his opinions soon became hers. This proof is the Republican catechism
contained in her letters to her son Maurice, who was then twelve years
of age. He was at the Lycee Henri IV, in the same class as the princes
of Orleans. It is interesting to read what his mother says to him
concerning the father of his young school friends. In a letter, written
in December, 1835, she says: "It is certainly true that Louis-Philippe
is the enemy of humanity. . . ." Nothing less than that! A little later,
the enemy of humanity invites the young friends of his son Montpensier
to his _chateau_ for the carnival holiday. Maurice is allowed to
accept the invitation, as he wishes to, but he is to avoid showing
that gratitude which destroys independence. "The entertainments that
Montpensier offers you are favours," writes this mother of the Gracchi
quite gravely. If he is asked about his opinions, the child is to reply
that he is rather too young to have opinions yet, but not too young to
know what opinions he will have when he is free to have them. "You
can reply," says his mother, "that you are Republican by race and
by nature." She then adds a few aphorisms. "Princes are our natural
enemies," she says; and then again: "However good-hearted the child of
a king may be, he is destined to be a tyrant." All this is certainly a
great commotion to make about her little son accepting a glass of fruit
syrup and a few cakes at the house of a schoolfellow. But George Sand
was then under the domination of "Robespierre in person."

Michel had brought George Sand over to republicanism. Without wishing
to exaggerate the service he had rendered her by this, it appears to
me that it certainly was one, if we look at it in one way. Rightly or
wrongly, George Sand had seen in Michel the man who devotes himself
entirely to a cause of general interest. She had learnt something in
his school, and perhaps all the more thoroughly because it was in his
school. She had learnt that love is in any case a selfish passion. She