racter. Ledru-Rollin disavowed the offending _Bulletin_; but the
growing uneasiness of the _bourgeoisie_, the unruly discontent among the
workmen, the Government, embarrassed and utterly disorganized, was
powerless to allay. Madame Sand began to perceive that the republic of
her dreams, the "republican republic," was a forlorn hope, though still
unconscious that even heavier obstacles to progress existed in the
governed many than in the incapacity or personal ambition of the
governing few. She writes to her son from Paris, April 17:--

I am sad, my boy. If this goes on, and in some sense there should
be no more to be done, I shall return to Nohant to console myself
by being with you. I shall stay and see the National Assembly,
after which I think I shall find nothing more here that I can do.

At the _Fete de la Fraternite_, April 20th, the spectacle of a million
of souls putting aside and agreeing to forget all dissensions, all
wrongs in the past and fears for the future, and uniting in a burst of
joyous exultation, filled her with enthusiasm and renewed hope. But the
demonstration of the 15th of May, of which she was next a spectator,
besides its mischievous effect in alarming the quiet classes and
exciting the agitators afresh, gave fatal evidence of the national
disorganization and uncontrollable confusion everywhere prevailing, that
had doomed the republic from the hour of its birth.

Madame Sand, though she strenuously denied any participation or sympathy
with this particular manifestation, was closely associated in the
public mind with those who had aided and abetted the uprising. During
the gathering of the populace, which she had witnessed, mingling
unrecognized among the crowd, a female orator haranguing the mob from
the lower windows of a _cafe_ was pointed out to her, and she was
assured that it was George Sand. During the repressive measures the
administration was led to take she felt uncertain whether the arrest of
Barbes might not be followed by her own. Some of her friends advised her
to seek safety in Italy, where at that time the partisans of liberty
were more united and sanguine. She turned a deaf ear. But she was
severed now from all influential connection with those in authority.
Before the end of May she left for Nohant, with her hopes for the rapid
regeneration of her country on the wane. "I am afraid for the future,"
she writes to the imprisoned Barbes, shortly after these eve