t energies to her art of fiction, and in November, 1853,
writing to Mazzini such words of wisdom as these:--

You are surprised that I can work at literature. For my part, I
thank God that he has let me preserve this faculty; for an honest
and clear conscience like mine still finds, apart from all debate,
a work of moralization to pursue. What should I do if I relinquish
my task, humble though it be? Conspire? It is not my vocation; I
should make nothing of it. Pamphlets? I have neither the wit nor
the wormwood required for that. Theories? We have made too many,
and have fallen to disputing, which is the grave of all truth and
all strength. I am, and always have been, artist before everything
else. I know that mere politicians look on artists, with great
contempt, judging them by some of those mountebank-types which are
a disgrace to art. But you, my friend, you well know that a real
artist is as useful as the _priest_ and the _warrior_, and that
when he respects what is true and what is good, he is in the right
path where the divine blessing will attend him. Art belongs to all
countries and to all time, and its special good is to live on when
all else seems to be dying. That is why Providence delivers it from
passions too personal or too general, and has given to its
organization patience and persistence, an enduring sensibility, and
that contemplative sense upon which rests invincible faith.

Her novel, _Les Maitres Sonneurs_, the first-fruits of the year 1853, is
what most will consider a very good equivalent for party pamphlets and
political diatribes.

When composing _La Mare au Diable_, in 1846, Madame Sand looked forward
to writing a series of such peasant tales, to be collectively entitled
_Les Veillees du Chanvreur_, the hemp-beaters being, as will be
recollected, the Scheherazades of each village. Their number was never
to be thus augmented, but the idea is recalled by the chapter-headings
of _Les Maitres Sonneurs_, in which Etienne Despardieu, or Tiennet, the
rustic narrator, tells, in the successive _veillees_ of a month, the
romance of his youth. It is a work of a very different type to the rural
tales that had preceded it, and should be regarded apart from them. It
is longer, more complex in form and sentiment, more of an ideal
composition. _Les Maitres Sonneurs_, is a delightful pastoral, woodland
fantasy