The works of Madame Sand, her novels, the poetry of matter, are born of the time. In spite of her superiority, it is to be feared that the author has, by the very nature of her works, narrowed the circle of her readers. George Sand will never belong to every age. Of two men of equal genius, of whom one preaches order, the other disorder, the first will attract the greater number of admirers: the human race refuses to accord unanimous applause to that which offends, morality, the pillow on which the weak and the just sleep; we can hardly associate with all the memories of our life books which caused our first blush, books whose pages we did not learn by heart on leaving the cradle, books which we have read only by stealth, which have not been our acknowledged and cherished companions, which are connected with neither the purity of our sentiments nor the integrity of our innocence. Providence has confined successes that do not take their origin in good within strait limits and has given universal glory as an encouragement to virtue.
Her particular talent.
I am arguing here, I know, like a man whose restricted sight does not embrace the immense "humanitarian" horizon, like a reactionary attached to a ridiculous moral system, a decrepit moral system of olden time, good at most for unenlightened minds, in the infancy of society. A new Gospel is about to take birth forthwith, placed far above the commonplaces of that conventional wisdom which arrests the progress of mankind and the rehabilitation of that poor body of ours, so sadly slandered by the soul. When the women will be running about the streets, when it will be sufficient, in order to get married, to open a window and summon God to the wedding as witness, priest and guest: then all prudery will be destroyed; there will be nuptials everywhere and we shall rise, like the doves, to nature's level. My criticism of the taste of Madame Sand's works would, therefore, possess a certain value only in the vulgar order of past things; wherefore I hope that she will not be offended by it: the admiration which I profess for her must make her excuse remarks which owe their origin to the infelicity of my age. In former days, I should have been more carried away by the Muses; those daughters of the olden sky were my fair mistresses: they keep me company in the evening in the chimney-corner, but they soon leave me, for I go to bed early, and they go to sit up by Madame Sand's fire-side.
No doubt Madame Sand will in this way prove her intellectual omnipotence, and yet she will please less, because she will be less original: she will believe herself to be increasing her power by sounding the depths of those reveries under which she buries us vulgar men, and she will be mistaken; for she stands far above that pit, that watery hollow, that proud balderdash. While we have to put a rare, but too flexible faculty on its guard against the follies of superiority, we must also warn it that fantastic writings, intimate descriptions, to employ the jargon of the day, are limited, that their source lies in youth, that each moment of time dries up a few drops of it and that, after a certain number of productions, we end with feeble repetitions.
Is it quite sure that Madame Sand will always find the same charm in what she is writing to-day? Will not the merit and allurement of the passions of twenty years depreciate in her mind, even as the works of my early days have lost their value in mine? It is only the works of the Ancient Muse that do not change, supported as they are by the nobility of manners, the beauty of language and the majesty of those sentiments bestowed upon the whole human race. The fourth book of the Æneid remains for ever exposed to the admiration of men, because it is hung up in the sky. The fleet carrying the founder of the Roman Empire; Dido, the foundress of Carthage, stabbing herself after foretelling the coming of Hannibal:
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor[352];
Love causing the rivalry of Rome and Carthage to blaze forth from its torch, setting fire to the funeral pile whose flame the flying Æneas sees on the waves: these are very different from the walk of a dreamer in a wood or the disappearance of a libertine who drowns himself in a pond. Madame Sand will, I hope, link her talent with subjects worthy of her genius.
Madame Sand can be converted only by the preaching of that missionary with the bald forehead and the white beard whose name is Time. At present, a less austere voice enchains the poet's captive ear. Now I am convinced that Madame Sand's talent is in some way rooted in corruption; she would become commonplace if she became timorous. The case would be different if she had always remained within the sanctuary unfrequented by men; her power of love, restrained and hidden under the virginal fillet, would have drawn from her bosom those decent melodies which suggest the woman and the angel. Be this as it may, boldness of doctrine and voluptuousness of manners are a field which had not yet been cleared by a daughter of Adam and which, delivered to female cultivation, has produced a harvest of unknown flowers. Let us leave Madame Sand to bring forth perilous marvels till the winter; she will sing no more "when the cold winds blow:" meantime let us permit her, less improvident than the grasshopper, to make a provision of glory for the time when there shall be a dearth of pleasure. Musarion's mother used to say to her:
"Thou wilt not always be sixteen.... Will Ch‚‚‚æreas always remember his oaths, his tears and his kisses[353]?"
For the rest, many women have been seduced and as it were carried off by their young years: when the autumn days come, brought back to the maternal hearth, they have added to their cithern the grave or plaintive string on which religion or misfortune is expressed. Old age is a nocturnal traveller: the earth is hidden to her and she no longer discerns aught save the sky shining over her head.