of Holies, as you call literature, is only secondary to me in life. I
have always loved some one better than it, and my family better than
that some one."

This, then, was the keynote of the argument. George Sand considered that
life is not only a pretext for literature, but that literature should
always refer to life and should be regulated by life, as by a model
which takes the precedence of it and goes far beyond it. This, too, is
our opinion.

The state of mind which can be read between the lines in George Sand's
letters to Flaubert is serenity, and this is also the characteristic of
her work during the last period of her life. Her "last style" is that
of _Jean de la Rocke_, published in 1860. A young nobleman, Jean de la
Roche, loses his heart to the exquisite Love Butler. She returns his
affection, but the jealousy of a young brother obliges them to separate.
In order to be near the woman he loves, Jean de la Roche disguises
himself as a guide, and accompanies the whole family in an excursion
through the Auvergne mountains. A young nobleman as a guide is by
no means an ordinary thing, but in love affairs such disguises are
admitted. Lovers in the writings of Marivaux took the parts of servants,
and in former days no one was surprised to meet with princes in disguise
on the high-roads.

George Sand's masterpiece of this kind is undoubtedly _Le Marquis
de Villemer_, published in 1861. A provincial _chateau_, an old
aristocratic woman, sceptical and indulgent, two brothers capable of
being rivals without ceasing to be friends, a young girl of noble birth,
but poor, calumny being spread abroad, but quickly repudiated, some
wonderful pages of description, and some elegant, sinuous conversations.
All this has a certain charm. The poor girl marries the Marquis in
the end. This, too, is a return to former days, to the days when kings
married shepherdesses. The pleasure that we have in reading such novels
is very much like that which we used to feel on hearing fairy-stories.

"If some one were to tell me the story of _Peau d'Ane_, I should be
delighted," confessed La Fontaine, and surely it would be bad form to
be more difficult and over-nice than he was. Big children as we are,
we need stories which give food to our imagination, after being
disappointed by the realities of life. This is perhaps the very object
of the novel. Romance is not necessarily an exaggerated aspiration
towards imaginary things. It is something