t-rendering to her whose heart had been thrown into the national
troubles. Great was the panic in Berry, an after-clap of the
disturbances in the capital. Madame Sand's position became more
unpleasant than ever. She describes herself as "_blasee d
outrages_--threatened perpetually by the coward hatreds and imbecile
terrors of country places." But to all this she was well-nigh insensible
in her despair over the public calamities oppressing her nation--the end
of all long-struggling aspirations in "frightful confusion, complete
moral anarchy, a morbid condition, in most which the courageous of us
lost heart and wished for death.

"You say that the _bourgeoisie_ prevails," she writes to Mazzini, in
September, 1848, "and that thus it is quite natural that selfishness
should be the order of the day. But why does the _bourgeoisie_ prevail,
whilst the people is sovereign, and the principle of its sovereignty,
universal suffrage, is still standing? We must open our eyes at last,
and the vision of reality is horrible. The majority of the French people
is blind, credulous, ignorant, ungrateful, wicked, and stupid; it is
_bourgeoisie_ itself!"

Under no conceivable circumstances is it likely that Madame Sand would
not very soon have become disgusted with active politics, for which her
temperament unfitted her in every respect. Impetuous and
uncompromisingly sincere, she was predestined to burn her fingers; proud
and independent, to become something of a scape-goat, charged with all
the follies and errors which she repudiated, as well as with those for
which she was more or less directly responsible.

For some time to come she remained in comparative seclusion at Nohant.
She had not ceased her propaganda, though obliged to conduct it with
greater circumspection. After the horrors of civil warfare, had come the
cry for order at any price, and France had declared for the rule of
Louis Bonaparte. During the course of events that consolidated his
power, Madame Sand withdrew more and more from the strife of political
parties. She had been, and we shall find her again, inclined to hope for
better things for France from its new master than time showed to be in
store. Other republicans besides herself had been disposed to build high
their hopes of this future "saviour of society" in his youthful days of
adversity and mysterious obscurity. When in confinement at the fortress
of Ham, in 1844, Louis Napoleon sent to George Sand his work on