Then, at the very time when the poor young man reproaches himself as
if with a crime with having spent four florins, one of his cousins, a
widow, dies and leaves three orphan children. He runs immediately to
carry the first consolations to the unhappy little creatures, entreats
his mother to take charge of the youngest, and overjoyed at her answer,
thanks her thus:--

"Far the very keen joy that you have given me by your letter, and for
the very dear tone in which your soul speaks to me, bless you, O my
mother! As I might have hoped and been sure, you have taken little
Julius, and that fills me afresh with the deepest gratitude towards you,
the rather that, in my constant trust in your goodness, I had already
in her lifetime given our good little cousin the promise that you are
fulfilling for me after her death."

About March, Sand, though he did not fall ill, had an indisposition that
obliged him to go and take the waters; his mother happened at the time
to be at the ironworks of Redwitz, same twelve or fifteen miles from
Wonsiedel, where the mineral springs are found. Sand established
himself there with his mother, and notwithstanding his desire to avoid
interrupting his work, the time taken up by baths, by invitations to
dinners, and even by the walks which his health required, disturbed the
regularity of his usual existence and awakened his remorse. Thus we find
these lines written in his journal for April 13th:

"Life, without some high aim towards which all thoughts and actions
tend, is an empty desert: my day yesterday is a proof of this; I spent
it with my own people, and that, of course, was a great pleasure to me;
but how did I spend it? In continual eating, so that when I wanted to
work I could do nothing worth doing. Full of indolence and slackness, I
dragged myself into the company of two or three sets of people, and came
from them in the same state of mind as I went to them."

Far these expeditions Sand made use of a little chestnut horse which
belonged to his brother, and of which he was very fond. This little
horse had been bought with great difficulty; for, as we have said, the
whole family was poor. The following note, in relation to the animal,
will give an idea of Sand's simplicity of heart:--

"19th April

"To-day I have been very happy at the ironworks, and very industrious
beside my kind mother. In the evening I came home on the little
chestnut. Since the day before yesterday, when he got a