rstand.

It was the first time that she had known a distress that forbade her to
find a solace in nature. She describes how one day, walking out with
some friends and following the course of the river Tarde, she had half
abandoned herself to the enjoyment of the scene--the cascade, the
dragon-flies skimming the surface, the purple scabious flowers, the
goats clambering on the boulders of rock that strewed the borders and
bed of the stream--when one of the party remarks: "Here's a retreat
pretty well fortified against the Prussians."

And the present, forgotten for an instant in reverie, came back upon her
with a shock.

Letters in that district took three or four days to travel thirty miles.
Newspapers were rarely to be procured; and when procured, made up of
contradictions, wild suggestions, and the pretentious speeches of
national leaders, meant to be reassuring, but marked by a vagueness and
violence from which Madame Sand rightly augured ill.

The red-letter days were those that brought communications from their
friends in Paris by the aerial post. On October 11, two balloons,
respectively called "George Sand" and the "Armand Barbes," left the
capital. "My name," she remarks, "did not bring good luck to the
first--which suffered injuries and descended with difficulty, yet
rescued the Americans who had gone up in it." The "Barbes" had a
smoother but a more famous flight; alighting and depositing M. Gambetta
safely at Tours.

As the autumn advanced Madame Sand and her family were enabled to return
to Nohant. But what a return was that! The enemy were quartered within
forty miles, at Issoudun; the fugitives thence were continually seen
passing, carrying off their children, their furniture and their
merchandise to places of security. Already the enemy's guns were said to
have been heard at La Chatre. Madame Sand walked in her garden daily
among her marigolds, snapdragon and ranunculus, making curious
speculations as to what might be in store for herself and her
possessions. She remarks:--

You get accustomed to it, even though you have not the consolation
of being able to offer the slightest resistance.... I look at my
garden, I dine, I play with the children, whilst waiting in
expectation of seeing the trees felled roots upwards; of getting no
more bread to eat, and of having to carry my grandchildren off on
my shoulders; for the horses have all been requisitioned. I work,
exp