condition to write again? Oh! if I could flee into a country where one does not see uniforms, where one does not hear the drum, where one does not talk of massacres, where one is not obliged to be a citizen! But the earth is no longer habitable for the poor mandarins. CLXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday I am sad no longer. I took up my Saint-Antoine yesterday. So much the worse, one has to get accustomed to it! One must accustom oneself to what is the natural condition of man, that is to say, to evil. The Greeks at the time of Pericles made art without knowing if they should have anything to eat the next day. Let us be Greeks. I shall confess to you, however, dear master, that I feel rather a savage. The blood of my ancesters, the Natchez or the Hurons, boils in my educated veins, and I seriously, like a beast, like an animal, want to fight! Explain that to me! The idea of making peace now exasperates me, and I would rather that Paris were burned (like Moscow), than see the Prussians enter it. But we have not gotten to that; I think the wind is turning. I have read some soldiers' letters, which are models. One can't swallow up a country where people write like that. France is a resourceful jade, and will be up again. Whatever happens, another world is going to begin, and I feel that I am very old to adapt myself to new customs. Oh! how I miss you, how I want to see you! We have decided here to all march on Paris if the compatriots of Hegel lay siege to it. Try to get your Berrichons to buck up. Call to them: "Come to help me prevent the enemy from drinking and eating in a country which is foreign to them!" The war (I hope) will make a home thrust at the "authorities." The individual, disowned, overwhelmed by the modern world, will he regain his importance? Let us hope so! CLXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND. Tuesday, 11 October, 1870 Dear master, Are you still living? Where are you, Maurice, and the others? I don't know how it is that I am not dead, I have suffered so atrociously for six weeks. My mother has fled to Rouen. My niece is in London. My brother is busy with town affairs, and, as for me, I am alone here, eaten up with impatience and chagrin! I assure you that I have wanted to do right; what misery! I have had at my door today two hundred and seventy-one poor people, and they were all given something. What will this winter be? The Prussians are now twelve hours from Rouen, and we have no commands, no orders, no discipline, nothing, nothing! They hold out false hopes to us continually with the army of the Loire. Where is it? Do you know anything about it? What are they doing in the middle of France? Paris will end by being starved, and no one is taking her any aid! The imbecilities of the Republic surpass those of the Empire. Are they playing under all this some abominable comedy? Why such inaction? Ah! how sad I am. I feel that the world is going by. CLXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset. Le Chatre, 14 October, 1870 We are living at Le Chatre. Nohant is ravaged by smallpox with complications, horrible. We had to take our little ones into the Creuse, to friends who came to get us, and we spent three weeks there, looking in vain for quarters where a family could stay for three months. We were asked to go south and were offered hospitality; but we did not want to leave the country where, from one day to another, one can be useful, although one hardly knows yet in what way to go at it. So we have come back to the friends who lived the nearest to our abandoned hearth; and we are awaiting events. To speak of all the peril and trouble there is in establishing the Republic in the interior of our provinces would be quite useless. There can be no illusion: everything is at stake, and the end will perhaps be ORLEANISM. But we are pushed into the unforeseen to such an extent that it seems to me puerile to have anticipations; the thing to do is to escape the next catastrophe. Don't let's say that it is impossible; don't let's think it. Don't let's despair about France. She is going through expiation for her madness, she will be reborn no matter what happens. We shall perhaps be carried away, the rest of us. To die of pneumonia or of a bullet is dying just the same. Let's die without cursing our race! We still love you, and we all embrace you. G. Sand CLXXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset. Nohant, 4 February, 1871. Don't you receive my letters, then? Write to me I beg you, one word only: I AM WELL. We are so worried! They are all well in Paris. We embrace you. G. Sand CLXXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT. Nohant, 22 February, 1871 I received your letter of the 15th this morning; what a cruel thorn it takes from my heart! One gets frantic with anxiety now when one does not receive answers. Let us hope that we can talk soon and tell all about our ABSENCE from each other. I too have had the good fortune not to lose any of my friends, young or old. That is all the good one can say. I do not regret this Republic, it has been the greatest failure of all! the most unfortunate for Paris, the most unsuitable in the provinces. Besides, if I had loved it, I should not regret anything; if only this odious war might end! We love you and we embrace you affectionately. I shall not hurry to go to Paris. It will be pestilential for some time to come. Yours. CLXXXIII. TO GEORGE SAND. Dieppe, 11 March, 1871 When shall we meet? Paris does not seem amusing to me. Ah! into what sort of a world are we going to enter! Paganism, Christianity, idiotism, there are the three great evolutions of humanity! It is sad to find ourselves at the beginning of the third. I shall not tell you all I have suffered since September. Why didn't I die from it? That is what surprises me! No one was more desperate than I was. Why? I have had bad moments in my life, I have gone through great losses. I have wept a great deal. I have undergone much anguish. Well! all these pangs accumulated together, are nothing in comparison to that. And I cannot get over them! I am not consoled! I have no hope! Yet I did not see myself as a progressivist and a humanitarian. That doesn't matter. I had some illusions! What barbarity! What a slump! I am wrathful at my contemporaries for having given me the feelings of a brute of the twelfth century! I'M STIFLING IN GALL! These officers who break mirrors with white gloves on, who know Sanskrit and who fling themselves on the champagne, who steal your watch and then send you their visiting card, this war for money, these civilized savages give me more horror than cannibals. And all the world is going to imitate them, is going to be a soldier! Russia has now four millions of them. All Europe will wear a uniform. If we take our revenge, it will be ultra-ferocious, and observe that one is going to think only of that, of avenging oneself on Germany! The government, whatever it is, can support itself only by speculating on that passion. Wholesale murder is going to be the end of all our efforts, the ideal of France! I cherish the following dream: of going to live in the sun in a tranquil country! Let us look for new hypocrisies: declamations on virtue, diatribes on corruption, austerity of habits, etc. Last degree of pedantry! I have now at Croisset twelve Prussians. As soon as my poor dwelling (of which I have a horror now) is emptied and cleaned, I shall return there; then I shall go doubtless to Paris, despite its unhealthfulness! But I don't care a hang for that. CLXXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset. Nohant, 17 March, 1871 I received your letter of the 11th yesterday. We have all suffered in spirit more than at any other time of our lives, and we shall always suffer from that wound. It is evident that the savage instinct tends to take the upper hand; but I fear something worse; it is the egoistic and cowardly instinct; it is the ignoble corruption of false patriots, of ultra-republicans who cry out for vengeance, and who hide themselves; a good pretext for the bourgeois who want a STRONG reaction. I fear lest we shall not even be vindictive,--all that bragging, coupled with poltroonery, will so disgust us and so impel us to live from day to day as under the Restoration, submitting to everything and only asking to be let alone. There will be an awakening later. I shall not be here then, and you, you will be old! Go to live in the sun in a tranquil country! Where? What country is going to be tranquil in this struggle of barbarity against civilization, a struggle which is going to be universal? Is not the sun itself a myth? Either he hides himself or he burns you up, and it is thus with everything on this unhappy planet. Let us love it just the same, and accustom ourselves to suffering on it. I have written day by day my impressions and my reflections during the crisis. The Revue des Deux Mondes is publishing this diary. If you read it, you will see that everywhere life has been torn from its very foundations, even in the country where the war has not penetrated. You will see too, that I have not swallowed, although very greedy, party humbugs. But I don't know if you are of my opinion, that full and entire liberty would save us from these disasters and restore us to the path of possible progress again. The abuses of liberty give me no anxiety of themselves; but those whom they frighten always incline towards the abuse of power. Just now M. Thiers seems to understand it; but can he and will he know how to preserve the principle by which he has become the arbiter of this great problem? Whatever happens, let us love each other, and do not keep me in ignorance of what concerns you. My heart is full to bursting and the remembrance of you eases it a little from its perpetual disquiet. I am afraid lest these barbarous guests devastate Croisset; for they continue in spite of peace to make themselves odious and disgusting everywhere. Ah! how I should like to have five billions in order to chase them away! I should not ask to get them back again. Now, do come to us, we are so quiet here; materially, we have been so always. We force ourselves to take up our work again, we resign ourselves; what is there better to do? You are beloved here, we live here in a continual state of loving one another; we are holding on to our Lamberts, whom we shall keep as long as possible. All our children have come out of the war safe and sound. You would live here in peace and be able to work; for that must be, whether one is in the mood or not! The season is going to be lovely. Paris will calm itself during that time. You are looking for a peaceful spot. It is under your nose, with hearts which love you! I embrace you a thousand times for myself and for all my brood. The little girls are splendid. The Lamberts' little boy is charming. CLXXXV. TO GEORGE SAND. Neuville near Dieppe, Friday, 31 March, 1871 Dear master, Tomorrow, at last, I resign myself to re-enter Croisset! It is hard! But I must! I am going to try to make up again my poor Saint-Antoine and to forget France. My mother stays here with her grandchild, till one knows where to go without fear of the Prussians or of a riot. Some days ago I went from here with Dumas to Brussels from where I thought to go direct to Paris. But "the new Athens" seems to me to surpass Dahomey in ferocity and imbecility. Has the end come to the HUMBUGS? Will they have finished with hollow metaphysics and conventional ideas? All the evil comes from our gigantic ignorance. What ought to be studied is believed without discussion. Instead of investigating, people make assertions. The French Revolution must cease to be a dogma, and it must become once more a part of science, like the rest of human things. If people had known more, they would not have believed that a mystical formula is capable of making armies, and that the word "Republic" is enough to conquer a million of well disciplined men. They would have left Badinguet on the throne EXPRESSLY to make peace, ready to put him in the galleys afterward. If they had known more, they would have known what the volunteers of '92 were and the retreat of Brunswick gained by bribery through Danton and Westermann. But no! always the same old story! always poppycock! There is now the Commune of Paris which is returning to the real Middle Ages! That's flat! The question of leases especially, is splendid! The government interferes in natural rights now, it intervenes in contracts between individuals. The Commune asserts that we do not owe what we owe, and that one service is not paid for by another. It is an enormity of absurdity and injustice. Many conservatives who, from love of order, wanted to preserve the Republic, are going to regret Badinguet and in their hearts recall the Prussians. The people of the Hotel de Ville have changed the object of our hatred. That is why I am angry with them. It seems to me that we have never been lower. We oscillate between the society of Saint-Vincent de Paul and the International. But this latter commits too many imbecilities to have a long life. I admit that it may overcome the troops at Versailles and overturn the government, the Prussians will enter Paris, and "order will reign" at Warsaw. If, on the contrary, it is conquered, the reaction will be furious and all liberty will be strangled. What can one say of the socialists who imitate the proceedings of Badinguet and of William: requisitions, suppressions of newspapers, executions without trial, etc.? Ah! what an immoral beast is the crowd! and how humiliating it is to be a man! I embrace you! CLXXXVI. TO GEORGE SAND. Croisset, Monday evening, two o'clock. Dear master, Why no letters? Haven't you received mine sent from Dieppe? Are you ill? Are you still alive? What does it mean? I hope very much that neither you (nor any of yours) are in Paris, capital of arts, cornerstone of civilization, center of fine manners and of urbanity? Do you know the worst of all that? IT IS THAT WE GET ACCUSTOMED TO IT. Yes! one does. One becomes accustomed to getting along without Paris, to worrying about it no longer, and almost to thinking that it exists no longer. As for me, I am not like the bourgeois; I consider that after the invasion there are no more misfortunes. The war with Prussia gave me the effect of a great upheaval of nature, one of those cataclysms that happen every six thousand years; while the insurrection in Paris is, to my eyes, a very clear and almost simple thing. What retrogressions! What savages! How they resemble the people of the League and the men in armor! Poor France, who will never free herself from the Middle Ages! who labors along in the Gothic idea of the Commune, which is nothing else than the Roman municipality. Oh! I assure you that my heart is heavy over it! And the little reaction that we are going to have after that? How the good ecclesiastics are going to flourish again! I have started at Saint-Antoine once more, and I am working tremendously. CLXXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset. Nohant, 28 April, 1871 No, certainly I do not forget you! I am sad, sad, that is to say, that I am stunned, that I watch the spring, that I am busy, that I talk as if there were nothing; but I have not been able to be alone an instant since that horrible occurrence without falling into a bitter despair. I make great efforts to prevent it; I do not want to be discouraged; I do not want to deny the past and dread the future; but it is my will, it is my reason that struggles against a profound impression unsurmountable up to the present moment. That is why I did not want to write to you before feeling better, not that I am ashamed to have crises of depression, but because I did not want to increase your sadness already so profound, by adding the weight of mine to it. For me, the ignoble experiment that Paris is attempting or is undergoing, proves nothing against the laws of the eternal progression of men and things, and, if I have gained any principles in my mind, good or bad, they are neither shattered nor changed by it. For a long time I have accepted patience as one accepts the sort of weather there is, the length of winter, old age, lack of success in all its forms. But I think that partisans (sincere) ought to change their formulas or find out perhaps the emptiness of every a priori formula. It is not that which makes me sad. When a tree is dead, one should plant two others. My unhappiness comes from pure weakness of heart that I don't know how to overcome. I cannot sleep over the suffering and even over the ignominy of others. I pity those who do the evil! while I recognize that they are not at all interesting, their moral state distresses me. One pities a little bird that has fallen from its nest; why not pity a heap of consciences fallen in the mud? One suffered less during the Prussian siege. One loved Paris unhappy in spite of itself, one pities it so much the more now that one can no longer love it. Those who never loved get satisfaction by mortally hating it. What shall we answer? Perhaps we should not answer at all. The scorn of France is perhaps the necessary punishment of the remarkable cowardice with which the Parisians have submitted to the riot and its adventurers. It is a consequence of the acceptance of the adventurers of the Empire; other felons but the same cowardice. But I did not want to talk to you of that, you ROAR about it enough as it is! one ought to be distracted; for if one thinks too much about it, one becomes separated from one's own limbs and lets oneself undergo amputation with too much stoicism. You don't tell me in what state you found your charming nest at Croisset. The Prussians occupied it; did they ruin it, dirty it, rob it? Your books, your bibelots, did you find them all? Did they respect your name, your workshop? If you can work again there, peace will come to your spirit. As for me, I am waiting till mine gets well, and I know that I shall have to help myself to my own cure by a certain faith often shaken, but of which I make a duty. Tell me whether the tulip tree froze this winter, and if the poppies are pretty. I often take the journey in spirit; I see again your garden and its surroundings. How far away that is! How many things have happened since! One hardly knows whether one is a hundred years old or not! My little girls bring me back to the notion of time; they are growing, they are amusing and affectionate; it is through them and the two beings who gave them to me that I feel myself still of the world; it is through you too, dear friend, whose kind and loving heart I always feel to be good and alive. How I should like to see you! But I have no longer a way of going and coming. We embrace you, all of us, and we love you. G. Sand CLXXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND I am answering at once your questions that concern me personally. No! the Prussians did not loot my house. They HOOKED some little things of no importance, a dressing case, a bandbox, some pipes; but on the whole they did no harm. As for my study, it was respected. I had buried a large box full of letters and hidden my voluminous notes on Saint-Antoine. I found all that intact. The worst of the invasion for me is that it has aged my poor, dear, old mother by ten years! What a change! She can no longer walk alone, and is distressingly weak! How sad it is to see those whom one loves deteriorate little by little! In order to think no longer on the public miseries or on my own, I have plunged again with fury into Saint-Antoine, and if nothing disturbs me and I continue at this pace, I shall have finished it next winter. I am very eager to read to you the sixty pages which are done. When we can circulate about again on the railroad, do come to see me for a little while. Your old troubadour has waited for you for such a long time! Your letter of this morning has saddened me. What a proud fellow you are and what immense courage you have! I am not like a lot of people whom I hear bemoaning the war of Paris. For my part, I find it more tolerable than the invasion, there is no more despair possible, and that is what proves once more our abasement. "Ah! God be thanked, the Prussians are there!" is the universal cry of the bourgeois. I put messieurs the workmen into the same pack, and would have them all thrust together into the river! Moreover they are on the way there, and then calm will return. We are going to become a great, flat industrial country like Belgium. The disappearance of Paris (as center of the government) will render France colorless and dull. She will no longer have a heart, a center, nor, I think, a spirit. As for the Commune, which is about to die out, it is the last manifestation of the Middle Ages. The very last, let us hope! I hate democracy (at least the kind that is understood in France), that is to say, the exaltation of mercy to the detriment of justice, the negation of right, in a word, antisociability. The Commune rehabilitates murderers, quite as Jesus pardoned thieves, and they pillage the residences of the rich, because they have been taught to curse Lazarus, who was not a bad rich man, but simply a rich man. "The Republic is above every criticism" is equivalent to that belief: "The pope is infallible!" Always formulas! Always gods! The god before the last, which was universal suffrage, has just shown his adherents a terrible farce by nominating "the murderers of Versailles." What shall we believe in, then? In nothing! That is the beginning of wisdom. It was time to have done with "principles" and to take up science, and investigation. The only reasonable thing (I always come back to that) is a government by mandarins, provided the mandarins know something and even that they know many things. The people is an eternal infant, and it will be (in the hierarchy of social elements) always in the last row, since it is number, mass, the unlimited. It is of little matter whether many peasants know how to read and listen no longer to their cure, but it is of great matter that many men like Renan or Littre should be able to live and be listened to! Our safety is now only in a LEGITIMATE ARISTOCRACY, I mean by that, a majority that is composed of more than mere numbers. If they had been more enlightened, if there had been in Paris more people acquainted with history, we should not have had to endure Gambetta, nor Prussia, nor the Commune. What did the Catholics do to meet a great danger? They crossed themselves while consigning themselves to God and to the saints. We, however, who are advanced, we are going to cry out, "Long live the Republic!" while recalling what happened in '92; and there was no doubt of its success, observe that. The Prussian existed no longer, they embraced one another with joy and restrained themselves from running to the defiles of the Argonne where there are defiles no longer; never mind, that is according to tradition. I have a friend in Rouen who proposed to a club the manufacture of lances to fight against the breech-loaders! Ah! it would have been more practical to keep Badinguet, in order to send him to the galleys once peace was made! Austria did not have a revolution after Sadowa, nor Italy after Novara, nor Russia after Sebastopol! But the good French hasten to demolish their house as soon as the chimney has caught fire. Well, I must tell you an atrocious idea; I am AFRAID that the destruction of the Vendome column is sowing the seeds of a third Empire! Who knows if in twenty or in forty years, a grandson of Jerome will not be our master? For the moment Paris is completely epileptic. A result of the congestion caused by the siege. France, on the whole, has lived for several years in an extraordinary mental state. The success of la Lanterne and Troppman have been very evident symptoms of it. That folly is the result of too great imbecility, and that imbecility comes from too much bluffing, for because of lying they had become idiotic. They had lost all notion of right and wrong, of beautiful and ugly. Recall the criticism of recent years. What difference did it make between the sublime and the ridiculous? What lack of respect; what ignorance! what a mess! "Boiled or roasted, same thing!" and at the same time, what servility for the opinion of the day, the dish of the fashion! All was false! False realism, false army, false credit, and even false harlots. They were called "marquises," while the great ladies called themselves familiarly "cochonnettes." Those girls who were of the tradition of Sophie Arnould, like Lagier, roused horror. You have not seen the reverence of Saint-Victor for la Paiva. And this falseness (which is perhaps a consequence of romanticism, predominance of passion over form, and of inspiration over rule) was applied especially in the manner of judging. They extolled an actress not as an actress, but as a good mother of a family! They asked art to be moral, philosophy to be clear, vice to be decent, and science to be within the range of the people. But this is a very long letter. When I start abusing my contemporaries, I never get through with it. CLXXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Sunday evening, 10 June, 1871 Dear master, I never had a greater desire or a greater need to see you than now. I have just come from Paris and I don't know to whom to talk. I am choking. I am overcome, or rather, absolutely disheartened. The odor of corpses disgusts me less than the miasmas of egotism that exhale from every mouth. The sight of the ruins is as nothing in comparison with the great Parisian inanity. With a very few exceptions it seemed to me that everybody ought to be tied up. Half the population wants to strangle the other half, and VICE VERSA. This is clearly to be seen in the eyes of the passers-by. And the Prussians exist no longer! People excuse them and admire them. The "reasonable people" want to be naturalized Germans. I assure you it is enough to make one despair of the human race. I was in Versailles on Thursday. The excesses of the Right inspire fear. The vote about the Orleans is a concession made to it, so as not to irritate it, and so as to have the time to prepare against it. I except from the general folly, Renan who, on the contrary, seemed to me very philosophical, and the good Soulie who charged me to give you a thousand affectionate messages. I have collected a mass of horrible and unpublished details which I spare you. My little trip to Paris has troubled me extremely, and I am going to have a hard time in getting down to work again. What do you think of my friend Maury, who kept the tricolor over the Archives all during the Commune? I think few men are capable of such pluck. When history clears up the burning of Paris, it will find several elements among which are, without any doubt: (1) the Prussians, and (2) the people of Badinguet; they have NO LONGER ANY written proof against the Empire, and Haussman is going to present himself boldly to the elections of Paris. Have you read, among the documents found in the Tuileries last September, a plot of a novel by Isidore? What a scenario! CXC. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris [FOOTNOTE: Evidently an answer to a lost letter.] Nohant, 23 July, 1871 No, I am not ill, my dear old troubadour, in spite of the sorrow which is the daily bread of France; I have an iron constitution and an exceptional old age, abnormal even, for my strength increases at the age when it ought to diminish. The day that I resolutely buried my youth, I grew twenty years younger. You will tell me that the bark undergoes none the less the ravages of time. I don't care for that, the heart of the tree is very good and the sap still runs as in the old apple trees in my garden, which bear fruit all the better the more gnarly they are. Thank you for having worried over the illness which the papers have bestowed upon me. Maurice thanks you also and embraces you. He is still mingling with his scientific, literary, and agricultural studies, beautiful marionette shows. He thinks of you every time and says that he would like to have you here to note his progress, for he continually improves. In what condition are we, according to your opinion? In Rouen, you no longer have any Prussians at your back, that's something, and one would say that the bourgeois Republic wants to impose itself. It will be foolish. You foretold that, and I don't doubt it; but after the inevitable rule of the Philistines, life will extend and spread on all sides. The filth of the Commune shows us dangers which were not sufficiently foreseen and which enforce a new political life on everybody, carrying on one's affairs oneself and forcing the charming proletariat created by the Empire to know what is possible and what is not. Education does not teach honesty and disinterestedness overnight. The vote is immediate education. They have appointed Raoul Rigault and company. They know how much people like that cost now by the yard; let them go on and they will die of hunger. There is no other way to make them understand in a short time. Are you working? Is Saint-Antoine going well? Tell me what you are doing in Paris, what you are seeing, what you are thinking. I have not the courage to go there. Do come to see me before you return to Croisset. I am blue from not seeing you, it is a sort of death. G. Sand CXCI. TO GEORGE SAND 25 July, 1871 I find Paris a little less mad than in June, at least on the surface. They are beginning to hate Prussia in a natural manner, that is to say, they are getting back into French tradition. They no longer make phrases in praise of her civilizations. As for the Commune, they expect to see it rise again later, and the "established order" does absolutely nothing to prevent its return. They are applying old remedies to new woes, remedies that have never cured (nor prevented) the least ill. The reestablishment of credit seems to me colossally absurd. One of my friends made a good speech against it; the godson of your friend Michel de Bourges, Bardoux, mayor of Clermont-Ferrand. I think, like you, that the bourgeois republic can be established. Its lack of elevation is perhaps a guarantee of stability. It will be the first time that we have lived under a government without principles. The era of positivism in politics is about to begin. The immense disgust which my contemporaries give me throws me back on the past, and I am working on my good Saint-Antoine with all my might. I came to Paris only for it, for it is impossible for me to get in Rouen the books that I need now; I am lost in the religions of Persia. I am trying to get a clear idea of the God Horn, and it isn't easy. I spent all the month of June in studying Buddhism, on which I already had many notes. But I wanted to get to the bottom of the subject as soon as possible. And I also did a little Buddha that I consider charming. Don't I want to read you that book (mine)! I am not going to Nohant, for I don't care to go further I away from my mother now. Her society afflicts me and unnerves me, my niece Caroline takes turns with me in carrying on the dear and painful burden. In a fortnight I shall be back in Croisset. Between the 15th and the 20th of August I am expecting the good Tourgueneff there. It would be very kind of you to come after him, dear master. I say come after, for we have only one decent room since the visit of the Prussians. Come, make a good effort. Come in September. Have you any news of the Odeon? I can't get any response whatsoever from de Chilly. I have been to his house several times and I have written three letters to him: not a word! Those gay blades behave towards one like great lords, which is charming. I don't know if he is still director, or if the management has been given to the Berton, Laurent, Bernard company, do you? Berton wrote to me to recommend him (and them) to d'Osmoy, deputy and president of the dramatic commission, but since then I have not heard anything mentioned. CXCII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, August, 1871 You want to see me, and you need me, and you don't come see me! That is not nice; for I too, and all of us here, sigh for you. We parted so gaily eighteen months ago, and so many atrocious things have happened in the meantime! Seeing each other would be the consolation DUE us. For my part, I cannot stir, I have not a penny, and I have to work like a negro. And then I have not seen a single Prussian, and I would like to keep my eyes pure from that stain. Ah! my friend, what years we are going through! We cannot go back again, for hope departs with the rest. What will be the reaction from the infamous Commune? Isidore or Henry V. or the kingdom of incendiaries restored by anarchy? I who have had so much patience with my species and who have so long looked on the bright side, now see nothing but darkness. I judge others by myself. I had improved my real character, I had extinguished useless and dangerous enthusiasms, I had sowed grass and flowers that grew well on my volcanoes, and I imagined that all the world could become enlightened, could correct itself, or restrain itself; that the years passed over me and over my contemporaries could not be lost to reason and experience: and now I awaken from a dream to find a generation divided between idiocy and delirium tremens! Everything is possible at present. However, it is bad to despair. I shall make a great effort, and perhaps I shall become just and patient again; but today I cannot. I am as troubled as you, and I don't dare to talk, nor to think, nor to write, I have such a fear of touching the wounds open in every soul. I have indeed received your other letter, and I was waiting for courage to answer it; I would like to do only good to those I love, especially to you, who feel so keenly. I am no good at this moment. I am filled with a devouring indignation and a disgust which is killing me. I love you, that is all I know. My children say the same. Embrace your good little mother for me. G. Sand CXCIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 6 September, 1871 Where are you, my dear old troubadour? I don't write to you, I am quite troubled in the depths of my soul. But that will pass, I hope; but I am ill with the illness of my nation and my race. I cannot isolate myself in my reason and in my own IRREPROACHABILITY. I feel the great bonds loosened and, as it were, broken. It seems to me that we are all going off, I don't know where. Have you more courage than I have? Give me some of it? I am sending you the pretty faces of our little girls. They remember you, and tell me I must send you their pictures. Alas! they are girls, we raise them with love like precious plants. What men will they meet to protect them and continue our work? It seems to me that in twenty years there will be only hypocrites and blackguards! Give me news of yourself, tell me of your poor mother, your family, of Croisset. Love us still, as we love you. G. Sand CXCIV. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Wednesday, 6 September Well, dear master, it seems to me that you are forgetting your troubadour, aren't you? Are you then quite overwhelmed with work! How long a time it is since I saw your good firm writing! How long it is since we have talked together! What a pity that we should live so far from each other! I need you very much. I don't dare to leave my poor mother! When I am obliged to be away, Caroline comes to take my place. If it were not for that, I should go to Nohant. Shall you stay there indefinitely? Must we wait till the middle of the winter to embrace each other? I should like very much to read you Saint-Antoine, which is half done, then to stretch myself and to roar at your side. Some one who knows that I love you and who admires you brought me a copy of le Gaulois in which there were parts of an article by you on the workmen, published in le Temps. How true it is! How just and well said! Sad! Sad! Poor France! And they accuse me of being skeptical. But what do you think of Mademoiselle Papevoine, the incendiary, who, in the midst of a barricade, submitted to the assaults of eighteen citizens! That surpasses the end of l'Education sentimentale where they limit themselves to offering flowers. But what goes beyond everything now, is the conservative party, which is not even going to vote, and which is still in a panic! You cannot imagine the alarm of the Parisians. "In six months, sir, the Commune will be established everywhere" is the answer or rather the universal groan. I do not look forward to an imminent cataclysm because nothing that is foreseen happens. The International will perhaps triumph in the end, but not as it hopes, not as they dread. Ah! how tired I am of the ignoble workmen, the incompetent bourgeois, the stupid peasant and the odious ecclesiastic! That is why I lose myself as much as I can in antiquity. Just now I am making all the gods talk in a state of agony. The subtitle of my book could be The Height of Insanity. And the printing of it withdraws further and further into my mind. Why publish? Who pray is bothering about art nowadays? I make literature for myself as a bourgeois turns napkin rings in his garret. You will tell me that I had better be useful. But how? How can I make people listen to me? Tourgueneff has written me that he is going to stay in Paris all winter beginning with October. That will be some one to talk to. For I can't talk of anything whatever with anyone whatever. I have been looking after the grave of my poor Bouilhet today; so tonight I have a twofold bitterness. CXCV. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, 8 September, 1871 Ah! how sweet they are! What darlings! What fine little heads so serious and sweet! My mother was quite touched by it, and so was I. That is what I call a delicate attention, dear master, and I thank you very much for it. I envy Maurice, his existence is not arid as mine is. Our two letters crossed again. That proves beyond a doubt that we feel the same things at the same time in the same degree. Why are you so said? Humanity offers nothing new. Its irremediable misery has filled me with sadness ever since my youth. And in addition I now have no disillusions. I believe that the crowd, the common herd will always be hateful. The only important thing is a little group of minds--always the same--which passed the torch from one to another. As long as we do not bow to mandarins, as long as the Academy of Sciences does not replace the pope, politics as a whole and society, down to its very roots, will be nothing but collection of disheartening humbugs. We are floundering in the after-birth of the Revolution, which was an abortion, a failure, a misfire, "whatever they say." And the reason is that it proceeded from the Middle Ages and Christianity. The idea of equality (which is all the modern democracy) is an essentially Christian idea and opposed to that of justice. Observe how mercy predominates now. Sentiment is everything, justice is nothing. People are now not even indignant against murderers, and the people who set fire to Paris are less punished than the calumniator of M. Favre. In order for France to rise again, she must pass from inspiration to science, she must abandon all metaphysics, she must enter into criticism, that is to say into the examination of things. I am persuaded that we shall seem extremely imbecile to posterity. The words republic and monarchy will make them laugh, as we on our part, laughed, at realism and nominalism. For I defy anyone to show me an essential difference between those two terms. A modern republic and a constitutional monarchy are identical. Never mind! They are squabbling about that, they are shouting, they are fighting! As for the good people, "free and compulsory" education will do it. When every one is able to read le Petit Journal and le Figaro, they won't read anything else, because the bourgeois and the rich man read only these. The press is a school of demoralization, because it dispenses with thinking. Say that, you will be brave, and if you prevail, you will have rendered a fine service. The first remedy will be to finish up with universal suffrage, the shame of the human mind. As it is constituted, one single element prevails to the detriment of all the others: numbers dominate over mind, education, race and even money, which is worth more than numbers. But society (which always needs a good God, a Saviour), isn't it perhaps capable of taking care of itself? The conservative party has not even the instinct of the brute (for the brute at least knows how to fight for its lair and its living). It will be divided by the Internationals, the Jesuits of the future. But those of the past, who had neither country nor justice, have not succeeded and the International will founder because it is in the wrong. No ideas, nothing but greed! Ah! dear, good master, if you only could hate! That is what you lack, hate. In spite of your great Sphinx eyes, you have seen the world through a golden color. That comes from the sun in your heart; but so many shadows have arisen that now you are not recognizing things any more. Come now! Cry out! Thunder! Take your great lyre and touch the brazen string: the monsters will flee. Bedew us with the drops of the blood of wounded Themis. Why do you feel "the great bonds broken?" What is broken? Your bonds are indestructible, your sympathy can attach itself only to the Eternal. Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times. Man has always been like that. Several years of quiet deceived us. That is all. I too, I used to believe in the amelioration of manners. One must wipe out that mistake and think of oneself no more highly than they did in the time of Pericles or of Shakespeare, atrocious epochs in which fine things were done. Tell me that you are lifting your head and that you are thinking of your old troubadour, who cherishes you. CXCVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 8 September, 1871 As usual our letters have crossed; you should receive today the portraits of my little grandchildren, not pretty at this period of their growth, but with such beautiful eyes that they can never be ugly. You see that I am as disheartened as you are and indignant, alas! without being able to hate either the human race or our poor, dear country. But one feels too much one's helplessness to pluck up one's heart and spirit. One works all the same, even if only turning napkin rings, as you say: and, as for me, while serving the public, I think about it as little as possible. Le Temps has done me the service of making me rummage in my waste basket. I find there the prophecies that the conscience of each of us has inspired in him, and these little returns to the past ought to give us courage; but it is not at all so. The lessons of experience are of no use until too late. I think that without subvention, the Odeon will be in no condition to put on well a literary play such as Aisse, and that you should not let them murder it. You had better wait and see what happens. As for the Berton company, I have no news of it; it is touring the provinces, and those who compose it will not be reengaged by Chilly, who is furious with them. The Odeon has let Reynard go, an artist of the first rank, whom Montigny had the wit to engage. There really is no one left at the Odeon, as far as I know. Why don't you consider the Theatre Francais? Where is the Princess Mathilde? At Enghien, or in Paris, or in England? I am sending you a note which you must enclose in the first letter that you have occasion to write to her. I cannot go to see you, dear old man, and yet I had earned one of those happy vacations; but I cannot leave the HOME, for all sorts of reasons too long to tell and of no interest, but inflexible. I do not know even if I shall go to Paris this winter. Here am I so old! I imagine that I can only bore others and that people cannot endure me anywhere except at home. You absolutely must come to see me with Tourgueneff, since you are planning to go away this winter; prepare him for this abduction. I embrace you, as I love, and my world does too. G. Sand CXCVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 14 September, 1871, Nohant [Footnote: Appeared in le Temps, 3 October, 1871, under the title, Reponse a un ami, and published in Impressions et Souvenirs, p. 53.] And what, you want me to stop loving? You want me to say that I have been mistaken all my life, that humanity is contemptible, hateful, that it has always been and always will be so? And you chide my anguish as a weakness, and puerile regret for a lost illusion? You assert that the people has always been ferocious, the priest always hypocritical, the bourgeois always cowardly, the soldier always brigand, the peasant always stupid? You say that you have known all that ever since your youth and you rejoice that you never have doubted it, because maturity has not brought you any disappointment; have you not been young then? Ah! We are entirely different, for I have never ceased to be young, if being young is always loving. What, then, do you want me to do, so as to isolate myself from my kind, from my compatriots, from my race, from the great family in whose bosom my own family is only one ear of corn in the terrestrial field? And if only this ear could ripen in a sure place, if only one could, as you say, live for certain privileged persons and withdraw from all the others! But it is impossible, and your steady reason puts up with the most unrealizable of Utopias. In what Eden, in what fantastic Eldorado will you hide your family, your little group of friends, your intimate happiness, so that the lacerations of the social state and the disasters of the country shall not reach them? If you want to be happy through certain people--those certain people, the favorites of your heart, must be happy in themselves. Can they be? Can you assure them the least security? Will you find me a refuge in my old age which is drawing near to death? And what difference now does death or life make to me for myself? Let us suppose that we die absolutely, or that love does not follow into the other life, are we not up to our last breath tormented by the desire, by the imperious need of assuring those whom we leave behind all the happiness possible? Can we go peacefully to sleep when we feel the shaken earth ready to swallow up all those for whom we have lived? A continuous happy life with one's family in spite of all, is without doubt relatively a great good, the only consolation that one could and that one would enjoy. But even supposing external evil does not penetrate into our house, which is impossible, you know very well, I could not approve of acquiescing in indifference to what causes public unhappiness. All that was foreseen. ... Yes, certainly, I had foreseen it as well as anyone! I saw the storm rising. I was aware, like all those who do not live without thinking, of the evident approach of the cataclysm. When one sees the patient writhing in agony is there any consolation in understanding his illness thoroughly? When lightning strikes, are we calm because we have heard the thunder rumble a long time before? No, no, people do not isolate themselves, the ties of blood are not broken, people do not curse or scorn their kind. Humanity is not a vain word. Our life is composed of love, and not to love is to cease to live. The people, you say! The people is yourself and myself. It would be useless to deny it. There are not two races, the distinction of classes only establishes relative and for the most part illusory inequalities. I do not know if your ancestors were high up in the bourgeoisie; for my part, on my mother's side my roots spring directly from the people, and I feel them continually alive in the depth of my being. We all have them, even if the origin is more or less effaced; the first men were hunters and shepherds, then farmers and soldiers. Brigandage crowned with success gave birth to the first social distinctions. There is perhaps not a title that was not acquired through the blood of men. We certainly have to endure our ancestors when we have any, but these first trophies of hatred and of violence, are they a glory in which a mind ever so little inclined to be philosophical, finds grounds for pride? THE PEOPLE ALWAYS FEROCIOUS, you say? As for me, I say, the nobility always savage! And certainly, together with the peasants, the nobility is the class most hostile to progress, the least civilized in consequence. Thinkers should congratulate themselves on not being of it, but if we are bourgeois, if we have come from the serf, and from the class liable to forced labor, can we bend with love and respect before the sons of the oppressors of our fathers? Whoever denies the people cheapens himself, and gives to the world the shameful spectacle of apostasy. Bourgeoisie, if we want to raise ourselves again and become once more a class, we have only one thing to do, and that is to proclaim ourselves the people, and to fight to the death against those who claim to be our superiors by divine right. On account of having failed in the dignity of our revolutionary mandate, of having aped the nobility, of having usurped its insignia, of having taken possession of its playthings, of having been shamefully ridiculous and cowardly, we count for nothing; we are nothing any more: the people, which ought to unite with us, denies us, abandons us and seeks to oppress us. The people ferocious? No, it is not imbecile either, its real trouble is in being ignorant and foolish. It is not the people of Paris that has massacred the prisoners, destroyed the monuments, and tried to burn the town. The people of Paris is all who stayed in Paris after the siege, since whoever had any means hastened to breathe the air of the provinces and to embrace their absent families after the physical and moral sufferings of the siege. Those who stayed in Paris were the merchant and the workman, those two agents of labor and of exchange, without whom Paris would exist no longer. Those are what constitutes positively the people of Paris; it is one and the same family, whose political blunders cannot restore their relationship and solidarity. It is now recognized that the oppressors of that torment were in the minority. Then the people of Paris was not disposed to fury, since the majority gave evidence only of weakness and fear. The movement was organized by men already enrolled in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, who belong no longer to the habits and needs of the proletariat. These men were moved by hatred, disappointed ambition, mistaken patriotism, fanaticism without an ideal, sentimental folly or natural maliciousness--there was all that in them--and even certain doctrinaire points of honor, unwilling to withdraw in the face of danger. They certainly did not lean on the middle class, which trembled, fled or hid itself. They were forced to put in action the real proletariat which had nothing to lose. Well, the proletariat even escaped them to a great degree, divided as it was by various shades of opinion, some wanting disorder to profit by it, others dreading the consequences of being drawn in, the most of them not reasoning at all, because the evil had become extreme and the lack of work forced them to go to war at thirty sous a day. Why should you maintain that this proletariat which was shut up in Paris, and was at most eighty thousand soldiers of hunger and despair, represented the people of France? They do not even represent the people of Paris, unless you desire to maintain the distinction between the producer and the trader, which I reject. But I want to follow you up and ask on what this distinction rests. Is it on more or less education? The limit is incomprehensible if you see at the top of the bourgeoisie, cultivated and learned people, if you see at the bottom of the proletariat, savages and brutes, you have none the less the crowd of intermediaries which will show to you, here intelligent and wise proletarians, there bourgeois who are neither wise nor intelligent. The great number of civilized citizens dates from yesterday and many of those who know how to read and write, have parents still living who can hardly sign their names. Would it then be only more or less wealth that would classify men into two distinct parties? The question then is where the people begins and where it ends, for each day competencies shift, ruin lowers one, and fortune raises another; roles change, he who was a bourgeois this morning is going to become again a proletarian this evening, and the proletarian of just now, may turn into a bourgeois in a day, if he finds a purse, or inherits from an uncle. You can well see that these denominations have become idle and that the work of classifying, whatever method one desired to use, would be impracticable. Men are only over or under one another because of more or less reason or morality. Instruction which develops only egoistic sensuality is not as good as the ignorance of the proletarian, honest by instinct or by custom. This compulsory education which we all desire through respect for human rights, is not, however, a panacea whose miracles need to be exaggerated. Evil natures will find there only more ingenious and more hidden means to do evil. It will be as in all the things that man uses and abuses, both the poison and the antidote. It is an illusion that one can find an infallible remedy for our woes. We have to seek from day to day, all the means immediately possible, we must think of nothing else in practical life except the amelioration of habits and the reconciliation of interests. France is agonizing, that is certain; we are all sick, all corrupt, all ignorant, all discouraged: to say that it was WRITTEN, that it had to be so, that it has always been and will always be, is to begin again the fable of the pedagogue and the child who is drowning. You might as well say at once. It is all the same to me; but if you add: That does not concern me, you are wrong. The deluge comes and death captures us. In vain you are prudent and withdraw, your refuge will be invaded in its turn, and in perishing with human civilization you will be no greater a philosopher for not having loved, than those who threw themselves into the flood to save some debris of humanity. The debris is not worth the effort, very good! They will perish none the less, that is possible. We shall perish with them, that is certain, but we shall die while in the fulness of life. I prefer that to a hibernation in the ice, to an anticipated death. And anyway, I could not do otherwise. Love does not reason. If I asked why you have the passion for study, you would not explain it to me any better than those who have a passion for idleness can explain their indolence. Then you think me upset, since you preach detachment to me? You tell me that you have read in the papers some extracts from my articles which indicate a change of ideas, and these papers which quote me with good will, endeavor to believe that I am illuminated with a new light, while others which do not quote me believe that perhaps I am deserting the cause of the future. Let the politicians think and say what they want to. Let us leave them to their critical appreciations. I do not have to protest, I do not have to answer, the public has other interests to discuss than those of my personality. I wield a pen, I have an honorable position of free discussion in a great paper; if I have been wrongly interpreted, it is for me to explain myself better when the occasion presents itself. I am reluctant to seize this opportunity of talking of myself as an isolated individual; but if you judge me converted to false notions, I must say to you and to others who are interested in me: read me as a whole, and do not judge me by detached fragments; a spirit which is independent of party exactions, sees necessarily the pros and cons, and the sincere writer tells both without busying himself about the blame or the approbation of partizan readers. But every being who is not mad maintains a certain consistency, and I do not think that I have departed from mine. Reason and sentiment are always in accord in me to make me repulse whatever attempts to make me revert to childhood in politics, in religion, in philosophy, in art. My sentiment and my reason combat more than ever the idea of factitious distinctions, the inequality of conditions imposed as a right acquired by some, as a loss deserved by others. More than ever I feel the need of raising what is low, and of lifting again what has fallen. Until my heart is worn out it will be open to pity, it will take the part of the weak, it will rehabilitate the slandered. If today it is the people that is under foot, I shall hold out my hand to the people--if it is the oppressor and executioner, I shall tell it that it is cowardly and odious. What do I care for this or that group of men, these names which have become standards, these personalities which have become catchwords? I know only wise and foolish, innocent and guilty. I do not have to ask myself where are my friends or my enemies. They are where torment has thrown them. Those who have deserved my love, and who do not see through my eyes, are none the less dear to me. The thoughtless blame of those who leave me does not make me consider them as enemies. All friendship unjustly withdrawn remains intact in the heart that has not merited the outrage. That heart is above self-love, it knows how to wait for the awakening of justice and affection. Such is the correct and easy role of a conscience that is not engaged in the party interests through any personal interest. Those who can not say that of themselves will certainly have success in their environment, if they have the talent to avoid all that can displease them, and the more they have of this talent, the more they will find the means to satisfy their passions. But do not summon them in history to witness the absolute truth. From the moment that they make a business of their opinion, their opinion has no value. I know sweet, generous and timorous souls, who in this terrible moment of our history, reproach themselves for having loved and served the cause of the weak. They see only one point in space, they believe that the people whom they have loved and served exist no longer, because in their place a horde of bandits followed by a little army of bewildered men has occupied momentarily the theatre of the struggle. These good souls have to make an effort to say to themselves that what good there was in the poor and what interest there was in the disinherited still exists, only it is no longer in evidence and the political disturbance has sidetracked it from the stage. When such dramas take place, those who rush in light-heartedly are the vain or the greedy members of the family, those who allow themselves to be pulled in are the idiots. There is no doubt that there are greedy souls, idiots, and vain persons by the thousands in France; but there are as many and perhaps more in the other states. Let an opportunity present itself similar to too frequent opportunities which put our evil passions in play, and you will see whether other nations are any better than we are. Wait till the Germanic race gets to work, the race whose disciplinary aptitudes we admire, the race whose armies have just shown us brutal appetites in all their barbarous simplicity, and you will see what will be its license! The people of Paris will seem sober and virtuous by comparison. That ought not to be what is called a crumb of comfort, we shall have to pity the German nation for its victories as much as ourselves for our defeats, because this is the first act of its moral dissolution. The drama of its degradation has begun, and as this is being worked out by its own hands it will move very quickly. All these great material organizations in which right, justice, and the respect for humanity are not recognized, are colossi of clay, as we have found to our cost. Well! the moral abasement of Germany is not the future safety of France, and if we are called upon to return to her the evil that has been done us, her collapse will not give us back our life. It is not in blood that races are re-invigorated and rejuvenated. Vital exhalations can issue still from the corpse of France, that of Germany will be the focus of the pestilence of Europe. A nation that has lost its ideals does not survive itself. Its death fertilizes nothing and those who breathe its fetid emanations are struck by the ill that killed it. Poor Germany! the cup of the wrath of the Eternal is poured out on you quite as much as on us, and while you rejoice and become intoxicated, the philosophic spirit is weeping over you and prepares your epitaph. This pale and bleeding, wounded thing that is called France, holds still in its tense hands, a fold of the starry mantle of the future, and you drape yourself in a soiled flag, which will be your winding sheet. Past grandeurs have no longer a place to take in the history of men. It is all over with kings who exploit the peoples; it is all over with exploited peoples who have consented to their own abasement. That is why we are so sick and why my heart is broken. But it is not in scorn of our misery that I regard the extent of it. I do not want to believe that this holy country, that this cherished race, all of whose chords I feel vibrate in me, both harmonious and discordant,--whose qualities and whose defects I love in spite of everything, all of whose good or bad responsibilities I consent to accept rather than to detach myself from them through disdain; no, I do not want to believe that my country and my race are struck to death, I feel it in my suffering, in my mourning, in my hours of pure dejection even, I love, therefore I live; let us love and live. Frenchmen, let us love one another, my God! my God! 1et us love one another or we are lost. Let us destroy, let us deny, let us annihilate politics, since it divides us and arms us against one another; let us ask from no one what he was and what he wanted yesterday. Yesterday all the world was mistaken, let us know what we want today. If it is not liberty for all and fraternity towards all, do not let us attempt to solve the problem of humanity, we are not worthy of defining it, we are not capable of comprehending it. Equality is a thing that does not impose itself, it is a free plant that grows only on fertile lands, in salubrious air. It does not take root on barricades, we know that now! It is immediately trodden under the foot of the conqueror, whoever he may be. Let us desire to establish it in our customs, let us be eager to consecrate it in our ideas. Let us give it for a starting point, patriotic charity, love! It is the part of a madman to think that one issues from a battle with respect for human rights. All civil war has brought forth and will bring forth great crime.... Unfortunate International, is it true that you believe in the lie that strength is superior to right? If you are as numerous, as powerful as one fancies, is it possible that you profess destruction and hatred as a duty? No, your power is a phantom of death. A great number of men of every nationality would not, could not, deliberate and act in favor of an iniquitous principle. If you are the ferocious party of the European people, something like the Anabaptists of Munster, like them you will destroy yourself with your own hands. If, on the contrary, you are a great and legitimate fraternal association, your duty is to enlighten your adherents and to deny those who cheapen and compromise your principles. I hope still that you include in your bosom, humane and hard-working men in great numbers, and that they suffer and blush at seeing bandits take shelter under your name. In this case your silence is inept and cowardly. Have you not a single member capable of protesting against ignoble attacks, against idiotic principles, against furious madness? Your chosen chiefs, your governors, your inspirers, are they all brigands and idiots? No, it is impossible; there are no groups, there is no club, there are no crossroads where a voice of truth could not make itself heard. Speak then, justify yourself, proclaim your gospel. Dissolve yourself in order to make yourself over if the discord is in your own midst. Make an appeal to the future if you are not an ancient invasion of Barbarians. Tell those who still love the people what they ought to do for them, and if you have nothing to say, if you cannot speak a word of life, if the iniquities of your mysteries are sealed by fear, renounce noble sympathies, live on the scorn of honest folk, and struggle between the jailer and the police. All France has heard the word of your destiny which might have been the word of hers. She has waited for it in vain. I too, simple, I waited. While blaming the means I did not want to prejudice the end. There has always been one in revolutions, and the revolutions that fail are not always those with the weakest basis. A patriotic fanaticism seems to have been the first sentiment of this struggle. These lost children of the democratic army were going perhaps to subscribe to an inevitable peace that they judged shameful: Paris had sworn to bury herself under her ruins. The democratic people were going to force the bourgeois to keep their word. They took possession of the cannon, they were going to turn them on the Prussians, it was mad, but it was grand.... Not at all. The first act of the Commune is to consent to the peace, and in all the course of its management, it does not have an insult, not a threat for the enemy, it conceives and commits the remarkable cowardice of overturning under the eyes of the enemy the column that recalls his defeats and our victories. It is angry against the powers emanating from universal suffrage, and yet it invokes this suffrage in Paris to constitute itself. It is true that this was not favorable to it; it dispenses with the appearance of legality that it intended to give itself and functions by brute force, without invoking any other right than that of hate and scorn for all that is not itself. It proclaims POSITIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE of which it calls itself the sole depository, but about which it does not let a word escape in its deliberations and in its decrees. It declares that it is going to free man from his shackles and his prejudices, and at that very instant, it exercises a power without control and threatens with death whoever is not convinced of its infallibility. At the same time it pretends to take up the tradition of the Jacobins, it usurps the papal social authority and assumes the dictatorship. What sort of a republic is that? I see nothing vital in it, nothing rational, nothing constituted, nothing constitutable. It is an orgy of false reformers who have not one idea, not one principle, not the least serious organization, not the least solidarity with the nation, not the least outlook towards the future. Ignorance, cynicism and brutality, that is all that emanates from this false social revolution. Liberation of the lowest instincts, impotence of bold ambitions, scandal of shameless usurpations. That is the spectacle which we have just seen. Moreover, this Commune has inspired the most deadly disgust in the most ardent political men, men most devoted to the democracy. After useless essays, they have understood that there was no reconciliation possible where there were no principles; they withdrew from it with consternation, with sorrow, and, the next day, the Commune declared them traitors, and decreed their arrest. They would have been shot if they had remained in its hands. And you, friend, you want me to see these things with a stoic indifference? You want me to say: man is made thus, crime is his expression, infamy is his nature? No, a hundred times no. Humanity is outraged in me and with me. We must not dissimulate nor try to forget this indignation which is one of the most passionate forms of love. We must make great efforts in behalf of brotherhood to repair the ravages of hate. We must put an end to the scourge, wipe out infamy with scorn, and inaugurate by faith the resurrection of the country. G. Sand CXCVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 16 September, 1871 Dear old friend, I answered you day before yesterday, and my letter took such proportions that I sent it as an article to le Temps for my next fortnightly contribution; for I have promised to give them two articles a month. The letter a un ami does not indicate you by even an initial, for I do not want to argue against you in public. I tell you again in it my reasons for suffering and for hoping still. I shall send it to you and that will be talking with you again. You will see that my chagrin is a part of me, and that believing progress to be a dream does not depend on me. Without this hope no one is good for anything. The mandarins do not need knowledge and even the education of a limited number of people has no longer reason for existing unless there is hope of influence on the masses; philosophers have only to keep silent and those great minds on whom the need of your soul leans, Shakespeare, Moliere, Voltaire, etc. have no reason for existing and for expressing themselves. Come, let me suffer! That is worth more than viewing INJUSTICE WITH A SERENE COUNTENANCE, as Shakespeare says. When I have drained my cup of bitterness, I shall feel better. I am a woman, I have affections, sympathies, and wrath. I shall never be a sage, nor a scholar. I received a kind little note from the Princess Mathilde. Is she then again settled in Paris? Has she anything to live on from the effects of M. Demidoff, her late and I think unworthy husband? On the whole it is brave and good of her to return near to her friends, at the risk of new upsets. I am glad that these little faces of children pleased you. I embrace you very much, you are so kind, I was sure of it. Although you are a mandarin, I do not think that you are like a Chinaman at all, and I love you with a full heart. I am working like a convict. G. Sand CXCIX. TO GEORGE SAND Dear master, I received your article yesterday, and I should answer it at length if I were not in the midst of preparations for my departure for Paris. I am going to try to finish up with Aisse. The middle of your letter made me SHED A TEAR, without converting me, of course. I was moved, that was all, without being persuaded. I look vainly in your article for one word: "justice," and all our ill comes from forgetting absolutely that first notion of morality, which to my way of thinking composes all morality. Humanitarianism, sentiment, the ideal, have played us sufficiently mean tricks for us to try righteousness and science. If France does not pass in a short time to the crisis, I believe that she will be irrevocably lost. Free compulsory education will do nothing but augment the number of imbeciles. Renan has said that very well in the preface to his Questions contemporaines. What we need most of all, is a natural, that is to say, a legitimate aristocracy. No one can do anything without a head, and universal suffrage as it exists is more stupid than divine right. You will see remarkable things if they let it keep on! The masses, the numbers, are always idiotic. I have few convictions, but I have that one strongly. But the masses must be respected, however inept they may be, because they contain the germs of an incalculable fecundity. Give it liberty but not power. I believe no more than you do in class distinction. Castes belong to archeology. But I believe that the poor hate the rich, and that the rich are afraid of the poor. It will be so forever. It is as useless to preach love to the one as to the other. The most important thing is to instruct the rich, who, on the whole, are the strongest. Enlighten the bourgeois first, for he knows nothing, absolutely nothing. The whole dream of democracy is to elevate the proletarian to the level of the imbecility of the bourgeois. The dream is partly accomplished. He reads the same papers and has the same passions. The three degrees of education have shown within the last year what they can accomplish: (1) higher education made Prussia win; (2) secondary education, bourgeois, produced the men of the 4th of September; (3) primary education gave us the Commune. Its minister of public instruction was the great Valles, who boasted that he scorned Homer! In three years every Frenchman can know how to read. Do you think that we shall be the better off? Imagine on the other hand that in each commune, there was ONE bourgeois, only one, who had read Bastiat, and that this bourgeois was respected, things would change. However I am not discouraged as you are, and the present government pleases me, because it has no principle, no metaphysics, no humbug. I express myself very badly. Moreover you deserve a different response, but I am much hurried. I hear today that the mass of the Parisians regrets Badinguet. A plebiscite would declare for him, I do not doubt it, universal suffrage is such a fine thing. CC. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 10 October, 1871 I am answering your post scriptum, if I had answered Flaubert I should not have ... ANSWERED, knowing well that your heart does not always agree with your mind, a discordance into which we all moreover are continually compelled to fall. I answered a part of a letter of some friend whom no one knows, no one can recognize, since I address myself to a part of your reasoning that is not you entirely. You are a troubadour all the same, and if I had to write to you PUBLICLY the character would be what it ought to be. But our real discussions ought to remain between ourselves, like caresses between lovers, and even sweeter, since friendship also has its mysteries without the storms of personality. That letter that you wrote me in haste, is full of well expressed truths against which I do not protest. But the connection and agreement between your truths of reason and my truths of sentiment must be found. France, alas! is neither on your side nor my side; she is on the side of blindness, ignorance and folly. Oh! that I do not deny, it is exactly that over which I despair. Is this a time to put on Aisse? You told me it was a thing of distinction, delicate like all that HE did, and I hear that the public of the theatres is more THICKHEADED than ever. You would do well to see two or three plays, no matter which, in order to appreciate the literary condition of the Parisian. The provinces will contribute less than in the past. The little fortunes are too much cut down to permit frequent trips to Paris. If Paris offered, as in my youth, an intelligent and influential nucleus, a good play would perhaps not have a hundred performances, but a bad play would not have three hundred. But this nucleus has become imperceptible and its influence is swamped. Who then will fill the theatres? The shopkeepers of Paris, without a guide, and without good criticism? Well, you are not the master in the matter of Aisse. There is an heir who is impatient, probably.--They write me that Chilly is very; seriously ill, and that Pierre Berton is reengaged. You must be very busy; I will not write a long letter to you. I embrace you affectionately, my children love you and ask to be remembered to you. G. Sand CCI. TO GEORGE SAND Never, dear good master, have you given such a proof of your inconceivable candor! Now, seriously, you think that you have offended me! The first page is almost like excuses! It made me laugh heartily! Besides, you can always say everything to me, to me! everything! Your blows will be caresses to me. Now let us talk again! I continually repeat my insistence on justice! Do you see how they are denying it everywhere? Has not modern criticism abandoned art for history? The intrinsic value of a book is nothing in the school of Sainte-Beuve and Taine. They take everything into consideration there except talent. Thence, in the petty journals, the abuse of personality, the biographies, the diatribes. Conclusion: lack of respect on the part of the public. In the theatre, the same thing. They don't bother about the play, but the lesson to be preached. Our friend Dumas dreams the glory of Lacordaire, or rather of Ravignan! To prevent the tucking up of petticoats has become with him obsession. We can not have progressed very far since all morality consists for women, in not committing adultery, and for men in abstaining from theft! In short, the first injustice is practised by literature; it has no interest in esthetics, which is only a higher justice. The romantics will have a fine account to render with their immoral sentimentality. Do you recall a bit of Victor Hugo in la Legende des siecles, where a sultan is saved because he had pity on a pig? it is always the story of the penitent thief blessed because he has repented! To repent is good, but not to do evil is better. The school of rehabilitations has led us to see no difference between a rascal and an honest man. I became enraged once before witnesses, against Sainte-Beuve, while begging him to have as much indulgence for Balzac as he had for Jules Lecomte. He answered me, calling me a dolt! That is where BREADTH OF VIEW leads you. They have so lost all sense of proportion, that the war council at Versailles treats Pipe-en-Bois more harshly than M. Courbet, Maroteau is condemned to death like Rossel! It is madness! These gentlemen, however, interest me very little. I think that they should have condemned to the galleys all the Commune, and have forced these bloody imbeciles to clear up the ruins of Paris, with a chain on their necks, like ordinary convicts. But that would have wounded HUMANITY. They are kind to the mad dogs, and not at all to the people whom the dogs have bitten. That will not change so long as universal suffrage is what it is. Every man (as I think), no matter how low he is, has a right to ONE voice, his own, but he is not the equal of his neighbor, who may be worth a hundred times more. In an industrial enterprise (Societe anonyme), each holder votes according to the value of his contribution. It ought to be so in the government of a nation. I am worth fully twenty electors of Croisset. Money, mind, and even race ought to be reckoned, in short every resource. But up to the present I only see one! numbers! Ah! dear master, you who have so authority, you ought to take the lead. Your articles in le Temps, which have had a great success, are widely read and who knows? You would perhaps do France a great service? Aisse keeps me very busy, or rather provokes me. I have not seen Chilly, I have had to do with Duquesnel. They are depriving me definitely of the senior Berton and proposing his son. He is very nice, but he is not at all the type conceived by the author. The Theatre Francais perhaps would ask nothing better than to take Aisse! I am very perplexed, and it is going to be necessary for me to decide. As for waiting till a literary wind arises, as it will never arise in my lifetime, it is better to risk the thing at once. These theatrical affairs disturb me greatly, for I was in great form. For the last month I was even in an exaltation bordering on madness! I have met the unavoidable Harrisse, a man who knows everyone, and who is a judge of everything, theatre, novels, finances, politics, etc. What a race is that of enlightened men!!! I have seen Plessy, charming and always beautiful. She asked me to send you a thousand friendly messages. For my part, I send you a hundred thousand affectionate greetings. Your old friend CCII. TO GEORGE SAND 14 November, 1871 Ouf! I have just finished MY GODS, that is to say the mythological part of my Saint-Antoine, on which I have been working since the beginning of June. How I want to read it to you, dear master of the good God! Why did you resist your good impulse? Why didn't you come this autumn? You should not stay so long without seeing Paris. I shall be there day after tomorrow, and I shall have no amusement there at all this winter, what with Aisse, a volume of verse to be printed (I should like to show you the preface), and Heaven knows what else. A lot of things that are not at all diverting. I did not receive the second article that was announced. Your old troubadour has an aching head. My longest nights these three months have not exceeded five hours. I have been grubbing in a frantic manner. Furthermore, I think I have brought my book to a pretty degree of insanity. The idea of the foolish things that it will make the bourgeois utter sustains me, or rather I don't need to be sustained, as such a situation pleases me naturally. The good bourgeois is becoming more and more stupid! He does not even go to vote! The brute beasts surpass him in their instinct for self-preservation. Poor France! Poor us! What do you think I am reading now to distract myself? Bichat and Cabanis, who amuse me enormously. They knew how to write books then. Ah! how far our doctors of today are from those men! We suffer from one thing only: Absurdity. But it is formidable and universal. When they talk of the brutishness of the plebe, they are saying an unjust, incomplete thing. Conclusion: the enlightened classes must be enlightened. Begin by the head, which is the sickest, the rest will follow. You are not like me! You are full of compassion. There are days when I choke with wrath, I would like to drown my contemporaries in latrines, or at least deluge their cockscombs with torrents of abuse, cataracts of invectives. Why? I wonder myself. What sort of archeology is Maurice busy with? Embrace your little girls warmly for me. Your old friend CCIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 23 November, 1871 I hear from Plauchut that you won't let yourself be abducted for our Christmas Eve REVELS. You say you have too much to do. That is so much the worse for us, who would have had such pleasure in seeing you.--You were at Ch. Edmond's successful play, you are well, you have a great deal to do, you still detest the silly bourgeois; and with all that, is Saint-Antoine finished and shall we read it soon? I am giving you an easy commission to do, this is it: I have had to aid a respectable and interesting person [Footnote: Mademoiselle de Flaugergues.] to whom the Prussians have left for a bed and chair, only an old garden bench. I sent her 300 francs, she needed 600. I begged from kind souls. They sent me what was necessary, all except the Princess Mathilde, from whom I asked 200 francs. She answered me the 19th of this month: HOW SHALL I SEND THIS TO YOU? I replied the same day; simply by mail. But I have received nothing. I do not insist, but I fear that the money may have been stolen or lost, and I am asking you to clear up the affair as quickly as possible. With this, I embrace you, and Lolo, AURORE EMBRACES YOU TOO and all the family which loves you. G. Sand [The words 'Aurore embraces you too' were written by the little girl herself.] CCIV. TO GEORGE SAND 1 December Your letter which I have just found again, makes me remorseful, for I have not yet done your errand to the princess. I was several days without knowing where the princess was. She was to have come to get settled in Paris, and send me word of her arrival. Today at last I learn that she is at Saint-Gratien where I shall go on Sunday evening probably. Anyway your commission shall be done next week. You must forgive me, for I have not had for the last two weeks ten minutes of freedom. The revival of Ruy Blas which was going to be put ahead of Aisse had to be PUT OFF (it was a hard job). Well, the rehearsals are to begin on Monday next. I read the play to the actors today, and the roles are to be verified tomorrow. I think it will go well. I have had Bouilhet's volume of verse printed, the preface of which I re-wrote. In short I am worn out! and sad! sad enough to croak. When I have to get into action I throw myself into it head first. But my heart is breaking in disgust. That is the truth. I have seen none of our friends except Tourgueneff, whom I have found more charming than ever. Give a good kiss to Aurore for her sweet message, and let her kiss you for me. Your old friend CCV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 7 December, 1871 The money was stolen, I did not receive it, and it can not be claimed, for the sender would be liable to a suit. Thank the princess just the same for me, and for poor Mademoiselle de Flaugergues whom by the way, the minister is aiding with 200 francs. Her pension is 800. You are in the midst of rehearsals, I pity you, and yet I imagine that in working for a friend one puts more heart in it, more confidence and much more patience. Patience, there is everything in that, and that is acquired. I love you and I embrace you, how I would like to have you at Christmas! You can not, so much the worse for us. We shall drink you a toast and many speaches [sic]. G. Sand CCVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 4 January, 1872 I want to embrace you at the first of the year and tell you that I love my old troubadour now and always, but I don't want you to answer me, you are in the thick of theatrical things, and you have not the time and the calmness to write. Here we called you at the stroke of midnight on Christmas, we called your name three times, did you hear it at all? We are all getting on well, our little girls are growing, we speak of you often; my children embrace you also. May our affection bring you good luck! G. Sand CCVII. TO GEORGE SAND Sunday, January, 1872 At last I have a moment of quiet and I can write to you. But I have so many things to chat with you about, that I hardly know where to begin: (1) Your little letter of the 4th of January, which came the very morning of the premiere of Aisse, moved me to tears, dear well- beloved master. You are the only one who shows such delicacies of feeling. The premiere was splendid, and then, that is all. The next night the theatre was almost empty. The press, in general, was stupid and base. They accused me of having wanted to advertise by INSERTING an incendiary tirade! I pass for a Red (sic). You see where we are! The management of the Odeon has done nothing for the play! On the contrary. The day of the premiere it was I who brought with my own hands the properties for the first act! And on the third performance I led the supernumeraries. Throughout the rehearsals they advertised in the papers the revival of Ruy Blas, etc., etc. They made me strangle la Baronne quite as Ruy Blas will strangle Aisse. In short, Bouilhet's heir will get very little money. Honor is saved, that is all. I have had Dernieres Chansons printed. You will receive this volume at the same time as Aisse and a letter of mine to the Conseil municipal de Rouen. This little production seemed too violent to le Nouvelliste de Rouen, which did not dare to print it; but it will appear on Wednesday in le Temps, then at Rouen, as a pamphlet. What a foolish life I have been leading for two and a half months! How is it that I have not croaked with it? My longest nights have not been over five hours. What running about! What letters! and what anger!--repressed--unfortunately! At last, for three days I have slept all I wanted to, and I am stupefied by it. I was present with Dumas at the premiere of Roi Carotte. You can not imagine such rot! It is sillier and emptier than the worst of the fairy plays of Clairville. The public agreed with me absolutely. The good Offenbach has had another failure at the Opera-Comique with Fantasio. Shall one ever get to hating piffle? That would be a fine step on the right path. Tourgueneff has been in Paris since the first of December. Every week we have an engagement to read Saint-Antoine and to dine together. But something always prevents and we never meet. I am harassed more than ever by life and am disgusted with everything, which does not prevent me from being in better health than ever. Explain that to me. CCVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 18 January, 1872 You must not be sick, you must not be a grumbler, my dear old troubadour. You must cough, blow your nose, get well, say that France is mad, humanity silly, and that we are crude animals; and you must love yourself, your kind, and your friends above all. I have some very sad hours. I look at MY FLOWERS, these two little ones who are always smiling, their charming mother and my wise hardworking son whom the end of the world will find hunting, cataloguing, doing his daily task, and gay withal AS PUNCH, in the RARE moments when he is resting. He said to me this morning: "Tell Flaubert to come, I will take a vacation at once. I will play the marionettes for him, I will make him laugh." Life in a crowd forbids reflection. You are too much alone. Come quickly to our house and let us love you. G. Sand CCIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Friday, 19 January, 1872 I did not know about all that affair at Rouen and I now understand your anger. But you are too angry, that is to say too good, and too good for them. With a BITTER and vindictive man these louts would be less spiteful and less bold. You have always called them brutes, you and Bouilhet, now they are avenging themselves on the dead and on the living. Ah! well, it is indeed that and nothing else. Yesterday I was preaching the calmness of disdain to you. I see that this is not the moment, but you are not wicked, strong men are not cruel! With a bad mob at their heels, these fine men of Rouen would not have dared what they have dared! I have the Chansons, tomorrow I shall read your preface, from beginning to end. I embrace you. CCX. TO GEORGE SAND You will receive very soon: Dernieres Chansons, Aisse and my Lettre au Conseil municipal de Rouen, which is to appear tomorrow in le Temps before appearing as a pamphlet. I have forgotten to tell you something, dear master. I have used your name. I have COMPROMISED you in citing you among the illustrious people who have subscribed to the monument for Bouilhet. I found that it looked well in the sentence. An effect of style being a sacred thing with me, don't disavow it. Today I am starting again my metaphysical readings for Saint- Antoine. Next Saturday, I shall read a hundred and thirty pages of it, all that is finished, to Tourgueneff. Why won't you be there! I embrace you. Your old friend CCXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 25 January, 1872 You were quite right to put me down and I want to CONTRIBUTE too. Put me down for the sum you would like and tell me so that I may have it sent to you. I have read your preface in le Temps: the end of it is very beautiful and touching. But I see that this poor friend was, like you, one who DID NOT GET OVER HIS ANGER, and at your age I should like to see you less irritated, less worried with the folly of others. For me, it is lost time, like complaining about being bored with the rain and the flies. The public which is accused often of being silly, gets angry and only becomes sillier; for angry or irritated, one becomes sublime if one is intelligent, idiotic if one is silly. After all, perhaps this chronic indignation is a need of your constitution; it would kill me. I have a great need to be calm so as to reflect and to think things over. At this moment I am doing THE USEFUL at the risk of your anathemas. I am trying to simplify a child's approach to culture, being persuaded that the first study makes its impression on all the others and that pedagogy teaches us to look for knots in bulrushes. In short, I am working over A PRIMER, do not EAT ME ALIVE. I have ONLY ONE regret about Paris: it is not to be a third with Tourgueneff when you read your Saint-Antoine. For all the rest, Paris does not call me at all; my heart has affections there that I do not wish to hurt, by disagreement with their ideas. It is impossible not to be tired of this spirit of party or of sect which makes people no longer French, nor men, nor themselves. They have no country, they belong to a church. They do what they disapprove of, so as not to disobey the discipline of the school. I prefer to keep silent. They would find me cold or stupid; one might as well stay at home. You don't tell me of your mother; is she in Paris with her grandchild? I hope that your silence means that they are well. Everything has gone wonderfully here this winter; the children are excellent and give us nothing but joy. After the dismal winter of '70 to '71, one ought to complain of nothing. Can one live peaceably, you say, when the human race is so absurd? I submit, while saying to myself that perhaps I am as absurd as every one else and that it is time to turn my mind to correcting myself. I embrace you for myself and for all mine. G. Sand CCXII. TO GEORGE SAND No! dear master! it is not true. Bouilhet never injured the bourgeois of Rouen; no one was gentler to them, I add even more cowardly, to tell the truth. As for me, I kept apart from them, that is all my crime. I find by chance just today in Nadar's Memoirs du Geant, a paragraph on me and the people of Rouen which is absolutely exact. Since you own this book, look at page 100. If I had kept silent they would have accused me of being a coward. I protested naively, that is to say brutally. And I did well. I think that one ought never begin the attack; but when one answers, one must try to kill cleanly one's enemy. Such is my system. Frankness is part of loyalty; why should it be less perfect in blame than in praise? We are perishing from indulgence, from clemency, from COWISHNESS and (I return to my eternal refrain) from lack of JUSTICE! Besides, I have never insulted any one, I have kept to generalities,--as for M. Decorde, my intentions are for open warfare;--but enough of that! I spent yesterday, a fine day, with Tourgueneff to whom I read the hundred and fifteen pages of Saint- Antoine that are finished. After which, I read to him almost half of the Dernieres Chansons. What a listener! What a critic! He dazzled me by the depth and the clearness of his judgment. Ah! if all those who attempt to judge books had been able to hear, what a lesson! Nothing escapes him. At the end of a passage of a hundred lines, he remembers a weak epithet! he gave me two or three suggestions of exquisite detail for Saint-Antoine. Do you think me very silly since you believe I am going to blame you for your primer? I have enough philosophic spirit to know that such a thing is very serious work. Method is the highest thing in criticism, since it gives the means of creating. CCXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 28 January, 1872 Your preface is splendid and the book [Footnote: Dernieres Chansons, by Louis Bouilhet.] is divine! Mercy! I have made a line of poetry without realizing it, God forgive me. Yes, you are right, he was not second rank, and ranks are not given by decree, above all in an age when criticism undoes everything and does nothing. All your heart is in this simple and discreet tale of his life. I see very well now, why he died so young; he died from having lived too extensively in the mind. I beg of you not to absorb yourself so much in literature and learning. Change your home, move about, have mistresses or wives, whichever you like, and during these phases, must change the end that one lights. At my advanced age I throw myself into torrents of far niente; the most infantile amusements, the silliest, are enough for me and I return more lucid from my attacks of imbecility. It was a great loss to art, that premature death. In ten years there will not be one single poet. Your preface is beautiful and well done. Some pages are models, and it is very true that the bourgeois will read that and find nothing remarkable in it. Ah! if one did not have the little sanctuary, the interior little shrine, where, without saying anything to anyone, one takes refuge to contemplate and to dream the beautiful and the true, one would have to say: "What is the use?" I embrace you warmly. Your old troubadour. CCXIV. TO GEORGE SAND Dear good master, Can you, for le Temps, write on Dernieres Chansons? It would oblige me greatly. Now you have it. I was ill all last week. My throat was in a frightful state. But I have slept a great deal and I am again afloat. I have begun anew my reading for Saint-Antoine. It seems to me that Dernieres Chansons could lend itself to a beautiful article, to a funeral oration on poetry. Poetry will not perish, but its eclipse will be long and we are entering into the shades. Consider if you have a mind for it and answer by a line. CCXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 17 February My troubadour, I am thinking of what you asked me to do and I will do it; but this week I must rest. I played the fool too much at the carnival with my grandchildren and my great-nephews. I embrace you for myself and for all my brood. G. Sand CCXVI. TO GEORGE SAND What a long time it is since I have written to you, dear master. I have so many things to say to you that I don't know where to begin. Oh! how horrid it is to live so separated when we love each other. Have you given Paris an eternal adieu? Am I never to see you again there? Are you coming to Croisset this summer to hear Saint-Antoine? As for me, I can not go to Nohant, because my time, considering my straitened purse, is all counted; but I have still I a full month of readings and researches in Paris. After that I am going away with my mother: we are in search of a companion for her. It is not easy to find one. Then, towards Easter I shall be back at Croisset, and shall start to work again at the manuscript. I am beginning to want to write. Just now, I am reading in the evening, Kant's Critique de la raison pure, translated by Barni, and I am freshening up my Spinoza. During the day I amuse myself by looking over bestiaries of the middle ages; looking up in the "authorities" all the most baroque animals. I am in the midst of fantastic monsters. When I have almost exhausted the material I shall go to the Museum to muse before real monsters, and then the researches for the good Saint-Antoine will be finished. In your letter before the last one you showed anxiety about my health; reassure yourself! I have never been more convinced that it was robust. The life that I have led this winter was enough to kill three rhinoceroses, but nevertheless I am well. The scabbard must be solid, for the blade is well sharpened; but everything is converted into sadness! Any action whatever disgusts me with life! I have followed your counsels, I have sought distractions! But that amuses me very little. Decidedly nothing but sacrosanct literature interests me. My preface to the Dernieres Chansons has aroused in Madame Colet a pindaric fury. I have received an anonymous letter from her, in verse, in which she represents me as a charlatan who beats the drum on the tomb of his friend, a vulgar wretch who debases himself before criticism, after having "flattered Caesar"! "Sad example of the passions," as Prudhomme would say. A propos of Caesar, I can not believe, no matter what they say, in his near return. In spite of my pessimism, we have not come to that! However, if one consulted the God called Universal Suffrage, who knows?...Ah! we are very low, very low! I saw Ruy Blas badly played except for Sarah. Melingue is a sleep- walking drain-man, and the others are as tiresome. As Victor Hugo had complained in a friendly way that I had not paid him a call, I thought I ought to do so and I found him ...charming! I repeat the word, not at all "the great man," not at all a pontiff! This discovery greatly surprised me and did me worlds of good. For I have the bump of veneration and I like to love what I admire. That is a personal allusion to you, dear, kind master. I have met Madame Viardot whom I found a very curious temperament. It was Tourgueneff who took me to her house. CCXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, from the 28 to the 29 February 1872. Night of Wednesday to Thursday, three o'clock in the morning. Ah! my dear old friend, what a dreadful twelve days I have spent! Maurice has been very ill. Continually these terrible sore throats, which in the beginning seem nothing, but which are complicated with abscesses and tend to become membranous. He has not been in danger, but always IN DANGER OF DANGER, and he has had cruel suffering, loss of voice, he could not swallow; every anguish attached to the violent sore throat that you know well, since you have just had one. With him, this trouble continually tends to get worse, and his mucous membrane has been so often the seat of the same illness that it lacks energy to react. With that, little or no fever, almost always on his feet, and the moral depression of a man used to continual exercise of body and mind, whom the mind and body forbids to exercise. We have looked after him so well that he is now, I think, out of the woods, although, this morning, I was afraid again and sent for Doctor Favre, our USUAL savior. Throughout the day I have been talking to him, to distract him, about your researches on monsters; he had his papers brought so as to hunt among them for what might be useful you; but he has found only the pure fantasies of his own invention. I found them so original and so funny that I have encouraged him to send them to you. They will be of no use to you except to make you burst out laughing in your hours recreation. I hope that we are going to come to life again without new relapses. He is the soul and the life of the house. When he is depressed we are dead; mother, wife, and children. Aurore says that she would like to be very ill in her father's place We love each other passionately, we five, and the SACROSANCT LITERATURE as you call it, is only secondary in my life. I have always loved some one more than it and my family more than that some one. Pray why is your poor little mother so irritable and desperate, in the very midst of an old age that when I last saw her was still so green and so gracious? Is her deafness sudden? Did she entirely lack philosophy and patience before these infirmities? I suffer with you because I understand what you are suffering. Another old age which is worse, since it is becoming malicious, is that of Madame Colet. I used to think that all her hatred was directed against me, and that seemed to me a bit of madness; for I had never done or said anything against her, even after that vile book in which she poured out all her fury WITHOUT cause. What has she against you now that passion has become ancient history? Strange! strange! And, a propos of Bouilhet, she hated him then, him too this poor poet? She is mad. You may well think that I was not able to write an iota for these twelve days. I am going, I hope, to start at work as soon as I have finished my novel which has remained with one foot in the air at the last pages. It is on the point of being published but has not yet been finished. I am up every night till dawn; but I have not had a sufficiently tranquil mind to be distracted from my patient. Good night, dear good friend of my heart. Heavens! don't work nor sit up too much, as you also have sore throats. They are terrible and treacherous illnesses. We all love you, and we embrace you. Aurore is charming; she learns all that we want her to, we don't know how, without seeming to notice it. What kind of a woman do you want as a companion for your mother? Perhaps I know of such a one. Must she converse and read aloud? It seems to me that the deafness is a barrier to that. Isn't it a question of material care and continual diligence? What are the stipulations and what is the compensation? Tell me how and why father Hugo did not have one single visit after Ruy Blas? Did Gautier, Saint-Victor, his faithful ones, neglect him? Have they quarreled about politics? CCXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND March, 1872 Dear master, I have received the fantastic drawings, which have diverted me. Is there perhaps profound symbolism hidden in Maurice's work? But I did not find it. ... Revery! There are two very pretty monsters: (1) an embryo in the form of a balloon on four feet; (2) a death's head emanating from an intestinal worm. We have not found a companion yet. It seems difficult to me, we must have someone who can read aloud and who is very gentle; we should also give her some charge of the household. She would not have much bodily care to give, as my mother would keep her maid. We must have someone who is kind above all, and perfectly honest. Religious principles are not objected to! The rest is left to your perspicacity, dear master! That is all. I am uneasy about Theo. I think that he is getting strangely old. He must be very ill, doubtless with heart trouble, don't you think so? Still another who is preparing to leave me. No! literature is not what I love most in the world, I explained myself badly (in my last letter). I spoke to you of distractions and of nothing more. I am not such a pedant as to prefer phrases to living beings. The further I go the more my sensibility is exasperated. But the basis is solid and the thing goes on. And then, after the Prussian war there is no further great annoyance possible. And the Critique de la raison pure of the previously mentioned Kant, translated by Barni, is heavier reading than the Vie Parisienne of Marcelin; never mind! I shall end by understanding it. I have almost finished the scenario of the last part of Saint Antoine. I am in a hurry to start writing. It is too long since I have written. I am bored with style! And tell me more about you, dear master! Give me at once news of Maurice, and tell me if you think that the lady you know would suit us. And thereupon I embrace you with both arms. Your old troubadour always agitated, always as wrathful as Saint Polycarp. CCXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 17 March, 1872 No, dear friend, Maurice is almost well again but I have been tired, worn out with URGENT work: finishing my novel, and correcting a mass of proof from the beginning. And then unanswered letters, business, no time to breathe! That is why I have not been able to write the article on Bouilhet, and as Nanon has begun, as they are publishing five numbers a week in le Temps, I don't see where I shall publish that article very soon. In the Revue des Deux Mondes, they don't want me to write criticism; whoever is not, or was not of their circle, has no talent, and they do not give me the right to say the contrary. There is, to be sure, a new review wide open to me, which is published by very fine people, but it is more widely read in other countries than in France, and you will find perhaps that an article in that would not excite comment. It is the Revue universelle directed by Amedee Marteau. Discuss that with Charles Edmond. Ask him if, in spite of the fact that Nanon is being published, he could find me a little corner in the body of the paper. As for the companion, you may rest assured that I am looking for her. The one whom I had in view is not suitable, for she could not read aloud, and I am not sure enough of the others to propose them. I thought that your poor mother was too deaf to listen to reading, and to converse, and that it would be enough for her to have some one very gentle, and charming, to care for her, and to stay with her. That is all, my dear old friend, it is not my fault, I embrace you with all my heart. For the moment that is the only thing that is functioning. My brain is too stupefied. G. Sand CCXX. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset Here I am, back again here, dear master, and not very happy; my mother worries me. Her decline increases from day to day, and almost from hour to hour. She wanted me to come home although the painters have not finished their work, and we are very inconveniently housed. At the end of next week, she will have a companion who will relieve me in this foolish business of housekeeping. As for me, I have quite decided not to make the presses groan for many years, solely not to have "business" to look after, to avoid all connection with publishers, editors and papers, and above all not to hear of money. My incapacity, in that direction, has developed to frightful proportions. Why should the sight of a bill put me in a rage? It verges on madness. Aisse has not made money. Dernieres Chansons has almost gotten me into a lawsuit. The story of la Fontaine is not ended. I am tired, profoundly tired, of everything. If only I do not make a failure also of Saint-Antoine. I am going to start working on it again in a week, when I have finished with Kant and Hegel. These two great men are helping to stupefy me, and when I leave them I fall with eagerness upon my old and thrice great Spinoza. What genius, how fine a work the Ethics is! CCXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset 9 April, 1872 I am with you all day and all night, and at every instant, my poor dear friend. I am thinking of all the sorrow that you are in the midst of. I would like to be near you. The misfortune of being tied here distresses me. I would like a word so as to know if you have the courage that you need. The end of that noble and dear life has been sad and long; for from the day that she became feeble, she declined and you could not distract her and console her. Now, alas! the incessant and cruel task is ended, as the things of this world end, anguish after struggle! What a bitter achievement of rest! and you are going to miss this anxiety, I am sure of that. I know the sort of dismay that follows the combat with death. In short, my poor child, I can only open a maternal heart to you which will replace nothing, but which is suffering with yours, and very keenly in each one of your troubles. G. Sand CCXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 14 April, 1872 My daughter-in-law has been staying several days with our friends, at Nimes, to stop a bad case of WHOOPING-COUGH that Gabrielle was suffering with, to separate her from Aurore, from fear of contagion, and to recuperate, for she has not been well for some time. As for me, I am well again. That little illness and this departure suddenly resolved upon and accomplished, have upset my plans somewhat. I had to look after Aurore so that she might be reconciled to it, and I have not had a moment to answer you. I am wondering too if you don't like it better to be left to yourself these first few days. But I beguile the need I feel of being near you at this sad time, by telling you over and over again, my poor, dear friend, how much I love you. Perhaps, too, your family has taken you to Rouen or to Dieppe, so as not to let you go back at once into that sad house. I don't know anything about your plans, in case those which you made to absorb yourself in work are changed. If you have any inclination to travel, and the sinews of war are lacking, I have ready for you a few sous that I have just earned, and I put them at your disposal. Don't feel constrained with me any more than I would with you, dear child. They are going to pay me for my novel in five or six days at the office of le Temps; you need only to write me a line and I shall see that you get it in Paris. A word when you can, I embrace you, and so does Maurice, very tenderly. CCXXIII. TO GEORGE SAND Tuesday, 16 April, 1872 Dear good master, I should have answered at once your first, very kind letter. But I was too sad. I lacked physical strength. At last, today, I am beginning to hear the birds singing and to see the leaves growing green. The sun irritates me no longer, which is a good sign. If I could feel like working again I should be all right. Your second letter (that of yesterday) moved me to tears! You are so good! What a splendid creature you are! I do not need money now, thank you. But if I did need any, I should certainly ask you for it. My mother has left Croisset to Caroline with the condition that I should keep my apartments there. So, until the estate is completely settled, I stay here. Before deciding on the future, I must know what I have to live on, after that we shall see. Shall I have the strength to live absolutely alone in solitude? I doubt it, I am growing old. Caroline cannot live here now. She has two dwellings already, and the house at Croisset is expensive. I think I shall give up my Paris lodging. Nothing calls me to Paris any longer. All my friends are dead, and the last one, poor Theo, is not for long, I fear. Ah! it is hard to grow a new skin at fifty years of age! I realized, during the last two weeks, that my poor dear, good mother was the being that I have loved the most! It is as if someone had torn out a part of my vitals. CCXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 28 April, 1872 I hold my poor Aurore, who has a terrible case of whooping-cough, day and night in my arms. I have an important piece of work that I must finish, and which I shall finish in spite of everything. If I have not already done the article on Bouilhet, rest assured it is because it is IMPOSSIBLE. I shall do it at the same time as that on l'Annee terrible. I shall go to Paris between the 20th and 25th of May, at the latest. Perhaps sooner, if Maurice takes Aurore to Nimes where Lina and the littlest one are. I shall write to you, you must come to see me in Paris, or I will go to see you. I thirst too to embrace you, to console you--no, but to tell you that your sorrows are mine. Good-bye till then, a line to tell me if your affairs are getting settled, and if you are coming out on top. Your old G. Sand CCXXV. TO GEORGE SAND What good news, dear master! In a month and even before a month, I shall see you at last! Try not to be too hurried in Paris, so that we may have the time to talk. What would be very nice, would be, if you came back here with me to spend several days. We should be quieter than there; "my poor old mother" loved you very much, would be sweet to see you in her house, when she has been gone only such a short time. I have started work again, for existence is only tolerable when one forgets one's miserable self. It will be a long time before I know what I have to live on. For all the fortune that is left to us is in meadowland, and in order to divide it, we have to sell it all. Whatever happens, I shall keep my apartments at Croisset. That will be my refuge, and perhaps even my only habitation. Paris hardly attracts me any longer. In a little while I shall have no more friends there. The human being (the eternal feminine included) amuses me less and less. Do you know that my poor Theo is very ill? He is dying from boredom and misery. No one speaks his language anymore! We are like fossils who subsist astray in a new world. CCXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 18 May, 1872 Dear friend of my heart, your inability does not disturb me at all, on the contrary. I have the grippe and the prostration that follows it. I cannot go to Paris for a week yet, and shall be there during the first part of June. My little ones are both in the sheepfold. I have taken good care of and cured the eldest, who is strong. The other is very tired, and the trip did not prevent the whooping- cough. For my part, I have worked very hard in caring for my dear one, and as soon as my task was over, as soon as I saw my dear world reunited and well again, I collapsed. It will be nothing, but I have not the strength to write. I embrace you, and I count on seeing you soon. G. Sand CCXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, Monday, 3 June, 1872, Rue Gay Lussac, 5 I am in Paris, and for all this week, in the horror of personal business. But next week will you come? I should like to go to see you in Croisset, but I do not know if I can. I have taken Aurore's whooping-cough, and, at my age, it is severe. I am, however, better, but hardly able to go about. Write me a line, so I can reserve the hours that you can give me. I embrace you, as I love you, with a full heart. G. Sand CCXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND 1872 The hours that I could give you, dear Master! Why, all the hours, now, by and by, and forever. I am planning to go to Paris at the end of next week, the 14th or the 16th. Shall you be there still? If not, I shall go earlier. But I should like it much better if you came here. We should be quieter, without callers or intruders! More than ever, I should like to have you now in my poor Croisset. It seems to me that we have enough to talk about without stopping for twenty-four hours. Then I would read you Saint-Antoine, which lacks only about fifteen pages of being finished. However, don't come if your cough continues. I should be afraid that the dampness would hurt you. The mayor of Vendome has asked me "to honor with my presence" the dedication of the statue of Ronsard, which occurs the 23rd of this month: I shall go. And I should even like to deliver an address there which would be a protest against the universal modern flap- doodle. The occasion is good. But for the production of a really appropriate little gem, I lack the snap and vivacity. Hoping to see you soon, dear master, your old troubadour who embraces you. CCXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 7 June, 1872 Dear friend, Your old troubadour has such a bad cough that a little bit more would be the last straw. On the other hand, they cannot get on without me at our house, and I cannot stay longer than next week, that is to say, the 15th or the 16th. If you could come next Thursday, the 13th, I should reserve the 13th, the 14th, even the 15th, to be with you at my house for the day for dinner, for the evening, in short, just as if we were in the country, where we could read and converse. I would be supposed to have gone away. A word at once, I embrace you as I love you. G. Sand CCXXX. TO GEORGE SAND Dear master, Have you promised your support to the candidacy of Duquesnel? if not, I should like to beg you to use to the utmost your influence to support my friend, Raymond Deslandes, as if he were Your old troubadour, G. Flaubert Thursday, three o'clock, 13 June, 1872. Answer me categorically, so that we may know what you will do. CCXXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset ..Nohant, 5 July, 1872 I must write to you today. Sixty-eight years old. Perfect health in spite of the cough, which lets me sleep now that I am plunging daily in a furious little torrent, cold as ice. It boils around the stones, the flowers, the great grasses in a delicious shade. It is an ideal place to bathe. We have had some terrible storms: lightning struck in our garden; and our stream, the Indre, has become like a torrent in the Pyrenees. It is not unpleasant. What a fine summer! The grain is seven feet high, the wheat fields are sheets of flowers. The peasant thinks that there are too many; but I let him talk, it is so lovely! I go on foot to the stream, I jump, all boiling hot, into the icy water. The doctor says that is madness. I let him talk, too; I am curing myself while his patients look after themselves and croak. I am like the grass of the fields: water and sun, that is all I need. Are you off for the Pyrenees? Ah! I envy you, I love them so! I have taken frantic trips there; but I don't know Luchon. Is it lovely, too? You won't go there without seeing the Cirque of Gavarnie, and the road that leads there, will you? And Cauterets and the lake of Gaube? And the route of Saint-Sauveur? Heavens! How lucky one is to travel and to see the mountains, the flowers, the cliffs! Does all that bore you? Do you remember the editors, the theatrical managers, the readers and the public when you are running about the country! As for me, I forget everything as I do when Pauline Viardot is singing. The other day we discovered, about three leagues from here, a wilderness, an absolute wilderness of woods in a great expanse of country, where not one hut could be seen, not a human being, not a sheep, not a fowl, nothing but flowers, butterflies and birds all day. But where will my letter find you? I shall wait to send it to you till you give me an address! CCXXXII. TO GEORGE SAND Bagneres de Luchon, 12th July, 1872 I have been here since Sunday evening, dear master, and no happier than at Croisset, even a little less so, for I am very idle. They make so much noise in the house where we are that it is impossible to work. Moreover, the sight of the bourgeois who surround us is unendurable. I am not made for travelling. The least inconvenience disturbs me. Your old troubadour is very old, decidedly! Doctor Lambron, the physician of this place, attributes my nervous tendencies to the excessive use of tobacco. To be agreeable I am going to smoke less; but I doubt very much if my virtue will cure me! I have just read Dickens's Pickwick. Do you know that? There are superb passages in it; but what defective composition! All English writers are the same; Walter Scott excepted, all lack a plot. That is unendurable for us Latins. Mister ***** is certainly nominated, as it seems. All the people who have had to do with the Odeon, beginning with you, dear master, will repent of the support that they have given him. As for me, who, thank Heaven, have no more connection with that establishment, I don't give a whoop. As I am going to begin a book which will exact much reading, and since I don't want to ruin myself in books, do you know of any dealer in Paris who would rent me all the books that I designated? What are you doing now? We saw each other so little and so inconveniently the last time. This letter is stupid. But they are making such a noise over my head that it is not clear (my head). In the midst of my bewilderment, I embrace you and yours also. Your old blockhead who loves you. CCXXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 19 July, 1872 Dear old troubadour, We too are going away, but without knowing yet where we are going; it doesn't make any difference to me. I wanted to take my brood to Switzerland; they would rather go in the opposite direction, to the Ocean; the Ocean will do! If only we travel and bathe, I shall be out of my mind with joy. Decidedly our two old troubadourships are two opposites. What bores you, amuses me; I love movement and noise, and even the tiresome things about travelling find favor in my eyes, provided they are a part of travelling. I am much more sensible to what disturbs the calm of sedentary life, than to that which is a normal and necessary disturbance in the life of motion. I am absolutely like my grandchildren, who are intoxicated beforehand without knowing why. But it is curious to see how children, while loving the change, want to take with them their surroundings, their accustomed playthings, when they go out into the world. Aurore is packing her dolls' trunk, and Gabrielle, who likes animals better, intends to take her rabbits, her little dog, and a little pig that she is taking care of until she eats it. SUCH IS LIFE [sic]. I believe that, in spite of your bad temper, this trip will do you good. It will make you rest your brain, and if you have to smoke less, so much the better! Health above all. I hope that your niece will make you move around a bit; she is your child; she ought to have some authority over you, or the world would be turned upside down. I cannot refer you to the bookshop that you need for borrowing books. I send for such things to Mario Proth, and I don't know where he finds them. When you get back to Paris, tell him from me to inform you. He is a devoted fellow, as obliging as possible. He lives at 2 rue Visconti. It occurs to me that Charles Edmond, too, might give you very good information; Troubat, [Footnote: Sainte- Beuve's secretary.] also. You are surprised that spoken words are not contracts; you are very simple; in business nothing holds except written documents. We are Don Quixotes, my old troubadour; we must resign ourselves to being trimmed by the innkeepers. Life is like that, and he who does not want to be deceived must go to live in a desert. It is not living to keep away from all the evil of this nether-world. One must swallow the bitter with the sweet. As to your Saint-Antoine, if you let me, I shall see about finding you a publisher or a review on my next trip to Paris, but we ought to talk about it together and you ought to read it to me. Why shouldn't you come to us in September? I shall be at home until winter. You ask me what I am doing now: I have done, since I left Paris, an article on Mademoiselle de Flaugergues, which will appear in l'Opinion nationale with a work by her; an article for le Temps on Victor Hugo, Bouilhet, Leconte de Lisle and Pauline Viardot. I hope that you will be pleased with what I said about your friend; I have done a second fantastic tale for the Revue des Deux Mondes, a tale for children. I have written about a hundred letters, for the most part to make up for the folly or to soften the misery of imbeciles of my acquaintance. Idleness is the plague of this age, and life is passed in working for those who do not work. I do not complain. I am well! every day I plunge into the Indre and into its icy cascades, my sixty-eight years and my whooping-cough. When I am no longer useful nor agreeable to others, I want to go away quietly without saying OUF! or at least, not saying anything except that against poor mankind, which is not worth much, but of which I am part, not being worth perhaps very much myself. I love you and I embrace you. My family does too, Plauchut included. He is going to travel with us. When we are SOMEWHERE FOR SEVERAL DAYS I shall write to you for news. G. Sand CCXXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Thursday Dear master, In the letter I received from you at Luchon a month ago, you told me that you were packing up, and then that was all. No more news! I have permitted myself to assume, as the good Brantome would say, that you were at Cabourg! When do you return? Where do you go then? To Paris or to Nohant? A question. As for me, I am not leaving Croisset. From the 1st to the 20th or 25th of September I shall have to go about a bit on business. I shall go to Paris. Write then to rue Murillo. I should like very much to see you: (1) to see you; (2) to read you Saint-Antoine, then to talk to you about another more important book, etc., and to talk about a hundred other things privately. CCXXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 31 August, 1872 My old troubadour, Here we are back again at home, after a month passed, just as you said, at Cabourg, where chance more than intention placed us. We all took wonderful sea baths, Plauchut, too. We often talked of you with Madame Pasca who was our neighbor at table, and had the room next us. We have returned in splendid health, and we are glad to see our old Nohant again, after having been glad to leave it for a little change of air. I have resumed my usual work, and I continue my river baths, but no one will accompany me, it is too cold. As for me, I found fault with the sea for being too warm. Who would think that, with my appearance and my tranquil old age, I would still love EXCESS? My dominant passion on the whole is my Aurore. My life depends on hers. She was so lovely on the trip, so gay, so appreciative of the amusements that we gave her, so attentive to what she saw, and curious about everything with so much intelligence, that she is real and sympathetic company at every hour. Ah! how UNLITERARY I am! Scorn me but still love me. I don't know if I shall find you in Paris when I go there for my play. I have not arranged with the Odeon for the date of its performance. I am waiting for Duquesnel for the final reading.--And then I expect Pauline Viardot about the 20th of September, and I hope Tourgueneff too, won't you come also? it would be so nice and so complete! In this hope which I will not give up, I love you and I embrace you with all my soul, and my children join me in loving you and summoning you. G. Sand CCXXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris Nohant, 25 October, 1872 Your letters fall on me like a rain that refreshes, and develops at once all that is germinating in the soil; they make me want to answer your reasons, because your reasons are powerful and inspire a reply. I do not assume that my replies will be strong too; they are sincere, they issue from the roots of my being, like the plants aforesaid. That is why I have just written a paper on the subject that you raise, addressing myself this time TO A WOMAN FRIEND, who has written me also in your vein, but less well than you, of course, and a little from an aristocratically intellectual point of view, to which she has not ALL THE RIGHTS SHE DESIRES. My roots, one can't extirpate them, and I am astonished that you ask me to make tulips come from them when they can answer you by producing only potatoes. Since the beginning of my intellectual blooming, when, studying quite alone at the bedside of my paralyzed grandmother, or in the fields at the times when I entrusted her to Deschartres, I asked myself the most elementary questions about society; I was no more advanced at seventeen than a child of six, not as much! thanks to Deschartres, my father's teacher, who was a contradiction from his head to his feet, much learning and little sense; thanks to the convent, into which they stuck me, God knows why, as they believed in nothing; thanks also to a purely Restoration surrounding in which my grandmother, a philosopher, but dying, breathed her last without resisting further the monarchical current. Then I read Chateaubriand, and Rousseau; I passed from the Gospels to the Contrat social. I read the history of the Revolution written by the pious, the history of France, written by philosophers; and, one fine day, I made all that agree like light proceeding from two lamps, and I had PRINCIPLES. Don't laugh, very candid, childish principles which have remained with me through all, through Lelia and the romantic epoch, through love and doubt, enthusiasm and disenchantments. To love, to make sacrifices, only to reconsider when the sacrifice is harmful to those who are the object of it, and to sacrifice oneself again in the hope of serving a real cause, love. I am not speaking here of personal passion, but of love of race, of the widening sentiment of self-love, of the horror of THE ISOLATED MOI. And that ideal of JUSTICE of which you speak, I have never seen it apart from love, since the first law on which the existence of a natural society depends, is that we shall serve each other mutually, like the bees and the ants. This concurrence of all to the same end, we have agreed to call instinct among beasts, and it does not matter, but among men, the instinct is love; he who withdraws himself from love, withdraws himself from truth, from justice. I have experienced revolutions, and I have seen the principal actors near to; I have seen the depth of their souls, I should say the bottom of their bag: NO PRINCIPLES! and no real intelligence, no force, nor endurance. Nothing but means and a personal end. Only one had principles, not all of them good, but in comparison with their integrity, he counted his personality for nothing: Barbes. Among artists and literary men, I have found no depth. You are the only one with whom I have been able to exchange other ideas than those of the profession. I don't know if you were at Magny's one day when I said to them that they were all GENTLEMEN. They said that one should not write for ignoramuses. They spurned me because I wanted to write only for them, as they are the only ones who need anything. The masters are provided for, are rich, satisfied. Imbeciles lack everything, I am sorry for them. Loving and pitying are not to be separated. And there you have the uncomplicated mechanism of my thought. I have the passion for goodness and not at all for prejudiced sentimentality. I spit with all my might upon him who pretends to hold my principles and acts contrary to them. I do not pity the incendiary and the assassin who fall under the hand of the law; I do pity profoundly the class which a brutal, degenerate life without upward trend and without aid, brings to the point of producing such monsters. I pity humanity, I wish it were good, because I cannot separate myself from it; because it is myself; because the evil it does strikes me to the heart; because its shame makes me blush; because its crimes gnaw at my vitals, because I cannot understand paradise in heaven nor on earth for myself alone. You ought to understand me, you who are goodness from head to foot. Are you still in Paris? It has been such fine weather that I have been tempted to go there to embrace you, but I don't dare to spend the money, however little it may be, when there is so much poverty. I am miserly because I know that I am extravagant when I forget, and I continually forget. And then I have so much to do!...I don't know anything and I don't learn anything, for I am always forced to learn it over again. I do very much need, however, to see you again, for a little bit; it is a part of myself which I miss. My Aurore keeps me very busy. She understands too quickly and we have to take her at a hard gallop. To understand fascinates her, to know repels her. She is as lazy as monsieur, her father, was. He has gotten over it so well that I am not impatient. She promises me to write you a letter soon. You see that she does not forget you. Titite's Punch has lost his head, literally, because he has been so embraced and caressed. He is loved as much without his head; what an example of fidelity in misfortune! His stomach has become a receptacle where playthings are put. Maurice is deep in his archeological studies, Lina is always adorable, and all goes well except that the maids are not clean. What a road the creatures have still to travel who do not keep themselves clean! I embrace you. Tell me how you are getting on with Aisse, the Odeon and all that stuff you are busy about. I love you; that is the end of all my discourses. G. Sand CCXXXVII. TO GEORGE SAND Dear master, In your last letter, among the nice things that you say to me, you praise me for not being "haughty"; one is not haughty with what is high. Therefore, in this aspect, you cannot know me. I object. Although I consider myself a good man, I am not always an agreeable gentleman, witness what happened to me Thursday last. After having lunched with a lady whom I had called "imbecile," I went to call on another whom I had said was "ninny"; such is my ancient French gallantry. The first one had bored me to death with her spiritualistic discourses and her pretensions to ideality; the second outraged me by telling me that Renan was a rascal. Observe that she confessed to me that she had not read his books. There are some subjects about which I lose patience, and, when a friend is slandered before my very face, the savage in my blood returns, I see red. Nothing more foolish! for it serves no purpose and hurts me frightfully. This vice, by the way, BETRAYING ONE'S FRIENDS IN PUBLIC, seems to me to be taking gigantic proportions! CCXXXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 26 October, 1872 Dear friend, Here is another chagrin for you; a sorrow foreseen, but none the less distressing. Poor Theo! I pity him deeply, not because he is dead, but because he has not been really living for twenty years; and if he had consented to live, to exist, to act, to forget a bit his intellectual personality so as to conserve his material personality, he could have lived a long time yet, and have renewed his resources which he was too much inclined to make a sterile treasure. They say that he suffered greatly from hardship during the siege. I understand it, but afterward? why and how? I am worried at not having had news from you for a long time. Are you at Croisset? You must have been in Paris for the funeral of this poor friend. What cruel and repeated separations! I am angry with you for becoming savage and discontented with life. It seems to me that you regard happiness too much as a possible thing, and that the absence of happiness which is our chronic state, angers you and astonishes you too much. You shun friends, you plunge into work, and reckon ass lost the time you might employ in loving or in being loved. Why didn't you come to us with Madame Viardot and Tourgueneff? You like them, you admire them, you know that you are adored here, and you run away to be alone. Well, how about getting married? Being alone is odious, it is deadly, and it is cruel also for those who love you. All your letters are unhappy and grip my heart. Haven't you any woman whom you love or by whom you would be loved with pleasure? Take her to live with you. Isn't there anywhere a little urchin whose father you can believe you are? Bring him up. Make yourself his slave, forget yourself in him. What do I know? To live in oneself is bad. There is intellectual pleasure only in the possibility of returning to it when one has been out for a long time; but to live always in this Moi which is the most tyrannical, the most exacting, the most fantastic of companions, no, one must not.--I beg you, listen to me! You are shutting up an exuberant nature in a jail, you are making out of a tender and indulgent heart, a deliberate misanthrope,--and you will not make a success of it. In short, I am worried about you, and I am saying perhaps some foolishness to you; but we live in cruel times and we must not undergo them with curses. We must rise above them with pity. That's it! I love you, write to me. I shall not go to Paris until after a month's time to put on Mademoiselle La Quintinie. Where shall you be? CCXXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND Monday night, 28 October, 1872 You have guessed rightly, dear master, that I had an increase of sorrow, and you have written me a very tender, good letter, thanks; I embrace you even more warmly than usual. Although expected, the death of poor Theo has distressed me. He is the last of my intimates to go. He closes the list. Whom shall I see now when I go to Paris? With whom shall I talk of what interests me? I know some thinkers (at least people who are called so), but an artist, where is there any? For my part, I tell you he died from the "putrescence of modern times." That is his word, and he repeated it to me this winter several times: "I am dying of the Commune," etc. The 4th of September has inaugurated an order of things in which people like him have nothing more in the world to do. One must not demand apples of orange trees. Artisans in luxury are useless in a society dominated by plebeians. How I regret him! He and Bouilhet have left an absolute void in me, and nothing can take their place. Besides he was always so good, and no matter what they say, so simple. People will recognize later (if they ever return seriously to literature), that he was a great poet. Meanwhile he is an absolutely unknown author. So indeed is Pierre Corneille. He hated two things: the hate of the Philistines in his youth, that gave him his talent; the hate of the blackguards in his riper years, this last killed him. He died of suppressed fury, of wrath at not being able to say what he thought. He was OPPRESSED by Girardin, by Fould, by Dalloz, and by the first Republic. I tell you that, because _I_ HAVE SEEN abominable things and I am the only man perhaps to whom he made absolute confidences. He lacked what was the most important thing in life for him and for others: CHARACTER. That he failed of the Academy was to him a dreadful chagrin. What weakness! and how little he must have esteemed himself! To seek an honor no matter what, seems to me, besides, an act of incomprehensible modesty. I was not at his funeral owing to the mistake of Catulle Mendes, who sent me a telegram too late. There was a crowd. A lot of scoundrels and buffoons came to advertise themselves as usual, and today, Monday, the day of the theatrical paper, there must be bits in the bulletins, THAT WILL MAKE COPY. To resume, I do not pity him, I ENVY HIM. For, frankly, life is not amusing. No, I don't think that HAPPINESS IS POSSIBLE, but certainly tranquillity. That is why I get away from what irritates me. A trip to Paris is for me now, a great business. As soon as I shake the vessel, the dregs mount and permeate all. The least conversation with anyone at all exasperates me because I find everyone idiotic. My feeling of justice is continually revolted. They talk ONLY of politics and in what a fashion! Where is there a sign of an idea? What can one get hold of? What shall one get excited about? I don't think, however, that I am a monster of egoism. My Moi scatters itself in books so that I pass whole days without noticing it. I have bad moments, it is true, but I pull myself together by this reflection: "No one at least bothers me." After that, I regain my balance. So I think that I am going on in my natural path; am I right? As for living with a woman, marrying as you advise me to do that is a prospect that I find fantastic. Why? I don't know. But it is so. Explain the riddle. The feminine being has never been included in my life; and then, I am not rich enough, and then, and then--...I am too old, and too decent to inflict forever my person on another. There is in me an element of the ecclesiastical that people don't know. We shall talk about that better than we can write of it. I shall see you in Paris in December, but in Paris one is disturbed by others. I wish you three hundred performances for Mademoiselle La Quintinie. But you will have a lot of bother with the Odeon. It is an institution where I suffered horribly last winter. Every time that I attempted to do anything they dished me. So, enough! enough! "Hide thy life," maxim of Epictetus. My whole ambition now is to flee from bother, and I am sure by that means never to cause any to others, that is much. I am working like a madman, I am reading medicine, metaphysics, politics, everything. For I have undertaken a work of great scope, which will require a lot of time, a prospect that pleases me. Ever since a month ago, I have been expecting Tourgueneff from week to week. The gout is delaying him still. CCXL. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 22 November, 1872 I don't think that I shall go to Paris before February. My play is postponed on account of the difficulty of finding the chief actor. I am content about it, for the idea of leaving Nohant, my occupations, and the walks that are so lovely in this weather, didn't look good to me at all; what a warm autumn and how good for old people! Two hours distant from here, we have a real wilderness, where, the next day after a rain, it is as dry as in a room, and where there are still flowers for me, and insects for Maurice. The little children run like rabbits in the heather which is higher than they are. Heavens! how good it is to be alive when all one loves is living and scurrying around one. You are the only BLACK SPOT in my heart-life, because you are sad and don't want to look at the sun. As for those about whom I don't care, I don't care either about the evils or the follies they can commit against me or against themselves. They will pass as the rain passes. The eternal thing is the feeling of beauty in a good heart. You have both, confound it! you have no right not to be happy.--Perhaps you ought to have had in your life the INCLUSION OF THE FEMININE SENTIMENT which you say you have defied.-- I know that the feminine is worth nothing; but, perhaps, in order to be happy, one must have been unhappy. I have been, and I know enough about it; but I forget so well. Well, sad or gay, I love you and I am still waiting for you, although you never speak of coming to see us, and you cast aside the opportunity emphatically; we love you here just the same, we are not literary enough for you here, I know that, but we love, and that gives life occupation. Is Saint-Antoine finished, that you are talking of a work of great scope? or is it Saint-Antoine that is going to spread its wings over the entire universe? It could, the subject is immense. I embrace you, shall I say again, my old troubadour, since you have resolved to turn into an old Benedictine? I shall remain a troubadour, naturally. G. Sand I am sending you two novels for your collection of my writings: you are not OBLIGED to read them immediately, if you are deep in serious things. CCXLI. TO GEORGE SAND Monday evening, eleven o'clock, 25 November, 1872 The postman just now, at five o'clock, has brought your two volumes to me. I am going to begin Nanon at once, for I am very curious about it. Don't worry any more about your old troubadour (who is becoming a silly animal, frankly), but I hope to recover. I have gone through, several times, melancholy periods, and I have come out all right. Everything wears out, boredom with the rest. I expressed myself badly: I did not mean that I scorned "the feminine sentiment." But that woman, materially speaking, had never been one of my habits, which is quite different. I have LOVED more than anyone, a presumptuous phrase which means "quite like others," and perhaps even more than average person. Every affection is known to me, "the storms of the heart" have "poured out their rain" on me. And then chance, force of circumstances, causes solitude to increase little by little around me, and now I am alone, absolutely alone. I have not sufficient income to take unto myself a wife, nor even to live in Paris for six months of the year: so it is impossible for me to change my way of living. Do you mean to say that I did not tell you that Saint-Antoine had been finished since last June? What I am dreaming of just now, is something of greater scope, which will aim to be comic. It would take too long to explain to you with a pen. We shall talk of it when we meet. Adieu, dear good, adorable master, yours with his best affection, Your old friend. Always as indignant as Saint Polycarp. Do you know, in all history, including that of the Botocudos, anything more imbecile than the Right of the National Assembly? These gentlemen who do not want the simple and frivolous word Republic, who find Thiers too advanced!!! O profoundness! problem, revery! CCXLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 27 November, 1872 Maurice is quite happy and very proud of the letter you wrote him; there is no one who could give him as much pleasure and whose encouragement counts more with him. I thank you too, for my part; for I agree with him. What! you have finished Saint-Antoine? Well, should I find a publisher, since you are not doing so? You cannot keep it in your portfolio. You don't like Levy, but there are others; say the word, and I will act as if it were for myself. You promise me to get well later, but in the mean time you don't want to do anything to jolt yourself. Come, then, to read Saint- Antoine to me, and we will talk of publishing it. What is coming here from Croisset, for a man? If you won't come when we are gay and having a holiday, come while it is quiet an I am alone. All the family embraces you. Your old troubadour G. Sand CCXLIII. TO GEORGE SAND Dear master, Here it is a night and a day that I have spent with you. I had finished Nanon at four o'clock in the morning, and Francia at three o'clock in the afternoon. All of it is still dancing around in my head. I am going to try to gather my ideas together to talk about these excellent books to you. They have done me good. So thank you, dear, good master. Yes, they were like a great whiff of air, and, after having been moved, I feel refreshed. In Nanon, in the first place I was charmed with the style, with a thousand simple and strong things which are included in the web of the work, and which make it what it is; for instance: "as the burden seemed to me enormous, the beast seemed to me beautiful." But I did not pay any attention to any thing, I was carried away, like the commonest reader. (I don't think that the common reader could admire it as much as I do.) The life of the monks, the first relations between Emilien and Nanon, the fear caused by the brigands and the imprisonment of Pere Fructueux which could be commonplace and which it is not at all. What a fine page is 113! and how difficult it was to stay within bounds! "Beginning with this day, I felt happiness in everything, and, as it were, a joy to be in the world." La Roche aux Fades is an exquisite idyll. One would like to share the life of those three fine people. I think that the interest slackens a little when Nanon gets the idea of becoming rich. She becomes too strongminded, too intelligent! I don't like the episode of the robbers either. The reappearance of Emilien with his arm cut off, stirred me again, and I shed a tear at the last page over the portrait of the Marquise de Francqueville in her old age. I submit to you the following queries: Emilien seems to me very much up in political philosophy; at that period did people see as far ahead as he? The same objection applies to the prior, whom I think otherwise charming, in the middle of the book especially. But how well all that is brought in, how well sustained, how fascinating, how charming! What a creature you are! What power you have! I give you on your two cheeks, two little nurse's kisses, and I pass to Francia! Quite another style, but none the less good. And in the first place I admire enormously your Dodore. This is the first time that anyone has made a Paris gamin real; he is not too generous, nor too intemperate, nor too much of a vaudevillist. The dialogue with his sister, when he consents to her becoming a kept woman, is a feat. Your Madame de Thievre, with her shawl which she slips up and down over her fat shoulders, isn't she decidedly of the Restoration! And the uncle who wants to confiscate his nephew's grisette! And Antoine, the good fat tinsmith so polite at the theatre! The Russian is a simple-minded, natural man, a character that is not easy to do. When I saw Francia plunge the poignard into his heart, I frowned first, fearing that it might be a classic vengeance that would spoil the charming character of that good girl. But not at all! I was mistaken, that unconscious murder completed your heroine. What strikes me the most in the book is that it is very intelligent and exact. One is completely in the period. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this twofold reading. It has relaxed me. Everything then is not dead. There is still something beautiful and good in the world. CCXLIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 29 November, 1872 You spoil me! I did not dare to send you the novels, which were wrapped up addressed to you for a week. I was afraid of interrupting your train of thought and of boring you. You stopped everything to read Maurice first, and then me. We should be remorseful if we were not egoists, very happy to have a reader who is worth ten thousand others! That helps a great deal; for Maurice and I work in a desert, never knowing, except from each other, if a thing is a success or a mess, exchanging our criticisms, and never having relations with accredited JUDGES. Michel never tells us until after a year or two if a book has SOLD. As for Buloz, if it is with him we have to do, he tells us invariably that the thing is bad or poor. It is only Charles Edmond who encourages us by asking us for copy. We write without consideration for the public; that is perhaps not a bad idea, but we carry it too far. And praise from you gives us the courage which does not depart from us, but which is often a sad courage, while you make it sparkling and gay, and healthful for us to breathe. I was right then in not throwing Nanon into the fire, as I was ready to do, when Charles Edmond came to tell me that it was very well done, and that he wanted it for his paper. I thank you then, and I send you back your good kisses, for Francia especially, which Buloz only put in with a sour face and for lack of something better: you see that I am not spoiled, but I never get angry at all that and I don't talk about it. That is how it is, and it is very simple. As soon as literature is a merchandise, the salesman who exploits it, appreciates only the client who buys it, and if the client depreciates the object, the salesman declares to the author that his merchandise is not pleasing. The republic of letters is only a market in which one sells books. Not making concession to the publisher is our only virtue; let us keep that and let us live in peace, even with him when he is peevish, and let us recognize, too, that he is not the guilty one. He would have taste if the public had it. Now I've emptied my bag, and don't let us talk of it again except to advise about Saint-Antoine, meanwhile telling ourselves that the editors will be brutes. Levy, however, is not, but you are angry with him. I should like to talk of all that with you; will you come? or wait until my trip to Paris? But when shall I go? I don't know. I am a little afraid of bronchitis in the winter, and I do not leave home unless I absolutely have to for business reasons. I don't think that they will play Mademoiselle La Quintinie. The censors have declared that it is a MASTERPIECE OF THE MOST ELEVATED AND HEALTHIEST MORALITY, but that they could not TAKE UPON THEMSELVES to authorize the performance. IT WILL HAVE TO BE TAKEN TO HIGHER AUTHORITIES, that is to say, to the minister who will send it to General Ladmirault; it is enough to make you die laughing. But I don't agree to all that, and I prefer to keep quiet till the new administration. If the NEW administration is the clerical monarchy, we shall see strange things. As for me, I don't care if they stand in my way, but how about the future of our generation?... CCXLV. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday, 4th December, 1872 Dear master, I notice a phrase in your last letter: "The publisher would have taste if the public had it...or if the public forced him to have it." But that is asking the impossible. They have LITERARY IDEAS, rest assured, and so have messieurs the managers of the theatre. Both insist that they are JUDGES IN THAT RESPECT, and their estheticism mingling with their commercialism makes a pretty result. According to the publishers, one's last book is always inferior to the preceding one. May I be hung if that is not true. Why does Levy admire Ponsard and Octave Feuillet more than father Dumas and you? Levy is academic. I have made more money for him than Cuvillier- Fleury has, haven't I? Well, draw a parallel between us two, and you will see how you will be received. You know that he did not want to sell more than 1200 copies of the Dernieres Chansons, and the 800 which were left over, are in my niece's garret, rue de Clichy! That is very narrow of me, I agree to that; but I confess that the proceeding has simply enraged me. It seems to me that my prose might have been more respected by a man for whom I have turned a penny or two. Why publish, in these abominable times? Is it to get money? What mockery! As if money were the recompense for work, or could be! That will be when one has destroyed speculation, till then, no! And then how measure work, how estimate the effort? The commercial value of the work remains. For that one would be obliged to suppress all intermediaries between the producer and the purchaser, and even then, that question in itself permits of no solution. For I write (I speak of an author who respects himself) not for the reader of today, but for all the readers who can present themselves as long as the language lives. My merchandise, therefore, cannot be consumed, for it is not made exclusively for my contemporaries. My service remains therefore indefinite, and in consequence, unpayable. Why publish then? Is it to be understood, applauded? But yourself, YOU, great George Sand, you confess your solitude. Is there at this time, I don't say, admiration or sympathy, but the appearance of a little attention to works of art? Who is the critic who reads the book that he has to criticise? In ten years they won't know, perhaps, how to make a pair of shoes, they are becoming so frightfully stupid! All that is to tell you that, until better times (in which I do not believe), I shall keep Saint-Antoine in the bottom of a closet. If I publish it, I would rather that it should be at the same time as another entirely different book. I am working now on one which will go with it. Conclusion: the wisest thing is to keep calm. Why does not Duquesnel go to find General Ladmirault, Jules Simon, Thiers? I think that the proceeding concerns him. What a fine thing the censorship is! Let us be reassured, it will always exist, for it always has! Our friend Alexandre Dumas fils, to make an agreeable paradox, has boasted of its advantages in the preface to the Dame aux Camelias, hasn't he? And you want me not to be sad! I think that we shall soon see abominable things, thanks to the inept stubbornness of the Right. The good Normans, who are the most conservative people in the world, incline towards the Left very strongly. If they consulted the bourgeoisie now, it would make father Thiers king of France. If Thiers were taken away, it would throw itself in the arms of Gambetta, and I am afraid it will do that soon! I console myself by thinking that Thursday next I shall be fifty-one years old. If you are not to come to Paris in February, I shall go to see you at the end of January, before going back to the Pan Monceau; I promise. The princess has written me to ask if you were at Nohant. She wants to write to you. My niece Caroline, to whom I have just given Nanon to read, is enchanted with it. What struck her was the "youth" of the book. The criticism seems true to me. It is a real BOOK while Francia, although more simple, is perhaps more finished; more irreproachable as a work. I read last week the Illustre Docteur Matheus, by Erckmann-Chatrian. How very boorish! There are two nuts, who have very plebeian souls. Adieu, dear good master. Your old troubadour embraces you, I am always thinking of Theo. I am not consoled for his loss. CCXLVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 8 December, 1872 Oh! well, then, if you are in the realm of the ideal about this, if you have a future book in your mind, if you are accomplishing a task of confidence and conviction, no more anger and no more sadness, let us be logical. I myself arrived at a philosophical state of very satisfactory serenity, and I did not OVERSTATE the matter when I said to you that all the ill any one can do me, or all the indifference that any one can show me, does not affect me really any more and does not prevent me, not only from being happy outside of literature, but also from being literary with pleasure, and from working with joy. You were pleased with my two novels? I am repaid, I think that they are SATISFACTORY, and the silence which has invaded my life (it must be said that I have sought it) is full of a good voice that talks to me and is sufficient to me. I have not mounted as high as you in my ambition. You want to write for the ages. As for me, I think that in fifty years, I shall be absolutely forgotten and perhaps unkindly ignored. Such is the law of things that are not of first rank, and I have never thought myself in the first rank. My idea has been rather to act upon my contemporaries, even if only on a few, and to share with them my ideal of sweetness and poetry. I have attained this end up to a certain point; I have at least done my best towards it, I do still, and my reward is to approach it continually a little nearer. That is enough for myself, but, as for you, your aim is greater, I see that clearly, and success is further off. Then you ought to put yourself more in accord with yourself, by being still calmer and more content than I am. Your momentary angers are good. They are the result of a generous temperament, and, as they are neither malicious nor hateful, I like them, but your sadness, your weeks of spleen, I do not understand them, and I reproach you for them. I have believed, I do still, that there is such a thing as too great isolation, too great detachment from the bonds of life. You have powerful reasons to answer me with, so powerful that they ought to give you the victory. Search your heart, think it over, and answer me, even if only to dispel the fears that I have often on your account; I don't want you to exhaust yourself. You are fifty years old, my son is the same or nearly. He is in the prime of his strength, in his best development, you are too, if you don't heat the oven of your ideas too hot. Why do you say often that you wish you were dead? Don't you believe then in your own work? Do let yourself be influenced then by this or that temporary thing? It is possible, we are not gods, and something in us, something weak and unimportant sometimes, disturbs our theodicy. But the victory every day becomes easier, when one is sure of loving logic and truth. It gets to the point even of forestalling, of overcoming in advance, the subject of ill humor, of contempt or of discouragement. All that seems easy to me, when it is a question of self control: the subjects of great sadness are elsewhere, in the spectacle of the history that is unrolling around us; that eternal struggle of barbarity against civilization is a great bitterness for those who have cast off the element of barbarity and find themselves in advance of their epoch. But, in that great sorrow, in these secret angers, there is a great stimulant which rightly raises us up, by inspiring in us the need of reaction. Without that, I confess, for my part, that I would abandon everything. I have had a good many compliments in my life, in the time when people were interested in literature. I have always dreaded them when they came to me from unknown people; they made me doubt myself too much. I have made enough money to be rich. If I am not, it is because I did not care to be; I have enough with what Levy makes for me. What I should prefer, would be to abandon myself entirely to botany, it would be for me a Paradise on earth. But it must not be, that would be useful only to myself, and, if chagrin is good for anything it is for keeping us from egoism, one must not curse nor scorn life. One must not use it up voluntarily; you are enamoured of JUSTICE, begin by being just to yourself, you owe it to yourself to conserve and to develop yourself. Listen to me; I love you tenderly, I think of you every day and on every occasion: when working I think of you. I have gained certain intellectual benefits which you deserve more than I do, and of which you ought to make a longer use. Consider too, that my spirit is often near to yours, and that it wishes you a long life and a fertile inspiration in true joys. You promise to come; that is a joy and a feast day for my heart, and in my family. Your old troubadour CCXLVII. TO GEORGE SAND 12 December 1872 Dear good master, Don't take seriously the exaggerations about my IRE. Don't believe that I am counting "on posterity, to avenge me for the indifference of my contemporaries." I meant to say only this: if one does not address the crowd, it is right that the crowd should not pay one. It is political economy. But, I maintain that a work of art (worthy of that name and conscientiously done) is beyond appraisal, has no commercial value, cannot be paid for. Conclusion: if the artist has no income, he must starve! They think that the writer, because he no longer receives a pension from the great, is very much freer, and nobler. All his social nobility now consists in being the equal of a grocer. What progress! As for me, you say to me "Let us be logical"; but that's just the difficulty. I am not sure at all of writing good things, nor that the book of which I am dreaming now can be well done, which does not prevent me from undertaking it. I think that the idea of it is original, nothing more. And then, as I hope to spit into it the gall that is choking me, that is to say, to emit some truths, I hope by this means to PURGE MYSELF, and to be henceforward more Olympian, a quality that I lack entirely. Ah! how I should like to admire myself! Mourning once more: I headed the procession at the burial of father Pouchet last Monday. That gentle fellow's life was very beautiful, and I mourned him. I enter today upon my fifty-second year, and I insist on embracing you today: I do it affectionately, since you love me so well. CCXLVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 8 January, 1873 Yes, yes, my old friend, you must come to see me. I am not thinking of going to Paris before the end of the winter, and it is so hard to see people in Paris. Bring me Saint-Antoine. I want to hear it, I want to live in it with you. I want to embrace you with all my soul, and Maurice does too. Lina loves you too, and our little ones have not forgotten you. I want you to see how interesting and lovely my Aurore has become. I shall not tell you anything new about myself. I live so little in myself. This will be a good reason for you to talk about what interests me more, that is to say, about yourself. Tell me ahead so that I can spare you that horrid coach from Chateauroux to Nohant. If you could bring Tourgueneff, we should be happy, and you would have the most perfect travelling companion. Have you read Peres et Enfants? How good it is! Now, I hope for you really this time, and I think that our air will do you good. It is so lovely here! Your old comrade who loves you, G. SAND I embrace you six times for the New Year. CCXLIX. TO GEORGE SAND Monday evening, 3 February, 1873 Dear master, Do I seem to have forgotten you and not to want to make the journey to Nohant? Not at all! But, for the last month, every time I go out, I am seized anew with the grippe which gets worse each time. I cough abominably, and I ruin innumerable pocket-handkerchiefs! When will it be over? I have sworn not to step beyond my doorsill till I am completely well again, and I am still awaiting the good will of the members of the commission for the Bouilhet fountain! For nearly two months, I have not been able to get together in Rouen six citizens of Rouen! That is the way friends are! Everything is difficult, the least undertaking demands great efforts. I am reading chemistry now (which I don't understand a bit), and the Raspail theory of medicine, not to mention the Potager moderne of Gressent and the Agriculture of Gasparin. In this connection, Maurice would be very kind, to compile his agronomical recollections, so that I may know what mistakes he made and why he made them. What sorts of information don't I need, for the book that I am undertaking? I have come to Paris this winter with the idea of collecting some; but if my horrible cold continues, my stay here will be useless! Am I going to become like the canon of Poitiers, of whom Montaigne speaks, who for thirty years did not leave his room "because of his melancholic infirmity," but who, however, was very well "except for a cold which had settled on his stomach." This is to tell you that I am seeing very few people. Moreover whom could I see? The war has opened many abysses. I have not been able to get your article on Badinguet. I am planning to read it at your house. As regards reading, I have just swallowed ALL the odious Joseph de Maistre. They have saddled us enough with this gentleman! And the modern socialists who have praised him beginning with the saint- simonians and ending with A. Comte. France is drunk with authority, no matter what they say. Here is a beautiful idea that I find in Raspail, THE PHYSICIANS OUGHT to be MAGISTRATES, so they could force, etc. Your romantic and liberal old dunce embraces you tenderly. CCL. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 5 February, 1873 I wrote to you yesterday to Croisset, Lina thinking that you had returned there. I asked you the little favor which you have already rendered me, namely, to ask your brother to give his patronage to my friend Despruneaux in his suit which is going to be appealed. My letter will probably be forwarded to you in Paris, and reach you as quickly as this one. It is only a question of writing a line to your brother, if that does not bother you. Pray, what is this obstinate cough? There is only one remedy, a minimum dose, a half-centigram of acetate of morphine taken every evening after digesting your dinner, for a week at least. I do nothing else and I always get over it, I cure all my family the same way, it is so easy to do and so quickly done! At the end of two or three days one feels the good effect. I am awaiting your cure with impatience, for your sake first, and second for myself, because you will come and because I am hungry and thirsty to see you. Maurice is at a loss to know how to answer your question. He has not made any mistake in his experiments, and knows indeed those that others make or could make; but he says that they vary infinitely and that each mistake is a special one for the conditions in which one works. When you are here and he understands really what you want, he can answer you for everything that concerns the center of France, and the general geology of the planet, if there is any opportunity to generalize. His reasoning has been this: not to make innovations, but to push to its greatest development what exists, in making use always of the method established by experience. Experience can never deceive, it may be incomplete, but never mendacious. With this I embrace you, I summon you, I await you, I hope for you, but will not however torment you. But we love you, that is certain; and we would like to infuse in you a little of our Berrichon patience about the things in this world which are not amusing, we know that very well! But why are we in this world if it is not to learn patience. Your obstinate troubadour who loves you. G. Sand CCLI. TO GEORGE SAND Tuesday, March 12, 1873 Dear master, If I am not at your house, it is the fault of the big Tourgueneff. I was getting ready to go to Nohant, when he said to me: "Wait, I'll go with you the first of April." That is two weeks off. I shall see him tomorrow at Madame Viardot's and I shall beg him to go earlier, as I am beginning to be impatient. I am feeling the NEED of seeing you, of embracing you, and of talking with you. That is the truth. I am beginning to regain my equilibrium again. What is it that I have had for the past four months? What trouble was going on in the depths of my being? I don't know. What is certain, is, that I was very ill in an indefinable way. But now I am better. Since the end of January, Madame Bovary and Salammbo have belonged to me and I can sell them. I am doing nothing about it, preferring to do without the money other than to exasperate my nerves. Such is your old troubadour. I am reading all sorts of books and I am taking notes for my big book which will take five or six years to write, and I am thinking of two or three others. There will be dreams for a long time, which is the principal thing. Art continues to be "in the marasmus," as M. Prudhomme says, and there is no longer any place in this world for people with taste. One must, like the rhinoceros, retire into solitude and await one's death. CCLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 15 March, 1873 Well, my old troubadour, we can hope for you very soon. I was worried about you. I am always worried about you. To tell the truth, I am not happy over your ill tempers, and your PREJUDICES. They last too long, and in effect they are like an illness, you recognize it yourself. Now, forget; don't you know how to forget? You live too much in yourself and get to consider everything in relation to yourself. If you were an egoist, and a conceited person, I would say that it was your normal condition; but with you who are so good and so generous, it is an anomaly, an evil that must be combated. Rest assured that life is badly arranged, painful, irritating for everyone, but do not neglect the immense compensations which it is ungrateful to forget. That you get angry with this or that person, is of little importance if it is a comfort to you; but that you remain furious, indignant for weeks, months, almost years, is unjust and cruel to those who love you, and who would like to spare you all anxiety and all deception. You see that I am scolding you; but while embracing you, I shall think only of the joy and the hope of seeing you flourishing again. We are waiting for you with impatience, and we are counting on Tourgueneff whom we adore also. I have been suffering a good deal lately with a series of very painful hemorrhages; but they have not prevented me from amusing myself writing tales and from playing with my LITTLE CHILDREN. They are so dear, and my big children are so good to me, that I shall die, I believe, smiling at them. What difference does it make whether one has a hundred thousand enemies if one is loved by two or three good souls? Don't you love me too, and wouldn't you reproach me for thinking that of no account? When I lost Rollinat, didn't you write to me to love the more those who were left? Come, so that I may OVERWHELM you with reproaches; for you are not doing what you told me to do. We are expecting you, we are preparing a mid-Lent fantasy; try to take part. Laughter is a splendid medicine. We shall give you a costume; they tell me that you were very good as a pastry cook at Pauline's! If you are better, be certain it is because you have gotten out of your rut and have distracted yourself a little. Paris is good for you, you are too much alone yonder in your lovely house. Come and work, at our house; how perfectly easy to send on a box of books! Send word when you are coming so that I can have a carriage at the station at Chateauroux. CCLIII. TO GEORGE SAND Thursday, 20 March, 1873 Dear master, The gigantic Tourgueneff is at this moment leaving here and we have just sworn a solemn oath. You will have us at dinner the 12th of April, Easter Eve. It has not been a small job to get to that point, it is so difficult to succeed in anything, no matter what. For my part nothing would prevent me from going tomorrow But our friend seems to me to enjoy very little liberty and I myself have engagements the first week in April. I am going this evening to two costume balls! Tell me after that that I am not young. A thousand affectionate greetings from your old troubadour who embraces you. Read as an example of modern fetidness, in the last number of the Vie Parisienne, the article on Marion Delorme. It ought to be framed, if, however, anything fetid can be framed. But nowadays people don't look so closely. CCLIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 23 March, 1873 No, that giant does not do as he likes, I have noticed that. But he is one of the class that finds its happiness in being ruled and I can understand it, on the whole. Provided one is in good hands,--and he is. Well, we are hoping still, but we are not absolutely counting on anyone but you. You can not give me a greater pleasure than by telling me that you are going out among people, that you are getting out of a rut and distracting yourself, absolutely necessary, in these muddled days. On the day when a little intoxication is no longer necessary for self-preservation, the world will be getting on very well. We haven't come to that yet. That FETID thing is not worth the trouble of reading, I didn't finish it, one turns away from such things, one does not spoil one's sense of smell by breathing them. But I do not think that the man to whom one offers that in a censer would be satisfied with it. Do come with the swallows and bring Saint-Antoine. It is Maurice who is going to be interested in that! He is more of a scholar than I am, I who will appreciate, thanks to my ignorance about many things, only the poetic and great side of it. I am sure of it, I know already that it is there. Keep on going about, you must, and above all continue to love us as we love you. Your old troubadour, G. Sand CCLV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 7th April, 1873 I am writing to my friend General Ferri Pisani, whom you know, who HAS CHARGE at Chateauroux, to reserve you a carriage which will be waiting for you on the 12th, at the station, at twenty minutes past three. You must leave Paris at ten minutes past nine o'clock by the EXPRESS. Otherwise the trip is too long and stupid. I hope that the general will come with you, if there is any decision contrary to your promise send him a telegram to Chateauroux so that he shall not wait for you. He usually comes on horseback. We are looking forward IMPATIENTLY to seeing you. Your old troubadour G. Sand CCLVI. TO GEORGE SAND 23 April, 1873 It is only five days since we parted, and I am missing you like the devil. I miss Aurore and all the household down to Fadette. Yes, that is the way it is, one is so happy at your house! you are so good and so interesting. Why can't we live together, why is life always so badly arranged? Maurice seems to me to be the type of human happiness. What does he lack? Certainly, he is no more envied by anyone than by me. Your two friends, Tourgueneff and Cruchard philosophized about that from Nohant to Chateauroux, very comfortably borne along in your carriage at a smart pace by two horses. Hurrah for the postillions of La Chatre! But the rest of the trip was horrid because of the company we had in our car. I was consoled for it by strong drink, as the Muscovite had a flask full of excellent brandy with him. We both felt a little heavy hearted. We did not talk, we did not sleep. We found here the barodetien folly in full flower again. On the heels of this affair has developed during the last three days, Stoppfel! another bitter narcotic! Oh! Heavens! Heavens! what a bore to live in such times! How wise you are live so far from Paris! I have begun my readings again, and, in a week I shall begin my excursions hereabouts to discover a countryside that may serve for my two good men. After which, about the 12th or the 15th, I shall return to my house at the water-side. I want very much, this summer, to go to Saint Gervais, to bleach my nose and to strengthen my nerves. For ten years I have been finding a pretext for doing without it. But it is high time to beautify myself, not that I have any pretensions at pleasing and seducing by my physical graces, but I hate myself too much when I look in my mirror. The older one grows, the more care one should take of oneself. I shall see Madame Viardot this evening, I shall go early and we will talk of you. When shall we meet again, now? How far Nohant is from Croisset! Yours, dear good master, all my affection. Gustave Flaubert otherwise called the R. P. Cruchard of the Barnabites, director of the Ladies of Disillusion. CCLVII. TO GEORGE SAND Dear master, Cruchard should have thanked you sooner for sending him your last book; but his reverence is working like ten thousand negroes, that is his excuse. But it did not hinder him from reading "Impressions et Souvenirs." I already knew some of it, from having read it in le Temps (a pun). [Footnote: "Dans de temps" means also, "some time ago."] This is what was new to me and what struck me: (1) the first fragment; (2) the second in which there is a charming and just page on the Empress. How true is what you say of the proletariat! Let us hope that its reign will pass like that of the bourgeois, and for the same causes, as a punishment for the same folly and a similar egoism. The "Reponse a un ami" I knew, as it was addressed to me. The "Dialogue avec Delacroix" is instructive; two curious pages on what he thought of father Ingres. I am not entirely of your opinion as regards the punctuation. That is to say that I would shock you by my exaggeration in that respect; but I do not lack, naturally, good reasons to defend my point of view. "J'allume le fagot," etc., all of this long article charmed me. In the "Idees d'un maitre d'ecole," I admire your pedagogic spirit, dear master, there are many pretty a b c phrases. Thank you for what you say of my poor Bouilhet! I adore your "Pierre Bonin." I have known people like him, and as these pages are dedicated to Tourgueneff it is the moment to ask you if you have read "I'Abandonnee"? For my part, I find it simply sublime. This Scythian is an immense old fellow. I am not at such high-toned literature now. Far from it! I am hacking and re-hacking "le Sexe faible." I wrote the first act in a week. It is true that my days are long. I spent, last week, one of eighteen hours, and Cruchard is as fresh as a young girl, not tired, no headache. In short, I think that I shall be through that work in three weeks. After that, God knows what! It would be funny if Carvalho's fantasticality was crowned with success! I am afraid that Maurice has lost his wager, for I want to replace the three theological virtues by the face of Christ appearing in the sun. What do you think about it? When the correction is made and I have strengthened the massacre at Alexandria and clarified the symbolism of the fantastic beasts, "Saint-Antoine" will be finished forever, and I shall start at my two good fellows who were set aside for the comedy. What a horrid way of writing is required for the stage! The ellipses, the delays, the questions and the repetitions have to be lavish, if movement is desired, and all that in itself is very ugly. I am perhaps blinding myself, but I think that I am now writing something very quick and easy to play. We shall see. Adieu, dear master, embrace all yours for me. Your old good-for-nothing Cruchard, friend of Chalumeau. Note that name. It is a gigantic story, but it requires one to toe the mark to tell it suitably. CCLVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 4 July, 1873 I don't know where you are at present, Cruchard of my heart. I am addressing this to Paris whence I suppose it will be forwarded to you. I have been ill, your reverence, nothing except a stupid anemia, no legs, no appetite, continual sweat on the forehead and my heart as jumpy as a pregnant woman; it is unfair, that condition, when one gets to the seventies, I begin my seventieth spring tomorrow, cured after a half score of river baths. But I find it so comfortable to rest that I have not yet done an iota of work since I returned from Paris, and until I opened my ink-well again to write to you today. We reread your letter this morning in which you said that Maurice had lost his wager. He insists that he has won it as you are taking out the vertus theologales. As for me, bet or no bet, I want you to keep the new version which is quite in the atmosphere, while the theological virtues are not.-- Have you any news of Tourgueneff? I am worried about him. Madame Viardot wrote me, several days ago, that he had fallen and hurt his leg.--Yes, I have read l'Abandonnee, it is very beautiful as is all that he does. I hope that his injury is not serious! such a thing is always serious with gout. So you are still working frantically? Unhappy one! you don't know the ineffable pleasure of doing nothing! And how good work will seem to me after it! I shall delay it however as long as possible. I am getting more and more of the opinion that nothing is worth the trouble of being said! Don't believe a word of that, do write lovely things, and love your old troubadour who always cherishes you. G. Sand Love from all Nohant. CCLIX. TO GEORGE SAND Thursday Why do you leave me so long without any news of yourself, dear good master? I am cross with you, there! I am all through with the dramatic art. Carvalho came here last Saturday to hear the reading of le Sexe faible, and seemed to me to be satisfied with it. He thinks it will be a success. But I put so little confidence in the intelligence of all those rascals, that for my part, I doubt it. I am exhausted, and I am now sleeping ten hours a night, not to mention two hours a day. That is resting my poor brain. I am going to resume my readings for my wretched book, which I shall not begin for a full year. Do you know where the great Tourgueneff is now? A thousand affectionate greetings to all and to you the best of everything from your old friend. CCLX. TO GEORGE SAND Sunday ... I am not like M. de Vigny, I do not like the "sound of the horn in the depth of the woods." For the last two hours now an imbecile stationed on the island in front of me has been murdering me with his instrument. That wretched creature spoils my sunlight and deprives me of the pleasure of enjoying the summer. For it is lovely weather, but I am bursting with anger. I should like, however, to talk a bit with you, dear master. In the first place, congratulations on your seventieth year, which seems more robust to me than the twentieth of a good many others! What a Herculean constitution you have! Bathing in an icy stream is a proof of strength that bewilders me, and is a mark of a "reserve force" that is reassuring to your friends. May you live long. Take care of yourself for your dear grandchildren, for the good Maurice, for me too, for all the world, and I should add: for literature, if I were not afraid of your superb disdain. Ha! good! again the hunting horn! The man is mad. I want to go and find the rural guard. As for me, I do not share your disdain, and I am absolutely ignorant of, as you say, "the pleasure of doing nothing." As soon as I no longer hold a book, or am not dreaming of writing one, A LAMENTABLE boredom seizes upon me. Life, in short seems tolerable to me only by legerdemain. Or else one must give oneself up to disordered pleasure ... and even then! Well, I have finished with le Sexe faible, which will be played, at least so Carvalho promises, in January, if Sardou's l'Oncle Sam is permitted by the censorship; if otherwise, it will be in November. As I have been accustomed during the last six weeks to seeing things from a theatrical point of view, to thinking in dialogue, here I am starting to build the plot of another play! It will be called le Candidat. My written plot is twenty pages long. But I haven't anyone to show it to. Alas! I shall therefore leave it in a drawer and start at my old book. I am reading l'Histoire de la Medecine by Daremberg, which amuses me a great deal, and I have finished l'Essai sur les facultes de l'entendement by Gamier, which I think very silly. There you have my occupations. THINGS seem to be getting quieter. I breathe again. I don't know whether they talk as much of the Shah in Nohant as they do around here. The enthusiasm has been immense. A little more and they would have proclaimed him Emperor. His sojourn in Paris has had, on the commercial shop-keeping and artisan class, a monarchical effect which you would not have suspected, and the clerical gentlemen are doing very well, very well indeed! On the other side of the horizon, what horrors they are committing in Spain! So that the generality of humanity continues to be charming. CCLXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 30 August, 1873 Where are you to be found now? where are you nestled? As for me, I have just come from Auvergne with my whole household, Plauchut included. Auvergne is beautiful, above all it is pretty. The flora is always rich and interesting, the walking rough, the living accommodations poor. I got through it all very well, except for the elevation of two thousand meters at Sancy, which combining an icy wind with a burning sun, laid me flat for four days with a fever. After that I got into the running again, and I am returning here to resume my river baths till the frost. There was no more question of any work, of any literature at all, than if none of us had ever learned to read. The LOCAL POETS pursued me with books and bouquets. I pretended to be dead and was left in peace. I am square with them now that I am home, by sending a copy of something of mine, it doesn't matter what, in exchange. Ah! what lovely places I have seen and what strange volcanic combinations, where we ought to have heard your Saint-Antoine in a SETTING worthy of the subject! Of what use are these pleasures of vision, and how are these impressions transformed later? One does not know ahead, and, with time and the easy ways of life, everything is met with again and preserved. What news of your play? Have you begun your book? Have you chosen a place to study? Do tell me what is becoming of my Cruchard, the Cruchard of my heart. Write to me even if only a word! Tell me that you still love us as I love you and as all of us here love you. G. Sand CCLXII. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Friday, 5th September, 1873 On arriving here yesterday, I found your letter, dear good master. All is well with you then, God be praised! I spent the month of August in wandering about, for I was in Dieppe, in Paris, in Saint-Gratien, in Brie, and in Beauce, hunting for a certain country that I had in mind, and I think that I have found it at last in the neighborhood of Houdan. But, before starting at my terrifying book, I shall make a last search on the road that goes from Loupe to Laigle. After that, good night. The Vaudeville begins well. Carvalho up to now has been charming. His enthusiasm is so strong even that I am not without anxieties. One must remember the good Frenchmen who cried "On to Berlin," and then received such a fine drubbing. Not only is the aforesaid Carvalho content with the le Sexe faible, but he wants me to write at once another comedy, the scenario of which I have shown him, and which he would like to produce a year from now. I don't think the thing is quite ready to be put into words. But on the other hand, I should like to be through with it before undertaking the story of my good men. Meanwhile, I am keeping on with my reading and note-taking. You are not aware, doubtless, that they have forbidden Coetlogon's play formally, BECAUSE IT CRITICISED THE EMPIRE. That is the censorship's answer. As I have in the le Sexe faible a rather ridiculous general, I am not without forebodings. What a fine thing is Censorship! Axiom: All governments curse literature, power does not like another power. When they forbade the playing of Mademoiselle La Quintinie, you were too stoical, dear master, or too indifferent. You should always protest against injustice and folly, you should bawl, froth at the mouth, and smash when you can. If I had been in your place with your authority, I should have made a grand row. I think too that Father Hugo was wrong in keeping quiet about le Roi s'amuse. He often asserts his personality on less legitimate occasions. At Rouen they are having processions, but the effect is completely spoiled, and the result of it is deplorable for fusion! What a misfortune! Among the imbecilities of our times, that (fusion) is perhaps the greatest. I should not be surprised if we should see little Father Thiers again! On the other hand many Reds, from fear of the clerical reaction, have gone over to Bonapartism. One needs a fine dose of simplicity to keep any political faith. Have you read the Antichrist? I find that indeed a beautiful book, aside from some faults of taste, some modern expressions applied to ancient things. Renan seems to me on the whole to have progressed. I passed all one evening recently with him and I thought him adorable. CCLXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 3d October, 1873 The existence of Cruchard is a beautiful poem, so much in keeping, that I don't know if it is a fictitious biography or the copy for a real article done in good faith. I had to laugh a bit after the departure of all the Viardots (except Viardot) and the big Muscovite, who was charming although very much indisposed from time to time. He left very well and very gay, but regretting not to have been to see you. The truth is that he was ill just then. He has had a disordered stomach, like me, for some time. I get well by being moderate, and he does not! I excuse him; after these crises one is famished, and if it is because of an empty stomach that one has to fill up, he must be terribly famished. What a kind, excellent and worthy man! And what modest talent! Everyone adores him here and I give them the example. We adore you too, Cruchard of my heart. But you love your work better than your friends, and in that you are inferior to the real Cruchard, who at least adored our holy religion. By the way, I think that we shall have Henry V. They tell me that I am seeing the dark side of things; I don't see anything, but I perceive the odor of sacristies that increases. If that should not last a long time, I should like our clerical bourgeois to undergo the scorn of those whose lands they have bought and whose titles they have taken. It would be a good thing. What lovely weather in our country! I still go every day to dip into the cold rush of my little river and I feel better. I hope to resume tomorrow my work that has been absolutely abandoned for six months. Ordinarily, I take shorter holidays; but the flowering of the meadow saffron always warns me that it is time to begin grubbing again. Here it is, let us grub. Love me as I love you. My Aurore, whom I have not neglected, and who is world: well, sends you a big kiss. Lina, Maurice send affection. G. Sand CCLXIV. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Thursday Whatever happens, Catholicism will receive a terrible blow, and if I were a devotee, I should spend my time before a crucifix saying: "Maintain the Republic for us, O my God!" But THEY ARE AFRAID of the monarchy. Because of itself and because of the reaction which would follow. Public opinion is absolutely against it. The reports of messieurs the prefects are disquieting; the army is divided into Bonapartists and Republicans; the body of big business in Paris has pronounced against Henry V. Those are the bits of information that I bring back from Paris, where I have spent ten days. In a word, dear master, I think now that THEY will be swamped! Amen! I advise you to read the pamphlet by Cathelineau and the one by Segur also. It is curious! The basis is clearly to be seen. Those people think they are in the XIIth century. As for Cruchard, Carvalho asked him for some changes which he refused. (You know that sometimes Cruchard is not easy.) The aforesaid Carvalho finally realized that it was impossible to change anything in le Sexe faible without distorting the real idea of the play. But he is asking to play le Candidat first, it is not finished but it delights him--naturally. Then when the thing is finished, reviewed and corrected, perhaps he won't want it. In short, if after l'Oncle Sam, le Candidat is finished, it will be played. If not, it will be le Sexe faible. However, I don't care, I am so eager to start my novel which will take me several years. And moreover, the theatrical style is beginning to exasperate me. Those little curt phrases, this continual scintillation irritates like seltzer water, which is pleasing at first but shortly seems like nasty water. Between now and January I am going to compose dialogues in the best manner possible, after that I am coming back to serious things. I am glad to have diverted you a little with the biography of Cruchard. But I find it is hybrid and the character of Cruchard is not consistent! A man with such an executive ability does not have so many literary preoccupations. The archeology is superfluous. It belongs to another kind of ecclesiastics. Perhaps there is a transition that is lacking. Such is my humble criticism. They had said in a theatrical bulletin that you were in Paris; I had a mistaken joy about it, dear good master whom I adore and whom I embrace. CCLXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Your poor old troubadour, just getting well from a cruel attack of rheumatism, during which he could not lie down, nor eat, nor dress without aid, is at last up again. He suffered liver trouble, jaundice, rash, fever, in short he was fit to be thrown out on a pile of rubbish. Here he is up again, very feeble, but able to write a few lines and to say with you AMEN to the buried catholic dictatorships; it is not even Catholics that they should be called, those people are not. They are only clericals. I note today in the papers that they have played l'Oncle Sam. I hear that it is bad, but it may very well be a success all the same. I think that your play is surely postponed and Carvalho seems as capricious too, to me, as hard to put your finger on as other theatrical managers. All Nohant embraces you and I embrace you even more, but I cannot write any more. G. Sand Monday Hard work? When indeed can I start at it? I am NO GOOD. CCLXVI. TO GEORGE SAND January, 1874 As I have a quiet moment, I am going to profit by it by talking a little with you, dear good master! And first of all, embrace for me all your family and accept all my wishes for a Happy New Year! This is what is happening now to your Father Cruchard. Cruchard is very busy, but serene and very calm, which surprises everybody. Yes, that's the way it is. No indignations, no boiling over. The rehearsals of le Candidat have begun, and the thing will be on the boards the first of February. Carvalho seems to me very satisfied with it! Nevertheless he has insisted on my combining two acts in one, which makes the first act inordinately long. I did this work in two days, and Cruchard has been splendid! He slept seven hours in all, from Thursday morning (Christmas Day) to Saturday, and he is only the better for it. Do you know what I am going to do to complete my ecclesiastical character? I am going to be a godfather. Madame Charpentier in her enthusiasm for Saint-Antoine came to beg me to give the name Antoine to the child that she is expecting! I refused to inflict on this young Christian the name of such an agitated man, but I had to accept the honor that was done me. Can you see my old top-knot by the baptismal font, beside the chubby-cheeked baby, the nurse and the relatives? O civilization, such are your blows! Good manners, such are your exactions! I went on Sunday to the civic funeral of Francois-Victor Hugo. What a crowd! and not a cry, not the least bit of disorder! Days like that are bad for Catholicism. Poor father Hugo (whom I could not help embracing) was very broken, but stoical. What do you think of le Figaro, which reproached him for wearing at his son's funeral, "a soft hat"? As for politics, a dead calm. The Bazaine trial is ancient history. Nothing shows better the contemporary demoralization than the pardon granted to this wretched creature! Besides, the right of pardon if one departs from theology is a denial of justice. By what right can a man prevent the accomplishment of the law? The Bonapartists should have let this alone; but not at all: they defended him bitterly, out of hatred for the 4th of September. Why do all the parties regard themselves as having joint interests with the rascals who exploit them? It is because all parties are execrable, imbecile, unjust, blind! An example: the history of Azor (what a name!). He robbed the ecclesiastics. Never mind! the clericals consider themselves attacked. As regards the church. I have read in full (which I never did before) Lamennais' Essai sur l'indifference. I know now, and thoroughly, all the great buffoons who had a disastrous influence on the XIXth century. To establish common sense or the prevailing mode and custom as the criterion of certitude, that is preparing the way for universal suffrage, which is, to my way of thinking, the shame of human kind. I have just read also, la Chretienne by the Abbe Bautain. A curious book for a novelist. It smacks of its period of modern Paris. I gulped a volume by Garcin de Tassy on Hindustani literature, to get clean. One can breathe, at least, in that. You see that your Father Cruchard is not entirely stupefied by the theatre. However, I haven't anything to complain of in the Vaudeville. Everyone there is polite and exact! How different from the Odeon! Our friend Chennevieres is now our superior, since the theatres are in his division. The theatrical people are enchanted. I see the Muscovite every Sunday. He is very well and like him better and better. Saint-Antoine will be in galley proof at the end of January. Adieu, dear master! When shall we meet? Nohant is very far away! and I am going to be, all this winter, very busy. CCLXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT January, 1874 I am seized with a headache, but, although perfectly imbecile, I want to embrace you and thank you for having written to me on New Year's day. All Nohant loves you and smacks you, as they say in the country. We wish you a magnificent success and we are glad that it is not to be at the cost of annoyances. However, that is hardly the way of the actors whom I have known, and at the Vaudeville I have found only those who were good natured. Have you a part for my friend Parade? And for Saint-Germain, who seemed to you idiotic one day when perhaps he had lunched too well, but who nevertheless is a fine addlepate, full of sympathy and spirit. And with real talent! I am not reading all these horrid things that you feed on so as to sense better apparently the good things with which you sandwich them. I have stopped laughing at human folly, I flee it and try to forget it. As for admiration, I am always ready, it is the healthiest regime by far, and too, I am glad to know that I shall soon read Saint-Antoine again. Keep in touch with your play and don't get ill this hateful winter. Your old troubadour who loves you. G. Sand CCLXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND Saturday evening, 7th February, 1874 I have at last a moment to myself, dear master; now let us talk a little. I knew through Tourgueneff that you were doing very well. That is the main thing. Now I am going lo give you some news about that excellent Father Cruchard. Yesterday I signed the final proof for Saint-Antoine. ...But the aforesaid old book will not be published until the first of April (like an April fool trick?) because of the translations. It is finished, I am not thinking any more about it! Saint-Antoine is relegated, as far as I am concerned, to the condition of a memory! However I do not conceal from you that I had a moment of great sadness when I looked at the first proof. It is hard to separate oneself from an old companion! As for le Candidat, it will be played, I think, between the 2oth and the 25th of this month. As that play gave me very little trouble and as I do not attach great importance to it, I am rather calm about the results of it. Carvalho's leaving irritated and disturbed me for several days. But his successor Cormon is full of zeal. Up to now I have nothing but praise for him, as for all the others in fact. The people at the Vaudeville are charming. Your old troubadour, whom you picture agitated and always angry, is gentle as a lamb and even good natured! First I made all the changes that THEY wanted, and then THEY put back the original text. But of my own accord I have cut out what seemed to me too long, and it goes well, very well. Delannoy and Saint-Germain have excellent wigs and play like angels. I think it will be all right. One thing vexes me. The censorship has ruined the role of a little legitimist ragamuffin, so that the play, conceived in the spirit of strict unpartisanship, has now to flatter the reactionaries: a result that distresses me. For I don't want to please the political passions of anyone, no matter who it may be, having, as you know, an essential hatred of all dogmatism, of all parties. Well, the good Alexander Dumas has made the plunge! Here he is an Academician! I think him very modest. He must be to think himself honored by honors. CCLXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 15 February, 1874 Everything is going well, and you are satisfied, my troubadour. Then we are happy here over your satisfaction and we are praying for success, and we are waiting impatiently Saint-Antoine so as to read it again. Maurice has had a cold which attacks him every other day. Lina and I are well, little girls superlatively so. Aurore learns everything with admirable facility and docility; that child is my life and ideal. I no longer enjoy anything except her progress. All my past, all that I have been able to acquire or to produce, has no value in my eyes unless it can profit her. If a certain portion of intelligence and goodness was granted to me, it is so that she may have a greater share. You have no children, be therefore a litterateur, an artist, a master; that is logical, that is your compensation, your happiness, and your strength. And do tell us that you are getting on, that seems to us the main thing in life.--And keep well, I think that these rehearsals which make you go to and fro are good for you. We all embrace you fondly. G. Sand CCLXX. TO GEORGE SAND Saturday evening, 28 February, 1874 Dear master, The first performance of le Candidat is set for next Friday, unless it is Saturday, or perhaps Monday the 9th? It has been postponed by Delannoy's illness and by l'Oncle Sam, for we had to wait until the said Sam had come down to under fifteen hundred francs. I think that my play will be very well given, that is all. For I have no idea about the rest of it, and I am very calm about the result, a state of indifference that surprises me greatly. If I were not harassed by people who ask me for seats, I should forget absolutely that I am soon to appear on the boards, and to expose myself, in spite of my great age, to the derision of the populace. Is it stoicism or fatigue? I have been having and still have the grippe, the result of it for your Cruchard, is a general lassitude accompanied by a violent (or rather a profound) melancholy. While spitting and coughing beside my fire, I muse over my youth. I dream of all my dead friends, I wallow in blackness! Is it the result of a too great activity for the past eight months, or the radical absence of the feminine element in my life? But I have never felt more abandoned, more empty, more bruised. What you said to me (in your last letter) about your dear little girls moved me to the depths of my soul! Why haven't I that? I was born with all the affections, however! But one does not make one's destiny, one submits to it. I was cowardly in my youth, I had a fear of life! One pays for everything. Let us speak of other things, it will be gayer. H. M. the Emperor of all the Russias does not like the Muses. The censorship of the "autocrat of the north" had formally forbidden the transportation of Saint-Antoine, and the proofs were returned me from Saint Petersburg, last Sunday; the French edition even will be prohibited. That is quite a serious money loss to me. It would have taken very little for the French censorship to forbid my play. Our friend Chennevieres gave me a good boost. Except for him I should not be played. Cruchard does not please the temporal powers. Isn't it funny, this simple hatred of authority, of all government whatever, for art! I am reading now books on hygiene. Oh! but they are comic! What assurance physicians have! what effrontery! what asses for the most part! I have just finished the Gaule poetique of Marchangy (the enemy of Beranger). This book gave me hysterics. So as to retemper myself in something stronger, I reread the great, the most holy, the incomparable Aristophanes. There is a man, that fellow! What a world in which such work were produced! CCLXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, March, 1874 Our two little girls cruelly ill with the grippe have taken up all my time, but I am following, in the papers, the course of your play. I would go to applaud it, my cherished Cruchard, if I could leave these dear little invalids. So it is on Wednesday that they are going to judge it. The jury may be good or stupid, one never knows! I have started grubbing again after having rested from the long and successful novel published by the Revue. I shall send it to you when it is published in book form. Don't you delay to give me the news on Thursday, I don't need to tell you that success and the lack of it prove nothing, and that it is a ticket in a lottery. It is agreeable to succeed; to a philosophical spirit it ought not to be very distressing to fail. As for me, without knowing the play, I predict a success on the first day. As for its continuance, that is always unknown and unforeseen from day to day. We all embrace you very affectionately. G. Sand CCLXXII. TO GEORGE SAND Thursday, one o'clock, 12 March, 1874 Speaking of FROSTS, this is one! People who want to flatter me insist that the play will do better before the real public, but I don't think so! I know the defects of my play better than anyone. If Carvalho had not, for a month, bored me to death with corrections that I have cut out, I would have made re-touches or perhaps changes which would perhaps have modified the final issue. But I was so disgusted with it that I would not have changed a line for a million francs. In a word, I am dished. It must be said too that the hall was detestable, all fops and students who did not understand the material sense of the words. They made jokes of the poetical things. A poet says: "I am of 1830, I learned to read in Hernani, and I wanted to be Lara." Thereupon a burst of ironical laughter, etc. And moreover I have fooled the public in regard to the title. They expected another Rabagas! The conservatives have been vexed because I did not attack the republicans. Similarly the communists would have liked some insults against the legitimists. My actors played superbly, Saint-Germain among others; Delannoy who carries all the play, is distressed, and I don't know what to do to soften his grief. As for Cruchard, he is calm, very calm! He had dined very well before the performance, and after it he supped even better. Menu: two dozen oysters from Ostend, a bottle of champagne frappe, three slices of roast beef, a truffle salad, coffee and a chaser. Religion and the stomach sustain Cruchard. I confess that I should have liked to make some money, but as my fall involves neither art nor sentiment I am profoundly unconcerned. I tell myself: "well, it's over!" and I experience a feeling of freedom. The worst of it all is the scandal about the tickets. Observe that I had twelve orchestra seats and a box! (Le Figaro had eighteen orchestra seats and three boxes.) I did not even see the chief of the claque. One would say that the management of the Vaudeville had arranged for me to fail. Its dream is fulfilled. I did not give away a quarter of the seats that I needed and I bought a great many for people who slandered me eloquently in the lobbies. The "bravos" of a devoted few were drowned at once by the "hushes." When they mentioned my name at the end, there was applause (for the man but not for the work) accompanied by two beautiful cat- calls from the gallery gods. That is the truth. La Petite Presse of this morning is polite. I can ask no more of it. Farewell, dear good master, do not pity me, for I don't feel pitiable. P. S.--A nice bit from my servant when he handed me your letter this morning. Knowing your handwriting, he said sighing: "Ah! the best one was not there last evening!" That is just what I think. CCLXXIII TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday, April, 1874 Thank you for your long letter about le Candidat. Now here are the criticisms that I add to yours: we ought to have: (1) lowered the curtain after the electoral meeting and put the entire half of the third act into the beginning of the fourth; (2) cut out the anonymous letter, which is unnecessary, since Arabelle informs Rousselin that his wife has a lover; (3) inverted the order of the scenes in the fourth act, that is to say, beginning with the announcement of the tryst between Madame Rousselin and Julien and, making Rousselin a little more jealous. The anxieties of his election turn him aside from his desire to go to entrap his wife. Not enough is made of the exploiters. There should be ten instead of three. Then, he gives his daughter. The end was there, and at the instant that he notices the blackguardism, he is elected. Then his dream is accomplished, but he feels no joy over it. In that manner there would have been moral progress. I think, whatever you say about it, that the subject was good, but that I have spoiled it. Not one of the critics has shown me in what. But I know, and that consoles me. What do you think of La Rounat, who in his page implores me, "in the name of our old friendship," not to have my play printed, he thinks it so "silly and badly written"! A parallel between me and Gondinet follows. The theatrical mystery is one of the funniest things of this age. One would say that the art of the theatre goes beyond the limits of human intelligence, and that it is a secret reserved for those who write like cab drivers. The QUESTION OF IMMEDIATE SUCCESS leads all others. It is the school of demoralization. If my play had been sustained by the management, it could have made money like another. Would it have been the better for that? The Tentation is not doing badly. The first edition of two thousand copies is exhausted. Tomorrow the second will be published. I have been torn in pieces by the petty journals and praised highly by two or three persons. On the whole nothing serious has appeared yet, nor will appear, I think. Renan does not write any more (he says) in the Debats, and Taine is busy getting settled at Annecy. I have been EXECRATED by the Messrs. Villemessant and Buloz, who will do all they can to be disagreeable to me. Villemessant reproaches me for not "having been killed by the Prussians." All that is nauseous! And you beg me not to notice human folly, and to deprive myself of the pleasure of depicting it! But the comic is the only consolation of virtue. There is, moreover, a manner of taking it which is elevated; that is what I am aiming at with two good people. Don't fear that they are too realistic! I am afraid, on the contrary, that it may seem beyond the bounds of possibility, for I shall push the idea to the limit. This little work that I shall start in six weeks will keep me busy for four or five years! CCLXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND April, 1874 As it would have necessitated a STRUGGLE, and as Cruchard has lawsuits in horror, I have withdrawn my play on the payment of five thousand francs, so much the worse! I will not have my actors hissed! The night of the second performance when I saw Delannoy come back into the wings with his eyes wet, I felt myself a criminal and said to myself: "Enough." (Three persons affect me: Delannoy, Tourgueneff and my servant!) In short, it is over. I am printing my play, you will get it towards the end of the week. I am jumped on on all sides! le Figaro and le Rappel; it is complete! Those people to whom I lent money or for whom I did favors call me an idiot. I have never had less nerves. My stoicism (or pride) surprises myself even, and when I look for the causes, I ask myself, dear master, if you are not one of them. I recall the first night of Villemer, which was a triumph, and the first night of Don Juan de Village, which was a failure. You do not know how much I admired you on those two occasions! The dignity of your character (a thing rarer still than genius) edified me! and I formulated within myself this prayer: "Oh! how I wish I could be like her, on a similar occasion." Who knows, perhaps your example has sustained me? Forgive the comparison! Well, I don't bat an eye- lid. That is the truth. But I confess to regretting the THOUSANDS OF FRANCS which I should have made. My little milk-jug is broken. I should have liked to renew the furniture at Croisset, fooled again! My dress rehearsal was deadly! Every reporter in Paris! They made fun of it all. I shall underline in your copy, all the passages that they seized on. Yesterday and the day before they did not seize on them any more. Oh! well, so much the worse! It is too late. Perhaps the PRIDE of Cruchard has killed it. And they have written articles on MY dwellings, my SLIPPERS, my DOG. The chroniclers have described my apartment where they saw "on the walls, pictures and bronzes." But there is nothing at all on the walls! I know that one critic was enraged because I did not go to see him; and a third person came to tell me so this morning, adding: "What do you want me to tell him?...But Messieurs Dumas, Sardou and even Victor Hugo are not like you.--Oh! I know it!--Then you are not surprised, etc." Farewell, dear good adored master, friendly regards to yours. Kisses to the dear little girls, and all my love to you. P.S. Could you give me a copy or the original of Cruchard's biography; I have no draft of it and I want to reread it to freshen up MY IDEAL. CCLXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 10 April, 1874 Those who say that I do not think Saint-Antoine beautiful! and excellent, lie about it, I do not need to tell you. Let me ask you how I could have confided in the Levy clerks whom I do not know! I remember, as for Levy himself, saying to him last summer, that I found the thing superb and first class. I would have done an article for you if I had not already refused Maurice recently, to do one about Hugo's Quatre-vingt-treize. I said that I was ill. The fact is, that I do not know how to DO ARTICLES, and I have done so many of them for Hugo that I have exhausted my subject. I wonder why he has never done any for me; for, really, I am no more of a journalist than he is, and I need his support much more than he needs mine. On the whole, articles are not of any use, now, no more than are friends at the theatre. I have told you that it is the struggle of one against all, and the mystery, if there is one, is to turn on an electric current. The subject then is very important in the theatre. In a novel, one has time to win the reader over. What a difference! I do not say as you do that there is nothing mysterious in that. Yes, indeed, there is something very mysterious in one respect: namely that one can not judge of one's effect beforehand, and that the shrewdest are mistaken ten times out of fifteen. You say yourself that you have been mistaken. I am at work now on a play; it is not possible to know if I am mistaken or not. And when shall I know? The day after the first performance, if I have it performed, which is not certain. There is no fun in anything except work that has not been read to any one. All the rest is drudgery and PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS, a horrible thing. So make fun of all this GOSSIP; the guiltiest ones are those who report it to you. I think it is very odd that they say so much against you to your friends. No one indeed ever says anything to me: they know that I would not allow it. Be valiant and CONTENT since Saint-Antoine is doing well and selling better. What difference does it make if they cut you up in this or that paper? In former times it meant something; in these days, nothing. The public is not the public of other days, and journalism has not the least literary influence. Every one is a critic and forms his own opinions. They never write articles about my novels. That doesn't make any difference to me. I embrace you and we love you. Your old troubadour. CCLXXVI. TO GEORGE SAND Friday evening, 1st May, 1874 Things are progressing, dear master, insults are accumulating! It is a concerto, a symphony in which each one is intent on his own instrument. I have been cut up beginning le Figaro up to la Revue des Deux Mondes, including la Gazette de France and le Constitutionnel. And THEY have not finished yet! Barbey d'Aurevilly has insulted me personally, and the good Saint-Rene Taillandier, who declares me "unreadable," attributes ridiculous words to me. So much for printing. As for speech, it is in accord. Saint-Victor (is it servility towards Michel Levy) rends me at the Brabant dinner, as does that excellent Charles Edmond, etc. On the other hand I am admired by the professors of the Faculty of Theology at Strasbourg, by Renan, and by the cashier at my butcher's! not to mention some others. There is the truth. What surprises me, is that under several of these criticisms there is a HATRED against me, against me personally, a deliberate slandering, the cause of which I am seeking. I do not feel hurt, but this avalanche of foolishness saddens me. One prefers inspiring good feelings to bad ones. As for the rest, I am not thinking any more about Saint-Antoine. That is over with! I shall start, this summer, another book of about the same calibre; after that I shall return to the novel pure and simple. I have in my head two or three to write before I die. Just now I am spending my days at the Library, where I am accumulating notes. In a fortnight, I shall return to my house in the fields. In July I shall go to get rid of my congestion on the top of a Swiss mountain, obeying the advice of Doctor Hardy, the man who called me "a hysterical woman," a saying that I consider profound. The good Tourgueneff is leaving next week for Russia, his trip will forcibly interrupt his frenzy for pictures, for our friend never leaves the auction rooms now! He is a man with a passion, so much the better for him! I missed you very much at Madame Viardot's a fortnight ago. She sang Iphigenie en Aulide. I can not tell you how beautiful it was, how transporting, in short how sublime. What an artist that woman is! What an artist! Such emotions console one for life. Well! and you, dear good master, that play that they talk about, is it finished? You are going to fall back into the theatre! I pity you! After having put dogs on the boards at the Odeon, perhaps they are going to ask you to put on horses! That is where we are now! And all the household, from Maurice to Fadet, how is it? Kiss the dear little girls for me and let them return it to you from me. Your old friend. CCLXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 4th May, 1874 Let them say what they like, Saint-Antoine is a masterpiece, a magnificent book. Ridicule the critics, they are blockheads. The present century does not like lyricism. Let us wait for the reaction, it will come for you, and a splendid one. Rejoice in your insults, they are great promises for the future. I am working still on my play, I don't at all know if it is worth anything and don't worry about it. I shall be told that when it is finished, and if it does not seem interesting I shall lock it up. It will have amused me for six weeks, that is the most certain thing for us about our profession. Plauchut is the joy of the salons! happy old man! always content with himself and with others; that makes him as good as an angel, I forgive him all his graces. You were happy at hearing the Diva Paulita, we had her, with Iphigenie, for two weeks in Nohant last autumn. Ah! yes, there is beauty and grandeur! Try to come to see us before going to Croisset, you would make us happy. We all love you and all my dear world embraces you with a GREAT GOOD HEART. Your old troubadour always, G. Sand CCLXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Tuesday, 26th March, 1874 Dear good master, Here I am back again in my solitude! But I shall not remain in it long, for, in a short month, I shall go to spend three weeks on the Righi, so as to breathe a bit, to relax myself, to deneurasthenize myself! It is a long time since I took the air, I am tired. I need a little rest. After that I shall start at my big book which will take at least four years. It will have that good quality! Le Sexe faible which was accepted at the Vaudeville Carvalho, was returned to me by the said Vaudeville and returned also by Perrin, who thinks the play off-color and unconventional. "Putting a cradle and a nurse on the French stage!" Think of it! Then, I took the thing to Duquesnel who has not yet (naturally) given me any answer. How far the demoralization which the theatres bring about extends! The bourgeois of Rouen, my brother included, have been talking to me of the failure of le Candidat in hushed voices (sic) and with a contrite air, as if I had been taken to the assizes under an accusation of forgery. NOT TO SUCCEED IS A CRIME and success is the criterion of well doing. I think that is grotesque in a supreme degree. Now explain to me why they put mattresses under certain falls and thorns under others? Ah! the world is funny, and it seems chimerical to me to want to regulate oneself according to its opinion. The good Tourgueneff must be now in Saint Petersburg; he sent me a favorable article on Saint-Antoine from Berlin. It is not the article, but he, that has given me pleasure. I saw him a great deal this winter, and I love him more and more. I saw a good deal of father Hugo who is (when the political gallery is absent) a charming, good fellow. Was not the fall of the Broglie ministry pleasing to you? Very much so to me! but the next! I am still young enough to hope that the next Chamber will bring us a change for the better. However? Ah, confound it! how I want to see you and talk a long time with you! Everything is poorly arranged in this world. Why not live with those one loves? The Abbey of Theleme [Footnote: Cf. Rabelais' Gargantua.] is a fine dream, but nothing but a dream. Embrace warmly the dear little girls for me, and entirely yours. R. P. Cruchard More Cruchard than ever. I feel like a good-for-nothing, a cow, damned, antique, deliquescent, in short calm and moderate, which is the last term in decadence. CCLXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND Kalt-Bad. Righi. Friday, 3d July, 1874 Is it true, dear master, that last week you came to Paris? I went through it to go to Switzerland, and I read "in a sheet" that you had been to see les Deux Orphelines, had taken a walk in the Bois de Boulogne, had dined at Magny's, etc.; all of which goes to prove that, thanks to the freedom of the Press, one is not master of one's own actions. Whence it results that Father Cruchard is wrathful with you for not having advised him of your presence in the "new Athens." It seems to me that people are sillier and flatter there than usual. The state of politics has become drivel! They have tickled my ears with the return of the Empire. I don't believe in it! However...We should have to expatriate ourselves then. But how and where? Is it for a play that you came? I pity you for having anything to do with Duquesnel! He had the manuscript of le Sexe faible returned to me by an agent of the theatrical management, without a word of explanation, and in the ministerial envelope was a letter from an underclerk, which is a gem! I will show it to you. It is a masterpiece of impertinence! People do not write in that way to a Carpentras urchin, offering a skit to the Beaumarchais theatre. It is that very play le Sexe faible that, last year, Carvalho was so enthusiastic about! Now no one wants it any more for Perrin thinks it unconventional to put on the boards of the Theatre Francais, a nurse and a cradle. Not knowing what to do with it, I have taken it to the Cluny Theatre. Ah! my poor Bouilhet did well to die! But I think that the Odeon could show more respect for his posthumous work. Without believing in an Holbachic conspiracy, I think that they have been knocking me a bit too much of late; and they are so indulgent towards certain others. The American Harrisse maintained to me the other day that Saint- Simon wrote badly. At that I burst out and talked to him in such a way that he will never more before me belch his idiocy. It was at dinner at the Princess's; my violence cast a chill. You see that your Cruchard continues not to listen to jokes on religion! He does not become calm! quite the contrary! I have just read la Creation naturelle by Haeckel, a pretty book, pretty book! Darwinism seems to me to be better expounded there than in the books of Darwin himself. The good Tourgueneff has sent me news from the depths of Scythia. He has found the information he wanted for a book that he is going to do. The tone of his letter is frivolous, from which I conclude that he is well. He will return to Paris in a month. A fortnight ago I made a little trip to Lower Normandy, where I have found at last a neighborhood suitable to place my two good men. It will be between the valley of the Orne and the valley of the Auge. I shall have to return there several times. Beginning with September, then, I shall start that hard task! it makes me afraid, and I am overwhelmed by it in advance. As you know Switzerland, it is useless for me to talk to you of it, and you would scorn me if I were to tell you that I am bored to extinction here. I came here obediently because they ordered me to, for the purpose of bleaching my face and calming my nerves! I don't think that the remedy will be efficacious; anyhow it has been deadly boring to me. I am not a man of nature, and I do not understand anything in a country where there is no history. I would give all these glaciers for the Vatican Museum. One can dream there. Well, in three weeks I shall be glued to my green table! in a humble refuge, where it seems to me you never want to come! CCLXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 6th July, 1874 (Yesterday, seventy years.) I was in Paris from the 30th of May to the 10th of June, you were not there. Since my return here, I have been ill with the grippe, rheumatic, and often absolutely deprived of the use of my right arm. I have not the courage to stay in bed: I spend the evening with my children and I forget my little miseries which will pass; everything passes. That is why I was not able to write to you, even to thank you for the good letter which you wrote to me about my novel. In Paris I was overwhelmed by fatigue. That is the way I am growing old, and now I am beginning to feel it; I am not more often ill, now, illness PROSTRATES me more. That is nothing, I have not the right to complain, being well loved and well cared for in my nest. I urge Maurice to go about without me, since my strength is not equal to going with him. He leaves tomorrow for Cantal with a servant, a tent, a lamp, and a quantity of utensils to examine the MICROS of his entomological DIVISION I am telling him that you are bored on the Righi. He cannot understand it. The 7th I am taking up my letter again, begun yesterday; I still find it very hard to move my pen, and even at this moment, I have a pain in my side, and I cannot... Till tomorrow. The 8th At last, I shall be able perhaps today: for I am furious to think that perhaps you are accusing me of forgetting you, when I am prevented by weakness that is entirely physical, in which my affections count for nothing. You tell me that they KNOCK you too much. I read only le Temps and it is a good deal for me even to open a paper to see about what it is talking. You ought to do as I do and IGNORE criticism when it is not serious, and even when it is. I have never been able to see what good it is to the author criticised. Criticism always starts from a personal point of view, the authority of which the artist does not recognize. It is because of that usurpation of powers in the intellectual order of things, that people get to discussing the Sun and the Moon; but that does not prevent them in the least from showing us their good tranquil faces. You do not want to be a man of nature, so much the worse for you! therefore you attach too much importance to the details of human things, and you do not tell yourself that there is in you a NATURAL force that defies the IFS and the BUTS of human prattle. We are of nature, in nature, by nature, and for nature. Talent, will, genius, are natural phenomena like the lake, the volcano, the mountain, the wind, the star, the cloud. What man dabbles in is pretty or ugly, ingenious or stupid; what he gets from nature is good or bad; but it is, it exists and subsists. One should not ask from the jumble of appreciation called CRITICISM, what one has done and what one wants to do. Criticism does not know anything about it; its business is to gossip. Nature alone knows how to speak to the intelligence in a language that is imperishable, always the same, because it does not depart from the eternally true, the absolutely beautiful. The hard thing, when one travels, is to find nature, because man has arranged it everywhere and has almost spoiled it everywhere; probably it is because of that that you are bored, it is because it is disguised and travestied everywhere. However, the glaciers are still intact, I presume. But I cannot write further, I must tell you quickly that I love you, that I embrace you affectionately. Give me news of yourself. I hope to be on my feet in a few days. Maurice is waiting until I am robust before he goes: I am hurrying as much as I can! My little girls embrace you, they are superb. Aurore is devoted to mythology (George Cox, Baudry translation). You know that? An adorable work for children and parents. Enough, I can no more. I love you; don't have black ideas, and resign yourself to being bored if the air is good there. CCLXXXI. TO GEORGE SAND Righi, 14 July, 1874; What? ill? poor, dear master! If it is rheumatism, do as my brother does, who in his character of physician, scarcely believes in medicine. Last year he went to the baths at Aix in Savoy, and in two weeks he was cured of the pains that had tormented him for six years. But to do that you would have to move, to resign your habits, Nohant and the dear little girls. You will remain at home and YOU WILL BE WRONG. You ought to take care of yourself ... for those who love you. And as regard this, you send me, in your last letter, a horrid thing. Could I, for my part, suspect you of forgetting Cruchard! Come now, I have, first of all, too much vanity and next, too much faith in you. You don't tell me how your play is getting on at the Odeon. Speaking of plays, I am going again to expose myself to insults of the populace and the penny-a-liners. The manager of the Cluny Theatre, to whom I took le Sexe faible, has written me an admiring letter and is disposed to put on that play in October. He is reckoning on a great money success. Well, so be it! But I am recalling the enthusiasm of Carvalho, followed by an absolute chill! and all that increases my scorn for the so-called shrewd people who pretend to know all about things. For, in short, there is a dramatic work, declared by the managers of the Vaudeville and the Cluny "perfect," by the Theatre Francais "unplayable," and by the manager of the Odeon "in need of rewriting from one end to the other." Draw a conclusion now! and listen to their advice! Never mind, as these four gentlemen are the masters of your destinies because they have the money, and as they have more mind than you, never having written a line, you must believe them and submit to them. It is a strange thing how much pleasure imbeciles find in floundering about in the work of another! in cutting it, correcting it, playing the pedagogue! Did I tell you that I was, because of that, very much at odds with a certain *****. He wanted to make over, sometime ago, a novel that I had recommended to him, which was not very good, but of which he is incapable of turning the least phrase. And I did not hide from him my opinion about him; inde irae. However, it is impossible for me to be so modest as to think that that good Pole is better than I am in French prose. And you want me to remain calm! dear master! I have not your temperament! I am not like you, always soaring above the miseries of this world. Your Cruchard is as sensitive as if he were divested of skin. And imbecility, self-sufficiency, injustice exasperate him more and more. Thus the ugliness of the Germans who surround me shuts off the view of the Righi!!! Zounds! What mugs! God be thanked, "of my horrible sight I purge their States." CCLXXXII. TO GEORGE SAND Saturday, 26 September, 1874 Then, after having been bored like an ass on the top of the Righi, I returned home the first of August and started my book. The beginning was not easy, it was even "direful," and "methought" I should die of despair; but now things are going, I am all right, come what may! But one needs to be absolutely mad to undertake such a book. I fear that, by its very conception, it is radically impossible. We shall see, Ah! supposing I should carry it out well ... what a dream. You doubtless know that once more I am exposing myself to the storms of the footlights (pretty metaphor) and that "braving the publicity of the theatre" I shall appear upon the boards of Cluny, probably, towards the end of December. The manager of that "little theatre" is enchanted with le Sexe faible. But so was Carvalho, which did not prevent him ... You know the rest. Of course every one blames me for letting my play be given in such a joint. But since the others do not want that play and since I insist that it shall be presented to make a few sous for the Bouilhet heirs, I am forced to pass that over. I am keeping two or three pretty anecdotes about this to tell you when we meet. Why is the theatre such a general cause of delirium? Once one is on that ground, ordinary conditions are changed. If one has had the misfortune (slight) not to succeed, friends turn from one. They are very inconsiderate of one. They never salute one! I swear to you on my word of honor that that happened to me on account of le Candida. I do not believe in Holbachic conspiracies, but all that they have done to me since March amazes me. But, I decidedly don't bat an optic, and the fate of le Sexe faible disturbs me less than the least of the phrases of my novel. Public intelligence seems to me to get lower and lower! To what depth of imbecility shall we descend? Belot's last book sold eight thousand copies in two weeks. Zola's Conquete de Plassans, seventeen hundred in six months, and there was an article about it. All the Monday-morning idiots have just been swooning away about M. Scribe's Une Chaine. France is ill, very ill, whatever they say; and my thoughts are more and more the color of ebony. However, there are some pretty comic elements: (1) the Bazaine escape with the episode of the sentinel; (2) l'Histoire d'un Diamant by Paul de Musset (see the Revue des Deux Mondes for September); (3) the vestibule of the former establishment of Nadar near Old England [sic], where one can contemplate a life-size photograph of Alexander Dumas. I am sure that you are finding me grouchy and that you are going to answer me: "What difference does all that make?" But everything makes a difference, and we are dying of humbug, of ignorance, of self-confidence, of scorn of grandeur, of love of banality, and imbecile babble. "Europe which hates us, looks at us and laughs," said Ruy Blas. My Heavens, she has a right to laugh. CCLXXXIII TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 5th November, 1874 What, my Cruchard, you have been ill? That is what I feared, I who live in the woes of indigestion and yet hardly work at all, I am disquieted at your kind of life, the excess of intellectual expenditure and the seclusion. In spite of the charm that I have proved and appreciated at Croisset, I fear for you that solitude where you have no longer anyone to remind you that you must eat, drink and sleep, and above all walk. Your rainy climate makes you keep to the house. Here, where it does not rain enough, we are at least hustled out of doors by the beautiful warm sun and that Phoebus invigorates us, while our Phoebus-Apollo murders us. But I am always talking to you as to a Cruchard philosophic and detached from his personality, to a Cruchard fanatical about literature and drunk with production. When, then, shall you be able to say to yourself: Lo! this is the time for rest, let us taste the innocent pleasure of living for life's sake, of watching with amazement the agitations of others and of not giving to them anything except the excess of our overflow. It does one good to ruminate over what one has assimilated in life, sometimes without attention and without discrimination. Old friendships sustain us and all at once they distress us. I have just lost my poor blind Duvernet, whom you have seen at our house. He expired very quietly without suspecting it and without suffering. There is another great void about us and my nephew, the substitute, has been nominated for Chateauroux. His mother has followed him. So we are all alone. Happily we love one another so much that we can live like that, but not without regret for the absent ones. Plauchut left us yesterday to return at Christmas. Maurice is already at work preparing a splendid performance of marionettes for us. And you, if you are in Paris, won't you come to keep the Christmas Eve revels with us? You will have finished your rehearsals, you will have had a success, perhaps you will be in the mood to return to material life, eating truffles? Tell us about yourself, do not be ill, always love your old troubadour and his people who love you too. G. Sand CCLXXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday, 2nd December, 1874 I am having remorse about you. It is a crime to let so long a time elapse without answering such a letter as your last. I was waiting to write to you until I had something definite to tell you about le Sexe faible. What is definite is that I took it away from the Cluny a week ago. The cast that Weinschenk proposed to me was odiously stupid and he did not keep the promises that he made. But, God be thanked, I withdrew in time. At present my play has been offered to the Gymnase. No news up to now from Montigny. I am worrying like five hundred devils about my book, asking myself sometimes if I am not mad to have undertaken it. But, like Thomas Diafoirus, I am stiffening myself against the difficulties of execution which are frightful. I need to learn a heap of things about which I am ignorant. In a month I hope to finish with the agriculture and the gardening, and I shall only then be at the second third of my first chapter. Speaking of books, do read Fromont et Risler, by my friend Daudet, and les Diaboliques, by my enemy Barbey d'Aurevilly. You will writhe with laughter. It is perhaps owing to the perversity of my mind, which likes unhealthy things, but the latter work seemed to me extremely amusing; it is the last word in the involuntary grotesque. In other respects, dead calm, France is sinking gently like a rotten hulk, and the hope of salvage, even for the staunchest, seems chimerical. You need to be here, in Paris, to have an idea of the universal depression, of the stupidity, of the decrepitude in which we are floundering. The sentiment of that agony penetrates me and I am sad enough to die. When I am not torturing myself about my work, I am groaning about myself. That is the truth. In my leisure moments, all I do is to think of the dead, and I am going to say a very pretentious thing to you. No one understands me; I belong to another world. The men of my profession are so little of my profession! There is hardly anyone except Victor Hugo with whom I can talk of what interests me. Day before yesterday he recited by heart to me from Boileau and from Tacitus. That was like a gift to me, the thing is so rare. Moreover, the days when there are not politicians at his house, he is an adorable man. CCLXXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 8th December, 1874 Poor dear friend, I love you all the more because you are growing more unhappy. How you torment yourself, and how you disturb yourself about life! for all of which you complain, is life; it has never been better for anyone or in any time. One feels it more or less, one understands it more or less, one suffers with it more or less, and the more one is in advance of the age one lives in, the more one suffers. We pass like shadows on a background of clouds which the sun seldom pierces, and we cry ceaselessly for the sun which can do no more for us. It is for us to clear away our clouds. You love literature too much; it will destroy you and you will not destroy the imbecility of the human race. Poor dear! imbecility, that, for my part, I do not hate, that I regard with maternal eyes: for it is a childhood and all childhood is sacred. What hatred you have devoted to it! what warfare you wage on it! You have too much knowledge and intelligence, you forget that there is something above art: namely, wisdom, of which art at its apogee is only the expression. Wisdom comprehends all: beauty, truth, goodness, enthusiasm, in consequence. It teaches us to see outside of ourselves, something more elevated than is in ourselves, and to assimilate it little by little, through contemplation and admiration. But I shall not succeed in changing you. I shall not even succeed in making you understand how I envisage and how I lay hold upon HAPPINESS, that is to say, the acceptation of life whatever it may be! There is one person who could change you and save you, that is father Hugo; for he has one side on which he is a great philosopher, while at the same time he is the great artist that you require and that I am not. You must see him often. I believe that he will quiet you: I have not enough tempest in me now for you to understand me. As for him, I think that he has kept his thunderbolts and that he has all the same acquired the gentleness and the compassion of age. See him, see him often and tell him your troubles, which are great, I see that, and which turn too much to spleen. You think too much of the dead, you think that they have too soon reached their rest. They have not. They are like us, they are searching. They labor in the search. Every one is well, and embraces you. As for me, I do not get well, but I have hopes, well or not, to keep on still so as to bring up my grandchildren, and to love you as long as I have a breath left. G. Sand CCLXXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 16th January, 1875 I too, dear Cruchard, embrace you at the New Year, and wish that you may have a tolerable one, since you do not care to hear the myth happiness spoken of. You admire my serenity; it does not come from my depths, it comes from my necessity of thinking only of others. There is but a little time left, old age creeps on and death is pushing me by the shoulders. I am as yet, if not necessary, at least extremely useful, and I shall go on as long as I have a breath, thinking, talking, working for them. Duty is the master of masters, it is the real Zeus of modern times, the son of Time, and has become his master. It is that which lives and acts outside of all the agitations of the world. It does not reason, does not discuss. It examines without fear, it walks without looking behind it; Cronos, the stupid, swallowed stones, Zeus breaks them with the lightning, and the lightning is the will. I am not a philosopher, I am a servant of Zeus, who takes away half of their souls from slaves, but who leaves them entire to the brave. I have no more leisure to think of myself, to dream of discouraging things, to despair of human-kind, to look at my past sorrows and joys and to summon death. Mercy! If one were an egoist, one would see it approach with joy; it is so easy to sleep in nothingness, or to awaken in a better life! for it opens these two hypotheses, or to express it better, this antithesis. But, for the one who must continue working, death must not be summoned before the hour when exhaustion opens the doors of liberty. You have had no children. It is the punishment of those who wish to be too independent; but that suffering is nevertheless a glory for those who vow themselves to Apollo. Then do not complain for having to grub, and describe your martyrdom to us; there is a fine book to be written about that. You say that Renan is despairing; for my part, I don't believe that: I believe that he is suffering as are all those who look high and far ahead; but he ought to have strength in proportion to his vision. Napoleon shares his ideas, he does well if he shares them all. He has written me a very wise and good letter. He now sees relative safety in a wise republic, and I, too, think it still possible. It will be very bourgeois and not very ideal, but one has to begin at the beginning. We artists have no patience at all. We want the Abbey of Theleme at once; but before saying, "Do what you want!" one must go through with "Do what you can!" I love you and I embrace you with all my heart, my dear Polycarp. My children large and small join with me. Come now, no weakness! We all ought to be examples to our friends, our neighbors, our fellow citizens. And how about me, don't you think that I need help and support in my long task that is not yet finished? Don't you love anyone, not even your old troubadour, who still sings, and often weeps, but who conceals himself when he weeps, as cats do when they die? CCLXXXVII. TO GEORGE SAND Paris, Saturday evening Dear master, I curse once more THE DRAMATIC MANIA and the pleasure that certain people have in announcing remarkable news! Someone had told me that you were VERY ill. Your good handwriting came to reassure me yesterday morning, and this morning I have received the letter from Maurice, so the Lord be praised! What to tell you about myself? I am not stiff, I have ... I don't know what. Bromide of potassium has calmed me and given me eczema on the middle of my forehead. Abnormal things are going on inside me. My psychic depression must relate to some hidden cause. I feel old, used up, disgusted with everything, and others bore me as I do myself. However, I am working, but without enthusiasm: as one does a stint, and perhaps it is the work that makes me ill, for I have undertaken a senseless book. I lose myself in the recollections of my childhood like an old man ... I do not expect anything further in life than a succession of sheets of paper to besmear with black. It seems to me that I am crossing an endless solitude to go I don't know where. And it is I who am at the same time the desert, the traveller, and the camel. I spent the afternoon today at the funeral of Amedee Achard. The Protestant ceremonies were as inane as if they had been Catholic. ALL PARIS and the reporters were there in force! Your friend, Paul Meurice, came a week ago to ask me to "do the Salon" in le Rappel. I declined the honor, for I do not admit that anyone can criticise an art of which he does not know the technique! And then, what use is so much criticism! I am reasonable. I go out every day, I exercise, and I come home tired, and still more irritated, that is the good I get out of it. In short, your troubadour (not very troubadourish) has become a sad bonehead. It is in order not to bore you with my complaints that I write so rarely to you now, for no one has a livelier sense than I of my unbearableness. Send me Flamarande; that will give me a little air. I embrace you all, and especially you, dear master, so great, so strong, and so gentle. Your Cruchard, who is more and more cracked, if cracked is the right word, for I perceive that the contents are escaping. CCLXXXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 20th February Then you are quite ill, dear old fellow? I am not worried about it, since it concerns only nerves and rheumatisms, and I have lived seventy years with all that nuisance in my body, and I am still healthy. But I am sad to know that you are bored, suffering, and your spirit turned to darkness as it necessarily is when one is ill. I was sure that a moment would come when someone would prescribe walking to you. All your illness comes from the lack of exercise, a man of your strength and your complexion ought to have lived an athletic life. Don't sulk then about the very wise order that condemns you to an hour's walk each day. You fancy that the work of the spirit is only in the brain, you are very much mistaken, it is also in the legs. Tell me that two weeks of this regime has cured you. It will happen, I am sure of it. I love you, and I embrace you, as does every one of my brood. Your old troubadour CCLXXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 25th March, 1875 Don't be worried about me, my Polycarp. I have nothing serious, a little grippe, and this right arm which hardly moves but which electricity will cure. One thinks that it is an effort. I am much more worried about you, although you are ten times as strong as I am, but your morale is affected whereas mine takes what comes, in a cowardly way, if you like, but there is perhaps a philosophy in knowing how to be cowardly rather than angry. Do write to me, tell me that you are going out of doors, that you are walking, that you are better.--I have finished going over the proofs of Flamarande. That is the most boring part of the task. I shall send you the book when it is published. I know that you do not like to read bit by bit. I am a little tired; however, I want to begin something else. Since it is not warm enough to go out, I get bored with not having anything on the stocks. Everything is going well in the nest, except for a few colds. Spring is so peevish this year! At last the pale sun will become the dear Phoebus-Appolo with the shining hair, and all will go well. Aurore is getting so big that one is surprised to hear her laugh and play like a child, always good, and tender, the other is always very funny and facetious. Tell us of yourself and always love us as we love you. Your old troubadour CCXC. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 7th May, 1875 You leave me without news of you? You say that you prefer to be forgotten, rather than to complain ceaselessly, as it is very useless and since you will not be forgotten; complain then, but tell us that you are alive and that you still love us. As you are much nicer, the more surly you are, I know that you are not rejoicing over the death of poor Michel. For me, it is a great loss in every way, for he was absolutely devoted to me and proved it all the time by his care and services without number. We are all well here. I am better since it is not cold any more, and I am working a great deal. I am also doing many water colors, I am reading the Iliad with Aurore, who does not like any translation except Leconte de Lisle's, insisting that Homer is spoiled by approximate renderings. The child is a singular mixture of precocity and childishness. She is nine years old and so large that one would think her twelve. She plays dolls with passion, and she is as LITERARY as you or I, meanwhile learning her own language which she does not yet know. Are you still in Paris in this lovely weather? Nohant is now STREAMING with flowers, from the tips of the trees to the turf; Croisset must be even prettier, for it is cool, and we are struggling with a drought that has now become chronic in Berry. But if you are still in Paris, you have that beautiful Pare Monceau under your eyes where you are walking, I hope, since you have to. Life is at the price of walking! Won't you come to see us? Whether you are sad or gay, we love you the same here, and we wish that affection meant something to you, but we shall give it to you, and we give it to you without conditions. I am thinking of going to Paris next month, shall you be there? G. Sand CCXCI. TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, 10th May, 1875 A wandering gout, pains that go all over me, an invincible melancholy, the feeling of "universal uselessness" and grave doubts about the book that I am writing, that is what is the matter with me, dear and valiant master. Add to that worries about money with melancholic recollections of the past, that is my condition, and I assure you that I make great efforts to get out of it. But my will is tired. I cannot decide about anything effective! Ah! I have eaten my white bread first, and old age is not announcing itself under gay colors. Since I have begun hydrotherapy, however, I feel a little less like a COW, and this evening I am going to begin work without looking behind me. I have left my apartment in the rue Murillo, and I have taken a larger one which is next to the one that my niece has just reserved on the Boulevard Reine Hortense. I shall be less alone next winter, for I cannot endure solitude. Tourgueneff seemed to me, however, to be very well pleased with the two first chapters of my frightful book. But Tourgueneff loves me too much, perhaps to judge impartially. I am not going to leave my house for a long time now, for I WILL get ahead in my task, which weighs on my chest like a burden of a million pounds. My niece will come to spend all the month of June here. When she has gone away, I shall make a little archeological and geological excursion in Calvados, and that will be all. No, I do not rejoice at Michel Levy's death, and I even envy him that death so quiet. Just the same, that man did me a great deal of harm. He wounded me deeply. It is true that I am endowed with an absurd sensitiveness; what scratches others tears me to pieces. Why am I not organized for enjoyment as I am for suffering! The bit you sent me about Aurore who is reading Homer, did me good. That is what I miss: a little girl like that! But one does not arrange one's own destiny, one submits to it. I have always lived from day to day, without plans for the future and pursuing my end (one alone, literature) without looking to the right or to the left. Everything that was around me has disappeared, and now I find I am in a desert. In short, the element of distraction is absolutely lacking to me. One needs a certain vivacity to write good things! What can one do to get it again? How can one proceed, to avoid thinking continually about one's miserable person? The sickest thing in me is my humor: the rest doubtless would go well. You see, dear, good master, that I am right to spare you my letters. Nothing is as imbecile as the whiners. CCXCII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Thursday morning, 10th June, 1875 We are leaving, Lina and I, on Saturday morning, and up to then we shall be on the move. If you wanted to come to dine with us Friday at Magny's at six o'clock, at least we could say farewell. You should be free at nine o'clock, for we go to bed with the chickens in order to leave early the next day. What do you say? I love you with all my heart. CCXCIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Friend, I shall come at your call as soon as you say to me, "I have finished." I love you, and I embrace you. G. Sand CCXCIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 15 August My poor, dear, old fellow, I learn only today in a letter from that dear, lazy soul of a Tourgueneff, about the misfortune which has come to your niece. Is it then irreparable? Her husband is very young and intelligent, can't he begin over again, or take a position that will give him a living? They have no children, they do not need millions to live on, young and well as they both are. Tourgueneff tells me that your property has been affected by this failure. If it is AFFECTED MERELY you will bear this serious annoyance philosophically. You have no vices to satisfy, nor ambitions to appease. I am sure that you will accommodate your life to your resources. The hardest thing for you to bear, is the chagrin of that young woman who is as a daughter to you. But you will give her courage and consolation, it is the moment to be above your own worries, in order to assuage those of others. I am sure that as I write, you have calmed her mind and soothed her heart. Perhaps, too, the disaster is not what it seems at the first moment. There will be a change for the better, a new way will be found, for it is always so, and the worth of men is measured according to their energy, to the hopes which are always a sign of their force and intelligence. More than one has risen again bravely. Be sure that better days will come and tell them so continually, for it is true. Your moral and physical welfare must not be shaken by this rebuff. Think of healing those whom you love, and forget yourself. We shall be thinking of you, and we shall be suffering for you; for I am keenly affected at seeing that you have a new subject of sadness amidst your spleen. Come, dear splendid old fellow, cheer up, do us a new successful novel, and think of those who love you, and whose hearts are saddened and torn by your discouragements. Love them, love us, and you will find once more your strength and your enthusiasm. We all embrace you very tenderly. Do not write if it bores you, say to us only, "I am well, and I love you." G. Sand CCXCV. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday Will you forgive my long delay, dear master? But I think that I must bore you with my eternal jeremiads. I repeat myself like a dotard! I am becoming too stupid! I am boring everybody. In short, your Cruchard has become an intolerable old codger, because he has been intolerant. And as I cannot do anything that I ought to do, I must, out of consideration for others, spare them the overflow of my bile. For the last six months, especially, I don't know what has been the trouble with me, but I feel dreadfully ill, without being able to get to the root of the matter, and I know many people are in the same condition. Why? Perhaps we are suffering from the illness of France; here in Paris, where her heart beats, people feel better than at her extremities, in the provinces. I assure you that every one now is suffering with some incomprehensible trouble. Our friend Renan is one of the most desperate, and Prince Napoleon feels exactly the way he does. But they have strong nerves. But, as for me, I am attacked by a well defined melancholia. I should be resigned to it, and I am not. I work all the more, so as not to think about myself. But since I have undertaken a book that has absurd difficulties in its execution, the feeling of my powerlessness adds to my chagrin. Don't tell me again that imbecility is sacred like childhood, for imbecility contains no germ. Let me believe that the dead do not "search any more," and that they are at rest. We are sufficiently tormented on earth to be at rest when we are beneath it! Ah! How I envy you, how I long to have your serenity! To say nothing of the rest! and your two dear little girls, whom I embrace as tenderly as I do--you. CCXCVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 7th September, 1875 You are distressed, you are discouraged, you distress me too. That is all right, I would rather have you complain than keep silent, dear friend. And I don't want you to stop writing to me. I also have great and frequent sorrows. My old friends are dying before I do. One of the dearest, the one who brought up Maurice and whom I was expecting to help me to bring up my grandchildren, has just died, almost in an instant. That is a deep sorrow. Life is a succession of blows at one's heart. But duty is there: we must go on and do our tasks without saddening those who suffer with us. I ask you absolutely to WILL, and not to be indifferent to the griefs which we are sharing with you. Tell us that calm has come and that the horizon has cleared. We love you, sad or gay. Give us news of yourself. G. Sand CCXCVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 8th October, 1875 Well, well, your health has come back in spite of you, since you are sleeping all night. The sea air forces you to live and you have made progress, you have given up a work that would not have made a success. Do something more of earth earthy, which would reach everybody. Tell me what price they would sell Croisset for if they are obliged to sell it. Is it a house and garden, or is there a farm and grounds! If it is not beyond my means I might buy it and you should spend the rest of your life there. I have no money, but I should try to shift a little capital. Answer me seriously, I beg of you; if I can do it, it shall be done. I have been ill all the summer, that is to say, that I have suffered continually, but I have worked all the more not to think of it. In fact they are to put on Villemer and Victorine at the Theatre Francais again. But there is nothing now in preparation. I do not know at what time in the autumn or winter I shall have to go to Paris. I shall find you there ready and courageous, shan't I? If you have made, through goodness and devotion, as I think, a great sacrifice for your niece, who, in truth, is your real daughter, you will forget all about it and will begin your life again as a young man. Is one old when one does not choose to be? Stay at the seaside as long as you can. The important thing is to patch up the physical machine. Here with us it is as warm as in midsummer. I hope that you still have the sun down there. Study the life of the mollusc! They are creatures better endowed than one thinks, and, for my part, I should love to take a walk with Georges Pouchet! Natural history is the inexhaustible source of agreeable occupations for even those who seek only amusement in it, and if you actually attacked it you would be saved. But you must by all means save yourself, for you are somebody, and you cannot drop out of the running, as can a mere ruined grocer. We all embrace you with our best love. G. Sand CCXCVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 15 November, 1875 So you are there in Paris, and have you left your apartment at the rue Murillo? You are working? Good luck and good courage! The old man is coming to the top again! I know that they are rehearsing Victorine at the Theatre Francais; but I don't know whether I shall go to see that revival. I have been so ill all the summer and I am still suffering so much with intestinal trouble, that I do not know if I shall ever be strong enough to move in winter. Well, we shall see. The hope of finding you there will give me courage; that is not what will be lacking, but, since I passed my seventieth birthday, I have been very much upset, and I do not yet know if I shall get over it. I cannot walk any more, I who used to love to be on my feet so much, without risking atrocious pains. I am patient with these miseries, I work all the more, and I do water-colors in my hours of recreation. Aurore consoles and charms me; I should like to live long enough to get her married. But God disposes, and one must take death and life as He wills. Well, this is just to say to you that I shall go to embrace you unless the thing is ABSOLUTELY impossible. You shall read me what you have begun. Meanwhile, give me news of yourself; for I shall not stir until the last rehearsals. I know my cast, I know that they will all do well, according to their capabilities, and, besides, that Perrin will look after them. We all KISS you very tenderly, and we love you, Cruchard or not. G. Sand CCXCIX. TO GEORGE SAND Paris, 11 December, 1875 Things are going a little better, and I am profiting by the occasion to write to you, dear, good, adorable master. You know that I have abandoned my big novel in order to write a little MEDIEVAL bit of nonsense, which won't run to more than thirty pages. It puts me in a more decent setting than that of modern times, and does me good. Then I am hunting for a contemporary novel, but I am hesitating among several embryonic ideas; I should like to do something concise and violent. The string of the necklace (that is to say, the main idea) is still to seek. Externally my life is scarcely changed: I see the same people, I receive the same visits. My faithful ones on Sunday are first of all, the big Tourgueneff, who is nicer than ever, Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Goncourt. You have never spoken to me of the first two. What do you think of their books? I am not reading anything at all, except Shakespeare, whom am going through from beginning to end. That tones you up and puts new air into your lungs, just as if you were on a high mountain. Everything appears mediocre beside that prodigious felow. As I go out very little, I have not yet seen Victor Hugo. However, this evening I am going to resign myself to putting on my boots, so that I can go to present my compliments to him. His personality pleases me infinitely, but his court! ... mercy! The senatorial elections are a subject of diversion to the public of which I am a part. There must have occurred, in the corridors of the Assembly, dialogues incredibly grotesque and base. The XlXth century is destined to see all religions perish. Amen! I do not mourn any of them. At the Odeon, a live bear is going to appear on the boards. That is all that I know about literature. CCC. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 18th and 19th December, 1875 At last I discover my old troubadour who was a subject of chagrin and serious worry to me. Here you are yourself again, trusting in the very natural luck of external events, and discovering in yourself the strength to control them, whatever they may be, by effort. What is it that you call some one in HIGH FINANCE? For my part, I don't know; I am in relations with Victor Borie. He will do me a favor if he sees it to his interest. Must I write him? Then you are going to start grubbing again? So am I; for since Flamarande I have done nothing but mark time, while waiting for something better. I was so ill all summer! but my strange and excellent friend Favre has cured me wonderfully, and I am taking a new lease on life. What's our next move? For you, of course, DESOLATION, and, for me, consolation. I do not know on what our destinies depend; you see them pass, you criticise them, you abstain from a literary appreciation of them, you limit yourself to depicting them, with deliberate meticulous concealment of your personal feelings. However, one sees them very clearly through your narrative, and you make the people sadder who read you. As for me, I should like to make them less sad. I cannot forget that my personal victory over despair was the work of my will and of a new way of understanding which is entirely opposed to what I had before. I know that you criticise the intervention of the personal doctrine in literature. Are you right? Isn't it rather a lack of conviction than a principle of esthetics? One cannot have a philosophy in one's soul without its appearing. I have no literary advice to give you, I have no judgment to formulate on the author friends of whom you speak. I, myself have told the Goncourts all my thought; as for the others, I firmly believe that they have more education and more talent than I have. Only I think that they, and you especially, lack a definite and extended vision of life. Art is not merely painting. True painting, moreover, is full of the soul that wields the brush. Art is not merely criticism and satire: criticism and satire depict only one side of the truth. I want to see a man as he is, he is not good or bad, he is good and bad. But he is something more ... nuance. Nuance which is for me the purpose of art, being good and bad, he has an internal force which leads him to be very bad and slightly good,--or very good and slightly bad. I think that your school is not concerned with the substance, and that it dwells too much on the surface. By virtue of seeking the form, it makes the substance too cheap! it addresses itself to the men of letters. But there are no men of letters, properly speaking. Before everything, one is a man. One wants to find man at the basis of every story and every deed. That was the defect of l'Education sentimentale, about which I have so often reflected since, asking myself why there was so general a dislike of a work that was so well done and so solid. This defect was the absence of ACTION of the characters on themselves. They submitted to the event and never mastered it. Well, I think that the chief interest in a story is what you did not want to do. If I were you, I would try the opposite; you are feeding on Shakespeare just now, and you are doing well! He is the author who puts men at grips with events; observe that by them, whether for good or for ill, the event is always conquered. In his works, it is crushed underfoot. Politics is a comedy just now. We have had tragedy, shall we end with the opera or with the operetta? I read my paper conscientiously every morning; but aside from that moment, it is impossible for me to think of it or to be interested in it. All of it is absolutely void of any ideal whatsoever, and therefore I cannot get up any interest in any of the persons concerned in that scullery. All of them are slaves of fact because they have been born slaves of themselves. My dear little girls are well. Aurore is a well-set-up girl, a beautiful upright soul in a strong body. The other one is grace and sweetness. I am always an assiduous and a patient teacher, and very little time is left to me to write PROFESSIONALLY, seeing that I cannot keep awake after midnight and that I want to spend all my evening with my family; but this lack of time stimulates me and makes me find a true pleasure in digging away; it is like a forbidden fruit that I taste in secret. All my dear world embraces you and rejoices to hear that you are better. Did I send you Flamarande and the pictures of my little girls? If not, send me a line, and I send you both. Your old troubadour who loves you, G. Sand Embrace your charming niece for me. What a good and lovely letter she wrote me! Tell her that I beg her to take care of herself and to please get well quickly. What do you mean! Littre a senator? It is impossible to believe it when one knows what the Chamber is. All the same it must be congratulated for this attempt at self-respect. CCCI. TO GEORGE SAND December, 1875 Your good letter of the 18th, so maternally tender, has made me reflect a great deal. I have reread it ten times, and I shall confess to you that I am not sure that I understand it. Briefly, what do you want me to do? Make your instructions exact. I am constantly doing all that I can to enlarge my brain, and I work in the sincerity of my heart. The rest does not depend on me. I do not enjoy making "desolation," believe me, but I cannot change my eyes! As for my "lack of convictions," alas! I choke with convictions. I am bursting with anger and restrained indignation. But according to the ideal of art that I have, I think that the artist should not manifest anything of his own feelings, and that the artist should not appear any more in his work than God in nature. The man is nothing, the work is everything! This method, perhaps mistakenly conceived, is not easy to follow. And for me, at least, it is a sort of permanent sacrifice that I am making to good taste. It would be agreeable to me to say what I think and to relieve Mister Gustave Flaubert by words, but of what importance is the said gentleman? I think as you do, dear master, that art is not merely criticism and satire; moreover, I have never tried to do intentionally the one nor the other. I have always tried to go into the soul of things and to stick to the greatest generalities, and I have purposely turned aside from the accidental and the dramatic. No monsters and no heroes! You say to me: "I have no literary advice to give you; I have no judgments to formulate on the authors, your friends, etc." Well? indeed! but I implore advice, and I am waiting for your judgments. Who, pray, should give them, and who, pray, should formulate them, if not you? Speaking of my friends, you add "my school." But I am ruining my temperament in trying not to have a school! A priori, I spurn them, every one. The people whom I see often and whom you designate cultivate all that I scorn and are indifferently disturbed about what torments me. I regard as very secondary, technical detail, local exactness, in short the historical and precise side of things. I am seeking above all for beauty, which my companions pursue but languidly. I see them insensible when I am ravaged with admiration or horror. Phrases make me swoon with pleasure which seem very ordinary to them. Goncourt is very happy when he has seized upon a word in the street that he can stick in a book, and I am well satisfied when I have written a page without assonances or repetitions. I would give all the legends of Gavarni for certain expressions and master strokes, such as "the shade was NUPTIAL, august and solemn!" from Victor Hugo, or this from Montesquieu: "the vices of Alexander were extreme like his virtues. He was terrible in his wrath. It made him cruel." In short, I try to think well, IN ORDER TO write well. But writing well is my aim, I do not deny it. "I lack a well-defined and extended vision of life." You are right a thousand times over, but by what means could it be otherwise? I ask you that. You do not enlighten my darkness with metaphysics, neither mine nor that of others. The words religion or Catholicism on the one hand; progress, fraternity, democracy on the other, do not correspond to the spiritual needs of the moment. The entirely new dogma of equality which radicalism praises is experimentally denied by physiology and history. I do not see the means of establishing today a new principle, any more than of respecting the old ones. Therefore I am hunting, without finding it, that idea on which all the rest should depend. Meanwhile I repeat to myself what Littre said to me one day: "Ah! my friend, man is an unstable compound, and the earth an inferior planet." Nothing sustains me better than the hope of leaving it soon, and of not going to another which might be worse. "I would rather not die," as Marat said. Ah! no! enough, enough weariness! I am writing now a little silly story, which a mother can permit her child to read. The whole will be about thirty pages, I shall have two months more at it. Such is my energy, I shall send it to you as soon as it appears (not my energy, but the little story). CCCII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 12th January, 1876 My cherished Cruchard, I want to write to you every day; time is lacking absolutely. At last here is a free moment; we are buried under the snow; it is the sort of weather that I adore: this whiteness is like general purification, and the amusements of the house seem more intimate and sweeter. Can anyone hate the winter in the country? The snow is one of the most beautiful sights of the year! It appears that I am not clear in my sermons; I have that much in common with the orthodox, but I am not of them; neither in my idea of equality, nor of authority, have I any fixed plan. You seem to think that I want to convert you to a doctrine. Not at all, I don't think of such a thing. Everyone sets off from a point of view, the free choice of which I respect. In a few words, I can give a resume of mine: not to place oneself behind an opaque glass through which one can see only the reflection of one's own nose. To see as far as possible the good, the bad, about, around, yonder, everywhere; to perceive the continual gravitation of all tangible and intangible things towards the necessity of the decent, the good, the true, the beautiful. I don't say that humanity is on the way to the heights. I believe it in spite of everything; but I do not argue about it, it is useless because each one judges according to his own personal vision, and the general aspect is for the moment poor and ugly. Besides, I do not need to be sure of the safety of the planet and its inhabitants in order to believe in the necessity of the good and the beautiful; if the planet departs from that law it will perish; if the inhabitants discard it they will be destroyed. Other stars, other souls will pass over their bodies, so much the worse! But, as for me, I want to gravitate up to my last breath, not with the certitude nor the need of finding elsewhere a GOOD PLACE, but because my sole joy is in keeping myself with my family on an upward road. In other words, I am fleeing the sewer, and I am seeking the dry and the clean, certain that it is the law of my existence. Being a man amounts to little; we are still near the monkey from which they say we proceed. Very well! a further reason for separating ourselves still more from it and for being at least at the height of the relative truth that our race has been admitted to comprehend; a very poor truth, very limited, very humble! well, let us possess it as much as we can and not permit anyone to take it from us. We are, I think, quite agreed; but I practice this simple religion and you do not practice it, since you let yourself become discouraged; your heart has not been penetrated with it, since you curse life and desire death like a Catholic who yearns for compensation, were it only the rest eternal. You are no surer than another of this compensation. Life is perhaps eternal, and therefore work is eternal. If this is so, let us do our day's work bravely. If it is otherwise, if the MOI perishes entirely, let us have the honor of having done our stated task, it is our duty; for we have evident duties only toward ourselves and our equals. What we destroy in ourselves, we destroy in them. Our abasement lowers them, our falls drag them down; we owe it to them to remain erect so that they shall not fall. The desire for an early death, as that for a long life, is therefore a weakness, and I do not want you to admit any longer that it is a right. I thought that had it once; I believed, however, what I believe today; but I lacked strength, and like you I said: "I cannot help it." I lied to myself. One can help everything. One has the strength that one thinks one has not, when one desires ardently to GRAVITATE, to mount a step each day, to say to oneself: "The Flaubert of tomorrow must be superior to the one of yesterday, and the one of day after tomorrow more steady and more lucid still." When you feel you are on the ladder, you will mount very quickly. You are about to enter gradually upon the happiest and most favorable time of life: old age. It is then that art reveals itself in its sweetness; as long as one is young, it manifests itself with anguish. You prefer a well-turned phrase to all metaphysics. I also, I love to see condensed into a few words what elsewhere fills volumes; but these volumes, one must have understood them completely (either to admit them or to reject them) in order to find the sublime resume which becomes literary art in its fullest expression; that is why one should not scorn the efforts of the human mind to arrive at the truth. I tell you that, because you have excessive prejudices AS TO WORDS. In truth, you read, you dig, you work much more than I and a crowd of others do. You have acquired learning that I shall never attain. Therefore you are a hundred times richer than all of us; you are a rich man, and you complain like a poor man. Be charitable to a beggar who has his mattress full of gold, but who wants to be nourished only on well-turned phrases and choice words. But brute, ransack your own mattress and eat your gold. Nourish yourself with the ideas and feelings accumulated in your head and your heart; the words and the phrases, THE FORM to which you attach so much importance, will issue by itself from your digestion. You consider it as an end, it is only an effect. Happy manifestations proceed only from an emotion, and an emotion proceeds only from a conviction. One is not moved at all by the things that one does not believe with all one's heart. I do not say that you do not believe: on the contrary, all your life of affection, of protection, and of charming and simple goodness, proves that you are the most convinced individual in the world. But, as soon as you handle literature, you want, I don't know why, to be another man, one who should disappear, one who destroys himself, who does not exist! What an absurd mania! what a false rule of GOOD TASTE! Our work is worth only what we are worth. Who is talking about putting yourself on the stage? That, in truth, is of no use, unless it is done frankly by way of a chronicle. But to withdraw one's soul from what one does, what is that unhealthy fancy? To hide one's own opinion about the characters that one puts on the stage, to leave the reader therefore uncertain about the opinion that he should have of them, that is to desire not to be understood, and from that moment, the reader leaves you; for if he wants to understand the story that you are telling him, it is on the condition that you should show him plainly that this one is a strong character and that one weak. L'Education sentimentale has been a misunderstood book, as I have told you repeatedly, but you have not listened to me. There should have been a short preface, or, at a good opportunity, an expression of blame, even if only a happy epithet to condemn the evil, to characterize the defect, to signalize the effort. All the characters in that book are feeble and come to nothing, except those with bad instincts; that is what you are reproached with, because people did not understand that you wanted precisely to depict a deplorable state of society that encourages these bad instincts and ruins noble efforts; when people do not understand us it is always our fault. What the reader wants, first of all, is to penetrate into our thought, and that is what you deny him, arrogantly. He thinks that you scorn him and that you want to ridicule him. For my part, I understood you, for I knew you. If anyone had brought me your book without its being signed, I should have thought it beautiful, but strange, and I should have asked myself if you were immoral, skeptical, indifferent or heart-broken. You say that it ought to be like that, and that M. Flaubert will violate the rules of good taste if he shows his thought and the aim of his literary enterprise. It is false in the highest degree. When M. Flaubert writes well and seriously, one attaches oneself to his personality. One wants to sink or swim with him. If he leaves you in doubt, you lose interest in his work, you neglect it, or you give it up. I have already combated your favorite heresy, which is that one writes for twenty intelligent people and does not care a fig for the rest. It is not true, since the lack of success irritates you and troubles you. Besides, there have not been twenty critics favorable to this book which was so well written and so important. So one must not write for twenty persons any more than for three, or for a hundred thousand. One must write for all those who have a thirst to read and who can profit by good reading. Then one must go straight to the most elevated morality within oneself, and not make a mystery of the moral and profitable meaning of one's book. People found that with Madame Bovary. If one part of the public cried scandal, the healthiest and the broadest part saw in it a severe and striking lesson given to a woman without conscience and without faith, to vanity, to ambition, to irrationality. They pitied her; art required that, but the lesson was clear, and it would have been more so, it would have been so for everybody, if you had wished it, if you had shown more clearly the opinion that you had, and that the public ought to have had, about the heroine, her husband, and her lovers. That desire to depict things as they are, the adventures of life as they present themselves to the eye, is not well thought out, in my opinion. Depict inert things as a realist, as a poet, it's all the same to me, but, when one touches on the emotions of the human heart, it is another thing. You cannot abstract yourself from this contemplation; for man, that is yourself, and men, that is the reader. Whatever you do, your tale is a conversation between you and the reader. If you show him the evil coldly, without ever showing him the good he is angry. He wonders if it is he that is bad, or if it is you. You work, however, to rouse him and to interest him; you will never succeed if you are not roused yourself, or if you hide it so well that he thinks you indifferent. He is right: supreme impartiality is an anti-human thing, and a novel ought to be human above everything. If it is not, the public is not pleased in its being well written, well composed and conscientious in every detail. The essential quality is not there: interest. The reader breaks away likewise from a book where all the characters are good without distinctions and without weaknesses; he sees clearly that that is not human either. I believe that art, this special art of narration, is only worth while through the opposition of characters; but, in their struggle, I prefer to see the right prevail. Let events overwhelm the honest men, I agree to that, but let him not be soiled or belittled by them, and let him go to the stake feeling that he is happier than his executioners. 15th January, 1876 It is three days since I wrote this letter, and every day I have been on the point of throwing it into the fire; for it is long and diffuse and probably useless. Natures opposed on certain points understand each other with difficulty, and I am afraid that you will not understand me any better today than formerly. However, I am sending you this scrawl so that you can see that I am occupied with you almost as much as with myself. You must have success after that bad luck which has troubled you deeply. I tell you wherein lie the certain conditions for your success. Keep your cult for form; but pay more attention to the substance. Do not take true virtue for a commonplace in literature. Give it its representative, make honest and strong men pass among the fools and the imbeciles that you love to ridicule. Show what is solid at the bottom of these intellectual abortions; in short, abandon the convention of the realist and return to the time reality, which is a mingling of the beautiful and the ugly, the dull and the brilliant, but in which the desire of good finds its place and its occupation all the same. I embrace you for all of us. G. Sand CCCIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 6th March, 1876 I am writing to you in a hurry this morning because I have just received news from M. Perrin of the first performance of the revival of the Mariage de Victorine, a play of mine, at the Theatre Francais. I have neither the time to go there, nor the wish to leave like that at a moment's notice, but I should have liked to send some of my friends there, and he does not offer me a single seat for them. I am writing him a letter that he will receive tomorrow, and I am asking him to send you at least one orchestra seat. If you do not get it, please understand that it was not my fault. I shall have to say the same thing to five or six other people. I embrace you therefore in a hurry, so as not to lose the post. Give me news of your niece and embrace her for me. G. Sand CCCIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris Nohant, 8th March, 1876 You scorn Sedaine, you great profane soul! That is where the doctrine of form destroys your eye! Sedaine is not a writer, that is true, although he falls but little short of it, but he is a man, with a heart and soul, with the sense of moral truth, the direct insight into human feelings. I don't mind his out-of-date reasonings and dry phraseology! The right thought is always there, and it penetrates you deeply! My dear old Sedaine! He is one of my well-beloved papas, and I consider le Philosophe sans le savior far superior to Victorine; it is such a distressing drama and so well carried out! But you only look for the well-turned phrase, that is one thing--only one thing, it is not all of art, it is not even half of it, it is a quarter at most, and if three-quarters are beautiful, one overlooks the part that is not. I hope that you will not go to seek for your country-side before the good weather; here, we have been pretty well spared; but for the past three days there has been a deluge, and it makes me ill. I should not have been able to go to Paris. Your niece is better, God be praised! I love you and I embrace you with all my soul. G. Sand Do tell M. Zola to send me his book. I shall certainly read it with great interest. CCCV. TO GEORGE SAND Wednesday, 9th March, 1876 COMPLETE SUCCESS, dear master. The actors were recalled after each act, and warmly applauded. The public was pleased and from time to time cries of approval were heard. All your friends who had come at your summons were sorry that you were not there. The roles of Antoine and Victorine were especially well played. Little Baretta is a real treasure. How were you able to make Victorine from le Philosophe sans le savoir? That is beyond me. Your play charmed me and made me weep like an idiot, while the other bored me to death, absolutely bored me to death; I longed to get to the end. What language! the good Tourgueneff and Madame Viardot made saucer-eyes, comical to behold. In your work, what produced the greatest effect is the scene in the last act between Antoine and his daughter. Maubant is too majestic, and the actor who plays Fulgence is inadequate. But everything went very well, and this revival will have a long life. The gigantic Harrisse told me that he was going to write to you immediately. Therefore his letter will arrive before mine. I should have started this morning for Pont-l'Eveque and Honfleur to see a bit of the country that I have forgotten, but the floods stopped me. Read, I beg of you, the new novel by Zola, Son Excellence Rougon: I am very anxious to know what you think of it. No, I do not SCORN Sedaine, because I do not scorn what I do not understand. He is to me, like Pindar, and Milton, who are absolutely closed to me; however, I quite understand that the citizen Sedaine is not exactly of their calibre. The public of last Tuesday shared my error, and Victorine, independently of its real worth, gained by contrast. Madame Viardot, who has naturally good taste, said to me yesterday, in speaking of you: "How was she able to make one from the other?" That is exactly what I think. You distress me a bit, dear master, by attributing esthetic opinions to me which are not mine. I believe that the rounding of the phrase is nothing. But that WRITING WELL is everything, because "writing well is at the same time perceiving well, thinking well and saying well" (Buffon). The last term is then dependent on the other two, since one has to feel strongly, so as to think, and to think, so as to express. All the bourgeois can have a great deal of heart and delicacy, be full of the best sentiments and the greatest virtues, without becoming for all that, artists. In short, I believe that the form and the matter are two subtleties, two entities, neither of which can exist without the other. This anxiety for external beauty which you reproach me with is for me a METHOD. When I discover a bad assonance or a repetition in one of my phrases, I am sure that I am floundering in error; by dint of searching, I find the exact expression which was the only one and is, at the same time, the harmonious one. The word is never lacking when one possesses the idea. Note (to return to the good Sedaine) that I share all his opinions and I approve his tendencies. From the archeological point of view, he is curious and from the humanitarian point of view very praiseworthy, I agree. But what difference does it make to us today? Is it eternal art? I ask you that. Other writers of his period have formulated useful principles also, but in an imperishable style, in a more concrete and at the same time more general manner. In short, the persistence of the Comedie Francais in exhibiting that to us as "a masterpiece" had so exasperated me that, having gone home in order to get rid of the taste of this milk-food, I read before going to bed the Medea of Euripides, as I had no other classic handy, and Aurora surprised Cruchard in this occupation. I have written to Zola to send you his book. I shall tell Daudet also to send you his Jack, as I am very curious to have your opinion on these two books, which are very different in composition and temperament, but quite remarkable, both of them. The fright which the elections caused to the bourgeois has been diverting. CCCVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, 15th March, 1876 I should have a good deal to say about the novels of M. Zola, and it would be better to say it in an article than in a letter, because there is a general question there which must be formulated with a refreshed brain. I should like to read M. Daudet's book first, the book you spoke of to me, the title of which I cannot recall. Have the publisher send it to me collect, if he does not want to give it to me; that is very simple. On the whole, the thing that I shall not gainsay, meanwhile making a PHILOSOPHICAL criticism of the method, is that Rougon is a STRONG book, as you say, and worthy of being placed in the first rank. That does not change anything in my way of thinking, that art ought to be the search for the truth, and that truth is not the picture of evil. It ought to be the picture of good and evil. A painter who sees only one is as false as he who sees only the other. Life is not crammed with monsters only. Society is not formed of rascals and wretches only. The honest people are not the minority, since society exists in a certain order and without too many unpunished crimes. Imbeciles dominate, it is true, but there is a public conscience which weighs on them and obliges them to respect the right. Let people show up and chastise the rascals, that is good, it is even moral, but let them tell us and show us the opposite; otherwise the simple reader, who is the average reader, is discouraged, saddened, horrified, and contradicts you so as not to despair. How are you? Tourgueneff wrote me that your last work was very remarkable: then you are not DONE FOR, as you pretend? Your niece continues to improve, does she not? I too am better, after cramps in my stomach that made me blue, and continued with a horrible persistence. Physical suffering is a good lesson when it leaves one freedom of spirit. One learns to endure it and to conquer it. Of course one has some moments of discouragement when one throws oneself on the bed; but, for my part, I always think of what my old cure used to say to me, when he had the gout: THAT WILL PASS, OR I SHALL PASS. And thereupon he would laugh, content with his joke. My Aurore is beginning history, and she is not very well pleased with these killers of men whom they call heroes and demigods. She calls them horrid fellows. We have a confounded spring; the earth is covered with flowers and snow, one gets numb gathering violets and anemones. I have read the manuscript of l'Etrangere. It is not as DECADENT as you say. There are diamonds that sparkle brightly in this polychrome. Moreover, the decadences are transformations. The mountains in travail roar and scream, but they sing beautiful airs, also. I embrace you and I love you. Do have your legend published quickly, so that we may read it. Your old troubadour, G. Sand CCCVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 30th March, 1876 Dear Cruchard, I am enthusiastic about Jack, and I beg you to send my thanks to M. Daudet. Ah, yes! He has talent and heart! and how well all that is done and SEEN! I am sending you a volume of old things that have just been collected. I embrace you, and I love you. Your old troubadour, G. Sand CCCVIII. TO GEORGE SAND Monday evening, 3rd April, 1876 I have received your volume this morning, dear master. I have two or three others that have been loaned to me for a long time; I shall send them off, and I shall read yours at the end of the week, during a little two-days' trip that I am forced to take to Pont-l'Eveque and to Honfleur for my Histoire d'un coeur simple, a trifle now "on the stocks," as M. Prudhomme would say. I am very glad that Jack has pleased you. It is a charming book, isn't it? If you knew the author you would like him even better than his book. I have told him to send you Risler and Tartarin. I am sure in advance that you would thank me for the opportunity of reading these two books. I do not share in Tourgueneff's severity as regards Jack, nor in the immensity of his admiration for Rougon. The one has charm, the other force. But neither one is concerned ABOVE ALL else with what is for me the end of art, namely, beauty. I remember having felt my heart beat violently, having felt a fierce pleasure in contemplating a wall of the Acropolis, a perfectly bare wall (the one on the left as you go up to the Propylaea). Well! I wonder if a book independently of what it says, cannot produce the same effect! In the exactness of its assembling, the rarity of its elements, the polish of its surface, the harmony of its ensemble, is there not an intrinsic virtue, a sort of divine force, something eternal as a principle? (I speak as a Platonist.) Thus, why is a relation necessary between the exact word and the musical word? Why does it happen that one always makes a verse when one restrains his thought too much? Does the law of numbers govern then the feelings and the images, and is what seems to be the exterior quite simply inside it? If I should continue a long time in this vein, I should blind myself entirely, for on the other side art has to be a good fellow; or rather art is what one can make it, we are not free. Each one follows his path, in spite of his own desire. In short, your Cruchard no longer knows where he stands. But how difficult it is to understand one another! There are two men whom I admire a great deal and whom I consider real artists, Tourgueneff and Zola. Yet they do not admire the prose of Chateaubriand at all, and even less that of Gautier. Phrases which ravish me seem hollow to them. Who is wrong? And how please the public when one's nearest friends are so remote? All that saddens me very much. Do not laugh. CCCIX. TO GEORGE SAND Sunday evening... 1876 You OUGHT to call me inwardly, dear master, "a confounded pig,"--for I have not answered your last letter, and I have said nothing to you about your two volumes, not to mention a third that I received this morning from you. But I have been, for the last two weeks, entirely taken up by my little tale which will be finished soon. I have had several errands to do, various readings to finish up with, and a thing more serious than all that, the health of my poor niece worries me extremely and, at times, disturbs my brain, so that I do not know at all what I am doing! You see that my cup is bitter! That young woman is anemic to the last degree. She is wasting away. She has been obliged to leave off painting, which is her sole distraction. All the usual tonics do no good. Three days ago, by the orders of another physician, who seems to me more learned than the others, she began hydrotherapy. Will he succeed in making her digest and sleep? in building up her strength? Your poor Cruchard takes less and less pleasure in life, and he even has too much of it, infinitely too much. Let us speak of your books, that will be better. They have amused me, and the proof is that I have devoured with one gulp and one after another, Flamarande and the Deux Freres. What a charming woman is Madame Flamarande, and what a man is M. Salcede. The narrative of the kidnapping of the child, the trip in the carriage, and the story of Zamora are perfect passages. Everywhere the interest is sustained and at the same time progressive. In short, what strikes me the most in these two novels (as in all yours, moreover), is the natural order of the ideas, the talent, or rather the genius for narrative. But what an abominable wretch is your M. Flamarande! As for the servant who tells the story and who is evidently in love with Madame, I wonder why you did not show more plainly his personal jealousy. Except for the count, all are virtuous persons in that story, even extraordinarily virtuous. But do you think them really true to life? Are there many like them? It is true that while reading, one accepts them because of the cleverness of the execution; but afterwards? Well, dear master, and this is to answer your last letter, this is, I think what separates us essentially. You, on the first bound, in everything, mount to heaven, and from there you descend to the earth. You start from a priori, from the theory, from the ideal. Thence your pity for life, your serenity, and to speak truly, your greatness.--I, poor wretch, I am stuck on the earth as with soles of lead; everything disturbs me, tears me to pieces, ravages me, and I make efforts to rise. If I should take your manner of looking at the whole of life I should become laughable, that is all. For you preach to me in vain. I cannot have another temperament than my own; nor another esthetics than what is the consequence of it. You accuse me of not letting myself go, according to nature. Well, and that discipline? that virtue? what shall we do with it? I admire M. Buffon putting on cuffs when he wrote. This luxury is a symbol. In short I am trying simply to be as comprehensive as possible. What more can one exact? As for letting my personal opinion be known about the people I put on the stage: no, no, a thousand times no! I do not recognize the right to that. If the reader does not draw from a book the moral that should be found there, the reader is an imbecile or the book is false from the point of view of accuracy. For, the moment that a thing is true, it is good. Obscene books likewise are immoral only because they lack truth. Things are not "like that" in life. And observe that I curse what they agree to call realism, although they make me one of its high priests; reconcile all that. As for the public, its taste disgusts me more and more. Yesterday, for instance, I was present at the first night of the Prix Martin, a piece of buffoonery that, for my part, I think full of wit. Not one of the witty things in the play produced a laugh, and the denouement, which seems out of the ordinary, passed unperceived. Then to look for what can please seems to me the most chimerical of undertakings. For I defy anyone to tell me by what means one pleases. Success is a consequence and must not be an end. I have never sought it (although I desire it) and I seek it less and less. After my little story, I shall do another,--for I am too deeply shaken to start on a great work. I had thought first of publishing Saint-Julien in a periodical, but I have given the plan up. CCCX. TO GEORGE SAND Friday evening...1876 Ah! thank you from the bottom of my heart, dear master! You have made me pass an exquisite day, for I have read your last volume, la Tour de Percemont.--Marianne only to-day; as I had many things to finish, among others my tale of Saint-Julien, I had shut up the aforesaid volume in a drawer so as not to succumb to the temptation. As my little story was finished last night, I rushed upon your book when morning came and devoured it. I find it perfect, two jewels! Marianne moved me deeply and two or three times I wept. I recognized myself in the character of Pierre. Certain pages seemed to me fragments of my own memoirs, supposing I had the talent to write them in such a way! How charming, poetic and true to life all that is! La Tour de Percemont pleased me extremely. But Marianne literally enchanted me. The English think as I do, for in the last number of the Athenaeum there is a very fine article about you. Did you know that? So then, for this time, I admire you completely and without the least reserve. There you are, and I am very glad of it. You have never done anything to me that was not good; I love you tenderly! CCCXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Sunday, Nohant, 5th April, 1876. Victor Borie is in Italy, what must I write him? Are you the man to go to find him and explain the affair to him? He is somewhere near Civita-Vecchia, very much on the go and perhaps not easy to catch up with. I am sure that he would receive you with open arms, for, although a financier to his finger-tips he has remained very friendly and nice to us. He does not tell us if he is on his mountain of alum for long. Lina is writing to him and will know soon, shall she tell him that you are disposed to go to meet him, or that you will wait until his return to Paris? anyway until the 20th of May he will get letters addressed to him at the Hotel Italy in Florence. We shall have to be on the watch, for he writes AT LONG INTERVALS. I have not the time to say any more to you today. People are coming in. I have read Fromont et Risler; I charge you to thank M. Daudet, to tell him that I spent the night in reading it and that I do not know whether I prefer Jack or Risler; it is interesting, I might almost say GRIPPING. I embrace you and I love you, when will you give me some Flaubert to read? G. Sand CCCXII. To GEOBGE SAND Monday evening Dear master, Thanks to Madame Lina's kind note, I betook myself to V. Borie's yesterday and was most pleasantly received. My nephew went to carry him the documents today. Borie has promised to look after the affair; will he do it? I think that he is in just the position to do me indirectly the greatest service that any one could do me. If my poor nephew should get the capital which he needs in order to work, I could get back a part of what I have lost and live in peace the rest of my days. I presented myself to Borie under your recommendation, and it is to you that I owe the cordiality of his reception. I do not thank you (of course) but you can tell him that I was touched by his kind reception (and stimulate his zeal if you think that may be useful). I have been working a great deal lately. How I should like to see you so as to read my little medieval folly to you! I have begun another story entitled Histoire d'un coeur simple. But I have interrupted this work to make some researches on the period of Saint John the Baptist, for I want to describe the feast of Herodias. I hope to have my readings finished in a fortnight, after which I shall return to Croisset from which spot I shall not budge till winter,--my long sessions at the library exhaust me. Cruchard is weary. The good Tourgueneff leaves this evening for Saint Petersburg. He asks me if I have thanked you for your last book? Could I be guilty of such an oversight? You will see by my Histoire d'un coeur simple where you will recognize your immediate influence, that I am not so obstinate as you think. I believe that the moral tendency, or rather the human basis of this little work will please you! Adieu, dear good master. Remembrances to all yours. I embrace you very tenderly. Your old Gustave Flaubert CCCXIII. To MAURICE SAND Tuesday evening, 27th All I can say to you, in the first place, my dear friend, is, that your book has made me pass a sleepless night. I read it instantly, at one fell swoop, only stopping to fill my good pipe from time to time and then to resume my reading. When the impression is a little less fresh I shall take up your book again to find the flaws in it. But I think that there are very few. You must be content? It ought to please? It is dramatic and as amusing as possible! Beginning with the first page I was charmed with the sincerity of the description. And at the end I admired the composition of the whole, the logical way the events were worked out and the characters related. Your chief character, Miss Mary, is too hateful (to my taste) to be anything but an exact picture. That is one of the choicest parts of your book, together with the homelife, the life in New York? Your good savage makes me laugh out loud when he is at the Opera. I was struck by the house of the missionaries (Montaret's first night). You make it seem real. Naissa scalping, and then wiping her hands on the grass, seemed to me especially well done. As well as the disgust that she inspires in Montaret, I venture a timid observation: it seems to me that the flight of father Athanasius and of Montaret, when they escape from their prison, is not perfectly clear? Is not the material explanation of the event too short? I do not care for, as language, two or three ready-made locutions, such as "break the ice." You can see that I have read you attentively! What a pedagogue I make, eh! I am telling you all that from memory, for I have lent your book, and it has not been returned to me yet. But my recollection of it is of a thing very well done. Don't you agree with me that a play of very great effect could be made from it for a boulevard theatre? By the way, how is Cadio going? Tell your dear mamma that I adore her. Harrisse, from whom I have received a letter today, charges me to remember him to her, and, for my part, I charge you to embrace her for me. And I grasp your two hands heartily and say "bravo" to you again, and faithfully yours. Gustave Flaubert CCCXIV. To MADAM MAURICE SAND Thursday evening, 25th May, 1876 Dear Madam, I sent a telegram to Maurice this morning, asking for news of Madam Sand. I was told yesterday that she was very ill, why has not Maurice answered me? I went to Plauchut's this morning to get details. He is in the country, at Le Mans, so that I am in a state of cruel uncertainty. Be good enough to answer me immediately and believe me, dear madam, Your very affectionate, Gustave Flaubert 4 rue Murillo, Parc Monceau CCCXV. To MADAM LINA SAND Dear Madam, Your note of this morning reassures me a little. But that of last night had absolutely upset me. I beg you to give me very frequent news of your dear mother-in-law. Embrace her for me and believe that I am Your very devoted Gustave Flaubert Beginning with the middle of next week, about Wednesday or Thursday, I shall be at Croisset. Saturday morning, 3d June, 1876. CCCXVI. To MAURICE SAND Croisset, Sunday, 24 June, 1876 You had prepared me, my dear Maurice, I wanted to write to you, but I was waiting till you were a little freer, more alone. Thank you for your kind thought. Yes, we understood each other, yonder! (And if I did not remain longer, it is because my comrades dragged me away.) It seemed to me that I was burying my mother the second time. Poor, dear, great woman! What genius and what heart! But she lacked nothing, it is not she whom we must pity. What is to become of you? Shall you stay in Nohant? That good old house must seem horribly empty to you! But you, at least, are not alone! You have a wife...a rare one! and two exquisite children. While I was with you, I had, over and above my grief, two desires: to run off with Aurore and to kill M. Marx.[Footnote: A reporter for le Figaro.] There you have the truth, it is unnecessary to make you see the psychology of the thing. I received yesterday a very sympathetic letter from good Tourgueneff. He too loved her. But then, who did not love her? If you had seen in Paris the anguish of Martine![Footnote: George Sand's maid.] That was distressing. Plauchut is still in Nohant, I suppose. Tell him that I love him because I saw him shed so many tears. And let yours flow, my dear friend, do all that is necessary not to console yourself,--which would, moreover, be impossible. Never mind! In a short time you will feel a great joy in the idea alone that you were a good son and that she knew it absolutely. She used to talk of you as of a blessing. And when you shall have rejoined her, when the great-grand-children of the grandchildren of your two little girls shall have joined her, and when for a long time there shall have been no question of the things and the people that surround us,--in several centuries,-- hearts like ours will palpitate through hers! People will read her books, that is to say that they will think according to her ideas and they will love with her love. But all that does not give her back to you, does it? With what then can we sustain ourselves if pride desert us, and what man more than you should have pride in his mother! Now dear friend, adieu! When shall we meet now? How I should feel the need of talking of her, insatiably! Embrace Madam Maurice for me, as I did on the stairway at Nohant, and your little girls. Yours, from the depths of my heart, Your Gustave Flaubert CCCXVII. To MAURICE SAND Croisset, Tuesday, 3rd October, 1876 Thank you for your kind remembrance, my dear friend. Neither do I forget, and I dream of your poor, dear mamma in a sadness that does not disappear. Her death has left a great emptiness for me. After you, your wife and the good Plauchut, I am perhaps the one who misses her most! I need her. I pity you the annoyances that your sister causes you. I too have gone through that! It is so easy moreover to be good! Besides that causes less evil. When shall we meet? I want so much to see you, first just to see you--and second to talk of her. When your business is finished, why not come to Paris for some time? Solitude is bad under certain conditions. One should not become intoxicated with one's grief, however much attraction one finds in doing so. You ask me what I am doing. This is it: this year I have written two stories, and I am going to begin another so as to make the three into one volume that I want to publish in the spring. After that I hope to resume the big novel that I laid aside a year ago after my financial disaster. Matters are improving in that direction, and I shall not be forced to change anything in my way of living. If I have been able to start at work again, I owe it partly to the good counsel of your mother. She had found the best way to bring me back to respect myself. In order to get the quicker at work, I shall stay here till New Year's Day,--perhaps later than that. Do try to put off your visit to Paris. Embrace your dear little girls warmly for me, my respects to Madam Maurice, and-sincerely yours, ex imo. Gustave Flaubert CCCXVIII. To MAURICE SAND Saint-Gratien par Sannois, 20th August, 1877 Thank you for your kind remembrance, my dear Maurice. Next winter you will be in Passy, I hope,--and from time to time we can have a good chat. I even count on seeing myself at your table by the side of your friends whose "idol" I am. You speak to me of your dear and illustrious mamma! Next to you I do not think that any one could think of her more often than I do! How I miss her! How I need her! I had begun un coeur simple solely on account of her, only to please her. She died while I was in the midst of this work. Thus it is with our dreams. I still continue not to find diversion in existence. In order to forget the weight of it, I work as frantically as possible. What sustains me is the indignation that the Imbecility of the Bourgeois affords me! Summed up at present by the large party of law and order, it reaches a dizzy height! Has there been anything in history more inept than the 16th of May? Where is there an idiot comparable to the Bayard of modern times? I have been in Paris, or rather at Saint-Gratien, for three days. Day after tomorrow I leave the princess, and in a fortnight I shall make a little trip to Lower Normandy for the sake of literature. When we meet I shall talk a long time with you, if you are interested, about the terrible book that I am in the process of concocting. I shall have enough work in it to take me three or four years. Not less! Don't leave me so long without news. Give a long look for me at the little corner of the holy ground!...My regards to your dear wife, embrace the dear little girls and sincerely yours, my good Maurice, Your old friend Gustave Flaubert CCCXIX. To MAURICE SAND Tuesday morning, April, 1880 My dear Maurice, No! Erase Cruchard and Polycarp and replace those words by what you like. The Public ought not to have all of us,--let us reserve something for ourselves. That seems to me more decent (quod decet). You do not speak of a COMPLETE EDITION? Ah! your poor dear mamma! How often I think of her! And what need I have of her! There is not a day when I do not say: "If she were there, I should ask her advice." I shall be at Croisset till the 8th or the 10th of May. So, my old fellow, when you wish to come there, you will be welcome. I embrace you all from the oldest to the youngest. Cruchard for you, Polycarp for the human race, Gustave Flaubert for Literature THE END OF THE GEORGE SAND-GUSTAVE FLAUBERT LETTERS