to whom Moliere
now addresses his flattering speech in turn.

But the fervor of heroism that fired everybody in the first days of
successful revolution, that made the leaders disinterested, the masses
well-behaved, reasonable, and manageable, was for the majority a flash
only; and the dreamed-of social ideal, touched for a moment was to
recede again into the far distance. It was Madame Sand's error, and no
ignoble one, to entertain the belief that a nation could safely be
trusted to the guidance of a force so variable and uncontrollable as
enthusiasm, and that the principle of self-devotion could be relied upon
as a motive power. The divisions, intrigues, and fatal complications
that quickly arose at head-quarters confirmed her first estimation of
the practical dangers ahead. She clung to her belief in the sublime
virtues of the masses, and that they would prove themselves grander,
finer, more generous than all the mighty and the learned ones upon
earth. But each of the popular leaders in turn was pronounced by her
tried and found wanting. None of the party chiefs presented the
desirable combination of perfect heroism and political genius. Michel,
the apostle who of old had converted her to the cause, she had long
scorned as a deserter. Leroux, in the moment of action, was a nonentity.
Barbes "reasons like a saint," she observes, "that is to say, very ill
as regards the things of this world." Lamartine was a vain trimmer;
Louis Blanc, a sectarian; Ledru-Rollin, a weathercock. "It is the
characters that transgress," she complains naively as one after the
other disappointed her. Her own shortcomings on the score of patience
and prudence were, it must be owned, no less grave. Her
clear-sightedness was unaccompanied by the slightest dexterity of
action. Years before, in one of the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_, she had
passed a criticism on herself as a political worker, the accuracy of
which she made proof of when carried into the vortex. "I am by nature
poetical, but not legislative, warlike, if required, but never
parliamentary. By first persuading me and then giving me my orders some
use may be made of me, but I am not fit for discovering or deciding
anything."

Such an influence, important for raising an agitation, was null for
controlling and directing the forces thus set in motion. In the
application of the theories she had accepted she was as weak and obscure
as she was emphatic and eloquent in the preaching of them. L