It is no use attempting to ignore the fact. This is anti-clericalism in all its violence. Is it not curious that this passion, when once it takes possession of even the most distinguished minds, causes them to lose all sentiment of measure, of propriety and of dignity.
_Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ is the result of a fit of anti-clerical mania. George Sand gives, in this novel, the counterpart of _Sibylle_.
Emile Lemontier, a free-thinker, is in love with the daughter of General La Quintinie. Emile is troubled in his mind because, as his _fiancee_ is a Catholic, he knows she will have to have a confessor.
The idea is intolerable to him, as, like Monsieur Homais, he considers that a husband could not endure the idea of his wife having private conversations with one of those individuals. Mademoiselle La Quintinie's confessor is a certain Moreali, a near relative of Eugene Sue's Rodin. The whole novel turns on the struggle between Emile and Moreali, which ends in the final discomfiture of Moreali.
Mademoiselle La Quintinie is to marry Emile, who will teach her to be a free-thinker. Emile is proud of his work of drawing a soul away from Christian communion. He considers that the light of reason is always sufficient for illuminating the path in a woman's life.
He thinks that her natural rectitude will prove sufficient for making a good woman of her. I do not wish to call this into question, but even if she should not err, is it not possible that she may suffer?
This free-thinker imagines that it is possible to tear belief from a heart without rending it and causing an incurable wound.
Oh, what a poor psychologist! He forgets that beliefis the summing up and the continuation of the belief of a whole series of generations. He does not hear the distant murmur of the prayers of by-gone years. It is in vain to endeavour to stifle those prayers;they will be heard for ever within the crushed and desolate soul.
_Mademoiselle La Quintinie_ is a work of hatred. George Sand was not successful with it. She had no vocation for writing such books, and she was not accustomed to writing them. It is a novel full of tiresome dissertations, and it is extremely dull.
From that date, though, George Sand experienced the joy of a certain popularity. At theatrical performances and at funerals the students manifested in her honour. It was the same for Sainte-Beuve, but this does not seem to have made either of them any greater.
We will pass over all this, and turn to something that we can admire.
The robust and triumphant old age of George Sand was admirable.
Nearly every year she went to some fresh place in France to find a setting for her stories. She had to earn her living to the very last, and was doomed to write novels for ever. "I shall be turning my wheel when I die," she used to say, and, after all, this is the proper ending for a literary worker.
In 1870 and 1871, she suffered all the anguish of the "Terrible Year."When once the nightmare was over, she set to work once more like a true daughter of courageous France, unwilling to give in.
She was as hardy as iron as she grew old. "I walk to the river,"she wrote in 1872, "and bathe in the cold water, warm as I am.
. . . I am of the same nature as the grass in the field.
Sunshine and water are all I need."
For a woman of sixty-eight to be able to bathe every day in the cold water of the Indre is a great deal. In May, 1876, she was not well, and had to stay in bed. She was ill for ten days, and died without suffering much. She is buried at Nohant, according to her wishes, so that her last sleep is in her beloved Berry.
In conclusion, we would say just a few words about George Sand's genius, and the place that she takes in the history of the French novel.
On comparing George Sand with the novelists of her time, what strikes us most is how different she was from them. She is neither like Balzac, Stendhal, nor Merimee, nor any story-teller of our thoughtful, clever and refined epoch. She reminds us more of the "old novelists,"of those who told stories of chivalrous deeds and of old legends, or, to go still further back, she reminds us of the _aedes_ of old Greece.
In the early days of a nation there were always men who went to the crowd and charmed them with the stories they told in a wordy way.
