May you live happy!--Your deeply respectful son,
"KARL-LUDWIG SAND."

A month after this letter came tender answers from all the family. We
will quote only that of Sand's mother, because it completes the idea
which the reader may have formed already of this great-hearted woman, as
her son always calls her.

"DEAR, INEXPRESSIBLY DEAR KARL,--How Sweet it was to me to see the
writing of your beloved hand after so long a time! No journey would have
been so painful and no road so long as to prevent me from coming to you,
and I would go, in deep and infinite love, to any end of the earth in the
mere hope of catching sight of you.

"But, as I well know both your tender affection and your profound anxiety
for me, and as you give me, so firmly and upon such manly reflection,
reasons against which I can say nothing, and which I can but honour, it
shall be, my well-beloved Karl, as you have wished and decided. We will
continue, without speech, to communicate our thoughts; but be satisfied,
nothing can separate us; I enfold you in my soul, and my material
thoughts watch over you.

"May this infinite love which upholds us, strengthens us, and leads us
all to a better life, preserve, dear Karl, your courage and firmness.

"Farewell, and be invariably assured that I shall never cease to love you
strongly and deeply.

"Your faithful mother, who loves you to eternity."

Sand replied:--

January 1820, from my isle of Patmos.
"MY DEAR PARENTS, BROTHERS, AND SISTERS,--

"In the middle of the month of September last year I received, through
the grand-duke's special commission of inquiry, whose humanity you have
already appreciated, your dear letters of the end of August and the
beginning of September, which had such magical influence that they
inundated me with joy by transporting me into the inmost circle of your
hearts.

"You, my tender father, you write to me on the sixty-seventh anniversary
of your birth, and you bless me by the outpouring of your most tender
love.

"You, my well-beloved mother, you deign to promise the continuance of
your maternal affection, in which I have at all times constantly
believed; and thus I have received the blessings of both of you, which,
in my present position, will exercise a more beneficent influence upon me
than any of the things that all the kings of the earth, united together,
could grant me. Yes, you strengthen me abundantly by your blessed love,
and I render thanks to you, my belo