hom novelists had never
spoken. Before Eugene Sue and before Victor Hugo, George Sand gives a
_role_ to a mason, a carpenter and a joiner. We see the working-class
come into literature in these novels, and this marks an era.

As to their socialistic influence, it is supposed by many people that
they had none. The kind of socialism that consists of making tinkers
marry marchionesses, and duchesses marry zinc-workers, seems very
childish and very feminine. It is just an attempt at bringing about the
marriage of classes. This socialistic preaching, by means of literature,
cannot be treated so lightly, though, as it is by no means harmless. It
is, on the contrary, a powerful means of diffusing doctrines to which
it lends the colouring of imagination, and for which it appeals to the
feelings. George Sand propagated the humanitarian dream among a whole
category of men and women who read her books. But for her, they would
probably have turned a deaf ear to the inducements held out to them with
regard to this Utopia. Lamartine with his _Girondins_ reconciled the
_bourgeois_ classes to the idea of the Revolution. In both cases the
effect was the same, and it is just this which literature does in
affairs of this kind. Its _role_ consists here in creating a sort of
snobbism, and this snobbism, created by literature in favour of all the
elements of social destruction, continues to rage at present. We still
see men smiling indulgently and stupidly at doctrines of revolt and
anarchy, which they ought to repudiate, not because of their own
interest, but because it is their duty to repudiate them with all
the strength of their own common sense and rectitude. Instead of any
arguments, we have facts to offer. All this was in 1846, and the time
was now drawing near when George Sand was to see those novels of hers
actually taking place in the street, so that she could throw down to the
rioters the bulletins that she wrote in their honour.

VIII

1848

GEORGE SAND AND THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT--HER PASTORAL NOVELS

IN 1846, George Sand published _Le Peche de M. Antoine_. It was a very
dull story of a sin, for sins are not always amusing. The same year,
though, she published _La Mare au Diable_. People are apt to say, when
comparing the socialistic novels and the pastoral novels by George Sand,
that the latter are superb, because they are the result of a conception
of art that was quite disinterested, as the author had given up