VII

THE HUMANITARIAN DREAM PIERRE LEROUX--SOCIALISTIC NOVELS

Hitherto we have seen George Sand put into her work her sufferings, her protests as a woman, and her dreams as an artist. But the nineteenth- century writer did not confine his ambitions to this modest task. He belonged to a corporation which counted among its members Voltaire and Rousseau. The eighteenth-century philosophers had changed the object of literature. Instead of an instrument of analysis, they had made of it a weapon for combat, an incomparable weapon for attacking institutions and for overthrowing governments. The fact is, that from the time of the Restoration we shall scarcely meet with a single writer, from the philosopher to the vaudevillist, and from the professor to the song-maker, who did not wish to act as a torch on the path of humanity. Poets make revolutions, and show Plato how wrong he was in driving them away from his Republic. Sophocles was appointed a general at Athens for having written a good tragedy, and so novelists, dramatists, critics and makers of puns devoted themselves to making laws. George Sand was too much a woman of her times to keep aloof from such a movement. We shall now have to study her in her socialistic _role_.

We can easily imagine on what side her sympathies were. She had always been battling with institutions, and it seemed to her that institutions were undoubtedly in the wrong. She had proved that there was a great deal of suffering in the world, and as human nature is good at bottom, she decided that society was all wrong. She was a novelist, and she therefore considered that the most satisfactory solutions are those in which imagination and feeling play a great part. She also considered that the best politics are those which are the most like a novel. We must now follow her, step by step, along the various roads leading to Utopia. The truth is, that in that great manufactory of systems and that storehouse of panaceas which the France of Louis-Philippe had become, the only difficulty was to choose between them all.

The first, in date, of the new gospels was that of the Saint-Simonians.

When George Sand arrived in Paris, Saint-Simonism was one of the curiosities offered to astonished provincials. It was a parody of religion, but it was organized in a church with a Father in two persons, Bazard and Enfantin. The service took place in a _bouis-bouis_. The costume worn consisted of white trousers, a red waistcoat and a blue tunic. On the days when the Father came down from the heights of Menilmontant with his children, there was great diversion for the people in the street. An important thing was lacking in the organization of the Saint-Simonians. In order to complete the "sacerdotal couple," a woman was needed to take her place next the Father. A Mother was asked for over and over again. It was said that she would soon appear, but she was never forthcoming. Saint-Simon had tried to tempt Madame de Stael.

"I am an extraordinary man," he said to her, "and you are just as extraordinary as a woman. You and I together would have a still more extraordinary child." Madame de Stael evidently did not care to take part in the manufacture of this prodigy. When George Sand's first novels appeared, the Saint-Simonians were full of hope. This was the woman they had been waiting for, the free woman, who having meditated on the lot of her sisters would formulate the Declaration of the rights and duties of woman. Adolphe Gueroult was sent to her. He was the editor of the

_Opinion nationale_. George Sand had a great fund of common sense, though, and once more the little society awaited the Mother in vain. It was finally decided that she should be sought for in the East. A mission was organized, and messengers were arrayed in white, as a sign of the vow of chastity, with a pilgrim's staff in their hand. They begged as they went along, and slept sometimes outdoors, but more often at the police-station. George Sand was not tempted by this kind of maternity, but she kept in touch with the Saint-Simonians. She was present at one of their meetings at Menilmontant. Her published _Corrspondance_ contains a letter addressed by her to the Saint-Simonian family in Paris. As a matter of fact, she had received from it, on the 1st of January, 1836, a large collection of presents. There were in all no less than fifty-nine articles, among which were the following: a dress-box, a pair of boots, a thermometer, a carbine-carrier, a pair of trousers and a corset.

Saint-Simonism was universally jeered at, but it is quite a mistake to think that ridicule is detrimental in France. On the contrary, it is an excellent means of getting anything known and of spreading the knowledge of it abroad; it is in reality a force. Saint-Simonism is at the root of many of the humanitarian doctrines which were to spring up from its ashes. One of its essential doctrines was the diffusion of the soul throughout all humanity, and another that of being born anew. Enfantin said: "I can feel St. Paul within me. He lives within me." Still another of its doctrines was that of the rehabilitation of the flesh. Saint- Simonism proclaimed the equality of man and woman, that of industry and art and science, and the necessity of a fresh repartition of wealth and of a modification of the laws concerning property. It also advocated increasing the attributions of the State considerably. It was, in fact, the first of the doctrines offering to the lower classes, by way of helping them to bear their wretched misery, the ideal of happiness here below, lending a false semblance of religion to the desire for material well-being. George Sand had one vulnerable point, and that was her generosity. By making her believe that she was working for the outcasts of humanity, she could be led anywhere, and this was what happened.

Among other great minds affected by the influence of Saint-Simonism, it is scarcely surprising to find Lamennais. When George Sand first knew him, he was fifty-three years of age. He had broken with Rome, and was the apocalyptic author of _Paroles d'un croyant_. He put into his revolutionary faith all the fervour of his loving soul, a soul that had been created for apostleship, and to which the qualification of "a disaffected cathedral" certainly applied.

After the famous trial, Liszt took him to call on George Sand in her attic. This was in 1835. She gives us the following portrait of him: "Monsieur de Lamennais is short, thin, and looks ill. He seems to have only the feeblest breath of life in his body, but how his face beams. His nose is too prominent for his small figure and for his narrow face. If it were not for this nose out of all proportion, he would be handsome. He was very easily entertained. A mere nothing made him laugh, and how heartily he laughed."[32] It was the gaiety of the seminarist, for Monsieur

Feli always remained the _Abbe_ de Lamennais. George Sand had a passionate admiration for him. She took his side against any one who attacked him in her third _Lettre d'un voyageur_, in her _Lettre a Lerminier_, and in her article on _Amshaspands et Darvands_. This is the title of a book by Lamennais. The extraordinary names refer to the spirits of good and evil in the mythology of Zoroaster. George Sand proposed to pronounce them _Chenapans et Pedants_. Although she had a horror of journalism, she agreed to write in Lamennais' paper, _Le Monde._

1. _Histoire de ma vie._

"He is so good and I like him so much," she writes, "that I would give him as much of my blood and of my ink as he wants."[33] She did not have to give him any of her blood, and he did not accept much of her ink. She commenced publishing her celebrated _Lettres a Marcie_ in _Le Monde_. We have already spoken of these letters, in order to show how George Sand gradually attenuated the harshness of her early feminism.

1. _Correspondance_: To Jules Janin, February 15, 1837.

These letters alarmed Lamennais, nevertheless, and she was obliged to discontinue them. Feminism was the germ of their disagreement. Lamennais said: "She does not forgive St. Paul for having said: `Wives, obey your husbands.'" She continued to acknowledge him as "one of our saints," but "the father of our new Church" gradually broke away from her and her friends, and expressed his opinion about her with a severity and harshness which are worthy of note.

Lamennais' letters to Baron de Vitrolles contain many allusions to George Sand, and they are most uncomplimentary.

"I hear no more about Carlotta" (Madame Marliani), he writes, "nor about George Sand and Madame d'Agoult. I know there has been a great deal of quarrelling among them. They are as fond of each other as Lesage's two _diables_, one of whom said: `That reconciled us, we kissed each other, and ever since then we have been mortal enemies.'" He also tells that there is a report that in her novel, entitled _Horace_, she has given as unflattering a portrait as possible of her dear, sweet, excellent

friend, Madame d'Agoult, the _Arabella_ of the _Lettres d'un voyageur_. "The portraits continue," he writes, "all true to life, without being like each other." In the same book, _Horace_, there is a portrait of Mallefille, who was beloved "during one quarter of the moon," and abhorred afterwards. He concludes the letter with the following words: "Ah, how fortunate I am to be forgotten by those people! I am not afraid of their indifference, but I should be afraid of their attentions. . . . Say what you like, my dear friend, those people do not tempt me at all. Futility and spitefulness dissolved in a great deal of _ennui_, is a bad kind of medicine." He then goes on to make fun, in terms that it is difficult to quote, of the silly enthusiasm of a woman like Marliani, and even of George Sand, for the theories of Pierre Leroux, of which they did not understand the first letter, but which had taken their fancy. George Sand may have looked upon Lamennais as a master, but it is very evident that she was not his favoured disciple.

It was due to his teaching that George Sand obtained her definite ideas about Catholicism, or rather against it. She was decidedly its adversary, because she held that the Church had stifled the spirit of liberty, that it had thrown a veil over the words of Christ, and that it was the obstacle in the way of holy equality. What she owed specially, though, to Lamennais was another lesson, of quite another character. Lamennais was the man of the nineteenth century who waged the finest battle against individualism, against "the scandal of the adoration of man by man."[34]

1. Compare Brunetiere, _Evolution de la poesie lyrique_, vol. i.

   p. 310.

Under his influence, George Sand began to attach less importance to the personal point of view, she ceased applying everything to herself, and she discovered the importance of the life of others. If we study this attentively, we shall see that a new phase now commenced in the history of her ideas. Lamennais was the origin of this transformation, although it is personified in another man, and that other man, was named Pierre Leroux.

What a strange mystery it is, among so many other mysteries, that of one mind taking possession of another mind. We have come into contact

with great minds which have made no impression on us, whilst other minds, of secondary intelligence, perhaps, and it may be inferior to our own, have governed us.

By the side of a Lamennais, this Pierre Leroux was a very puny personage. He had been a compositor in a printing works, before founding the _Globe_. This paper, in his hands, was to become an organ of Saint-Simonism. He belonged neither to the _bourgeois_ nor to the working-class. He was Clumsy, not well built, and had an enormous shock of hair, which was the joy of caricaturists. He was shy and awkward, in addition to all this. He nevertheless appeared in various _salons_, and was naturally more or less ridiculous. In January, 1840, Beranger writes: "You must know that our metaphysician has surrounded himself with women, at the head of whom are George Sand and Marliani, and that, in gilded drawing-rooms, under the light of chandeliers, he exposes his religious principles and his muddy boots." George Sand herself made fun of this occasionally. In a letter to Madame d'Agoult, she writes:

"He is very amusing when he describes making his appearance in your drawing-room of the Rue Laffitte. He says: `I was all muddy, and quite ashamed of myself. I was keeping out of sight as much as possible in a corner. _This lady_ came to me and talked in the kindest way possible. She is very beautiful.'"[35]

1. _Correspondance_: To Madame d'Agoult, October 16, 1837/.

There are two features about him, then, which seem to strike every one, his unkemptness and his shyness. He expressed his ideas, which were already obscure, in a form which seemed to make them even more obscure. It has been said wittily that when digging out his ideas, he buried himself in them.[36] Later on, when he spoke at public meetings, he was noted for the nonsense he talked in his interminable and unintelligible harangues.

1. P. Thureau-Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet._

And yet, in spite of all this, the smoke from this mind attracted George Sand, and became her pillar of light moving on before her. His hazy philosophy seemed to her as clear as daylight, it appealed to her heart and to her mind, solved her doubts, and gave her tranquillity, strength,

faith, hope and a patient and persevering love of humanity. It seems as though, with that marvellous faculty that she had for idealizing always, she manufactured a Pierre Leroux of her own, who was finer than the real one. He was needy, but poverty becomes the man who has ideas. He was awkward, but the contemplative man, on coming down from the region of thought on to our earth once more, only gropes along. He was not clear, but Voltaire tells us that when a man does not understand his own words, he is talking metaphysics. Chopin had personified the artist for her; Pierre Leroux, with his words as entangled as his hair, figured now to her as the philosopher. She saw in him the chief and the master. _Tu duca e tu maestro_.

In February, 1844, she wrote the following extraordinary lines: "I must tell you that George Sand is only a pale reflection of Pierre Leroux, a fanatical disciple of the same ideal, but a disciple mute and fascinated when listening to his words, and quite prepared to throw all her own works into the fire, in order to write, talk, think, pray and act under his inspiration. I am merely the popularizer, with a ready pen and an impressionable mind, and I try to translate, in my novels, the philosophy of the master."

The most extraordinary part about these lines is that they were absolutely true. The whole secret of the productions of George Sand for the next ten years is contained in these words. With Pierre Leroux and Louis Viardot she now founded a review, _La Revue independante_, in which she could publish, not only novels (beginning with _Horace_, which Buloz had refused), but articles by which philosophical-socialistic ideas could have a free course. Better still than this, the novelist could take the watchword from the sociologist. just as Mascarilla put Roman history into madrigals, she was able to put Pierre Leroux's philosophy into novels.

It would be interesting to know what she saw in Pierre Leroux, and which of his ideas she approved and preferred. One of the ideas dear to Pierre Leroux was that of immortality, but an immortality which had very little in common with Christianity. According to it, we should live again after death, but in humanity and in another world. The idea of

metempsychosis was very much in vogue at this epoch. According to Jean Rcynaud and Lamennais, souls travelled from star to star, but Pierre Leroux believed in metempsychosis on earth.

"We are not only the children and the posterity of those who have already lived, but we are, at bottom, the anterior generations themselves. We have gone through former existences which we do not remember, but it may be that at times we have fragmentary reminiscences of them."

George Sand must have been very deeply impressed by this idea. It inspired her with _Sept cordes de la lyre_, _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_ and the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, the whole cycle of her philosophical novels.

The _Sept cordes de la lyre_ is a dramatic poem after the manner of

_Faust_. Maitre Albertus is the old doctor conversing with Mephistocles. He has a ward, named Helene, and a lyre. A spirit lives in this lyre. It is all in vain that the painter, the _maestro_, the poet, the critic endeavour to make the cords vibrate. The lyre remains dumb. Helene, even without putting her hands on it, can draw from it magnificent harmony; Helene is mad. All this may seem very incomprehensible to you, and I must confess that it is so to me. Albertus himself declares: "This has a poetical sense of a very high order perhaps, but it seems vague to me." Personally, I am of the same opinion as Albertus. With a little effort, I might, like any one else, be able to give you an interpretation of this logogriph, which might appear to have something in it. I prefer telling you frankly that I do not understand it. The author, perhaps, did not understand it much better so that it may have been metaphysics.

I would call your attention, though, to that picture of Helene, with the magic lyre in her hand, risking her life, by climbing to the spire of the steeple and uttering her inspiring speech from there. Is not this something like Solness, the builder, from the top of his tower? Like Tolstoi, Ibsen had evidently read George Sand and had not forgotten her.

_Spiridion_ introduces us into a strange convent, in which we see the portraits come out of their frames and roam about the cloisters. The founder of the convent, Hebronius, lives again in the person of Father Alexis, who is no other than Leroux.

In _Consuelo_ we have the same imagination. We have already considered the first part of this novel, that which takes place at Venice, in the schools of music and in the theatres of song. Who would have thought that the charming diva, the pupil of Porpora, was to have such strange adventures? She arrives in Bohemia, at the Chateau of Rudolstadt. She has been warned that extraordinary things take place there. Comte Albert de Rudolstadt is subject to nervous fits and to great lethargy. He disappears from the chateau and then reappears, without any one seeing him go in or out. He believes that he has been Jean Ziska, and this is probably true. He has been present at events which took place three hundred years previously, and he describes them. Consuelo discovers Albert's retreat. It is a cavern hollowed out of a mountain in the vicinity, which communicates, by means of a well, with his rooms. The Chateau of Rudolstadt is built on the same architectural plan as Anne Radcliffe's chateau. After staying for some time in this bewildering place, Consuelo sets forth once more. She now meets Haydn, goes through the Bohmer Wald with him, arrives in Venice, is introduced to Maria Theresa, and is engaged at the Imperial Theatre. She is now recalled to the Chateau of Rudolstadt. Albert is on his deathbed, and he marries her _in extremis_, after telling her that he is going to leave her for a time, but that he shall return to her on earth by a new birth. He, too, had evidently read Pierre Leroux, and it was perhaps that which had caused his illness.

_Consuelo_ is a novel of adventures after the style of _Gil Blas_, the

_Vie de Marianne_, and _Wilkelm Meister_. It is a historical novel, for which we have Joseph Haydn, Maria Theresa, Baron Trenk, and the whole history of the Hussites. It is a fantastical story with digressions on music and on popular songs, but running through it all, with the persistency of a fixed idea, are divagations on the subject of earthly metempsychosis. Such, then, is this incongruous story, odd and exaggerated, but with gleams of light and of great beauty, the reading of which is apt to leave one weary and disturbed.

We meet with Consuelo again in another book. In those days, it was not enough for a novel to consist of several volumes. People liked a sequel also. _Vingt ans apres_ was the sequel to _Trois Mousquetaires_,

and the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_ was a sequel to that sequel. Our grandparents were capable of allowing themselves to be bored to a degree which makes us ashamed of our frivolity. The _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ was the sequel to _Consuelo_. As time went on, Pierre Leroux called George Sand's attention to the study of freemasonry. In 1843, she declared that she was plunged in it, and that it was a gulf of nonsense and uncertainties, in which "she was dabbling courageously."

"I am up to my ears in freemasonry," she writes. "I cannot get away from the kaddosh, the Rose Croix and the Sublime Scotchman. The result of all this will be a mysterious novel." The mysterious novel was the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_. Consuelo, who through her marriage with Albert is now Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour. She reaches Berlin, and we find her at the Court of Frederick II. We now have Voltaire, La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint- Germain and the occult sciences. Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison. There appears to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she must first have been imprisoned. Some mysterious rescuers take a great interest in Consuelo, and transport her to a strange dwelling, where she has a whole series of surprises. It is, in fact, a sort of Palace of Illusions. She is first in a dark room, and she then finds herself suddenly in a room of dazzling light. "At the far end of this room, the whole aspect of which is very forbidding, she distinguishes seven personages, wrapped in red cloaks and wearing masks of such livid whiteness that they looked like corpses. They were all seated behind a table of black marble. Just in front of the table, and on a lower seat, was an eighth spectre. He was dressed in black, and he, too, wore a white mask. By the wall, on each side of the room, were about twenty men in black cloaks and masks. There was the most profound silence. Consuelo turned round and saw that there were also black phantoms behind her. At each door there were two of them standing up, each holding a huge, bright sword."[37]

1. _Comtesse de Rudolstadt._

She wondered whether she had reached the infernal regions, but she discovered that she was in the midst of a secret society, styled the Invisibles. Consuelo is to go through all the various stages of the

initiation. She first puts on the bridal dress, and after this the widow's weeds. She undergoes all the various trials, and has to witness the different spectacles provided for her edification, including coffins, funeral palls, spectres and simulated tortures. The description of all the various ceremonies takes up about half of the book. George Sand's object was to show up this movement of secret societies, which was such a feature of the eighteenth century, and which was directed both against monarchical power and against the Church. It contributed to prepare the way for the Revolution, and gave to this that international character and that mystic allure which would otherwise have been incomprehensible.

From _Spiridion_ to the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, then, we have this series of fantastical novels with ghosts, subterranean passages, secret hiding-places,

hallucinations and apparitions. The unfortunate part is that at present we scarcely know to what category of readers they would appeal. As regards grown-up people, we all prefer something with a vestige of truth in it now-a-days. As to our children, they would prefer _Monte- Cristo_ to _Consuelo_, and _Tom Thumb_ to _Spiridion_. At the time that they were written, in spite of the fact that Buloz protested against all this philosophy, these novels were quite in accordance with the public taste. A mania for anything fantastic had taken possession of the most serious people. Ballanche wrote his _La Palingenesie_, and Edgar Quinet _Ahasverus_. Things took place through the ages, and the reader travelled through the immensity of the centuries, just as though Wells had already invented his machine for exploring time. In a country like France, where clear-mindedness and matter-of-fact intelligence are appreciated, all this seems surprising. It was no doubt the result of infiltrations which had come from abroad. There was something wrong with us just then, "something rotten in the kingdom of France." We see this by that fever of socialistic doctrines which burst forth among us about the year 1840. We have the _Phalanstere_ by Fourier, _La Phalange_ by Considerant, the _Icarie_ by Cabet, and his famous _Voyage_, which appeared that very year. We were always to be devoured by the State,

accompanied by whatever sauce we preferred. The State was always to find us shelter, to dress us, to govern us and to tyrannize over us. There was the State as employer, the State as general storekeeper, the State to feed us; all this was a dream of bliss. Buonarotti, formerly Babeuf's accomplice, preached Communism. Louis Blanc published his

_Organisation du travail_, in which he calls to his aid a political revolution, foretaste of a social revolution. Proudhon published his _Memoire sur la propriete_, containing the celebrated phrase: "Property means theft." He declared himself an anarchist, and as a matter of fact anarchy was already everywhere. A fresh evil had suddenly made its appearance, and, by a cruel irony, it was the logical consequence of that industrial development of which the century was so proud. The result of all that wealth had been to create a new form of misery, an envious, jealous form of misery, much more cruel than the former one, for it filled the heart with a ferment of hatred, a passion for destruction.

It was Pierre Leroux, also, who led George Sand on to Socialism. She had been on the way to it by herself. For a long time she had been raising an altar in her heart to that entity called the People, and she had been adorning it with all the virtues. The future belonged to the people, the whole of the future, and first of all that of literature.

Poetry was getting a little worn out, but to restore its freshness there were the poets of the people. Charles Poncy, of Toulon, a bricklayer, published a volume of poetry, in 1842, entitled _Marines_. George Sand adopted him. He was the demonstration of her theory, the example which illustrated her dream. She congratulated him and encouraged him. "You are a great poet," she said to him, and she thereupon speaks of him to all her friends. "Have you read Baruch?" she asks them. "Have you read Poncy, a poet bricklayer of twenty years of age?" She tells every one about his book, dwells on its beauties, and asks people to speak of it.

As a friend of George Sand, I have examined the poems by Poncy of which she specially speaks. The first one is entitled _Meditation sur les toits_. The poet has been obliged to stay on the roof to complete his work, and while there he meditates.

_"Le travail me retient bien tard sur ces toitures_ "

He then begins to wonder what he would see if, like Asmodee in the

_Diable boiteux_, he could have the roof taken off, so that the various rooms could be exposed to view. Alas! he would not always find the concord of the Golden Age.

_Que de fois contemolant cet amas de maisons Quetreignent nos remparts couronnes de gazons, Et ces faubourgs naissants que la ville trop pleine Pour ses enfants nouveaux eleve dans la plaine. Immobiles troufieaux ou notre clocher gris Semble un patre au milieu de ses blanches brebis, Jai pense que, malgre notre angoisse et nos peines, Sous ces toits paternels il existait des haines, Et que des murs plus forts que ces murs mitoyens Separent ici-bas les coeurs des citoyens._

This was an appeal to concord, and all brothers of humanity were invited to rally to the watchword.

The intention was no doubt very good. Then, too, _murs mitoyens_ was an extremely rich and unexpected rhyme for _citoyens_. This was worthy indeed of a man of that party.

Another of the poems greatly admired by George Sand was _Le Forcat_.

_Regarder le forcat sur la poutre equarrie Poser son sein hale que le remords carie_. . .

Certainly if Banville were to lay claim to having invented rhymes that are puns, we could only say that he was a plagiarist after reading Charles Poncy.

In another poem addressed to the rich, entitled _L'hiver_, the poet notices with grief that the winter

. . . _qui remplit les salons, les Wdtres, Remplit aussi la Morgue et les amphitheatres._

He is afraid that the people will, in the end, lose their patience, and so he gives to the happy mortals on this earth the following counsel:

_Riches, a vos plaisirs faites participer L'homme que les malheurs s'acharnent a frapper Oh, faites travailler le pere de famille, Pour qu'il puisse arbiter la pudeur de sa fille,

Pourqu'aux petits enfants maigris par les douleurs Il rapporte, le soir, le pain et non des pleurs, Afin que son epouse, au desespoir en proie, Se ranime a sa vue et l'embrasse avec joie, Afin qua l'Eternel, a l'heure de sa mort. Vous n'offriez pas un coeur carie de remords_.

The expression certainly leaves much to be desired in these poems, but they are not lacking in eloquence. We had already had something of this kind, though, written by a poet who was not a bricklayer. He, too, had asked the rich the question following:

_Dans vos fetes d'hiver, riches, heureux du monde, Quand le bal tournoyant de ses feux vous inonde. . . Songez- vous qu'il est la, sous le givre et la neige, Ce pere sans travail que la famine assiege?_

He advises them to practise charity, the sister of prayer.

_Donnez afin qu'un jour, a votre derniere heure, Contre tous vos peches vous ayez la Priere

D'un mendiant puissant au ciel_."

We cannot, certainly, expect Poncy to be a Victor Hugo. But as we had Victor Hugo's verses, of what use was it for them to be rewritten by Poncy? My reason for quoting a few of the fine lines from _Feuilles d'automne_ is that I felt an urgent need of clearing away all these platitudes. Poncy was not the only working-man poet. Other trades produced their poets too. The first poem in _Marines_ is addressed to Durand, a poet carpenter, who introduces himself as "_Enfant de la foret qui ceint Fontainebleau_."

This man handled the plane and the lyre, just as Poncy did the trowel and the lyre.

This poetry of the working-classes was to give its admirers plenty of disappointment. George Sand advised Poncy to treat the things connected with his trade, in his poetry. "Do not try to put on other men's clothes, but let us see you in literature with the plaster on your hands which is natural to you and which interests us," she said to him.

Proud of his success with the ladies of Paris, Poncy wanted to wash his hands, put on a coat, and go into society. It was all in vain that George

Sand beseeched Poncy to remain the poet of humanity. She exposed to him the dogma of impersonality in such fine terms, that more than one

_bourgeois_ poet might profit by what she said.

"An individual," she said, "who poses as a poet, as a pure artist, as a god like most of our great men do, whether they be _bourgeois_ or aristocrats, soon tires us with his personality Men are only interested

in a man when that man is interested in humanity."

This was all of no use, though, for Poncy was most anxious to treat other subjects rather more lively and--slightly libertine. His literary godmother admonished him.

"You are dedicating to _Juana l'Espagnole_ and to various other fantastical beauties verses that I do not approve. Are you a _bourgeois_ poet or a poet of the people? If the former, you can sing in honour of all the voluptuousness and all the sirens of the universe, without ever having known either. You can sup with the most delicious houris or with all the street-walkers, in your poems, without ever leaving your fireside or having seen any greater beauty than the nose of your hall-porter. These gentlemen write their poetry in this way, and their rhyming is none the worse for it. But if you are a child of the people and the poet of the people, you ought not to leave the chaste breast of Desiree, in order to run about after dancing-girls and sing about their voluptuous arms."[38]

1. See the letters addressed to Charles Poncy in the

_Correspondance._

It is to be hoped that Poncy returned to the chaste Desiree. But why should he not read to the young woman the works of Pierre Leroux? We need a little gaiety in our life. In George Sand's published

_Correspondance_, we only have a few of her letters to Charles Poncy. They are all in excellent taste. There is an immense correspondence which M. Rocheblave will publish later on. This will be a treat for us, and it will no doubt prove that there was a depth of immense candour in the celebrated authoress.

It does not seem to me that the writings of the working-men poets have greatly enriched French literature. Fortunately George Sand's sympathy with the people found its way into literature in another way, and this time

in a singularly interesting way. She did not get the books written by the people themselves, but she put the people into books. This was the plan announced by George Sand in her preface to the _Compagnon du tour de France_. There is an entirely fresh literature to create, she writes, "with the habits and customs of the people, as these are so little known by the other classes." The _Compagnon du tour de France_ was the first attempt at this new literature of the people. George Sand had obtained her documents for this book from a little work which had greatly struck her, entitled _Livre du compagnonnage_, written by Agricol Perdiguier, surnamed Avignonnais-la-Vertu, who was a _compagnon_ carpenter. Agricol Perdiguier informs us that the _Compagnons_ were divided into three chief categories: the _Gavots_, the _Devorants_ and the _Drilles_, or the _Enfants de Salomon_, the _Enlants de Maitre Jacques_ and the

_Enfants du_ _Pere Soubise_. He then describes the rites of this order. When two _Compagnons_ met, their watchword was "_Tope_." After this they asked each other's trade, and then they went to drink a glass together. If a _Compagnon_ who was generally respected left the town, the others gave him what was termed a "conduite en regle." If it was thought that he did not deserve this, he had a "conduite de Grenoble." Each _Compagnon_ had a surname, and among such surnames we find

_The Prudence of Draguignan_, _The Flower of Bagnolet_ and _The Liberty of Chateauneuf_. The unfortunate part was that among the different societies, instead of the union that ought to have reigned, there were rivalries, quarrels, fights, and sometimes all this led to serious skirmishes; Agricol Perdiguier undertook to preach to the different societies peace and tolerance. He went about travelling through France with this object in view. His second expedition was-at George Sand's expense.

A fresh edition of his book contained the letters of approval addressed to him by those who approved his campaign. Among these signatures are the following: Nantais-Pret-a-bien-faire, Bourgignonla-Felicite, Decide- le-Briard. All this is a curious history of the syndicates of the nineteenth century. Agricol Perdiguier may have seen the _Confederation du Travail_ dawning in the horizon.

In the _Compagnon du Tour de France_, Pierre Huguenin, a carpenter, travels about among all these different societies of the _Compagnonnage_, and lets us see something of their competition, rivalries, battles, etc. He is then sent for to the Villepreux Chateau, to do some work. The noble Yseult falls in love with this fine-talking carpenter, and at once begs him to make her happy by marrying her.

In the _Meunier d'Angibault_ it is a working locksmith, Henri Lemor, who falls in love with Marcelle de BIanchemont. Born to wealth, she regrets that she is not the daughter or the mother of workingmen. Finally, however, she loses her fortune, and rejoices in this event. The personage who stands out in relief in this novel is the miller, Grand Louis. He is always gay and contented, with a smile on his lips, singing lively songs and giving advice to every one.

In the _Peche de M. Antoine_, the _role_ of Grand Louis falls to Jean the carpenter. In this story all the people are communists, with the exception of the owner of the factory, who, in consequence, is treated with contempt. His son Emile marries the daughter of Monsieur Antoine. Her name is Gilberte, and a silly old man, the Marquis de Boisguilbaut, leaves her all his money, on condition that the young couple found a colony of agriculturists in which there shall be absolute communism. All these stories, full of eloquence and dissertations on the misfortune of being rich and the corrupting influence of wealth, would be insufferable, if it were not for the fact that the Angibault mill were in the Black Valley, and the crumbling chateau, belonging to Monsieur Antoine, on the banks of the Creuse.

They are very poor novels, and it would be a waste of time to attempt to defend them. They are not to be despised, though, as regards their influence on the rest of George Sand's work, and also as regards the history of the French novel. They rendered great service to George Sand, inasmuch as they helped her to come out of herself and to turn her attention to the miseries of other people, instead of dwelling all the time on her own. The miseries she now saw were more general ones, and consequently more worthy of interest. In the history of the novel they are of capital importance, as they are the first ones to bring into notice, by

making them play a part, people of whom novelists had never spoken. Before Eugene Sue and before Victor Hugo, George Sand gives a _role_ to a mason, a carpenter and a joiner. We see the working-class come into literature in these novels, and this marks an era.

As to their socialistic influence, it is supposed by many people that they had none. The kind of socialism that consists of making tinkers marry marchionesses, and duchesses marry zinc-workers, seems very childish and very feminine. It is just an attempt at bringing about the marriage of classes. This socialistic preaching, by means of literature, cannot be treated so lightly, though, as it is by no means harmless. It is, on the contrary, a powerful means of diffusing doctrines to which it lends the colouring of imagination, and for which it appeals to the feelings. George Sand propagated the humanitarian dream among a whole category of men and women who read her books. But for her, they would probably have turned a deaf ear to the inducements held out to them with regard to this Utopia. Lamartine with his _Girondins_ reconciled the

_bourgeois_ classes to the idea of the Revolution. In both cases the effect was the same, and it is just this which literature does in affairs of this kind. Its _role_ consists here in creating a sort of snobbism, and this snobbism, created by literature in favour of all the elements of social destruction, continues to rage at present. We still see men smiling indulgently and stupidly at doctrines of revolt and anarchy, which they ought to repudiate, not because of their own interest, but because it is their duty to repudiate them with all the strength of their own common sense and rectitude. Instead of any arguments, we have facts to offer. All this was in 1846, and the time was now drawing near when George Sand was to see those novels of hers actually taking place in the street, so that she could throw down to the rioters the bulletins that she wrote in their honour.