She is stupid, she is heavy, she is a chatterbox. She has, in moral matters, the same depth of judgment and the same delicacy of feeling as innkeepers and kept women. What she has said of her mother; what she has said of poetry. Her love for the workingman.
George Sand is one of those old ingenues who do not wish to quit the boards.
See the preface to Mlle. La Quintinie, where she claims that true Christians do not believe in hell. Sand is for the God of good folks, the god of innkeepers and of domestic sharpers.
She has good reason to wish to wipe out hell.
XXIII
It must not be thought that the devil tempts only men of genius. He doubtless scorns imbeciles, but he does not disdain their assistance. Quite the contrary, he founds great hopes on them.
Take George Sand. She is especially, and above all things, a great blockhead; but she is possessed. It is the devil who has persuaded her to trust in her good heart and her good sense, so that she might persuade all other great blockheads to trust in their good heart and their good sense.
I cannot think of that stupid creature without a shudder of horror. If I were to meet her, I could not keep myself from hurling a basin of holy water at her.
XXIV
I am bored in France, especially as every one resembles Voltaire.