Born in the heart of France-at Aubusson, in the
Department
of
Creuse in 1811, he passed his school days there; and then was sent
to the law school in Paris.
Creuse in 1811, he passed his school days there; and then was sent
to the law school in Paris.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v22 - Sac to Sha
She thought it
strange for a priest to arrogate to himself the right to point out
her duty in such a manner. Nevertheless, she did not think she
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GEORGE SAND
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could be excused from performing what her education rendered
sacred. Still, fearing some such snare as she had hitherto been
able to avoid, she did not go into the raised pew reserved for
the ancient lords of Fougères,-a pew placed in full sight to
the right of the choir, and now furnished with a rug and several
arm-chairs at the priest's own expense. , Fiamma waited until
vespers had begun; then slipped into church in the plainest gar-
ments, and mingled with the crowd of women who in that part
of the country kneel on the church pavement. She hated the
flattery paid to any special class; but thought that before God.
she could not bow down with too much humility.
It was vain for her to hope to escape the village priest's
scrutinizing glance, or the sexton's, who had been told to find
her. The church was very small; and besides, the custom of
the country separates the women from the men, and gathers the
former in one of the naves. Between the 'Magnificat' and the
'Pange Lingua,' in the interval used by the officiating priest for
putting on his pontifical vestments, the sexton passed through
the feminine crowd, and in the priest's name came to beg
Mademoiselle de Fougères to take a place more suited to her
rank. When she refused to go to the pew, the obstinate assist-
ant had an arm-chair and a hassock placed near the railing sepa-
rating the two sexes at the entrance to the choir, just as he
would have done for his bishop. He thought that Mademoiselle
de Fougères would not be able to resist this flattering invitation,
and concluded to go back to the altar.
In the mean time the rows of women separating Mademoiselle
de Fougères from the insolent arm-chair had opened, and every
eye seemed to be requesting her to condescend to take possession
of it. Jeanne Féline alone, whose fervent prayer was somewhat
disturbed, and whose honest and incorruptible good-sense was no
less shocked, by what was going on, lowered her prayer-book,
raised her hood, and fixed on Mademoiselle de Fougères a look
in which the pride of virtue and the fire of youth shone amidst
all the ravages of age and sorrow. Fiamma saw her, and recog-
nized Simon's mother by a distant likeness of features and a
striking similarity of expression. She had heard this woman's
merit praised, and had wished for an opportunity to make her
acquaintance. She therefore bore the look quietly, and by her
own expressed that she was ready to enter into communication
with her.
## p. 12796 (#214) ##########################################
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GEORGE SAND
Madame Féline, as bold and ingenuous as truth itself, ad-
dressed her at once, and whispered:
"Well, mademoiselle, what does your conscience bid you do? ”
"My conscience," replied Fiamma unhesitatingly, "bids me
stay here and offer you the arm-chair as a mark of respect due
you. "
--
Jeanne Féline was so far from expecting this answer that she
was dumbfounded.
Mademoiselle de Fougères was not, like her father, a person
who could be accused of courting popularity. She was said to
have the opposite failing, and Jeanne could not understand why
she had remained in the general crowd from the beginning of
the ceremony. At length her face softened; and resisting
Fiamma, who wanted to lead her to the arm-chair, she said:-
"No, not I: it would ill become me to take a place of honor
before God, who sees the depths of all hearts and our weakness.
But look! there is the oldest woman in the village,-one who
has known four generations; she usually has a chair, but is
kneeling on the ground to-day. They forgot her on your ac-
count. "
Mademoiselle de Fougères followed the direction of Jeanne's
gesture, and saw a centenarian, for whom some young girls had
made a sort of cushion with their fustian cloaks. She went
towards her, and with Madame Féline's assistance, helped her
to rise and sit down in the arm-chair. The old woman did not
resist, not understanding what was taking place, and thanked
them by nodding her trembling head.
Mademoiselle de Fougères knelt on the pavement close to
Jeanne, so as to be entirely hidden by the back of the great
arm-chair; in which the ancient dame, who performed her reli-
gious duties by mere force of habit, owing to her age soon fell
quietly asleep.
The priest, however, knowing that downcast eyes harmonize
with the fervor of an officiator, could just see a woman with
a white head-covering in the arm-chair. He fancied that his
negotiations had been successful, and began to officiate calmly;
but when the time came for the explosion of his great project;
- when he had descended the three steps of the altar and knelt
to burn incense before the Holy Sacrament, crossed the choir
and walked towards the arm-chair to render the same honor to
Mademoisellede Fougères according to ancient feudal custom,- he
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GEORGE SAND
12797
noticed his mistake, and his arm remained suspended between
heaven and earth; while all the congregation of the faithful, eyes
and mouths wide open, were wondering why these unusual honors
were being paid to Mother Mathurin.
The young priest did not lose his composure: but seeing that
Mademoiselle de Fougères had carried her point, with a little
obstinacy and malice showed her that she was not to have it all
her own way; for turning briskly to the other side, he swung the
censers towards the seignorial pew, thus giving the empty place
the honors due more to the title than to its bearers. The whole
village was amazed; and it took more than six months to make
the commentators, who were worn out by inquiries and discussions,
adopt the true version of the event. The relatives of the cen-
tenarian did not fail to say that she had been blessed in virtue
of an ancient custom giving this preference to persons a hun-
dred years old; and that the priest had found it in the archives
of the commune. As for the old woman, being nearly blind and
more than half asleep when she was thus honored, as her ear
was fortunate enough to be forever closed to all human speech
and all worldly noise, she died without ever knowing that she
had had incense burned before her.
FRANÇOIS THE FIELD-FOUNDLING
Preface to François le Champi >
THE
HE moon shed a dim silver light on the paths through the
darkened fields as R and I were on our way home
from walk. It was a mild and softly clouded autumn
evening; and we were noticing the sonority peculiar to the air,
as well as the indefinable mystery pervading nature at that sea-
son. One might say that as the heavy winter sleep draws nigh,
all things and creatures furtively endeavor to enjoy the last rem-
nants of life and animation before the fatal coming on of be-
numbing frost; and as if they wanted to cheat the flight of time,
and feared to be surprised and interrupted in the last gambols
of their merry-making, gave themselves up silently and without
apparent activity to their nocturnal ecstasies. Birds utter smoth-
ered cries instead of the joyous flourishes of summer days. The
insect in the furrows lets us hear an indiscreet exclamation now
and then; but interrupts itself at once, and quickly transfers its
## p. 12798 (#216) ##########################################
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GEORGE SAND
chirp or plaint to another rallying-point. Plants hasten to exhale
their last perfume, all the sweeter for being subtler and long
repressed. The fading leaves dare not quiver under the breath
of the breeze; while the flocks graze in silence, without a sound.
of strife or love.
Even we, my friend and I, walked cautiously; instinctive med-
itation holding us mute, and as it were, observant of nature's
softened beauty and the enchanting harmony of her last chords,
now dying away in an imperceptible pianissimo. Autumn is a
graceful and melancholy andante, admirably introducing the sol-
emn adagio of winter.
At length my friend, who had followed my thoughts as I had
followed his, in spite of our silence, said: "All this is so calm,
and seems absorbed in a revery so foreign and indifferent to the
labors, foresight, and cares of man, that it makes me wonder
what expression, what coloring, what manifestation of art and
poetry human intelligence could give to the physiognomy of
nature at this particular moment. And to make the aim of my
inquiry clearer to you, I will compare this evening, this sky and
this landscape,- all of them so dim yet so harmonious and
complete, to the soul of a wise and pious peasant who works
and profits by his labor, enjoys his peculiar kind of life without
feeling the need or the wish, and without having the means to
manifest or express, his inner life. I try to set myself in the
heart of this mystery of rustic and natural life,-I, the civilized
creature, who do not know how to enjoy by instinct alone,— and
am forever tormented by the desire to render an account, both
to myself and others, of my contemplation or my meditation. "
"And then," continued my friend, “I am anxiously seeking
what connection can be established between my too active intelli-
gence, and the peasant's which is not active enough; just as I
was wondering a while ago what painting, music,-in short,
what the description, the translation by art,- could add to the
beauty of this autumn night, which reveals itself to me by its
mysterious reticence, and penetrates me although I do not know
by what magic communication. "
"Let me see whether I fully understand how the question is
stated," I replied. "Let us take this October night, this color-
less sky, this music without any marked or sequent melody, this
calm of nature, and the peasant who by his simplicity comes
nearer to enjoying and understanding, without describing it, than
____
## p. 12799 (#217) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12799
we do,- and putting all these together, let us call it primitive
life, relatively to our developed and complicated existence, which
I will call factitious life. You ask what the possible connection,
the direct link, between these two opposite states of the existence.
of things and creatures may be; between the palace and the
cottage, the artist and his creation, the poet and the plowman. "
"Yes," he resumed; "and to state it precisely,- between
the language spoken by this nature, this primitive life, and these
instincts, and that spoken by art, science,
in
a word, by
knowledge. "
"To speak in the language you adopt, I should answer that
the connection between knowledge and sensation is feeling. "
-
"The definition of that feeling is precisely what I am ques-
tioning you about, while I am interrogating myself. The mani-
festation that so puzzles me is intrusted to it;. this definition.
is the art-the artist, if you choose - commissioned to translate
the candor, grace, and charm of primitive life for those who live
the factitious life alone, and who are (permit me to say so) the
greatest idiots in the world when they stand before nature and
her divine secrets. "
-
"You ask for nothing less than the very secret of art: seek
that in the bosom of God, for no artist can reveal it to you. He
does not know it himself, and could not give an account of
either his inspiration or his impotence. How are we to express
beauty, simplicity, and truth? Indeed, I do not know. And who
could teach us? Not even the greatest artists could do it, for
if they tried they would no longer be artists, but become critics;
and as for criticism — ! ”
"Criticism," resumed my friend, "has been revolving around
the mystery for centuries without understanding anything about
it. But, pardon me, that is not precisely what I was asking.
am even more of a barbarian just now; I call the very power of
art in question. I despise it; I annihilate it; I maintain that art
is not born, that it does not exist, or if it has existed its time
is past. It is worn out, it has no more forms, it has no more
breath, it no longer has the means to sing the beauty of truth.
Nature is a work of art; but God is the only existing artist, and
man is but a tasteless compiler. Nature is beautiful; she exhales
feeling at every pore: and with her, love and youth and beauty
are undying. But man has only absurd means and miserable
faculties for feeling and expressing them. He would do best if
## p. 12800 (#218) ##########################################
12800
GEORGE SAND
he let them alone,- were silent and absorbed in contemplation.
Come, what do you say to this? "
"That plan would suit me, and I should be quite content to
follow it," I answered.
"Ah! you go too far," he exclaimed, "and enter into my par-
adox too fully. I am pleading: put in a rejoinder. "
"Then I will say that one of Petrarch's sonnets has its own
relative beauty equal to the beauty of the water at Vaucluse;
that a Ruysdael landscape has a charm as great as that of such
an evening as this; that Mozart sings as well in the language
of men as Philomel in that of the birds; that Shakespeare pre-
sents passions, feelings, and instincts, just as the most primitive
and truthful man can feel them. This is art, the connection,-
feeling, in short. "
"Yes, it is a work of transformation!
But suppose it does
not satisfy me? Even if you were right a thousand times over
by all the decrees of taste and æsthetics, what if I find Petrarch's
verses less harmonious than the sound of the waterfall, and feel
the same about the rest? If I maintained that there is a charm
in this evening that no one could reveal to me unless I had
enjoyed it myself, and that all Shakespeare's passion is cold
compared to what I can see blazing in a jealous peasant's eyes
when he beats his wife, what would you say? The point here
is to persuade my 'feeling. ' And what if it eludes your exam-
ples, resists your proofs? Then art would not be an invincible
demonstrator, and feeling not always satisfied with the best of
definitions. "
"I see nothing to reply to this, indeed, except that art is a
demonstration whose proof is in nature; that the pre-existing fact
of this proof is ever present to justify or contradict the demon-
stration, and that one cannot make a good one unless the proof
is examined with love and faith. "
"Then the demonstration cannot do without the proof; but
may the proof not get along without the demonstration ? »
"No doubt God could; but I am ready to wager that you, who
are now talking as if you were not one of us, would not under-
stand anything about the proof if you had not found the demon-
stration in a thousand forms in the tradition of art, and if you
were not yourself a demonstration forever acting upon the proof. "
"Ah! that's just the fact I am finding fault with. I should
like to get rid of this eternal demonstration that so irritates me;
## p. 12801 (#219) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12801
erase all forms and teachings of art from my memory; never
think of painting when I look at a landscape, nor of music
when I listen to the wind, nor of poetry when I admire and
appreciate the whole effect. I should like to enjoy everything
by instinct, because it seems to me that that cricket now chirp-
ing is more joyous and ecstatic than I. "
"In short, you complain of being a man. "
"No; but I complain of no longer being the primitive man. ”
"It remains to be proved whether he enjoyed, since he could
not understand. ”
"I do not imagine him like the brutes. The moment he was
a man he understood and felt differently. But I cannot form a
clear idea of his emotions, and that torments me. Therefore I
would like to be what present society permits a great many men.
to be from the cradle to the grave, a peasant, and a peasant
unable to read, but to whom God has given good instincts, a
peaceful disposition, an honest conscience; and in that torpor
of useless faculties and ignorance of depraved tastes, I believe I
could be as happy as the primitive man dreamed of by Jean
Jacques. "
"I often have the same dream myself: who has not? But it
would not make your argument win the day, for the simplest and
most ingenuous peasant is an artist after all; and I claim that
their art is superior to ours. It has another form, but it appeals
to my soul more than all those of our civilization. Rustic songs,
tales, and stories, paint in a few words what our literature merely
knows how to amplify and disguise. "
XXII-801
―――――
"Then I am right," resumed my friend. "That art is purest
and best because it goes to nature for inspiration; is in directer
contact with it. I may have gone too far when I said that
art was good for nothing; but I said too that I would like to
feel as a peasant does, and I do not unsay that. There are
some popular songs in Brittany, made by beggars, which in their
three stanzas are worth all that Goethe or Byron ever wrote, and
prove that the appreciation of the true and beautiful was more
complete and spontaneous in those simple souls than in the most
illustrious poets. And as for music? Have we not admirable
melodies in our country? True, our peasants have no painting;
but they have it in their speech, which is a hundred times more
expressive, more energetic, and more logical than our literary lan-
guage. "
## p. 12802 (#220) ##########################################
12802
GEORGE SAND
"I admit that," I answered: "and the last point particularly
is a cause of despair; because I am obliged to write in the lan-
guage of the Academy, when there is another I know so much
better, and which is so far superior for expressing a whole order
of emotions, sentiments and thoughts. "
"Yes, yes, the world devoid of art! " he said; "the unknown
world, closed to our modern art, and that no amount of study
will allow even you to express to yourself,-you, the peasant by
nature, if you wished to introduce it into the domain of civil-
ized art, into the intellectual intercourse of artificial life. "
"Alas! " I replied, "that fact has often been in my mind.
Like all civilized beings, I have seen and felt that primitive life
has been the dream, the ideal, of all men and all times. From
the shepherds of Longus to those of Trianon, pastoral life has
been a perfumed Eden, where souls tormented and wearied by
the world's tumult have tried to take refuge. Art, the great
flatterer and obliging purveyor of consolation for all over-happy
people, has gone through an uninterrupted series of pastorals. I
have often wanted to write a learned and critical book entitled
"The History of Pastorals,' wherein all the various sylvan dreams
so passionately cherished by the upper classes would have been
reviewed. I should have followed their modifications, which
were always in an inverse ratio to the depravity of morals, and
grew purer and more sentimental in proportion as society be-
came more shameless and corrupt. I wish I could order such a
book from an author more capable of writing it than I am; and
I should then read it with pleasure. It would be a complete
treatise on art; for music, painting, architecture, literature in all
its forms, the drama, poetry, novels, eclogue, songs, even fash-
ions, gardens, and costumes, have had to submit to the infatuation
of the pastoral dream.
I have often asked myself why
there are no more shepherds; for we are not so impassioned for
Truth in these latter days, that our arts and literature have the
right to despise these conventional types in favor of those that
fashion is now introducing. We are all given over to energy
and atrocity at present, and are embroidering ornaments on the
canvas of these passions, terrible enough to set our hair on end
if we could but take them seriously. "
-
-
·
"If we have no more shepherds," returned my friend,- “ if
literature no longer has that false ideal, which was worth as much
as to-day's, perhaps it is because art is making an unconscious
## p. 12803 (#221) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12803
attempt to level itself, to put itself within the reach of all
classes of intelligence. Does not the dream of equality, flung
into society, drive art to become brutal and impetuous, so as to
awaken the instincts and passions common to all men, of what-
soever rank they may be? Truth has not yet been reached. It
lies no more in disfigured reality than in over-ornamented ideal-
ity: but it is quite evident that it is being sought; and if it is
not well sought, the seekers are none the less eager to find it.
For instance, the drama, poetry, and the novel have dropped the
crook and taken up the dagger; and when rustic life is put upon
the scene they give it a certain realistic form, not found in the
pastorals of former days. Yet there is but little poetry in it,
and I find fault with this; still I do not see the means of elevat-
ing the rustic ideal without heightening its color or blackening it.
You have often thought of doing it, I know; but will you succeed? "
"I do not hope to," I replied; "for I have no form to cast it
in, and my feeling for rustic simplicity finds no language for its
expression. If I make the rustic speak as he really does, the
civilized reader would need a translation on the opposite page;
and if I make him speak as we do, then I make an unnatural
creature of him, and have to pretend that he has ideas he really
has not. "
"And even if you did make him speak as he does, your own
language would make a disagreeable contrast every moment; and
you have laid yourself open to that reproach, in my opinion.
You portrayed a rustic maiden, called her Jeanne, and put words
in her mouth which strictly speaking she might say.
But you,
the novelist, wishing to make your readers share the attraction.
you feel in delineating the type, compare her to a druidess, a
Joan of Arc, and what not. Your feelings and your words along-
side of hers have the same incongruous effect as the clash of
harsh tones in a picture; and I cannot quite enter into nature
thus, even when it is idealized. You have made a better study
of truth since then, in 'La Mare au Diable' [The Devil's Pool].
But I am not satisfied yet. The author still peeps out now
and then; there are authors' words in it. . . . You must try
again, even though you do not succeed; masterpieces are only
successful attempts. Provided you make conscientious attempts,
you may console yourself for not making masterpieces. "
"I am consoled on that point beforehand," I replied, “and
will begin again whenever you wish: advise me. "
## p. 12804 (#222) ##########################################
12804
GEORGE SAND
"Yesterday, for instance, we were at the rustic wake at the
farm," he said. "The hemp-breaker told stories up to two o'clock
in the morning. The village priest's servant helped or corrected
him: she was a somewhat cultured peasant; he was ignorant, but
happily endowed and very eloquent in his own way. These two
persons jointly told us a rather long, true story, which appeared
to be a familiar novel. Do you remember it? ”
"Perfectly, and I could repeat it literally in their very lan-
>>>>
guage.
"Their language would need a translation: you must write
in French, and not allow yourself a single word which does not
belong to the language, unless it be so intelligible that a foot-
note would be useless for the reader. "
"I see you are setting me a task fit to make me lose my
mind,—one I have never plunged into without coming out dis-
satisfied with myself, and penetrated by a sense of my weakness. "
"Never mind! You will plunge into it again; I know the
artist nature: nothing stimulates you as much as obstacles, and
you do poorly what you do without suffering. Come, begin,—
tell me the story of the 'Champi'; but not as I heard it with
you. It was a masterpiece for our minds and ears 'to the man-
ner born. ' Tell it as if there were a Parisian at your right
speaking the modern language, and a peasant at your left before
whom you would not wish to say a word or phrase he could not
fathom. Thus you will have to speak plainly for the Parisian,
simply for the peasant. One will rebuke you for absence of
color, the other for that of elegance; but I shall be there too,-
I, who am trying to find the conditions by which art, without
ceasing to be art for every one, may enter into the mystery of
primitive simplicity, and communicate to the mind the charm per-
vading nature. "
"We are going to make a joint study, it seems. "
"Yes; for I shall interfere when you stumble. "
## p. 12805 (#223) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12805
THE BUDDING AUTHOR
From 'Convent Life of George Sand. ' Copyright 1893, by Roberts Brothers
I
BEGAN, of course, by writing verses; rebelling against the
Alexandrine, which however I understood perfectly. I tried
to preserve a sort of rhythm without attending to the rhyme
or the cæsura; and composed many verses that had a great suc-
cess among the girls, who were not very critical. At last I took
it into my head to write a novel; and though I was not at all
religious at that time, I made my story very pious and edifying.
It was more of a tale, however, than a novel. The hero and
heroine met in the dusk of evening, in the country, at the foot
of a shrine, where they had come to say their prayers. They
admired and exhorted each other by turns. I knew that they
ought to fall in love, but I could not manage it. Sophia urged
me on; but when I had described them both as beautiful and
perfect beings, when I had brought them together in an enchant-
ing spot at the entrance of a Gothic chapel under the shade of
lofty oaks, I never could get any further. It was not possible
for me to describe the emotions of love: I had not a word to
say, and gave it up. I succeeded in making them ardently pious;
-not that I knew any more about piety than I did about love;
but I had examples of piety all the time before my eyes, and
perhaps even then the germ was unconsciously developing within
me. At all events, my young couple, after several chapters of
travel and adventure that I have completely forgotten, separated
at last, both consecrating themselves to God, the heroine taking
the veil, and the hero becoming a priest.
Sophia and Anna thought my novel very well written, and
they liked some things about it; but they declared that the hero
(who rejoiced, by the way, in the name of Fitzgerald) was dread-
fully tiresome, and they did not seem to consider the heroine.
much more amusing. There was a mother whom they liked bet-
ter; but upon the whole my prose was less successful than my
verses, and I was not much charmed with it myself.
Then I wrote a pastoral romance in verse, still worse than
the novel; and one winter day I put it into the stove. Then I
stopped writing, and decided that it was not an amusing occu-
pation, though I had taken infinite delight in the preliminary
composition.
Translation of Maria Ellery Mackaye.
-
## p. 12806 (#224) ##########################################
12806
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
(1811-1883)
HEN Jules Sandeau (as he is usually known) was a humble
young law student, he visited Nohant, and there he met the
young Baroness Dudevant (George Sand), whose influence
was to change the whole course of his life. Up to that time he had
pursued the regular routine of French boys.
Born in the heart of France-at Aubusson, in the Department of
Creuse in 1811, he passed his school days there; and then was sent
to the law school in Paris. It was during one of his vacation trips
that he and Baroness Dudevant discovered
their congeniality of tastes and ambitions.
She was heartily tired of her husband and
of an irksome domestic life, and convinced
of her own latent power of authorship;
while Sandeau too inclined more toward
literature than law. So they went to Paris
together in 1831, when Sandeau was twenty
and Madame Dudevant twenty-seven. There
they rented a garret on the Quai Saint
Michel, and toiled cheerfully for a meagre
livelihood.
Henri de Latouche, editor-in-chief of Le
Figaro, became interested in these gifted
young Bohemians. He subjected them to
severe but helpful criticism, and accepted
JULES SANDEAU
some of their sketches for his paper. At his suggestion they wrote
a novel in collaboration,-'Rose et Blanche,' a colorless tale not
indicative of either's power. It is said that Sandeau suggested the
plot of George Sand's powerful novel 'Indiana. ' He also furnished
her with her nom de plume: George because upon St. George's day
he advised her to try her hand alone, and Sand from his own name.
The liaison terminated in two years, when Sandeau went off to
Italy; and with the exception of one moment's chance encounter, the
two never met again. Unquestionably the strongly emotional period
spent with the gifted young woman deepened Sandeau's nature, and
stimulated all his faculties. He continued to write, and proved his
possession of individual though not powerful talent. In 1839 'Mari-
anna' appeared,- a delicate analysis of the ebb and flow of passion;
## p. 12807 (#225) ##########################################
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
12807
and its success enabled him to become a frequent contributor to the
Revue des Deux Mondes.
The true value of Sandeau's work lay in a nobility of sentiment
which was the spontaneous expression of his own nature.
He was
always obliged to earn his own living; yet he never allowed mer-
cenary considerations to affect the quality of his work. His novels
are models of careful construction. He could not treat overwhelm-
ing passions; but his refined nature had an intuitive appreciation of
the more delicate emotions acquired by civilized society.
He was
particularly fond of depicting the inevitable repulsion experienced
by the ancient aristocracy when forced to meet and adapt itself to
new and more democratic social conditions. This was the theme of
'Mademoiselle de la Seiglière,' and also of 'La Maison de Penarvan,'
two of his strongest books. That he could also write charmingly
for children is shown in 'La Roche aux Mouettes. '
It was Sandeau's fate to be associated with greater minds, to
whom perhaps more than their share of praise was sometimes given.
He wrote several plays in collaboration with Émile Augier; notably
'Le Gendre de M. Poirier,' which ranks as one of the best modern
French comedies. He did not cater to public taste, and never became
widely popular. It was his fellow authors who most respected and
admired him.
In spite of his scanty means, he was very generous. During his
early struggles he and the great Balzac were friends. It is said that
one day Balzac, hard pressed for a small sum, asked Sandeau for it.
Sandeau went out, and by pawning his overcoat raised the money,
and took it to him. A few days later, Balzac asked the loan of San-
deau's coat. "I cannot give it to you," said Sandeau simply; and
Balzac stormed at his meanness until shamed by a discovery of the
truth. Another time, feeling sorry for an old, poor, and embittered
publisher named Werdet, he presented him with the manuscript of
one of his ablest and most popular stories, 'Le Docteur Herbleu. '
Naturally he himself never became rich; although he was made
comfortable by the proceeds of his writing, augmented by his salary
as librarian, — first at the Mazarin library, to which position he was
appointed in 1853, and later at St. Cloud. Upon the downfall of the
second Napoleon this office was abolished; and Sandeau was granted
a pension.
Sandeau was elected Academician in 1859. His literary activity
extended over about twenty-five years; and he ceased to write many
years before his death on April 24th, 1883. Although he had little
influence in determining the trend of literature, Sandeau was a
decided romanticist in the early days of the romantic movement.
His tales are pleasant rather than exciting reading; most noteworthy
for delicacy of perception and sympathetic delineation of character.
## p. 12808 (#226) ##########################################
12808
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
HOW THE HISTORY OF PENARVAN WAS WRITTEN
From The House of Penarvan'
[The Marquise de Penarvan, an aristocrat of the old régime, has been
actuated all her life by a ruling passion of family pride. She sacrifices her
husband to it; and after his death, her greatest interest is the history of the
family of Penarvan, which the Abbé Pyrmil, the chaplain and devoted friend
of the family, is writing. She does not love her only child,- her daughter
Paule,- because she cannot perpetuate the family name.
After vainly trying to win her mother's consent to her marriage with
Henri Coverley,- a young man who, although not of noble birth, is in every
other respect worthy of her, Paule marries without it. ]
F
ROM the day of her marriage Paule was seized with what
some would call a natural, others a morbid, self-reproach,
the suffering of which was increased by everything which
otherwise would have rendered her happy. She had made a des-
perate effort to secure the bliss so long coveted, and the capacity
of enjoying it when attained was denied to her.
Young, beautiful, worshiped by her husband, in the midst of
everything this world can offer of comfort and pleasure, she
suffered unremittingly, and in secret wept bitterly; loving her
husband as much as ever, the wealth and luxury with which he
surrounded her she simply hated. Her thoughts were perpetually
reverting to the stern mother, and the old château she had for-
saken. A strange sort of yearning for its poverty and simplicity
took possession of her soul. She turned with loathing from all
the magnificence that her sensitive feelings compared with the
penury of the home where her early life had been overshadowed
and saddened.
For the first time she understood the grand side of her
mother's character, the dignity of her uncomplaining poverty.
She was haunted by the thought of the tears she had — for the
first time-seen in those eyes, the severe or forgiving glance of
which she was never again to meet; they seemed to be dropping
like molten lead on her heart.
Henri lavished upon her all that the most devoted affection
and tenderest care could devise. His patience, his delicacy of
feeling, never failed; and she responded to his love with passion-
ate affection.
"Oh, if you knew how I love you! " she would say. "I would
suffer far more even than I do suffer, rather than forego the
## p. 12809 (#227) ##########################################
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
12809
blessing of being your wife. Yes, I bless the hour when I first
saw you; and I thank God morning, noon, and night for the
priceless gift of your love. But oh, forgive me if I cannot be
happy, if I cannot forget; if I cannot live on in the midst of
splendor and gayety, unforgiven and unblest by my mother. "
If Henri reminded her of all she had suffered under that
mother's roof, she would answer:
"I was not patient enough; I did not wait as I ought to have
done, Henri. I think I have thought so ever since — that she
was beginning to love me when I left her. "
They wrote: only the abbé answered, and his letters held out
no hope. They still went on writing, and with no other result.
They traveled in Italy, in Greece; but in the midst of all the
wonderful beauties of nature and art there was always before
Paule's eyes the same vision,- her mother growing old in soli-
tude and poverty.
She gave birth to a child; and the joys of maternal love
only sharpened the pangs of a remorse which had grown into a
malady. The more intensely she cared for her little girl, the
more acute became her regrets and her fears. Would that little
one abandon her one day as she had abandoned her mother?
Had she any claim upon her own child,- she who had disobeyed
and defied her only parent?
Once more Paule wrote to the marquise: no answer came.
The abbé was obliged to admit that her letters were never
opened, that her name was never to be uttered in her mother's
ears.
They spent a year on the banks of the lake of Como. As
time went by, Paule found Henri even more excellent, more
perfect, than she had ever supposed that any one could be. It
was terrible to her to feel that the wife of such a man should be
an unhappy woman; that with such a husband and with such a
child she should be wasting away with sorrow. They came back
to France discouraged and depressed.
People are often more selfish in their sorrows than in their
joys; and yet there is no sort of selfishness which those who
are conscientious and kind-hearted should more anxiously shrink
from. Paule awakened at last to a sense of the fault she was
committing by making the weight of her self-reproach sadden
her husband's life; and she made up her mind to reappear in
society.
## p. 12810 (#228) ##########################################
12810
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
The magnificent house of the Coverleys was thrown open
to the world; and she did the honors of balls and parties with
simplicity and grace. She was as much admired then as the
first days she had been seen at Bordeaux, walking arm in arm
with the prince. Her dress was always simple: she disliked to
wear jewels or trinkets.
But in spite of all efforts to appear happy in Henri's pres-
ence, and her pleasure in her little girl, who was a singularly
engaging child, he could not help seeing that she was misera-
ble; and so did Madame de Soleyre, who noticed that whereas
formerly she seldom spoke of the marquise, and seemed afraid
almost of mentioning her name, now she was always anxious to
revert to the subject of her mother's past life, and questioned
her minutely as to the time when, in the height of her youth
and beauty, Renée de Penarvan had acted such a noble and heroic
part, and been the admiration of the Vendean nobility. Paule
accused herself of the indifference and want of understanding, as
she called it, which had made her fail to appreciate the grand
side of her mother's nature.
One night when they had returned from a ball, Paule threw
herself down on a sofa and burst into an agony of tears. She
had struggled all the evening with an oppressive sense of con-
trast between her mother's fate and her own; and at last the
overburdened heart gave way, and she could not control herself
any longer, even in Henri's presence. He knelt by her side, and
she laid her head on his shoulder.
"What can I do
"What is it, my darling? " he tenderly said.
to comfort you?
1 ? »
<< Henri," she whispered, "I must go and see my mother.
Even at the risk of her driving me away,- of her cursing me,-
I must go to her. "
"But, dearest, if she refuses - and she will refuse- to see
—
you ? »
"Then I shall hide myself in the park; I shall catch sight of
her in some way or other. "
"We shall set off to-morrow," Henri said.
"Oh, how good, how kind you are, my own love! " she said,
throwing her arms round his neck.
Two days afterwards, in the dusk of an October evening, they
arrived at the inn at Tiffange with their little girl, then just three
years old. It was too late to send for the abbé, and they set out
## p. 12811 (#229) ##########################################
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
12811
on foot for the château; Paule leading the way, and Henri carry-
ing the child.
They entered the park through one of the breaks in the wall,
and walked along the alleys strewed with dead leaves.
As they
approached the house, Paule pointed to a window in which a
light was visible, and whispered to her husband:-
"That is her room. She must be sitting there. "
It was a strange thing that those young people, who had
youth and beauty and mutual love to gladden, their lives, who
possessed houses and villas and many a ship crossing the ocean
laden with rich merchandise, and whose wealth was every day
increasing, should have been standing before that dilapidated
building with the one wish, the one desire, to be admitted within
those doors, closed to them perhaps forever.
room.
In another window a light gleamed also. That was the abbé's
What was he doing? Was he praying for his little Paule?
Was he still working at his 'History of the House of Penarvan'?
When Paule was a child, she used to stand under the abbe's
window and clap her hands together three times to summon him
into the garden. She advanced and made the well-known sig-
nal. The window opened, and the abbé, looking like a tall ghost,
appeared, leaning out of it as if to dive into the outward dark-
ness.
"Abbé, my own abbé," Paule cried in a mournful voice.
The ghost disappeared; and a moment afterwards the abbé
was clasping Paule, her husband, and her child in his wide arms,
and then dragging them like secreted criminals into his room.
"You here, my child, and you, M. Henri, and this darling? "
"I am broken-hearted, abbé: I cannot live on in this state.
Do, do make my mother see me. Oh, do get her to forgive me. "
The abbé had taken the little child on his knees, and she was
looking up into his face with a pretty smile.
"Oh, M. l'Abbé, do help us! " Coverley said.
The abbé was looking attentively at the little girl. She was
so like what Renée had been as a child.
«< What does my mother feel? Does she allow you to speak of
Does she ever mention me? "
us?
The abbé was silent. He could not say yes, he could not bear
to say no.
"I see there is no hope," Paule exclaimed in a despairing man-
"It is really to her as if I were dead! "
ner.
## p. 12812 (#230) ##########################################
12812
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
The abbé made the little child join her little hands together
and said to her:
"Do you love the good God, my child? "
"Oh yes," she answered.
"Then say to the good God, 'My God, come with me. "
"My God, come with me," the little one repeated; and then
the abbé took her in his arms and exclaimed:-
――――
"Come along, come with me; and may God help thee. "
The marquise was sitting in her old oak-wood chair by the
chimney, where two small logs were burning; an ill-trimmed lamp
by her side. Her features had grown thin and sharp; her hollow
cheeks and dim eyes spoke of silent suffering and inward strug-
gles, and of the secret work which had been going on in her
soul during the last four years. She looked like the ghost of her
former self; but there was still something striking and impressive
in her appearance. She seemed crushed indeed, but not subdued.
Around her nothing but ruins, within her nothing but bitter rec-
ollections; and a blank, desolate future in view.
Had she too felt remorse? Had she heard a voice whispering
misgivings as to the course she had pursued ? Had she closed
her ears to it? Was it true, as Paule in her grief and repentance
had suspected, that she had begun to love and admire her child
during the months which had preceded their final separation?
Did she ask herself sometimes, when kneeling in the dismantled.
chapel, and before that crucifix which war and devastation had
spared, if she had acted up to the Christian as well as to the
ancestral traditions of her race when she had driven that child
away from her forever? And the mourning garb in which she
was arrayed,-did she feel certain that it was God's will, and
not her own unrelenting heart, which had condemned her to
wear it?
No one could tell, not even the abbé. But that she was be-
coming every day more thin, more haggard, more gloomy, others
besides him could observe.
As in a besieged city where famine is doing fell work, and
from which a cry for mercy and life despairingly rises, a stern
commander refuses to capitulate, holds out, and dooms himself
and others to a lingering death,- so the pride of her soul sti
fled the yearnings, the pleadings, the cries of nature; and never
perhaps had they been more distinctly heard, never had the
weight of solitude and loneliness pressed more heavily on Renée
## p. 12813 (#231) ##########################################
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
12813
de Penarvan's heart than upon that autumnal evening. As she
sat in that large, dimly lighted room, her elbow resting on the
side of her arm-chair, her head on her hand, a slight noise made.
her look up: the door opened, and a little child came in. Alarmed
at the sight of the pale lady in black by the fireside, the child
stopped in the middle of the room, and her smiling face became
grave.
"Who are you? " asked the marquise, who did not even know
that Paule had a child.
"I am a little girl. "
"Come here, my child. "
Taking courage, the little thing toddled up to the chimney,
and put her little hands on the arm of the oak chair.
"What is your name? " the marquise asked, softened by the
sight of the lovely little face.
"Renée," the child answered.
The marquise started with emotion and a sort of fear; she
scanned the features of the child, she saw, she guessed, she under-
stood it all.
"Go back to your mother," she said in a trembling voice.
"Go back to Madame Coverley. ”
Frightened at the stern voice and manner of the lady, the
little thing turned round and slowly went towards the door.
The marquise watched her with a beating heart. During the
instants it took the child to cross the room, the whole of her
life passed before her. She saw her gentle, affectionate husband
riding from the hall door on his way to a bloody death; she saw
her beautiful, gentle daughter driven from her home: and now
that lovely little creature so like herself—with her fair hair, her
white skin, her blue eyes-was disappearing also.
She looked round at the pictures on the walls: she felt as if
they, those ancestors, to whom she had sacrificed everything, had
doomed her to a lingering death.
And meanwhile the little girl had reached the door. Renée
was still hesitating. The child turned round and said with a
reproachful expression in her baby face:
"You not my grandmamma. You not love Renée. You send
Renée away. "
She could not hold out,-the poor marquise! She uttered a
sort of cry.
She sprang up, seized the child in her arms, kissed
her, wept over her, hugged her to her breast.
## p. 12814 (#232) ##########################################
12814
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
Stay, stay, my little one, stay," she wildly exclaimed; "stay,
my little life, my darling, my treasure. "
«
A YEAR had elapsed; and on the banks of the Sèvres there
were no longer any ruins to be seen. The old castle of Penar-
van had recovered its former aspect. The towers, the walls, the
handsome entrance, were all restored, the armorial bearings had
reappeared, the invading weeds were banished from the court.
The stables were filled with horses and carriages, the kennel
with dogs.
In the handsomely furnished drawing-room the whole set of
ancestors looked new and bright in their cleaned state and fresh-
gilded frames. Inside and outside the house there was life and
animation. The ruined farms were rebuilt, the greatest part of
the estate repurchased; manufactories of ropes and sails rose on
the banks of the river.
The time of ragged cassocks had likewise gone by; the chapel
of the château had recovered its old splendor. The abbé offi-
ciated in great pomp, on Sundays and festivals, at a magnificent
altar; and the seat of the lords of the manor had been restored to
its wonted place. A look of happiness and prosperity reigned
in the whole neighborhood. Respect for the past was joined to
modern enterprise, and the poetry of old associations to the activ-
ity of useful labor.
Henri Coverley had not only repurchased the estates of the
ancient domain of Penarvan, he had also bought back La Briga-
zière.
M. Michaud, who possessed several houses in the neighbor-
hood of Rennes, looked with contempt on that little old-fashioned
manor-house, and was quite ready to sell it. Père Michaud had
now grown into that famous Michaud so conspicuous on the
Liberal benches in the days of the Restoration, who denounced
the nobility and protested against the feudal distinctions, till in
1830 the new government stopped his mouth by making him a
baron.
On a beautiful summer's afternoon the Marquise de Penarvan,
with her little granddaughter and the abbé, were sitting in that
same drawing-room where we have so often seen them.
strange for a priest to arrogate to himself the right to point out
her duty in such a manner. Nevertheless, she did not think she
## p. 12795 (#213) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12795
could be excused from performing what her education rendered
sacred. Still, fearing some such snare as she had hitherto been
able to avoid, she did not go into the raised pew reserved for
the ancient lords of Fougères,-a pew placed in full sight to
the right of the choir, and now furnished with a rug and several
arm-chairs at the priest's own expense. , Fiamma waited until
vespers had begun; then slipped into church in the plainest gar-
ments, and mingled with the crowd of women who in that part
of the country kneel on the church pavement. She hated the
flattery paid to any special class; but thought that before God.
she could not bow down with too much humility.
It was vain for her to hope to escape the village priest's
scrutinizing glance, or the sexton's, who had been told to find
her. The church was very small; and besides, the custom of
the country separates the women from the men, and gathers the
former in one of the naves. Between the 'Magnificat' and the
'Pange Lingua,' in the interval used by the officiating priest for
putting on his pontifical vestments, the sexton passed through
the feminine crowd, and in the priest's name came to beg
Mademoiselle de Fougères to take a place more suited to her
rank. When she refused to go to the pew, the obstinate assist-
ant had an arm-chair and a hassock placed near the railing sepa-
rating the two sexes at the entrance to the choir, just as he
would have done for his bishop. He thought that Mademoiselle
de Fougères would not be able to resist this flattering invitation,
and concluded to go back to the altar.
In the mean time the rows of women separating Mademoiselle
de Fougères from the insolent arm-chair had opened, and every
eye seemed to be requesting her to condescend to take possession
of it. Jeanne Féline alone, whose fervent prayer was somewhat
disturbed, and whose honest and incorruptible good-sense was no
less shocked, by what was going on, lowered her prayer-book,
raised her hood, and fixed on Mademoiselle de Fougères a look
in which the pride of virtue and the fire of youth shone amidst
all the ravages of age and sorrow. Fiamma saw her, and recog-
nized Simon's mother by a distant likeness of features and a
striking similarity of expression. She had heard this woman's
merit praised, and had wished for an opportunity to make her
acquaintance. She therefore bore the look quietly, and by her
own expressed that she was ready to enter into communication
with her.
## p. 12796 (#214) ##########################################
12796
GEORGE SAND
Madame Féline, as bold and ingenuous as truth itself, ad-
dressed her at once, and whispered:
"Well, mademoiselle, what does your conscience bid you do? ”
"My conscience," replied Fiamma unhesitatingly, "bids me
stay here and offer you the arm-chair as a mark of respect due
you. "
--
Jeanne Féline was so far from expecting this answer that she
was dumbfounded.
Mademoiselle de Fougères was not, like her father, a person
who could be accused of courting popularity. She was said to
have the opposite failing, and Jeanne could not understand why
she had remained in the general crowd from the beginning of
the ceremony. At length her face softened; and resisting
Fiamma, who wanted to lead her to the arm-chair, she said:-
"No, not I: it would ill become me to take a place of honor
before God, who sees the depths of all hearts and our weakness.
But look! there is the oldest woman in the village,-one who
has known four generations; she usually has a chair, but is
kneeling on the ground to-day. They forgot her on your ac-
count. "
Mademoiselle de Fougères followed the direction of Jeanne's
gesture, and saw a centenarian, for whom some young girls had
made a sort of cushion with their fustian cloaks. She went
towards her, and with Madame Féline's assistance, helped her
to rise and sit down in the arm-chair. The old woman did not
resist, not understanding what was taking place, and thanked
them by nodding her trembling head.
Mademoiselle de Fougères knelt on the pavement close to
Jeanne, so as to be entirely hidden by the back of the great
arm-chair; in which the ancient dame, who performed her reli-
gious duties by mere force of habit, owing to her age soon fell
quietly asleep.
The priest, however, knowing that downcast eyes harmonize
with the fervor of an officiator, could just see a woman with
a white head-covering in the arm-chair. He fancied that his
negotiations had been successful, and began to officiate calmly;
but when the time came for the explosion of his great project;
- when he had descended the three steps of the altar and knelt
to burn incense before the Holy Sacrament, crossed the choir
and walked towards the arm-chair to render the same honor to
Mademoisellede Fougères according to ancient feudal custom,- he
## p. 12797 (#215) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12797
noticed his mistake, and his arm remained suspended between
heaven and earth; while all the congregation of the faithful, eyes
and mouths wide open, were wondering why these unusual honors
were being paid to Mother Mathurin.
The young priest did not lose his composure: but seeing that
Mademoiselle de Fougères had carried her point, with a little
obstinacy and malice showed her that she was not to have it all
her own way; for turning briskly to the other side, he swung the
censers towards the seignorial pew, thus giving the empty place
the honors due more to the title than to its bearers. The whole
village was amazed; and it took more than six months to make
the commentators, who were worn out by inquiries and discussions,
adopt the true version of the event. The relatives of the cen-
tenarian did not fail to say that she had been blessed in virtue
of an ancient custom giving this preference to persons a hun-
dred years old; and that the priest had found it in the archives
of the commune. As for the old woman, being nearly blind and
more than half asleep when she was thus honored, as her ear
was fortunate enough to be forever closed to all human speech
and all worldly noise, she died without ever knowing that she
had had incense burned before her.
FRANÇOIS THE FIELD-FOUNDLING
Preface to François le Champi >
THE
HE moon shed a dim silver light on the paths through the
darkened fields as R and I were on our way home
from walk. It was a mild and softly clouded autumn
evening; and we were noticing the sonority peculiar to the air,
as well as the indefinable mystery pervading nature at that sea-
son. One might say that as the heavy winter sleep draws nigh,
all things and creatures furtively endeavor to enjoy the last rem-
nants of life and animation before the fatal coming on of be-
numbing frost; and as if they wanted to cheat the flight of time,
and feared to be surprised and interrupted in the last gambols
of their merry-making, gave themselves up silently and without
apparent activity to their nocturnal ecstasies. Birds utter smoth-
ered cries instead of the joyous flourishes of summer days. The
insect in the furrows lets us hear an indiscreet exclamation now
and then; but interrupts itself at once, and quickly transfers its
## p. 12798 (#216) ##########################################
12798
GEORGE SAND
chirp or plaint to another rallying-point. Plants hasten to exhale
their last perfume, all the sweeter for being subtler and long
repressed. The fading leaves dare not quiver under the breath
of the breeze; while the flocks graze in silence, without a sound.
of strife or love.
Even we, my friend and I, walked cautiously; instinctive med-
itation holding us mute, and as it were, observant of nature's
softened beauty and the enchanting harmony of her last chords,
now dying away in an imperceptible pianissimo. Autumn is a
graceful and melancholy andante, admirably introducing the sol-
emn adagio of winter.
At length my friend, who had followed my thoughts as I had
followed his, in spite of our silence, said: "All this is so calm,
and seems absorbed in a revery so foreign and indifferent to the
labors, foresight, and cares of man, that it makes me wonder
what expression, what coloring, what manifestation of art and
poetry human intelligence could give to the physiognomy of
nature at this particular moment. And to make the aim of my
inquiry clearer to you, I will compare this evening, this sky and
this landscape,- all of them so dim yet so harmonious and
complete, to the soul of a wise and pious peasant who works
and profits by his labor, enjoys his peculiar kind of life without
feeling the need or the wish, and without having the means to
manifest or express, his inner life. I try to set myself in the
heart of this mystery of rustic and natural life,-I, the civilized
creature, who do not know how to enjoy by instinct alone,— and
am forever tormented by the desire to render an account, both
to myself and others, of my contemplation or my meditation. "
"And then," continued my friend, “I am anxiously seeking
what connection can be established between my too active intelli-
gence, and the peasant's which is not active enough; just as I
was wondering a while ago what painting, music,-in short,
what the description, the translation by art,- could add to the
beauty of this autumn night, which reveals itself to me by its
mysterious reticence, and penetrates me although I do not know
by what magic communication. "
"Let me see whether I fully understand how the question is
stated," I replied. "Let us take this October night, this color-
less sky, this music without any marked or sequent melody, this
calm of nature, and the peasant who by his simplicity comes
nearer to enjoying and understanding, without describing it, than
____
## p. 12799 (#217) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12799
we do,- and putting all these together, let us call it primitive
life, relatively to our developed and complicated existence, which
I will call factitious life. You ask what the possible connection,
the direct link, between these two opposite states of the existence.
of things and creatures may be; between the palace and the
cottage, the artist and his creation, the poet and the plowman. "
"Yes," he resumed; "and to state it precisely,- between
the language spoken by this nature, this primitive life, and these
instincts, and that spoken by art, science,
in
a word, by
knowledge. "
"To speak in the language you adopt, I should answer that
the connection between knowledge and sensation is feeling. "
-
"The definition of that feeling is precisely what I am ques-
tioning you about, while I am interrogating myself. The mani-
festation that so puzzles me is intrusted to it;. this definition.
is the art-the artist, if you choose - commissioned to translate
the candor, grace, and charm of primitive life for those who live
the factitious life alone, and who are (permit me to say so) the
greatest idiots in the world when they stand before nature and
her divine secrets. "
-
"You ask for nothing less than the very secret of art: seek
that in the bosom of God, for no artist can reveal it to you. He
does not know it himself, and could not give an account of
either his inspiration or his impotence. How are we to express
beauty, simplicity, and truth? Indeed, I do not know. And who
could teach us? Not even the greatest artists could do it, for
if they tried they would no longer be artists, but become critics;
and as for criticism — ! ”
"Criticism," resumed my friend, "has been revolving around
the mystery for centuries without understanding anything about
it. But, pardon me, that is not precisely what I was asking.
am even more of a barbarian just now; I call the very power of
art in question. I despise it; I annihilate it; I maintain that art
is not born, that it does not exist, or if it has existed its time
is past. It is worn out, it has no more forms, it has no more
breath, it no longer has the means to sing the beauty of truth.
Nature is a work of art; but God is the only existing artist, and
man is but a tasteless compiler. Nature is beautiful; she exhales
feeling at every pore: and with her, love and youth and beauty
are undying. But man has only absurd means and miserable
faculties for feeling and expressing them. He would do best if
## p. 12800 (#218) ##########################################
12800
GEORGE SAND
he let them alone,- were silent and absorbed in contemplation.
Come, what do you say to this? "
"That plan would suit me, and I should be quite content to
follow it," I answered.
"Ah! you go too far," he exclaimed, "and enter into my par-
adox too fully. I am pleading: put in a rejoinder. "
"Then I will say that one of Petrarch's sonnets has its own
relative beauty equal to the beauty of the water at Vaucluse;
that a Ruysdael landscape has a charm as great as that of such
an evening as this; that Mozart sings as well in the language
of men as Philomel in that of the birds; that Shakespeare pre-
sents passions, feelings, and instincts, just as the most primitive
and truthful man can feel them. This is art, the connection,-
feeling, in short. "
"Yes, it is a work of transformation!
But suppose it does
not satisfy me? Even if you were right a thousand times over
by all the decrees of taste and æsthetics, what if I find Petrarch's
verses less harmonious than the sound of the waterfall, and feel
the same about the rest? If I maintained that there is a charm
in this evening that no one could reveal to me unless I had
enjoyed it myself, and that all Shakespeare's passion is cold
compared to what I can see blazing in a jealous peasant's eyes
when he beats his wife, what would you say? The point here
is to persuade my 'feeling. ' And what if it eludes your exam-
ples, resists your proofs? Then art would not be an invincible
demonstrator, and feeling not always satisfied with the best of
definitions. "
"I see nothing to reply to this, indeed, except that art is a
demonstration whose proof is in nature; that the pre-existing fact
of this proof is ever present to justify or contradict the demon-
stration, and that one cannot make a good one unless the proof
is examined with love and faith. "
"Then the demonstration cannot do without the proof; but
may the proof not get along without the demonstration ? »
"No doubt God could; but I am ready to wager that you, who
are now talking as if you were not one of us, would not under-
stand anything about the proof if you had not found the demon-
stration in a thousand forms in the tradition of art, and if you
were not yourself a demonstration forever acting upon the proof. "
"Ah! that's just the fact I am finding fault with. I should
like to get rid of this eternal demonstration that so irritates me;
## p. 12801 (#219) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12801
erase all forms and teachings of art from my memory; never
think of painting when I look at a landscape, nor of music
when I listen to the wind, nor of poetry when I admire and
appreciate the whole effect. I should like to enjoy everything
by instinct, because it seems to me that that cricket now chirp-
ing is more joyous and ecstatic than I. "
"In short, you complain of being a man. "
"No; but I complain of no longer being the primitive man. ”
"It remains to be proved whether he enjoyed, since he could
not understand. ”
"I do not imagine him like the brutes. The moment he was
a man he understood and felt differently. But I cannot form a
clear idea of his emotions, and that torments me. Therefore I
would like to be what present society permits a great many men.
to be from the cradle to the grave, a peasant, and a peasant
unable to read, but to whom God has given good instincts, a
peaceful disposition, an honest conscience; and in that torpor
of useless faculties and ignorance of depraved tastes, I believe I
could be as happy as the primitive man dreamed of by Jean
Jacques. "
"I often have the same dream myself: who has not? But it
would not make your argument win the day, for the simplest and
most ingenuous peasant is an artist after all; and I claim that
their art is superior to ours. It has another form, but it appeals
to my soul more than all those of our civilization. Rustic songs,
tales, and stories, paint in a few words what our literature merely
knows how to amplify and disguise. "
XXII-801
―――――
"Then I am right," resumed my friend. "That art is purest
and best because it goes to nature for inspiration; is in directer
contact with it. I may have gone too far when I said that
art was good for nothing; but I said too that I would like to
feel as a peasant does, and I do not unsay that. There are
some popular songs in Brittany, made by beggars, which in their
three stanzas are worth all that Goethe or Byron ever wrote, and
prove that the appreciation of the true and beautiful was more
complete and spontaneous in those simple souls than in the most
illustrious poets. And as for music? Have we not admirable
melodies in our country? True, our peasants have no painting;
but they have it in their speech, which is a hundred times more
expressive, more energetic, and more logical than our literary lan-
guage. "
## p. 12802 (#220) ##########################################
12802
GEORGE SAND
"I admit that," I answered: "and the last point particularly
is a cause of despair; because I am obliged to write in the lan-
guage of the Academy, when there is another I know so much
better, and which is so far superior for expressing a whole order
of emotions, sentiments and thoughts. "
"Yes, yes, the world devoid of art! " he said; "the unknown
world, closed to our modern art, and that no amount of study
will allow even you to express to yourself,-you, the peasant by
nature, if you wished to introduce it into the domain of civil-
ized art, into the intellectual intercourse of artificial life. "
"Alas! " I replied, "that fact has often been in my mind.
Like all civilized beings, I have seen and felt that primitive life
has been the dream, the ideal, of all men and all times. From
the shepherds of Longus to those of Trianon, pastoral life has
been a perfumed Eden, where souls tormented and wearied by
the world's tumult have tried to take refuge. Art, the great
flatterer and obliging purveyor of consolation for all over-happy
people, has gone through an uninterrupted series of pastorals. I
have often wanted to write a learned and critical book entitled
"The History of Pastorals,' wherein all the various sylvan dreams
so passionately cherished by the upper classes would have been
reviewed. I should have followed their modifications, which
were always in an inverse ratio to the depravity of morals, and
grew purer and more sentimental in proportion as society be-
came more shameless and corrupt. I wish I could order such a
book from an author more capable of writing it than I am; and
I should then read it with pleasure. It would be a complete
treatise on art; for music, painting, architecture, literature in all
its forms, the drama, poetry, novels, eclogue, songs, even fash-
ions, gardens, and costumes, have had to submit to the infatuation
of the pastoral dream.
I have often asked myself why
there are no more shepherds; for we are not so impassioned for
Truth in these latter days, that our arts and literature have the
right to despise these conventional types in favor of those that
fashion is now introducing. We are all given over to energy
and atrocity at present, and are embroidering ornaments on the
canvas of these passions, terrible enough to set our hair on end
if we could but take them seriously. "
-
-
·
"If we have no more shepherds," returned my friend,- “ if
literature no longer has that false ideal, which was worth as much
as to-day's, perhaps it is because art is making an unconscious
## p. 12803 (#221) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12803
attempt to level itself, to put itself within the reach of all
classes of intelligence. Does not the dream of equality, flung
into society, drive art to become brutal and impetuous, so as to
awaken the instincts and passions common to all men, of what-
soever rank they may be? Truth has not yet been reached. It
lies no more in disfigured reality than in over-ornamented ideal-
ity: but it is quite evident that it is being sought; and if it is
not well sought, the seekers are none the less eager to find it.
For instance, the drama, poetry, and the novel have dropped the
crook and taken up the dagger; and when rustic life is put upon
the scene they give it a certain realistic form, not found in the
pastorals of former days. Yet there is but little poetry in it,
and I find fault with this; still I do not see the means of elevat-
ing the rustic ideal without heightening its color or blackening it.
You have often thought of doing it, I know; but will you succeed? "
"I do not hope to," I replied; "for I have no form to cast it
in, and my feeling for rustic simplicity finds no language for its
expression. If I make the rustic speak as he really does, the
civilized reader would need a translation on the opposite page;
and if I make him speak as we do, then I make an unnatural
creature of him, and have to pretend that he has ideas he really
has not. "
"And even if you did make him speak as he does, your own
language would make a disagreeable contrast every moment; and
you have laid yourself open to that reproach, in my opinion.
You portrayed a rustic maiden, called her Jeanne, and put words
in her mouth which strictly speaking she might say.
But you,
the novelist, wishing to make your readers share the attraction.
you feel in delineating the type, compare her to a druidess, a
Joan of Arc, and what not. Your feelings and your words along-
side of hers have the same incongruous effect as the clash of
harsh tones in a picture; and I cannot quite enter into nature
thus, even when it is idealized. You have made a better study
of truth since then, in 'La Mare au Diable' [The Devil's Pool].
But I am not satisfied yet. The author still peeps out now
and then; there are authors' words in it. . . . You must try
again, even though you do not succeed; masterpieces are only
successful attempts. Provided you make conscientious attempts,
you may console yourself for not making masterpieces. "
"I am consoled on that point beforehand," I replied, “and
will begin again whenever you wish: advise me. "
## p. 12804 (#222) ##########################################
12804
GEORGE SAND
"Yesterday, for instance, we were at the rustic wake at the
farm," he said. "The hemp-breaker told stories up to two o'clock
in the morning. The village priest's servant helped or corrected
him: she was a somewhat cultured peasant; he was ignorant, but
happily endowed and very eloquent in his own way. These two
persons jointly told us a rather long, true story, which appeared
to be a familiar novel. Do you remember it? ”
"Perfectly, and I could repeat it literally in their very lan-
>>>>
guage.
"Their language would need a translation: you must write
in French, and not allow yourself a single word which does not
belong to the language, unless it be so intelligible that a foot-
note would be useless for the reader. "
"I see you are setting me a task fit to make me lose my
mind,—one I have never plunged into without coming out dis-
satisfied with myself, and penetrated by a sense of my weakness. "
"Never mind! You will plunge into it again; I know the
artist nature: nothing stimulates you as much as obstacles, and
you do poorly what you do without suffering. Come, begin,—
tell me the story of the 'Champi'; but not as I heard it with
you. It was a masterpiece for our minds and ears 'to the man-
ner born. ' Tell it as if there were a Parisian at your right
speaking the modern language, and a peasant at your left before
whom you would not wish to say a word or phrase he could not
fathom. Thus you will have to speak plainly for the Parisian,
simply for the peasant. One will rebuke you for absence of
color, the other for that of elegance; but I shall be there too,-
I, who am trying to find the conditions by which art, without
ceasing to be art for every one, may enter into the mystery of
primitive simplicity, and communicate to the mind the charm per-
vading nature. "
"We are going to make a joint study, it seems. "
"Yes; for I shall interfere when you stumble. "
## p. 12805 (#223) ##########################################
GEORGE SAND
12805
THE BUDDING AUTHOR
From 'Convent Life of George Sand. ' Copyright 1893, by Roberts Brothers
I
BEGAN, of course, by writing verses; rebelling against the
Alexandrine, which however I understood perfectly. I tried
to preserve a sort of rhythm without attending to the rhyme
or the cæsura; and composed many verses that had a great suc-
cess among the girls, who were not very critical. At last I took
it into my head to write a novel; and though I was not at all
religious at that time, I made my story very pious and edifying.
It was more of a tale, however, than a novel. The hero and
heroine met in the dusk of evening, in the country, at the foot
of a shrine, where they had come to say their prayers. They
admired and exhorted each other by turns. I knew that they
ought to fall in love, but I could not manage it. Sophia urged
me on; but when I had described them both as beautiful and
perfect beings, when I had brought them together in an enchant-
ing spot at the entrance of a Gothic chapel under the shade of
lofty oaks, I never could get any further. It was not possible
for me to describe the emotions of love: I had not a word to
say, and gave it up. I succeeded in making them ardently pious;
-not that I knew any more about piety than I did about love;
but I had examples of piety all the time before my eyes, and
perhaps even then the germ was unconsciously developing within
me. At all events, my young couple, after several chapters of
travel and adventure that I have completely forgotten, separated
at last, both consecrating themselves to God, the heroine taking
the veil, and the hero becoming a priest.
Sophia and Anna thought my novel very well written, and
they liked some things about it; but they declared that the hero
(who rejoiced, by the way, in the name of Fitzgerald) was dread-
fully tiresome, and they did not seem to consider the heroine.
much more amusing. There was a mother whom they liked bet-
ter; but upon the whole my prose was less successful than my
verses, and I was not much charmed with it myself.
Then I wrote a pastoral romance in verse, still worse than
the novel; and one winter day I put it into the stove. Then I
stopped writing, and decided that it was not an amusing occu-
pation, though I had taken infinite delight in the preliminary
composition.
Translation of Maria Ellery Mackaye.
-
## p. 12806 (#224) ##########################################
12806
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
(1811-1883)
HEN Jules Sandeau (as he is usually known) was a humble
young law student, he visited Nohant, and there he met the
young Baroness Dudevant (George Sand), whose influence
was to change the whole course of his life. Up to that time he had
pursued the regular routine of French boys.
Born in the heart of France-at Aubusson, in the Department of
Creuse in 1811, he passed his school days there; and then was sent
to the law school in Paris. It was during one of his vacation trips
that he and Baroness Dudevant discovered
their congeniality of tastes and ambitions.
She was heartily tired of her husband and
of an irksome domestic life, and convinced
of her own latent power of authorship;
while Sandeau too inclined more toward
literature than law. So they went to Paris
together in 1831, when Sandeau was twenty
and Madame Dudevant twenty-seven. There
they rented a garret on the Quai Saint
Michel, and toiled cheerfully for a meagre
livelihood.
Henri de Latouche, editor-in-chief of Le
Figaro, became interested in these gifted
young Bohemians. He subjected them to
severe but helpful criticism, and accepted
JULES SANDEAU
some of their sketches for his paper. At his suggestion they wrote
a novel in collaboration,-'Rose et Blanche,' a colorless tale not
indicative of either's power. It is said that Sandeau suggested the
plot of George Sand's powerful novel 'Indiana. ' He also furnished
her with her nom de plume: George because upon St. George's day
he advised her to try her hand alone, and Sand from his own name.
The liaison terminated in two years, when Sandeau went off to
Italy; and with the exception of one moment's chance encounter, the
two never met again. Unquestionably the strongly emotional period
spent with the gifted young woman deepened Sandeau's nature, and
stimulated all his faculties. He continued to write, and proved his
possession of individual though not powerful talent. In 1839 'Mari-
anna' appeared,- a delicate analysis of the ebb and flow of passion;
## p. 12807 (#225) ##########################################
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
12807
and its success enabled him to become a frequent contributor to the
Revue des Deux Mondes.
The true value of Sandeau's work lay in a nobility of sentiment
which was the spontaneous expression of his own nature.
He was
always obliged to earn his own living; yet he never allowed mer-
cenary considerations to affect the quality of his work. His novels
are models of careful construction. He could not treat overwhelm-
ing passions; but his refined nature had an intuitive appreciation of
the more delicate emotions acquired by civilized society.
He was
particularly fond of depicting the inevitable repulsion experienced
by the ancient aristocracy when forced to meet and adapt itself to
new and more democratic social conditions. This was the theme of
'Mademoiselle de la Seiglière,' and also of 'La Maison de Penarvan,'
two of his strongest books. That he could also write charmingly
for children is shown in 'La Roche aux Mouettes. '
It was Sandeau's fate to be associated with greater minds, to
whom perhaps more than their share of praise was sometimes given.
He wrote several plays in collaboration with Émile Augier; notably
'Le Gendre de M. Poirier,' which ranks as one of the best modern
French comedies. He did not cater to public taste, and never became
widely popular. It was his fellow authors who most respected and
admired him.
In spite of his scanty means, he was very generous. During his
early struggles he and the great Balzac were friends. It is said that
one day Balzac, hard pressed for a small sum, asked Sandeau for it.
Sandeau went out, and by pawning his overcoat raised the money,
and took it to him. A few days later, Balzac asked the loan of San-
deau's coat. "I cannot give it to you," said Sandeau simply; and
Balzac stormed at his meanness until shamed by a discovery of the
truth. Another time, feeling sorry for an old, poor, and embittered
publisher named Werdet, he presented him with the manuscript of
one of his ablest and most popular stories, 'Le Docteur Herbleu. '
Naturally he himself never became rich; although he was made
comfortable by the proceeds of his writing, augmented by his salary
as librarian, — first at the Mazarin library, to which position he was
appointed in 1853, and later at St. Cloud. Upon the downfall of the
second Napoleon this office was abolished; and Sandeau was granted
a pension.
Sandeau was elected Academician in 1859. His literary activity
extended over about twenty-five years; and he ceased to write many
years before his death on April 24th, 1883. Although he had little
influence in determining the trend of literature, Sandeau was a
decided romanticist in the early days of the romantic movement.
His tales are pleasant rather than exciting reading; most noteworthy
for delicacy of perception and sympathetic delineation of character.
## p. 12808 (#226) ##########################################
12808
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
HOW THE HISTORY OF PENARVAN WAS WRITTEN
From The House of Penarvan'
[The Marquise de Penarvan, an aristocrat of the old régime, has been
actuated all her life by a ruling passion of family pride. She sacrifices her
husband to it; and after his death, her greatest interest is the history of the
family of Penarvan, which the Abbé Pyrmil, the chaplain and devoted friend
of the family, is writing. She does not love her only child,- her daughter
Paule,- because she cannot perpetuate the family name.
After vainly trying to win her mother's consent to her marriage with
Henri Coverley,- a young man who, although not of noble birth, is in every
other respect worthy of her, Paule marries without it. ]
F
ROM the day of her marriage Paule was seized with what
some would call a natural, others a morbid, self-reproach,
the suffering of which was increased by everything which
otherwise would have rendered her happy. She had made a des-
perate effort to secure the bliss so long coveted, and the capacity
of enjoying it when attained was denied to her.
Young, beautiful, worshiped by her husband, in the midst of
everything this world can offer of comfort and pleasure, she
suffered unremittingly, and in secret wept bitterly; loving her
husband as much as ever, the wealth and luxury with which he
surrounded her she simply hated. Her thoughts were perpetually
reverting to the stern mother, and the old château she had for-
saken. A strange sort of yearning for its poverty and simplicity
took possession of her soul. She turned with loathing from all
the magnificence that her sensitive feelings compared with the
penury of the home where her early life had been overshadowed
and saddened.
For the first time she understood the grand side of her
mother's character, the dignity of her uncomplaining poverty.
She was haunted by the thought of the tears she had — for the
first time-seen in those eyes, the severe or forgiving glance of
which she was never again to meet; they seemed to be dropping
like molten lead on her heart.
Henri lavished upon her all that the most devoted affection
and tenderest care could devise. His patience, his delicacy of
feeling, never failed; and she responded to his love with passion-
ate affection.
"Oh, if you knew how I love you! " she would say. "I would
suffer far more even than I do suffer, rather than forego the
## p. 12809 (#227) ##########################################
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
12809
blessing of being your wife. Yes, I bless the hour when I first
saw you; and I thank God morning, noon, and night for the
priceless gift of your love. But oh, forgive me if I cannot be
happy, if I cannot forget; if I cannot live on in the midst of
splendor and gayety, unforgiven and unblest by my mother. "
If Henri reminded her of all she had suffered under that
mother's roof, she would answer:
"I was not patient enough; I did not wait as I ought to have
done, Henri. I think I have thought so ever since — that she
was beginning to love me when I left her. "
They wrote: only the abbé answered, and his letters held out
no hope. They still went on writing, and with no other result.
They traveled in Italy, in Greece; but in the midst of all the
wonderful beauties of nature and art there was always before
Paule's eyes the same vision,- her mother growing old in soli-
tude and poverty.
She gave birth to a child; and the joys of maternal love
only sharpened the pangs of a remorse which had grown into a
malady. The more intensely she cared for her little girl, the
more acute became her regrets and her fears. Would that little
one abandon her one day as she had abandoned her mother?
Had she any claim upon her own child,- she who had disobeyed
and defied her only parent?
Once more Paule wrote to the marquise: no answer came.
The abbé was obliged to admit that her letters were never
opened, that her name was never to be uttered in her mother's
ears.
They spent a year on the banks of the lake of Como. As
time went by, Paule found Henri even more excellent, more
perfect, than she had ever supposed that any one could be. It
was terrible to her to feel that the wife of such a man should be
an unhappy woman; that with such a husband and with such a
child she should be wasting away with sorrow. They came back
to France discouraged and depressed.
People are often more selfish in their sorrows than in their
joys; and yet there is no sort of selfishness which those who
are conscientious and kind-hearted should more anxiously shrink
from. Paule awakened at last to a sense of the fault she was
committing by making the weight of her self-reproach sadden
her husband's life; and she made up her mind to reappear in
society.
## p. 12810 (#228) ##########################################
12810
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
The magnificent house of the Coverleys was thrown open
to the world; and she did the honors of balls and parties with
simplicity and grace. She was as much admired then as the
first days she had been seen at Bordeaux, walking arm in arm
with the prince. Her dress was always simple: she disliked to
wear jewels or trinkets.
But in spite of all efforts to appear happy in Henri's pres-
ence, and her pleasure in her little girl, who was a singularly
engaging child, he could not help seeing that she was misera-
ble; and so did Madame de Soleyre, who noticed that whereas
formerly she seldom spoke of the marquise, and seemed afraid
almost of mentioning her name, now she was always anxious to
revert to the subject of her mother's past life, and questioned
her minutely as to the time when, in the height of her youth
and beauty, Renée de Penarvan had acted such a noble and heroic
part, and been the admiration of the Vendean nobility. Paule
accused herself of the indifference and want of understanding, as
she called it, which had made her fail to appreciate the grand
side of her mother's nature.
One night when they had returned from a ball, Paule threw
herself down on a sofa and burst into an agony of tears. She
had struggled all the evening with an oppressive sense of con-
trast between her mother's fate and her own; and at last the
overburdened heart gave way, and she could not control herself
any longer, even in Henri's presence. He knelt by her side, and
she laid her head on his shoulder.
"What can I do
"What is it, my darling? " he tenderly said.
to comfort you?
1 ? »
<< Henri," she whispered, "I must go and see my mother.
Even at the risk of her driving me away,- of her cursing me,-
I must go to her. "
"But, dearest, if she refuses - and she will refuse- to see
—
you ? »
"Then I shall hide myself in the park; I shall catch sight of
her in some way or other. "
"We shall set off to-morrow," Henri said.
"Oh, how good, how kind you are, my own love! " she said,
throwing her arms round his neck.
Two days afterwards, in the dusk of an October evening, they
arrived at the inn at Tiffange with their little girl, then just three
years old. It was too late to send for the abbé, and they set out
## p. 12811 (#229) ##########################################
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
12811
on foot for the château; Paule leading the way, and Henri carry-
ing the child.
They entered the park through one of the breaks in the wall,
and walked along the alleys strewed with dead leaves.
As they
approached the house, Paule pointed to a window in which a
light was visible, and whispered to her husband:-
"That is her room. She must be sitting there. "
It was a strange thing that those young people, who had
youth and beauty and mutual love to gladden, their lives, who
possessed houses and villas and many a ship crossing the ocean
laden with rich merchandise, and whose wealth was every day
increasing, should have been standing before that dilapidated
building with the one wish, the one desire, to be admitted within
those doors, closed to them perhaps forever.
room.
In another window a light gleamed also. That was the abbé's
What was he doing? Was he praying for his little Paule?
Was he still working at his 'History of the House of Penarvan'?
When Paule was a child, she used to stand under the abbe's
window and clap her hands together three times to summon him
into the garden. She advanced and made the well-known sig-
nal. The window opened, and the abbé, looking like a tall ghost,
appeared, leaning out of it as if to dive into the outward dark-
ness.
"Abbé, my own abbé," Paule cried in a mournful voice.
The ghost disappeared; and a moment afterwards the abbé
was clasping Paule, her husband, and her child in his wide arms,
and then dragging them like secreted criminals into his room.
"You here, my child, and you, M. Henri, and this darling? "
"I am broken-hearted, abbé: I cannot live on in this state.
Do, do make my mother see me. Oh, do get her to forgive me. "
The abbé had taken the little child on his knees, and she was
looking up into his face with a pretty smile.
"Oh, M. l'Abbé, do help us! " Coverley said.
The abbé was looking attentively at the little girl. She was
so like what Renée had been as a child.
«< What does my mother feel? Does she allow you to speak of
Does she ever mention me? "
us?
The abbé was silent. He could not say yes, he could not bear
to say no.
"I see there is no hope," Paule exclaimed in a despairing man-
"It is really to her as if I were dead! "
ner.
## p. 12812 (#230) ##########################################
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LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
The abbé made the little child join her little hands together
and said to her:
"Do you love the good God, my child? "
"Oh yes," she answered.
"Then say to the good God, 'My God, come with me. "
"My God, come with me," the little one repeated; and then
the abbé took her in his arms and exclaimed:-
――――
"Come along, come with me; and may God help thee. "
The marquise was sitting in her old oak-wood chair by the
chimney, where two small logs were burning; an ill-trimmed lamp
by her side. Her features had grown thin and sharp; her hollow
cheeks and dim eyes spoke of silent suffering and inward strug-
gles, and of the secret work which had been going on in her
soul during the last four years. She looked like the ghost of her
former self; but there was still something striking and impressive
in her appearance. She seemed crushed indeed, but not subdued.
Around her nothing but ruins, within her nothing but bitter rec-
ollections; and a blank, desolate future in view.
Had she too felt remorse? Had she heard a voice whispering
misgivings as to the course she had pursued ? Had she closed
her ears to it? Was it true, as Paule in her grief and repentance
had suspected, that she had begun to love and admire her child
during the months which had preceded their final separation?
Did she ask herself sometimes, when kneeling in the dismantled.
chapel, and before that crucifix which war and devastation had
spared, if she had acted up to the Christian as well as to the
ancestral traditions of her race when she had driven that child
away from her forever? And the mourning garb in which she
was arrayed,-did she feel certain that it was God's will, and
not her own unrelenting heart, which had condemned her to
wear it?
No one could tell, not even the abbé. But that she was be-
coming every day more thin, more haggard, more gloomy, others
besides him could observe.
As in a besieged city where famine is doing fell work, and
from which a cry for mercy and life despairingly rises, a stern
commander refuses to capitulate, holds out, and dooms himself
and others to a lingering death,- so the pride of her soul sti
fled the yearnings, the pleadings, the cries of nature; and never
perhaps had they been more distinctly heard, never had the
weight of solitude and loneliness pressed more heavily on Renée
## p. 12813 (#231) ##########################################
LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
12813
de Penarvan's heart than upon that autumnal evening. As she
sat in that large, dimly lighted room, her elbow resting on the
side of her arm-chair, her head on her hand, a slight noise made.
her look up: the door opened, and a little child came in. Alarmed
at the sight of the pale lady in black by the fireside, the child
stopped in the middle of the room, and her smiling face became
grave.
"Who are you? " asked the marquise, who did not even know
that Paule had a child.
"I am a little girl. "
"Come here, my child. "
Taking courage, the little thing toddled up to the chimney,
and put her little hands on the arm of the oak chair.
"What is your name? " the marquise asked, softened by the
sight of the lovely little face.
"Renée," the child answered.
The marquise started with emotion and a sort of fear; she
scanned the features of the child, she saw, she guessed, she under-
stood it all.
"Go back to your mother," she said in a trembling voice.
"Go back to Madame Coverley. ”
Frightened at the stern voice and manner of the lady, the
little thing turned round and slowly went towards the door.
The marquise watched her with a beating heart. During the
instants it took the child to cross the room, the whole of her
life passed before her. She saw her gentle, affectionate husband
riding from the hall door on his way to a bloody death; she saw
her beautiful, gentle daughter driven from her home: and now
that lovely little creature so like herself—with her fair hair, her
white skin, her blue eyes-was disappearing also.
She looked round at the pictures on the walls: she felt as if
they, those ancestors, to whom she had sacrificed everything, had
doomed her to a lingering death.
And meanwhile the little girl had reached the door. Renée
was still hesitating. The child turned round and said with a
reproachful expression in her baby face:
"You not my grandmamma. You not love Renée. You send
Renée away. "
She could not hold out,-the poor marquise! She uttered a
sort of cry.
She sprang up, seized the child in her arms, kissed
her, wept over her, hugged her to her breast.
## p. 12814 (#232) ##########################################
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LÉONARD SYLVAIN JULES SANDEAU
Stay, stay, my little one, stay," she wildly exclaimed; "stay,
my little life, my darling, my treasure. "
«
A YEAR had elapsed; and on the banks of the Sèvres there
were no longer any ruins to be seen. The old castle of Penar-
van had recovered its former aspect. The towers, the walls, the
handsome entrance, were all restored, the armorial bearings had
reappeared, the invading weeds were banished from the court.
The stables were filled with horses and carriages, the kennel
with dogs.
In the handsomely furnished drawing-room the whole set of
ancestors looked new and bright in their cleaned state and fresh-
gilded frames. Inside and outside the house there was life and
animation. The ruined farms were rebuilt, the greatest part of
the estate repurchased; manufactories of ropes and sails rose on
the banks of the river.
The time of ragged cassocks had likewise gone by; the chapel
of the château had recovered its old splendor. The abbé offi-
ciated in great pomp, on Sundays and festivals, at a magnificent
altar; and the seat of the lords of the manor had been restored to
its wonted place. A look of happiness and prosperity reigned
in the whole neighborhood. Respect for the past was joined to
modern enterprise, and the poetry of old associations to the activ-
ity of useful labor.
Henri Coverley had not only repurchased the estates of the
ancient domain of Penarvan, he had also bought back La Briga-
zière.
M. Michaud, who possessed several houses in the neighbor-
hood of Rennes, looked with contempt on that little old-fashioned
manor-house, and was quite ready to sell it. Père Michaud had
now grown into that famous Michaud so conspicuous on the
Liberal benches in the days of the Restoration, who denounced
the nobility and protested against the feudal distinctions, till in
1830 the new government stopped his mouth by making him a
baron.
On a beautiful summer's afternoon the Marquise de Penarvan,
with her little granddaughter and the abbé, were sitting in that
same drawing-room where we have so often seen them.
