dances. Here she only touches the ground now
and then, and between whiles her imagination asks ours to accompany it
on the most extraordinary flights. As a novel of adventure, it is
written with unflagging spirit; and in the rites and doctrines of the
_Illuminati_, an idealization of the feature of the secret sects of the
last century, she found a new medium of expression for her sentiments
regarding the present abuses of society and the need of thorough
renovation. Secret societies, at that time, were extremely numerous and
active among the Republican workers in France. Madame Sand seems
thoroughly to have appreciated their dangers, and has expressly stated
that she was no advocate of such sects; that though under a tyranny,
such as that which oppressed Germany in the times of which she wrote,
they may be a necessity, elsewhere they are an abuse if not a crime.
"The custom indeed I have never regarded as applicable for good in our
time and our country; I have never believed that it can bring forth
anything in future but a dictatorship, and the dictatorial principle is
one I have never accepted." (_Histoire de ma Vie._)

But the romance of the subject was irresistibly tempting to her
inventive faculty. "Tell Leroux to send me some more books on
freemasonry, if he can find any," she writes to a correspondent at Paris
whilst working at the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ at Nohant; "I am plunged
into it over head and ears. Tell him also that he has there thrown me
into an abyss of follies and absurdities, but that I am dabbling about
courageously though prepared to extract nothing but nonsense."

For the musical miracles which it is given to Madame Sand's heroes and
heroines to perform at a trifling cost, she may well at this time have
come to regard them as almost in the natural order. She had received her
second, and her best musical education through the contemplation of
original musical genius, of the rarest quality, among her most intimate
friends, her constant guests at Paris and Nohant. The vocal and
instrumental feats of Consuelo and Count Albert themselves are not more
astonishing than the actual recorded achievements of Liszt, pronounced a
perfect _virtuoso_ at twelve years old--and no wonder! The boy had so
carried away his accompanyists, the band of the Italian opera at Paris,
by his performance of the solo in an orchestral piece, that when the
moment came for them to strike in, one and all forgot to do so, but
rema