Part 8 (1/2)

This was in 1835, at the most brilliantpart in the trial of the accusedyear at Lyons and Paris, a great trial had commenced before the Chamber of Peers We are told that: ”The Republican party was deter of the prisoners for accusing the Govern Republicanism and Socialism The idea was to invite a hundred and fifty noted Republicans to Paris from all parts of France In their quality of defenders, they would be the orators of this great manifestation” Barb'es, Blanqui, Flocon, Marie, Raspail, Trelat and Michel of Bourges were a these Republicans ”On the 11th of May, the revolutionary newspapers published a ratulated and encouraged the accused natures were affixed to this docuery It had been drawn up by a few of the upholders of the scheme, and, in order to make it appear ues without their authorization Those who had done this then took fright, and atteerous adventure by a public avowal In order to save the situation, two of the guilty party, Trelat and Michel of Bourges, took the responsibility of the drawing up of the natures upon themselves They were sentenced by the Court of Peers, Trelat to four years of prison and Michel to ainequality, and Michel could not forgive Trelat for getting such a fine sentence

(22) Thureau Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet_, II 297

What good was one month of prison? Michel's career certainly had been a very ordinary one He hesitated and tacked about In a word, he was just a politician George Sand tells us that he was obliged ”to accept, in theory, what he called the necessities of pure politics, ruse, charlatanism and even untruth, concessions that were not sincere, alliances in which he did not believe, and vain promises” We should say that he was a radical opportunist To besuccess There are different ways of being an opportunist Michel had been elected a Deputy, but he had no _role_ to play In 1848, he could not coe of Flocon He went into the shade co time he had really preferred business to politics, and a choice must be made when one is not a member of the Governe Sand in Michel He was a sectarian, and she took hietic He had been badly brought up, but she thought him simply austere He was a tyrant, but she only saw in hiuillotined at the first possible opportunity This was an incontestable proof of superiority She was sincere herself, and was consequently not on her guard against vain boasting He had alarmed her, and she admired him for this, and at once incarnated in hi for years and had not yet been able to attribute to any one else

This is how she explained to Michel her reasons for loving hiure to e rises up before me No other man has ever exercised any moral influence over me My mind, which has always been wild and unfettered, has never accepted any guidanceYou caain she says: ”It is you whoh all the phantoht, for ato this, it was Michel she loved through Musset Let us hope that she was e Sand and Michel of Bourges

Part of it was published not long ago in the _Revue illustree_ under the title of _Lettres de lee Sand's letters surpass these epistles to Michel for fervent passion, beauty of form, and a kind of superb _impudeur_ Let us take, for instance, this call to her beloved George Sand, after a night of work, coer and cold: ”Oh, my lover,” she cries, ”appear, and, like the earth on the return of the May sunshi+ne, I should be reani off my shroud of ice and thrill with love The wrinkles of suffering would disappear fro to you, for I should leap with joy into your iron strong arth, health, youth, gaiety, hope

I will go forth to , 'to her well-beloved'” The Well-beloved to whom this Shulamite would hasten was a bald-headed provincial laore spectacles and three mufflers

But it appears that his ”beauty, veiled and unintelligible to the vulgar, revealed itself, like that of Jupiter hidden under human form, to the woical coe Sand had, as it were, restored for herself that condition of soul to which the ancient reat current of naturalist poetry circulates through these pages In Theocritus and in Rousard there are certain descriptive passages There is an analogy between the on her iht of round and rear impatiently I have trained hiround disappear when he bearsvaults formed by the apple-trees in blossomThe least sound of my voice makes him bound like a ball; the s like a child with no experience He is scarcely five years old, and he is timid and restive His black crupper shi+nes in the sunshi+ne like a raven's wing” This description has all the relief of an antique figure Another tie Sand tells how she has seen Phoebus throw off her robe of clouds and rush along radiant into the pure sky

The following day she writes: ”She was eaten by the evil spirits

The dark sprites fro clouds, threw theht coes with a letter of July 10, 1836, in which she tells how she throws herself, all dressed as she is, into the Indre, and then continues her course through the sunny meadows, and hat voluptuousness she revels in all the joys of pri in the beautiful tie Sand, under the afflux of physical life, is pagan Her genius then is that of the greenwood divinities, who, at certain times of the year, were intoxicated by the odour of the meadows and the sap of the woods If soiven to us, I should not be surprised if many people preferred it to her letters to Musset In the first place, it is not spoiled by that preoccupation which the Venice lovers had, of writing literature Mingled with the accents of sincere passion, we do not find extraordinary conceptions of paradoxical metaphysics It is Nature which speaks in these letters, and for that very reason they are none the less sorrowful They, too, tell us of a veritable ine from them that Michel was coarse, despotic, faithless and jealous We know, too, thatall patience with him, so that we can syoult in July, 1836:

”I have had, reat men (excuse the expression)I prefer to see them all in Plutarch, as they would not then causeon the human side May they all be carved in marble or cast in bronze, but usted George Sand with her Michel was his vanity and his craving for adulation In July, 1837, she had come to the end of her patience, as she wrote to Girerd It was one of her peculiarities to always take a third person into her confidence At the tinault; at the time of Musset, Sainte-Beuve, and noas Girerd ”I aainstbut ingratitude and hardness asaway andcrushed, but I a for the sake of a great reat h, that he had had over her thought was real, and in a certain way beneficial

At the beginning she was far fro Michel's ideas, and for some of thema of absolute equality seemed an absurdity to her The Republic, or rather the various republics then in gestation, appeared to her a sort of Utopia, and as she saw each of her friends”his own little Republic” for hiovern all French people One point shocked her above all others in Michel's theories This politician did not like artists

Just as the Revolution did not find chemists necessary, he considered that the Republic did not need writers, painters and musicians These were all useless individuals, and the Republic would give the a labourer's spade or a shoee Sand considered this idea not only barbarous, but silly

Time works wonders, for we have an indisputable proof that certain of his opinions soon became hers This proof is the Republican catechism contained in her letters to her son Maurice, as then twelve years of age He was at the Lycee Henri IV, in the sa to read what hisschool friends In a letter, written in December, 1835, she says: ”It is certainly true that Louis-Philippe is the ene less than that! A little later, the ene friends of his son Montpensier to his _chateau_ for the carnival holiday Maurice is allowed to accept the invitation, as he wishes to, but he is to avoid showing that gratitude which destroys independence ”The entertainments that Montpensier offers you are favours,” writes this ravely If he is asked about his opinions, the child is to reply that he is rather too young to have opinions yet, but not too young to knohat opinions he will have when he is free to have them ”You can reply,” says his mother, ”that you are Republican by race and by nature” She then adds a few aphorisain: ”However good-hearted the child of a king may be, he is destined to be a tyrant” All this is certainly a great colass of fruit syrup and a few cakes at the house of a schoolfellow But George Sand was then under the doht George Sand over to republicaniserate the service he had rendered her by this, it appears to htly or wrongly, George Sand had seen in Michel the eneral interest She had learnt sohly because it was in his school She had learnt that love is in any case a selfish passion She had learnt that another object enerous heart, and that such an object may be the service of humanity, devotion to an idea

This was a turn in the road, and led the writer on to leave the personal style for the impersonal style

There was another service, too, which Michel had rendered to George Sand He had pleaded for her in her petition for separation from her husband, and she had won her case

Ever since George Sand had taken back her independence in 1831, her intercourse with Dudevant had not been disagreeable She and her husband exchanged cordial letters When he came to Paris, he made no attempt to stay with his wife, lest he should inconvenience her ”I shall put up at Hippolyte's,” he says in his letter to her ”I do not want to inconvenience you in the least, nor to be inconvenienced myself, which is quite natural” He certainly was a s her to take advantage of so good an opportunity for seeing such a beautiful country He was also a husband ready to give good advice Later on, he invited Pagello to spend a little tie story

During the ain at Nohant, the scenes began once more Dudevant's irritability was increased by the fact that he was always short of s as a financial administrator

He had made speculations which had been disastrous He was very credulous, as so many suspicious people are, and he had been duped by a swindler in an affair of maritime armaments He had had all the more faith in this enterprise because a picture of the boat had been shown him on paper He had spent ninety thousand francs of the hundred thousand he had had, and was now living on his wife's incoe Sand paid his debts first, and the husband and wife then signed an agreement to the effect that their respective property should be separated Dudevant regretted having signed this afterwards, and it was torn up after a violent scene which took place before witnesses in October, 1835 The pretext of this scene had been an order given to Maurice In a series of letters, which have never hitherto been published, George Sand relates the various incidents of this affair We give so letter is to her half-brother Hippolyte, who used to be Casi companion

_”To Hippolyte Chatiron_

”My friend, I am about to tell you some nehich will reach you indirectly, and that you had better hear first froree with thehi, either byhim, he endeavoured to strike me He was prevented by five persons, one of as Dutheil, and he then fetched his gun to shoot ine, he was not allowed to do this

”On account of such treatment and of his hatred, which amounts to madness, there is no safety for ht to couarantee, except his oill and pleasure, that he will keep our agreement, and I cannot remain at the mercy of a man who behaves so unreasonably and indelicately to al separation, and I shall no doubt obtain this