pastoral novels will then have additional value, as graphic
studies of a state of things that has passed away.

It does not appear that the merit of these stories was so quickly
recognized as that of _Indiana_ and _Valentine_. The author might
abstract herself awhile from passing events and write idylls, but the
public had probably not yet settled down into the proper state of mind
for fully enjoying them. Moreover Madame Sand's antagonists in politics
and social science, as though under the impression that she could not
write except to advance some theory of which they disapproved,
pre-supposed in these stories a set purpose of exalting the excellence
of rustic as compared with polite life--of exaggerating the virtues of
the poor, to throw into relief the vices of the rich. The romances
themselves do not bear out such a supposition. In them the author
chooses exactly the same virtues to exalt, the same vices to condemn, as
in her novels of refined society. She shows us intolerance, selfishness,
and tyranny of custom marring or endangering individual happiness among
the working-classes, as with their superiors. There are Philistines in
her thatched cottages, as well as in her marble halls. Germain, in _La
Mare au Diable_, has some difficulty to discover for himself, as well as
to convince his family and neighbors, that in espousing the penniless
Marie he is not marrying beneath him in every sense. Francois le Champi
is a pariah, an outcast in the estimation of the rustic world. Fanchon
Fadet, by her disregard of appearances and village etiquette,
scandalizes the conservative minds of farmers and millers very much as
Aurore Dupin scandalized the leaders of society at La Chatre. Most
prominence is given to the more pleasing characters, but the existence
of brutality and cupidity among the peasant classes is nowhere kept out
of sight. Her long practical acquaintance with these classes indeed was
fatal to illusions on the subject. The average son of the soil was as
far removed as any other living creature from her ideal of humanity, and
at the very time when she penned _La Petite Fadette_ she was
experiencing how far the ignorance, ill-will, and stupidity of her
poorer neighbors could go.

Thus she writes from Nohant to Barbes at Vincennes, November 1848:
"Since May, I have shut myself up in prison in my retreat, where, though
without the hardships of yours, I have more to suffer than you from
sadness and dejection, ... a