to politics, and a choice must be made when one is not a member of the
Government.

It is easy to see what charmed George Sand in Michel. He was a
sectarian, and she took him for an apostle. He was brutal, and she
thought him energetic. He had been badly brought up, but she thought him
simply austere. He was a tyrant, but she only saw in him a master. He
had told her that he would have her guillotined at the first possible
opportunity. This was an incontestable proof of superiority. She was
sincere herself, and was consequently not on her guard against vain
boasting. He had alarmed her, and she admired him for this, and at once
incarnated in him that stoical ideal of which she had been dreaming for
years and had not yet been able to attribute to any one else.

This is how she explained to Michel her reasons for loving him. "I love
you," she says, "because whenever I figure to myself grandeur, wisdom,
strength and beauty, your image rises up before me. No other man has
ever exercised any moral influence over me. My mind, which has always
been wild and unfettered, has never accepted any guidance. . . . You
came, and you have taught me." Then again she says: "It is you whom
I love, whom I have loved ever since I was born, and through all
the phantoms in whom I thought, for a moment, that I had found you."
According to this, it was Michel she loved through Musset. Let us hope
that she was mistaken.

A whole correspondence exists between George Sand and Michel of Bourges.
Part of it was published not long ago in the _Revue illustree_ under
the title of _Lettres de lemmze_. None of George Sand's letters surpass
these epistles to Michel for fervent passion, beauty of form, and a
kind of superb _impudeur_. Let us take, for instance, this call to