torch of revolution, turning to his Michaels and his leech-gatherers
and his Peter Bells. Her exquisite pictures of pastoral life are
idealizations of it; her representations of the peasant are not
corroborated by Zola's; to the last she approaches the shield of
human nature from the golden side. But for herself at least she has
found a real secret of happiness in country life, tranquil work, and
a right direction given to her own heart and conscience.

It is at about this point in her spiritual development that she
turns towards Gustave Flaubert--perhaps a little suspiciously at
first, yet resolved from the first, according to her natural
instinct and her now fixed principles, to stimulate by believing in
his admirable qualities. Writing from Nohant in 1866 to him at
Croisset, she epitomises her distinction as a woman and as an author
in this playful sally: "Sainte-Beuve, who loves you nevertheless,
pretends that you are dreadfully vicious. But perhaps he sees with
eyes a bit dirty, like that learned botanist who pretends that the
germander is of a DIRTY yellow. The observation was so false that I
could not help writing on the margin of his book: 'IT IS YOU, WHOSE
EYES ARE DIRTY.'"

We have spoken of George Sand as a faithful daughter of the French
Revolution; and by way of contrast we may speak of Flaubert as a
disgruntled son of the Second Empire. Between his literary advent
and hers there is an interval of a generation, during which the
proud expansive spirit and the grandiose aspirations imparted to the
nation by the first Napoleon dwindled to a spirit of mediocrity and
bourgeois smugness under a Napoleon who had inherited nothing great
of his predecessor but his name. This change in the time-spirit may
help to explain the most significant difference between Flaubert and