strain and hurt
his foot, he has been very restive and very touchy, and when he got
home he refused his food. I thought at first that he did not fancy his
fodder, and gave him some pieces of sugar and sticks of cinnamon, which
he likes very much; he tasted them, but would not eat them. The poor
little beast seems to have same other internal indisposition besides
his injured foot. If by ill luck he were to become foundered or ill,
everybody, even my parents, would throw the blame on me, and yet I have
been very careful and considerate of him. My God, my Lord, Thou who
canst do things both great and small, remove from me this misfortune,
and let him recover as quickly as possible. If, however, Thou host
willed otherwise, and if this fresh trouble is to fall upon us, I
will try to bear it with courage, and as the expiation of same sin.
Meanwhile, O my Gad, I leave this matter in Thy hands, as I leave my
life and my soul."

On the 20th of April he wrote:--"The little horse is well; God has
helped me."

German manners and customs are so different from ours, and contrasts
occur so frequently in the same man, on the other side of the Rhine,
that anything less than all the quotations which we have given would
have been insufficient to place before our readers a true idea of that
character made up of artlessness and reason, childishness and strength,
depression and enthusiasm, material details and poetic ideas, which
renders Sand a man incomprehensible to us. We will now continue the
portrait, which still wants a few finishing touches.

When he returned to Erlangen, after the completion of his "cure," Sand
read Faust far the first time. At first he was amazed at that work,
which seemed to him an orgy of genius; then, when he had entirely
finished it, he reconsidered his first impression, and wrote:--

"4th May

"Oh, horrible struggle of man and devil! What Mephistopheles is in me
I feel far the first time in this hour, and I feel it, O God, with
consternation!

"About eleven at night I finished reading the tragedy, and I felt and
saw the fiend in myself, so that by midnight, amid my tears and despair,
I was at last frightened at myself."

Sand was falling by degrees into a deep melancholy, from which nothing
could rouse him except his desire to purify and preach morality to the
students around him. To anyone who knows university life such a task
will seem superhuman. Sand, however, was not discouraged, and if he
could