This journey did in fact greatly cheer Sand. Since Dittmar's death his
attacks of hypochondria had disappeared. While Dittmar lived he might
die; Dittmar being dead, it was his part to live.

On the 11th of December he left Wonsiedel, to return to Jena, and on the
31st of the same month he wrote this prayer in his journal.

"O merciful Saviour! I began this year with prayer, and in these last
days I have been subject to distraction and ill-disposed. When I look
backward, I find, alas! that I have not become better; but I have entered
more profoundly into life, and, should occasion present, I now feel
strength to act.

"It is because Thou hast always been with me, Lord, even when I was not
with Thee."

If our readers have followed with some attention the different extracts
from the journal that we have placed before them, they must have seen
Sand's resolution gradually growing stronger and his brain becoming
excited. From the beginning of the year 1818, one feels his view, which
long was timid and wandering, taking in a wider horizon and fixing itself
on a nobler aim. He is no longer ambitious of the pastor's simple life or
of the narrow influence which he might gain in a little community, and
which, in his juvenile modesty, had seemed the height of good fortune and
happiness; it is now his native land, his German people, nay, all
humanity, which he embraces in his gigantic plans of political
regeneration. Thus, on the flyleaf of his journal for the year 1818, he
writes:

"Lord, let me strengthen myself in the idea that I have conceived of the