them ever present in our mind and to be in constant communion with
them. Style is, perhaps, the sovereign quality in these stories. Words
peculiar to the district are introduced just sufficiently to give an
accent. Somewhat old-fashioned expressions are employed, and these prove
the survival of by-gone days, which, in the country, are respected more
than elsewhere. Without any apparent effort, the narrative takes that
epic form so natural to those who, as _aedes_ of primitive epochs, or
story-tellers by country firesides, give their testimony about things of
the past.

I am aware that George Sand has been accused of tracing portraits of
her peasants which were not like them. This is so absurd that I do not
consider it worth while to spend time in discussing it. It would be so
easy to show that in her types of peasants there is more variety, and
also more reality, than in Balzac's more realistic ones. Without being
untruthful portraits, it may be that they are somewhat flattered, and
that we have more honest, delicate and religious peasants in these
stories than in reality. This may be so, and George Sand warns us of
this herself. It was her intention to depict them thus.

It was not absolute reality and the everyday details of the peasants'
habits and customs that she wanted to show us, but the poetry of the
country, the reflection of the great sights of Nature in the soul of
those who, thanks to their daily work, are the constant witnesses of
them. The peasant certainly has no exact notion of the poetry of Nature,
nor is he always conscious of it. He feels it, though, within his soul
in a vague way. At certain moments he has glimpses of it, perhaps, when
love causes him emotion, or perhaps when he is absent from the part of
the world, where he has always lived. His homesickness then gives him a
keener perception. This poetry is perhaps never clearly revealed to any
individual, not to the labourer who traces out his furrows tranquilly in
the early morning, nor to the shepherd who spends whole weeks alone in
the mountains, face to face with the stars. It dwells, though, in the
inner conscience of the race. The generations which come and go have it
within them, and they do not fall to express it. It is this poetry
which we find in certain customs and beliefs, in the various legends and
songs. When Le Champi returns to his native place, he finds the whole
country murmuring with the twitter of birds which he knew so well.