Famous Women: George Sand

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

847 of Lucrezia Floriani, a novel of character-analysis entirely, but into which she was accused of having introduced an unflatt

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

ulously 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 happin

hopin, imaginative writers have gone so far as to assert that the book was conceived and written from an e

nius, 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 impos

t 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 s

ffections, 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 t

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,

n 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

lange with the sculptor Clésinger. The remainder of the twelvemonth was spent in the country, apparently with very little an

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 a

on of the condition of the working classes, and reform of social institutions in general, on the advent to power of those placed at t

th a charge of powder, if indeed some day a charge of powder does not blow it up." February, 1848, saw the expl

nd 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 convi

uote 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, bot

e 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 "Théatre de la République," wh

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-Ro

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 th

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

appeared on April 16, at a moment when the pending general elections seemed likely to be overruled by reactionaries, contained the startling declaration that

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 pe

e, I shall return to Nohant to console myself by being with you. I shall stay and see

st 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 c

e 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

ments, regardless of the political enmities she might excite, and of the personal mortification to which she was exposed, even a

n sufficient proof to the poor and uneducated that I know my duties towards them, I myself in particular am looked u

tle 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

rs, she might excuse on account of their ignorance, but the extent of their ign

h will ever remain for me in my heaven, unless I go blind. But hope is a belief in the near triumph of one's fait

es,-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 t

ut 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 a

unfitted her in every respect. Impetuous and uncompromisingly sincere, she was predestined to burn her fingers; proud and independent, to become somethin

d 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 Pauper

ocious in action. Among the leaders, she had seen some infatuated by the allurements of personal popularity, and the rest showing, by their inability to

ure 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