vous m'accordez.

GEORGE SAND.
Paris: 12 fevrier, 52.

This is graceful and kind, is it not? And we are going to-morrow; I,
rather at the risk of my life. But I shall roll myself up head and all
in a thick shawl, and we shall go in a close carriage, and I hope I
shall be able to tell you about the result before shutting up this
letter.

One of her objects in coming to Paris this time was to get a commutation
of the sentence upon her friend Dufraisse, who was ordered to Cayenne.
She had an interview accordingly with the President. He shook hands with
her and granted her request, and in the course of conversation pointed
to a great heap of 'Decrees' on the table, being hatched 'for the good
of France.' I have heard scarcely anything of him, except from his
professed enemies; and it is really a good deal the simple recoil from
manifest falsehoods and gross exaggerations which has thrown me on the
ground of his defenders. For the rest, it remains to be _proved_, I
think, whether he is a mere ambitious man, or better--whether his
personality or his country stands highest with him as an object. I
thought and still think that a Washington might have dissolved the
Assembly as he did, and appealed to the people. Which is not saying,
however, that he is a Washington. We must wait, I think, to judge the
man. Only it is right to bear in mind one fact, that, admitting the
lawfulness of the _coup d'etat_, you must not object to the
dictatorship. And, admitting the temporary necessity of the
dictatorship, it is absolute folly to expect under it the liberty and
ease of a regular government.

What has saved him with me from the beginning was his appeal to the
people, and what makes his government respectable in my eyes is the
answer of the people to that appeal. Being a democrat, I dare to be so
_consequently_. There never was a more legitimate chief of a State than
Louis Napoleon is now--elected by seven millions and a half; and I do
maintain that, ape or demi-god, to insult him where he is, is to insult
the people who placed him there. As to the stupid outcry in England
about forced votes, voters pricked forward by bayonets--why, nothing can
be more stupid. Nobody not blinded by passion could maintain such a
thing for a moment. No Frenchman, however blinded by passion, has
maintained it in my presence.

A very philosophically minded man (French) was talking of these things
the other day--one of the most though