re au Diable_ was to make
of George Sand the revolutionary writer of 1848. We can now understand
the _role_ which the novelist played in the second Republic. It is
one of the most surprising pages in the history of this extraordinary
character.

The joy with which George Sand welcomed the Republic can readily be
imagined. She had been a Republican ever since the days of Michel of
Bourges, and a democrat since the time when, as a little girl, she took
the side of her plebeian mother against "the old Countesses." For a long
time she had been wishing for and expecting a change of government.
She would not have been satisfied with less than this. She was not much
moved by the Thiers-Guizot duel, and it would have given her no pleasure
to be killed for the sake of Odilon Barrot. She was a disciple of
Romanticism, and she wanted a storm. When the storm broke, carrying all
before it, a throne, a whole society with its institutions, she hurried
away from her peaceful Nohant. She wanted to breathe the atmosphere of a
revolution, and she was soon intoxicated by it.

"Long live the Republic," she wrote in her letters. "What a dream and
what enthusiasm, and then, too, what behaviour, what order in Paris. I
have just arrived, and I saw the last of the barricades. The people are
great, sublime, simple and generous, the most admirable people in the
universe. I spent nights without any sleep and days without sitting
down. Every one was wild and intoxicated with delight, for after going
to sleep in the mire they have awakened in heaven."(39)

(39) _Correspondance: _ To Ch. Poncy, March 9, 1848.

She goes on dreaming thus of the stars. Everything she hears, everything
she sees enchants her. The most absurd measures delight her. She either
thinks they are most noble, liberal steps to have taken, or else they
are very good jokes.

"Rothschild," she writes, "expresses very fine sentiments about liberty
at present. The Provisional Government is keeping him in sight, as it
does not wish him to make off with his money, and so will put some
of the troops on his track. The most amusing things are happening." A
little later on she writes: "The Government and the people expect to
have bad deputies, but they have agreed to put them through the window.
You must come, and we will go and see all this and have fun."(40)

(40) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, March 24, 1848.

She was thoroughly entertained, and that is very signific