(53) _Correspondance:_ To Barbes, May 12, 1867.

"There is nothing left," she writes, "when the priest and Catholic
vandalism have passed by, destroying the monuments of the old world and
leaving their lice for the future."(54)

(54) _Ibid.:_ To Flaubert, September 21, 1860.

It is no use attempting to ignore the fact. This is anti-clericalism
in all its violence. Is it not curious that this passion, when once it
takes possession of even the most distinguished minds, causes them to
lose all sentiment of measure, of propriety and of dignity.

_Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ is the result of a fit of anti-clerical
mania. George Sand gives, in this novel, the counterpart of _Sibylle_.
Emile Lemontier, a free-thinker, is in love with the daughter of General
La Quintinie. Emile is troubled in his mind because, as his _fiancee_
is a Catholic, he knows she will have to have a confessor. The idea
is intolerable to him, as, like Monsieur Homais, he considers that
a husband could not endure the idea of his wife having private
conversations with one of those individuals. Mademoiselle La Quintinie's
confessor is a certain Moreali, a near relative of Eugene Sue's Rodin.
The whole novel turns on the struggle between Emile and Moreali, which
ends in the final discomfiture of Moreali. Mademoiselle La Quintinie is
to marry Emile, who will teach her to be a free-thinker. Emile is
proud of his work of drawing a soul away from Christian communion. He
considers that the light of reason is always sufficient for illuminating
the path in a woman's life. He thinks that her natural rectitude will
prove sufficient for making a good woman of her. I do not wish to call
this into question, but even if she should not err, is it not possible
that she may suffer? This free-thinker imagines that it is possible to
tear belief from a heart without rending it and causing an incurable
wound. Oh, what a poor psychologist! He forgets that beliefs the
summing up and the continuation of the belief of a whole series of
generations. He does not hear the distant murmur of the prayers of
by-gone years. It is in vain to endeavour to stifle those prayers; they
will be heard for ever within the crushed and desolate soul.

_Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ is a work of hatred. George Sand was not
successful with it. She had no vocation for writing such books, and
she was not accustomed to writing them. It is a novel full of tiresome
dissertations, and it is extr