CHAPTER XII_Famous Women: George Sand

LATER YEARS.

When, in 1869, Madame Sand was applied to by M. Louis Ulbach--a literary

friend who proposed to write her biography--for some account of her life

from that time onwards where her memoirs break off, she replied, in a

letter now appended to those memoirs, as follows:--

For the last five-and-twenty years there is nothing more that is of

interest. It is old age, very quiet and very happy, _en famille_,

crossed by sorrows entirely personal in their nature--deaths,

defections, and then the general state of affairs in which we have

suffered, you and I, from the same causes. My time is spent in

amusing the children, doing a little botany, long walks in

summer--I am still a first-rate pedestrian--and writing novels,

when I can secure two hours in the daytime and two in the evening.

I write easily and with pleasure. This is my recreation, for my

correspondence is numerous, and there lies work indeed! If one had

none but one's friends to write to! But how many requests, some

touching, some impertinent! Whenever there is anything I can do, I

reply. Those for whom I can do nothing I do not answer. Some

deserve that one should try, even with small hope of succeeding.

Then one must answer that one will try. All this, with private

affairs to which one must really give attention now and then, makes

some ten letters a day.

The old age of George Sand, brighter, fuller and more active than the

youth of most men and women, was in itself a most signal proof of the

stability and worth of her mental organization. Life, which deteriorates

a frail character, told with a perfecting and elevating power upon hers.

Of her earlier personal beauty few traces remained after middle age

except a depth of expression in her eyes, the features having become

thickened by age. Some among those who, like Dickens, first saw her in

her later years and still looked for the semblance of a heroine of

romance, failed to find the muse Lelia of their imaginations under the

guise of a middle-aged _bourgeoise_. But such impressions were

superficial. Her portrait in black and white by Couture, engraved by

Manceau, seems to reconcile these apparent discrepancies. Beauty is not

here, but the face is so powerful and comprehensive that we perceive

there at once the mirror of a mind capable of embracing both the prose

and the poetry of life; and by many this portrait is preferred to the

earlier likenesses.

Nor is there anything more remarkable in her correspondence than the

extremely interesting series of letters, extending from February, 1863,

to within three months of her death in 1876, and addressed to Gustave

Flaubert, at this period her familiar friend. The intercourse of two

minds of so different an intellectual and moral order as those of the

authors of _Consuelo_ and of _Madame Bovary_ offers to all a curious

study. To the admirers of George Sand these letters are invaluable, both

from a literary point of view and as a record of her inner life from

that time onwards, when, as expressed by herself, she resolutely buried

youth, and owned herself the gainer by an increasing calm within. The

secret of her future happiness she found in living for her children and

her friends. That she retained her zest for intellectual pleasures she

ascribed to the very fact that she never allowed herself to be absorbed

for long in these and in herself.

"Artists are spoilt children," she writes to Flaubert, "and the best of

them are great egoists. You tell me I love them too well; I love them as

I love woods and fields, all things, all beings that I know a little and

make my constant study. In the midst of it all I pursue my calling; and

how I love that calling of mine, and all that nourishes and renovates

it!"

We must now take up the thread of outward events again, which we have

slightly anticipated.

In the autumn of 1860 Madame Sand had a severe attack of typhoid fever.

She was then on the point of beginning her little tale, _La Famille de

Germandre_; "_le roman de ma fievre_," she playfully terms it

afterwards, when retracing the circumstances in a letter to her old

friend Francois Rollinat:--

The day before that upon which I was suddenly taken very seriously

ill, I had felt quite well. I had scribbled the beginning of a

novel; I had placed all my personages; I knew them thoroughly; I

knew their situations in the world, their characters, tendencies,

ideas, relations to each other. I saw their faces. All that

remained to be known was what they were going to do, and I did not

trouble my head about that, having time to think it over to-morrow.

Struck down on the morrow, she was for many days in a precarious

condition; and in the confused fancies of fever found herself wandering

with _La Famille de Germandre_ about the country, alighting in ruined

castles, and encountering the most whimsical adventures in flood and

field.

It would have been an easy death, she remarked afterwards, had she died

then, as she might, in her dream; but she came to herself to find her

son and friends in such anxiety on her account, so overjoyed at her

convalescence, that she could not but be glad of the life that was given

back to her. Early in 1861 we find her recruiting her forces by a stay

at Tamaris, near Toulon, completing the novel interrupted by illness;

resuming her long walks and botanic studies, and thoroughly enjoying the

sense of returning vital powers.

She stood always in great dread of the idea of possibly losing her

activity as she advanced in years. The infirmities of old age, however,

she was happily to be spared, preserving her energy and mental

faculties, as will be seen, till just before her death. But though she

was restored to health and strength, this illness seems to have left its

traces on her constitution.

Her son's marriage to Mdlle. Calamatta, spoken of by Madame Sand as a

heart's desire of hers at length fulfilled, took place in 1862, not many

months after his return from half a year of travel in Africa and

America, in the company of Prince Napoleon. The event proved a fresh

source of the purest happiness to her, and was not to separate her from

her son. The young people settled at Nohant, which remained her

head-quarters. There a few years later we find her residing almost

exclusively, except when called by matters of business to her

_pied-a-terre_ in Paris, where she never lingered long. To the two

little grand-daughters, Aurore and Gabrielle, whom she saw spring up in

her home, she became passionately devoted. Most of her compositions

henceforward are dated from Nohant, where, indeed, more than fifty years

of her life were spent.

As regards decorum of expression and temperance of sentiments, the later

novels of George Sand have earned more praise than censure; but some

readers may feel that in fundamental questions of taste the comparison

between them and their forerunners is not always entirely to their

advantage. The fervor of youth has a certain purifying power to redeem

from offense matter, even though over-frankly treated, which becomes

disagreeable in cold analysis, however sober the wording, and clear and

admirable the moral pointed.

_Mademoiselle La Quintinie_, which appeared in 1863, was suggested by M.

Octave Feuillet's _Sibille_. The point of M. Feuillet's novel is, that

Sibille, an ardent Catholic, stifles her love, and renounces her lover

on account of his heterodox opinions. Madame Sand gives us the

reverse--a heroine who is reflectively rather than mystically inclined,

and whose lover by degrees succeeds in effecting her conversion to his

more liberal views. Here, as elsewhere, the author's mind shows a

sympathetic comprehension of the standpoint of enlightened Protestantism

curiously rare among those who, like herself, have renounced Romanism

for the pursuit of free thought and speculation. But even those who

prefer the _denoument_ of George Sand's novel to that of M. Feuillet's

will not rank _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ very high among the author's

productions. It is colorless, and artistically weak, however

controversially strong.

Madame Sand, according to her own reckoning in 1869, had made at least

L40,000 by her writings. Out of this she had saved no fortune. She had

always preferred to live from day to day on the proceeds of her work,

regulating her expenses accordingly, trusting her brain to answer to any

emergency and bring her out of the periodical financial crises in which

the uncertainty of literary gains and the liberality of her expenditure

involved her. She continued fond of travelling, especially of exploring

the nooks and corners of France, felt by her to be less well known than

they deserve, and fully as picturesque as the spots tourists go far to

visit. Here she sought fresh frames for her novels. "If I have only

three words to say about a place," she tells us, "I like to be able to

refer to it in my memory so as to make as few mistakes as possible."

In January, 1869, we find her writing of herself in a playful strain to

her friend Flaubert:--

The individual called George Sand is quite well, enjoying the

marvelous winter now reigning in Berry, gathering flowers, taking

note of interesting botanic anomalies, stitching at dresses and

mantles for her daughter-in-law, costumes for the marionettes,

dressing dolls, reading music, but, above all, spending hours with

little Aurore, who is a wonderful child. There is not a being on

earth more tranquil and happier in his home than this old

troubadour retired from business, now and then singing his little

song to the moon, singing well or ill he does not particularly

care, so long as he gives the _motif_ that is running in his

head.... He is happy, for he is at peace, and can find amusement in

everything.

M. Plauchut, another literary friend and a visitor at Nohant during this

last decade of her lifetime, gives a picture of the order of her day; it

is simplicity itself.

Nine o'clock, in summer and in winter alike, was her hour of waking.

Letters and newspapers would then occupy her until noon, when she came

down to join the family _dejeuner_. Afterwards she would stroll for an

hour in the garden and the wood, visiting and tending her favorite

plants and flowers. At two o'clock she would come indoors to give a

lesson to her grandchildren in the library, or work there on her own

account, undistracted by the romps around her. Dinner at six was

followed by a short evening walk, after which she played with the

children, or set them dancing indoors. She liked to sit at the piano,

playing over to herself bits of music by her favorite Mozart, or old

Spanish and Berrichon airs. After a game of dominoes or cards she would

still sit up so late, occupying herself with water-color painting or

otherwise, that sometimes her son was obliged to take away the lights.

These long evenings, the same writer bears witness, sometimes afforded

rare opportunities of hearing Madam Sand talk of the events and the men

of her time. In the absolute quiet of the country, among a small circle

of responsive minds, she, so silent otherwise, became expansive. "Those

who have never heard George Sand at such hours," he concludes, "have

never known her. She spoke well, with great elevation of ideas, charming

eloquence, and a spirit of infinite indulgence." When at length she

retired, it was to write on until the morning hours according to her old

habit, only relinquished when her health made this imperative.

She had allowed her son and her daughter-in-law to take the cares of

household management off her hands. This left her free, as she

expressed it, to be a child again, to hold aloof from things immediate

and transitory, reserving her thoughts and contemplations for what is

general and eternal. She found a poet's pleasure in abstracting herself

from human life, saying: "There are hours when I escape from myself,

when I live in a plant, when I feel myself grass, a bird, a tree-top, a

cloud, a running stream." Shaking off, as it were, the sense of

personality, she felt more freely and fully the sense of kinship with

the life and soul of the universe.

It was her habit every evening to sum up in a few lines the impressions

of the day, and this journal, for the conspicuous absence of incident in

its pages, she compares to the log-book of a ship lying at anchor. But

one terrible and little anticipated break in its tranquil monotony was

yet to come.

George Sand lived to see her country pass through every imaginable

political experience. Born before the First Republic had expired, she

had witnessed the First Empire, the restored Monarchy, the Revolution of

1830, the reign of Louis Philippe, the convulsions of 1848, the

presidency of Louis Bonaparte, and the Second Empire. She was still to

see and outlive its fall, the Franco-German War, the Commune, and to

die, as she was born, under a republic.

To some of her friends who had reproached her with showing too much

indulgence for the state of things under Imperial rule, she replied that

the only change in her was that she had acquired more patience in

proportion as more was required. The _regime_ she condemned--and amid

apparent prosperity had foretold the corrupting influence on the nation

of the established ideal of frivolity, and that a crash of some kind

must ensue. Her judgment on the Emperor, after his fall, is worth

noting, if only because it is dispassionate. Since his elevation to the

Imperial dignity she had lost all old illusions as to his public

intentions. With regard to these, on the occasion of her interviews with

him at the Elysee, he had completely deceived her, and designedly, she

had at first thought. Nor had she concealed her disgust.

I left Paris, and did not come to an appointment he had offered me.

They did not tell me "The King might have had to wait!" but they

wrote "The Emperor waited." However, I continued to write to him,

whenever I saw hopes of saving some victim, to ponder his answers

and watch his actions; and I became convinced that he did not

intentionally impose upon any one. He imposed on himself and on

everybody else.... In private life he had genuine qualities. I

happened to see in him a side that was really generous and sincere.

His dream of grandeur for France was not that of a sound mind, but

neither of an ordinary mind. Really France would have sunk too low

if she had submitted for twenty years to the supremacy of a

_cretin_, working only for himself. One would then have to give her

up in despair for ever and ever. The truth is that she mistook a

meteor for a star, a silent dreamer for a man of depth. Then seeing

him sink under disasters he ought to have foreseen, she took him

for a coward.

George Sand's _Journal d'un Voyageur pendant la guerre_ has a peculiar

and painful interest. It is merely a note-book of passing impressions

from September, 1870, to January, 1871; but its pages give a most

striking picture of those effects of war which have no place in military

annals.

The army disasters of the autumn were preceded by natural calamities of

great severity. The heat of the summer in Berry had been tremendous, and

Madame Sand describes the havoc as unprecedented in her experience--the

flowers and grass killed, the leaves scorched and yellowed, the baked

earth under foot literally cracking in many places; no water, no hay, no

harvest, but destructive cattle-plague, forest-fires driving scared

wolves to seek refuge in the courtyard of Nohant itself--the remnant of

corn spared by the sun, ruined by hail-storms. She and all her family

had suffered from the unhealthiness of the season. Thus the political

catastrophe found her already weakened by anxiety and fatigue, and

feeling greatly the effort to set to work again. Finally, an outbreak of

malignant small-pox in the village forced her to take her little

grandchildren and their mother from Nohant out of reach of the

infection. September and October were passed at or in the neighborhood

of Boussac, a small town some thirty miles off. Sedan was over, and the

worst had begun; the protracted suspense, the long agony of hope.

Those suffered most perhaps who, like herself, had to wait in enforced

inaction, amid the awful dead calm that reigned in the provinces, yet

forbidden to forget their affliction for a moment. The peasant was gone

from the land--only the old and infirm were left to look after the

flocks, to till and sow the field. Madame Sand notes, and with a kind of

envy, the stolid patience and industry, the inextinguishable confidence,

of poor old Jacques Bonhomme when things are at the worst. "He knows

that in one way or another it is he who will have to pay the expenses of

the war; he knows next winter will be a season of misery and want, but

he believes in the spring"--in the bounty of nature to repair war's

ravages.

During this time of unimaginable trouble some of the strongest minds

were unhinged. It is no small honor to George Sand that hers should

have preserved its balance. The pages of this journal are distinguished

throughout by a wonderful calm of judgment and an equitable tone--not

the calm of indifference, but of a broad and penetrating intelligence,

no longer to be blinded by the wild excitement and passions of the

moment, or exalted by childish hopes one hour to be thrust into the

madness of despair the next.

Although tempted now and then to regret that she had recovered from her

illness ten years ago, surviving but to witness the abasement of France,

she was not, like others, panic-struck at the prospect of invasion, as

though this meant the end of their country. "It will pass like a squall

over a lake," she said.

But it was a time when they could be sure of nothing except of their

distress. The telegraph wires were cut; rumors of good news they feared

to believe would be succeeded by tales of horror they feared to

discredit. Tidings would come that three hundred thousand of the enemy

had been disposed of in a single engagement and King William taken

prisoner; then of fatal catastrophes befallen to private

friends--stories which often proved equally unfounded.

She had friends shut up in Paris of whom she knew not whether they were

alive or dead. The strain of anxiety and painful excitement made sleep

impossible to her except in the last extremity of fatigue. Yet she had

her little grandchildren to care for; and when they came around her,

clamoring for the fairy tales she was used to supply, she contented them

as well as she could and gave them their lessons as usual, anxious to

keep them from realizing the sadness the causes of which they were too

young to understand.

It was the first time that she had known a distress that forbade her to

find a solace in nature. She describes how one day, walking out with

some friends and following the course of the river Tarde, she had half

abandoned herself to the enjoyment of the scene--the cascade, the

dragon-flies skimming the surface, the purple scabious flowers, the

goats clambering on the boulders of rock that strewed the borders and

bed of the stream--when one of the party remarks: "Here's a retreat

pretty well fortified against the Prussians."

And the present, forgotten for an instant in reverie, came back upon her

with a shock.

Letters in that district took three or four days to travel thirty miles.

Newspapers were rarely to be procured; and when procured, made up of

contradictions, wild suggestions, and the pretentious speeches of

national leaders, meant to be reassuring, but marked by a vagueness and

violence from which Madame Sand rightly augured ill.

The red-letter days were those that brought communications from their

friends in Paris by the aerial post. On October 11, two balloons,

respectively called "George Sand" and the "Armand Barbes," left the

capital. "My name," she remarks, "did not bring good luck to the

first--which suffered injuries and descended with difficulty, yet

rescued the Americans who had gone up in it." The "Barbes" had a

smoother but a more famous flight; alighting and depositing M. Gambetta

safely at Tours.

As the autumn advanced Madame Sand and her family were enabled to return

to Nohant. But what a return was that! The enemy were quartered within

forty miles, at Issoudun; the fugitives thence were continually seen

passing, carrying off their children, their furniture and their

merchandise to places of security. Already the enemy's guns were said to

have been heard at La Chatre. Madame Sand walked in her garden daily

among her marigolds, snapdragon and ranunculus, making curious

speculations as to what might be in store for herself and her

possessions. She remarks:--

You get accustomed to it, even though you have not the consolation

of being able to offer the slightest resistance.... I look at my

garden, I dine, I play with the children, whilst waiting in

expectation of seeing the trees felled roots upwards; of getting no

more bread to eat, and of having to carry my grandchildren off on

my shoulders; for the horses have all been requisitioned. I work,

expecting my scrawls to light the pipes of the Prussians.

But the enemy, though so near, never passed the boundaries of the "Black

Valley." The department of the Indre remained uninvaded, though

compassed on all sides by the foreign army; and George Sand was able to

say afterwards that she at least had never seen a Prussian soldier.

A sad Christmas was passed. On the last night of 1870 a meeting of

friends at Nohant broke up with the parting words, "All is lost!"

"The execrable year is out," writes Madame Sand, "but to all appearances

we are entering upon a worse."

On the 15th of January, 1871, her little drama _Francois le Champi_,

first represented in the troublous months of 1849, was acted in Paris

for the benefit of an ambulance. She notes the singular fate of this

piece to be reproduced in time of bombardment. A pastoral!

The worst strain of suspense ended January 29, with the capitulation of

Paris. Here the _Journal d'un Voyageur_ breaks off. It would be sad

indeed had her life, like that of more than one of her compeers, closed

then over France in mourning. Although it was impossible but that such

an ordeal must have impaired her strength, she outlived the war's

ending, and the horrible social crisis which she had foreseen must

succeed the political one. Happier than Prosper Merimee, than Alexandre

Dumas, and others, she saw the dawn of a new era of prosperity for her

country, whose vital forces, as she had also foretold, were to prevail

in the end over successive ills--the enervation of corruption, of

military disaster, and the "orgie of pretended renovators" at home, that

signalized the first months of peace abroad.

In January, 1872, we again find her writing cheerily to Flaubert:--

Mustn't be ill, mustn't be cross, my old troubadour. Say that

France is mad, humanity stupid, and that we are unfinished animals

every one of us, you must love on all the same, yourself, your

race, above all, your friends. I have my sad hours. I look at my

blossoms, those two little girls smiling as ever, their charming

mother, and my good, hard-working son, whom the end of the world

will find hunting, cataloguing, doing his daily task, and yet as

merry as Punch in his rare leisure moments.

In a later letter she writes in a more serious strain:--

I do not say that humanity is on the road to the heights; I believe

it in spite of all, but I do not argue about it, which is useless,

for every one judges according to his own eyesight, and the general

outlook at the present moment is ugly and poor. Besides, I do not

need to be assured of the salvation of our planet and its

inhabitants in order to believe in the necessity of the good and

the beautiful; if our planet departs from this law it will perish;

if its inhabitants discard it they will be destroyed. As for me, I

wish to hold firm till my last breath, not with the certainty or

the demand to find a "good place" elsewhere, but because my sole

pleasure is to maintain myself and mine in the upward way.

The last five years of her life saw her pen in full activity. In the

_Revue des Deux Mondes_, _Malgretout_, the novel of 1870, was succeeded

by _Flamarande_ and _Les Deux Freres_--compositions executed with

unflagging energy and animation of style; _La Tour de Percemont_, and a

series of graceful fairy-stories entitled _Contes d'une grand'mere_.

_Nanon_ (1872), a rustic romance of the First Revolution, is a highly

remarkable little work, possibly suggested by her recent experiences of

the effect of public disturbances on remote country places.

She was also a constant contributor to the newspaper _Le Temps_. A

critical notice by her hand of M. Renan's _Dialogues et Fragments

Philosophiques_, reprinted from those columns, bears date May, 1876,

immediately before she succumbed to the illness which in a few days was

to cut short her life.

At the beginning of this year she had written on this subject to

Flaubert, in the brave spirit she would fain impart to her weaker

brethren:--

Life is perhaps eternal, and work in consequence eternal. If so,

let us finish our march bravely. If otherwise, if the individual

perish utterly, let us have the honor of having done our task. That

is duty, for our only obvious duties are to ourselves and our

fellow-creatures. What we destroy in ourselves we destroy in them.

Our abasement abases them; our falls drag them down; we owe to them

to stand fast, to save them from falling. The desire to die early

is a weakness, as is the desire to live long.

George Sand, like most persons of an exceptional constitution, had

little faith in the efficacy for herself of medical science. She was

persuaded that the prescribed remedies did her more harm than good, and

on more than one occasion, when her health had caused her children

uneasiness, they had had to resort to an affectionate _ruse_ to induce

her to take advice. Her habit of disregarding physical ailments,

fighting against them as a weakness, and working on in their despite,

led her to neglect for too long failing health that should have been

attended to. During the whole of May, 1876, Madame Sand, though

suffering from real illness, continued to join in the household routine

and to proceed with her literary work as usual. Not till the last days

of the month did she, unable any longer to make light of her danger, at

length consent to send for professional advice. It was then too late.

She was suffering from internal paralysis. The medical attention which,

sought earlier, might, in the opinion of the doctors, have prolonged her

life for years, could now do nothing to avert the imminent fatal

consequences of her illness. "It is death," she said; "I did not ask for

it, but neither do I regret it." For beyond the sorrow of parting it had

no particular terrors for her; she had viewed and could meet it in

another spirit. "Death is no more," she had written; "it is life renewed

and purified."

She lingered for a week, in great suffering, but bearing all with

fortitude and an unflinching determination not to distress those around

her by painful complaining. Up to her last hour she preserved

consciousness and lucidity. The words, "_Ne touchez pas a la verdure_,"

among the last that fell from her lips, were understood by her children,

who knew her wish that the trees should be undisturbed under which, in

the village cemetery, she was soon to find a resting-place--a wish that

had been sacredly respected.

Her suffering ceased a short while before death, which came to her so

quietly that the transition was almost imperceptible to the watchers by

her side. It was on the morning of the 8th of June. She was within a

month of completing her seventy-second year. Although her life's work

had long since been mainly accomplished, yet the extinction of that

great intelligence was felt by many--as fitly expressed by M.

Renan--"like a diminution of humanity."

Two days later she was buried in the little cemetery of Nohant, that

adjoins her own garden wall. The funeral was conducted with extreme

simplicity, in accordance with her taste and spirit. The scene was none

the less a memorable one. The rain fell in torrents, but no one seemed

to regard it; the country-people flocking in from miles around, old men

standing bare-headed for hours, heedless of the deluge. The peasant and

the prince, Parisian leaders of the world of thought and letters, and

the humblest and most unlearned of her poorer neighbors, stood together

over her grave.

Six peasants carried the bier from the house to the church, a few paces

distant. The village priest came, preceded by three chorister-boys and

the venerable singing-clerk of the parish, to perform the ceremony. A

portion of the little churchyard, railed off from the rest and planted

with evergreen-trees, contains the graves of her grandmother, her

father, and the two little grandchildren she had lost. A plain granite

tomb in their midst now marks the spot where George Sand was laid,

literally buried in flowers.

A great spirit was gone from the world; and a good spirit, it will be

generally acknowledged: an artist in whose work the genuine desire to

leave those she worked for better than she found them, is one inspiring

motive. Such endeavor may seem to fail, and she affirmed: "A hundred

times it does fail in its immediate results. But it helps,

notwithstanding, to preserve that tradition of good desires and of good

deeds, without which all would perish."

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[A] The biography of Alfred De Musset, by Paul De Musset, translated

from the French by Harriet W. Preston. Boston, Roberts Brothers.

[B] Mauprat, translated by Miss Vaughan. Boston, Roberts Brothers.

[C] The Miller of Angibault. Translated by M. E. Dewey. Boston, Roberts

Brothers.

[D] The "Snow Man," translated by Virginia Vaughan. Boston: Roberts

Brothers.

* * * * *

GEORGE SAND'S NOVELS.

I. MAUPRAT. Translated by VIRGINIA VAUGHAN.

II. ANTONIA. Translated by VIRGINIA VAUGHAN.

III. MONSIEUR SYLVESTRE. Translated by FRANCIS GEORGE SHAW.

IV. THE SNOW MAN. Translated by VIRGINIA VAUGHAN.

V. THE MILLER OF ANGIBAULT. Translated by MARY E. DEWEY.

VI. MY SISTER JEANNIE. Translated by S. R. CROCKER.

_A standard Library Edition, uniformly bound, in neat 16mo volumes. Each

volume sold separately. Price $1.50._

SOME NOTICES OF "MAUPRAT."

"An admirable translation. As to 'Mauprat,' with which novel Roberts

Brothers introduce the first of French novelists to the American public,

if there were any doubts as to George Sand's power, it would for ever

set them at rest.... The object of the story is to show how, by her

(Edmee's) noble nature, he (Mauprat) is subsequently transformed from a

brute to a man; his sensual passion to a pure and holy love."--_Harper's

Monthly._

"The excellence of George Sand, as we understand it, lies in her

comprehension of the primitive elements of mankind. She has conquered

her way into the human heart, and whether it is at peace or at war, is

the same to her; for she is mistress of all its moods. No woman before

ever painted the passions and the emotions with such force and fidelity,

and with such consummate art. Whatever else she may be, she is always an

artist.... Love is the key-note of 'Mauprat,'--love, and what it can

accomplish in taming an otherwise untamable spirit. The hero, Bernard

Mauprat, grows up with his uncles, who are practically bandits, as was

not uncommon with men of their class, in the provinces, before the

breaking out of the French Revolution. He is a young savage, of whom the

best that can be said is, that he is only less wicked than his

relatives, because he has somewhere within him a sense of generosity and

honor, to which they are entire strangers. To sting this sense into

activity, to detect the makings of a man in this brute, to make this

brute into a man, is the difficult problem, which is worked out by

love,--the love of Bernard for his cousin Edmee, and hers for him,--the

love of two strong, passionate, noble natures, locked in a

life-and-death struggle, in which the man is finally overcome by the

unconquerable strength of womanhood. Only a great writer could have

described such a struggle, and only a great artist could have kept it

within allowable limits. This George Sand has done, we think; for her

portrait of Bernard is vigorous without being coarse, and her situations

are strong without being dangerous. Such, at least, is the impression we

have received from reading 'Mauprat,' which, besides being an admirable

study of character, is also a fine picture of French provincial life and

manners."--_Putnam's Monthly._

"Roberts Brothers propose to publish a series of translations of George

Sand's better novels. We can hardly say that all are worth appearing in

English; but it is certain that the 'better' list will comprise a good

many which are worth translating, and among these is 'Mauprat,'--though

by no means the best of them. Written to show the possibility of

constancy in man, a love inspired before and continuing through

marriage, it is itself a contradiction to a good many of the popular

notions respecting the author,--who is generally supposed to be as

indifferent to the sanctities of the marriage relation as was her

celebrated ancestor, Augustus of Saxony.... The translation is

admirable. It is seldom that one reads such good English in a work

translated from any language. The new series is inaugurated in the best

possible way, under the hands of Miss Vaughan, and we trust that she may

have a great deal to do with its continuance. It is not every one who

can read French who can write English so well."--_Old and New._

_Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised price,

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ROBERTS BROTHERS. BOSTON.

_Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._

FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES.

EMILY BRONTE.

BY A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

One vol. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

"Miss Robinson has written a fascinating biography.... Emily Bronte is

interesting, not because she wrote 'Wuthering Heights,' but because of

her brave, baffled, human life, so lonely, so full of pain, but with a

great hope shining beyond all the darkness, and a passionate defiance in

bearing more than the burdens that were laid upon her. The story of the

three sisters is infinitely sad, but it is the ennobling sadness that

belongs to large natures cramped and striving for freedom to heroic,

almost desperate, work, with little or no result. The author of this

intensely interesting, sympathetic, and eloquent biography, is a young

lady and a poet, to whom a place is given in a recent anthology of

living English poets, which is supposed to contain only the best poems

of the best writers."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._

"Miss Robinson had many excellent qualifications for the task she has

performed in this little volume, among which may be named, an

enthusiastic interest in her subject and a real sympathy with Emily

Bronte's sad and heroic life. 'To represent her as she was,' says Miss

Robinson, 'would be her noblest and most fitting monument.' ... Emily

Bronte here becomes well known to us and, in one sense, this should be

praise enough for any biography."--_New York Times._

"The biographer who finds such material before him as the lives and

characters of the Bronte family need have no anxiety as to the interest

of his work. Characters not only strong but so uniquely strong, genius

so supreme, misfortunes so overwhelming, set in its scenery so forlornly

picturesque, could not fail to attract all readers, if told even in the

most prosaic language. When we add to this, that Miss Robinson has told

their story _not_ in prosaic language, but with a literary style

exhibiting all the qualities essential to good biography, our readers

will understand that this life of Emily Bronte is not only as

interesting as a novel, but a great deal more interesting than most

novels. As it presents most vividly a general picture of the family,

there seems hardly a reason for giving it Emily's name alone, except

perhaps for the masterly chapters on 'Wuthering Heights,' which the

reader will find a grateful condensation of the best in that powerful

but somewhat forbidding story. We know of no point in the Bronte

history--their genius, their surroundings, their faults, their

happiness, their misery, their love and friendships, their

peculiarities, their power, their gentleness, their patience, their

pride,--which Miss Robinson has not touched upon with conscientiousness

and sympathy."--_The Critic._

"'Emily Bronte' is the second of the 'Famous Women Series,' which

Roberts Brothers, Boston, propose to publish, and of which 'George

Eliot' was the initial volume. Not the least remarkable of a very

remarkable family, the personage whose life is here written, possesses a

peculiar interest to all who are at all familiar with the sad and

singular history of herself and her sister Charlotte. That the author,

Miss A. Mary F. Robinson, has done her work with minute fidelity to

facts as well as affectionate devotion to the subject of her sketch, is

plainly to be seen all through the book."--_Washington Post._

Sold by all Booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by

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MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS'

Classic Series.

A collection of world-renowned works selected from the literatures of

all nations, printed from new type in the best manner, and neatly and

durably bound. Handy books, convenient to hold, and an ornament to the

library shelves.

READY AND IN PREPARATION.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S "LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL," "MARMION," and "THE

LADY OF THE LAKE." The three poems in one volume.

"There are no books for boys like these poems by Sir Walter Scott. Every

boy likes them, if they are not put into his hands too late. _They

surpass everything for boy reading._"--_Ralph Waldo Emerson._

OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S "THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD." With Illustrations by

Mulready.

DEFOE'S "ROBINSON CRUSOE." With Illustrations by Stothard.

BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE'S "PAUL AND VIRGINIA." With Illustrations

by Lalauze.

SOUTHEY'S "LIFE OF NELSON." With Illustrations by Birket Foster.

VOLTAIRE'S "LIFE OF CHARLES THE TWELFTH." With Maps and Portraits.

MARIA EDGEWORTH'S "CLASSIC TALES." With a biographical Sketch by

Grace A. Oliver.

LORD MACAULAY'S "LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME." With a Biographical Sketch

and Illustrations.

BUNYAN'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." With all of the original

Illustrations in fac-simile.

CLASSIC HEROIC BALLADS. Edited by the Editor of "Quiet Hours."

CLASSIC TALES. By Anna Letitia Barbauld. With a Biographical Sketch

by Grace A. Oliver.

CLASSIC TALES. By Ann and Jane Taylor. With a Biographical Sketch

by Grace A. Oliver.

AND OTHERS.

MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS.

Famous Women Series.

GEORGE ELIOT.

BY MATHILDE BLIND.

One vol. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

"Messrs. Roberts Brothers begin a series of Biographies of Famous

Women with a life of George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind. The idea of

the series is an excellent one, and the reputation of its

publishers is a guarantee for its adequate execution. This book

contains about three hundred pages in open type, and not only

collects and condenses the main facts that are known in regard to

the history of George Eliot, but supplies other material from

personal research. It is agreeably written, and with a good idea of

proportion in a memoir of its size. The critical study of its

subject's works, which is made in the order of their appearance, is

particularly well done. In fact, good taste and good judgment

pervade the memoir throughout."--_Saturday Evening Gazette._

"Miss Blind's little book is written with admirable good taste and

judgment, and with notable self-restraint. It does not weary the

reader with critical discursiveness, nor with attempts to search

out high-flown meanings and recondite oracles in the plain 'yea'

and 'nay' of life. It is a graceful and unpretentious little

biography, and tells all that need be told concerning one of the

greatest writers of the time. It is a deeply interesting if not

fascinating woman whom Miss Blind presents," says the New York

_Tribune_.

"Miss Blind's little biographical study of George Eliot is written

with sympathy and good taste, and is very welcome. It gives us a

graphic if not elaborate sketch of the personality and development

of the great novelist, is particularly full and authentic

concerning her earlier years, tells enough of the leading motives

in her work to give the general reader a lucid idea of the true

drift and purpose of her art, and analyzes carefully her various

writings, with no attempt at profound criticism or fine writing,

but with appreciation, insight, and a clear grasp of those

underlying psychological principles which are so closely interwoven

in every production that came from her pen."--_Traveller._

"The lives of few great writers have attracted more curiosity and

speculation than that of George Eliot. Had she only lived earlier

in the century she might easily have become the centre of a mythos.

As it is, many of the anecdotes commonly repeated about her are

made up largely of fable. It is, therefore, well, before it is too

late, to reduce the true story of her career to the lowest terms,

and this service has been well done by the author of the present

volume."--_Philadelphia Press._

Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by

the publishers,

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