f _Consuelo_, is quite good stuff.

[Sidenote: _Le Marquis de Villemer._]

It is, indeed, a really lively book. Two duller ones than the first two
allotted, at the beginning of this notice, to her last period I have
seldom read. They are both instances (and one at least contains an
elaborate vindication) of the "novel of purpose," and they are by
themselves almost enough to damn it. M. le Marquis de Villemer is an
appalling prig--virtuous, in the Devil-and-his-grandmother style, to the
_n_th--who devotes his energies to writing a _History of the Patriciate
since the Christian Era_, the object being to reveal the sins of
aristocracy. He has a rather nice half-brother spend-thrift, Duque
d'Aleria (Madame de Villemer the elder has first married a Spaniard),
whose debts he virtuously pays, and after a great deal of scandal he
marries a poor but noble and noble-minded damsel, Caroline de
Saint-Geneix, who has taken the position of companion to his mother in
order to help her widowed and four-childed sister. For the virtue of
George Sand's virtuous people _is_ virtue and no mistake. The lively and
amiable duke is fortunately fitted with a lively and amiable duchess,
and they show a little light in the darkness of copy-book morality and
republican principles.

[Sidenote: _Mlle. La Quintinie._]

This kindly light is altogether wanting in _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_,
where the purpose passes from politics to religion. The book is rather
famous, and was, at the time, much read, because it is not merely a
novel of purpose, but an instance of the duello fought, not with sword
or pistol, not with quarter-staves or sand-bags, but with _feuilletons_
of fiction. It, and Octave Feuillet's _Sibylle_, to which it is the
countercheck-quarrelsome, both appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.
It should be seen at a further stage of this volume that I do not think
_Sibylle_ a masterpiece, either of tale-telling or of argumentation,
though it is more on my side than the reply is. But Feuillet, though not
a genius, as some people would have George Sand to be, nor yet
possessing anything like the talent which no sane criticism can deny
her, was a much better craftsman in the art of novel-writing.

[Sidenote: _Flamarande._]

For a final notice--dealing also with the last, or almost the last, of
all her books--we may take _Flamarande_ and its sequel, _Les Deux
Freres_. They give the history of the unfounded jealousy of a husband in
regard