all.

"I will give you as an example the life and conduct of my father, of whom
you have not heard very much, for he died before you were born, but whose
mind and likeness are reproduced in you only among all your brothers and
sisters. The disastrous fire which reduced his native town to ashes
destroyed his fortune and that of his relatives; grief at having lost
everything--for the fire broke out in the next house to his--cost his
father his life; and while his mother, who for six years had been
stretched an a bed of pain, where horrible convulsions held her fast,
supported her three little girls by the needlework that she did in the
intervals of suffering, he went as a mere clerk into one of the leading
mercantile houses of Augsburg, where his lively and yet even temper made
him welcome; there he learned a calling, for which, however, he was not
naturally adapted, and came back to the home of his birth with a pure and
stainless heart, in order to be the support of his mother and his
sisters.

"A man can do much when he wishes to do much: join your efforts to my
prayers, and leave the rest in the hands of God."

The prediction of this Puritan woman was fulfilled: a little time
afterwards rector Salfranck was appointed professor at Richembourg,
whither Sand followed him; it was there that the events of 1813 found
him. In the month of March he wrote to his mother:--

"I can scarcely, dear mother, express to you how calm and happy I begin
to feel since I am permitted to believe in the enfranchisement of my
country, of which I hear on every side as being so near at hand,--of that
country which, in my faith in God, I see beforehand free and mighty, that