was her contribution to the hatreds and agitations of the time--she
gave a refuge to the souls that could accept it--an "Ideal of calmness
and innocence and reverie." "La Petite Fadette" and "Le Meunier
d'Angibault" reveal her fascinating intelligence and her idyllic
imagination. "Le Meunier d'Angibault," she tells us, was the result of
a walk, a meeting, a day of leisure, an hour of _far niente_, followed
by Reverie, that play of the imagination which, clothes with beauty
and perfects, and interprets, the isolated and small events and facts
of life. There are books of hers in early life that are simply
self-revelations--outpourings of her indignations. She is not at her
best in these. "Indiana," written in her age of revolt, is too
obviously a pamphlet to reveal her passionate hatred of marriage. In
it she looked on marriage as "un malheur insupportable." But
"Consuelo," "La Comtesse de Rudolstadt," "Lettres d'un voyageur,"
Lelia, Spiridion, Valvedre, Valentine, "History of her Life and
letters," and many other books reveal her agonies and agitations, her
hope and power, her love of beauty both outward and inward as
represented in Consuelo herself, who is contrasted with the mere
beautiful "animal" Anzoleto, the artist in his lowest form. He cared
only for physical loveliness, he was a great child, who needed nothing
but amusement, emotion and beauty. But George Sand herself felt the
delight of existence. She says of Joy "It is the great uplifter of
men, the great upholder. For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as
a blessing." In all she wrote we feel the rare charm of perfect ease
and naturalness, combined with the cadences of beauty. We never feel
that she is "posing." And yet the author of the bitter attack "Lui et
elle," accused her of continual "posing." Edonard de Musset wrote with
an envenomed pen, (but we must remember he was defending a brother),
in that strange literary duel between him and George Sand. Alfred de
Musset had accused her of assuming the maternal "pose" towards poets
and musicians who adored her, whilst she absorbed their loves and
lives and then deserted them. It is certainly very striking how her
strong vitality seemed to sway and overpower some of those with whom
she came in contact. She was the oak, and the others were the ivy.
When they were torn apart, the oak was scarred but not irreparably
injured, it was the ivy that was destroyed. In, "Elle et Lui," George
Sand claims that hers wa