old standing, and from
under whose roof she awaited, as from a neutral ground, the decision of
her judges. During this year she saw little of Paris, and less of
Nohant, except for a brief visit which, profiting by a moment when its
walls were absolutely deserted by every other human being, she paid to
her house--not knowing then whether she would ever, so to speak, inhabit
it again in her own right.

On the result of the legal proceedings depended her future home and the
best part of her happiness. Sooner than be parted from her children, she
contemplated the idea, in case of the decision going against her, of
escaping with them to America! Yet, in the midst of all this suspense,
we find her industrious as ever, joining in the daytime in the family
life of the household with which she was domesticated, helping to amuse
the children among them, retiring to her room at ten at night, to work
on at her desk till seven in the morning, according to her wont. A more
cheerful tone begins to pervade her effusions. The clouds were slowly
breaking on all sides at once, and a variety of circumstances combining
to restore to her mind its natural tone--faith, hope, and charity to her
heart, and harmony to her existence. She began to perceive what she was
enabled afterwards more fully to acknowledge as follows:--

As to my religion, the ground of it has never varied. The forms of
the past have vanished, for me as for my century, before the light
of study and reflection. But the eternal doctrine of believers, of
God and His goodness, the immortal soul and the hopes of another
life, this is what, in myself, has been proof against all
examination, all discussion, and even intervals of despairing
doubt.

It is significant that during these months, spent for the most part at
La Chatre, we find her rewriting _Lelia_, trying, as she expressed her
intention, "to transform this work of anger into a work of gentleness."
_Engelwald_, a novel of some length on which she was engaged, was
destined never to see the light.

To the Comtesse d'Agoult, better known by her _nom de plume_ of Daniel
Stern, whose acquaintance she had recently made in Paris, she writes in
May, 1836:--

I am still at La Chatre, staying with my friends, who spoil me like
a child of five years old. I inhabit a suburb, built in terraces
against the rock. At my feet lies a wonderfully pretty valley. A
garden thirty feet