emely dull.

From that date, though, George Sand experienced the joy of a certain
popularity. At theatrical performances and at funerals the students
manifested in her honour. It was the same for Sainte-Beuve, but this
does not seem to have made either of them any greater.

We will pass over all this, and turn to something that we can admire.
The robust and triumphant old age of George Sand was admirable. Nearly
every year she went to some fresh place in France to find a setting for
her stories. She had to earn her living to the very last, and was doomed
to write novels for ever. "I shall be turning my wheel when I die," she
used to say, and, after all, this is the proper ending for a literary
worker.

In 1870 and 1871, she suffered all the anguish of the "Terrible Year."
When once the nightmare was over, she set to work once more like a true
daughter of courageous France, unwilling to give in. She was as hardy
as iron as she grew old. "I walk to the river," she wrote in 1872, "and
bathe in the cold water, warm as I am. . . . I am of the same nature as
the grass in the field. Sunshine and water are all I need."

For a woman of sixty-eight to be able to bathe every day in the cold
water of the Indre is a great deal. In May, 1876, she was not well, and
had to stay in bed. She was ill for ten days, and died without suffering
much. She is buried at Nohant, according to her wishes, so that her last
sleep is in her beloved Berry.

In conclusion, we would say just a few words about George Sand's genius,
and the place that she takes in the history of the French novel.

On comparing George Sand with the novelists of her time, what strikes
us most is how different she was from them. She is neither like Balzac,
Stendhal, nor Merimee, nor any story-teller of our thoughtful, clever
and refined epoch. She reminds us more of the "old novelists," of those
who told stories of chivalrous deeds and of old legends, or, to go still
further back, she reminds us of the _aedes_ of old Greece. In the early
days of a nation there were always men who went to the crowd and charmed
them with the stories they told in a wordy way. They scarcely knew
whether they invented these stories as they told them, or whether they
had heard them somewhere. They could not tell either which was fiction
and which reality, for all reality seemed wonderful to them. All the
people about whom they told were great, all objects were good and
everything beautiful.