Where one is more inclined to differ from Madame Sand is in her estimate of her Republican friends of the educated classes. They may stand, she says, for the genius and the soul of France; they represent its "exalted imagination and profound sensibility," while the peasant represents its humble, sound, indispensable body. Her protégé, the peasant, is much ruder with those eloquent gentlemen, and has his own name for one and all of them, _l'avocat_, by which he means to convey his belief that words are more to be looked for from that quarter than seriousness and profit. It seems to me by no means certain but that the peasant is in the right.
George Sand herself has said admirable things of these friends of hers; of their want of patience, temper, wisdom; of their "vague and violent way of talking"; of their interminable flow of "stimulating phrases, cold as death." Her own place is of course with the party and propaganda of organic change. But George Sand felt the poetry of the past; she had no hatreds; the furies, the follies, the self-deceptions of secularist and revolutionist fanatics filled her with dismay. They are, indeed, the great danger of France, and it is amongst the educated and articulate classes of France that they prevail. If the educated and articulate classes in France were as sound in their way as the inarticulate peasant is in his, France would present a different spectacle. Not "imagination and sensibility" are so much required from the educated classes of France, as simpler, more serious views of life; a knowledge how great a part _conduct_ (if M. Challemel-Lacour[342] will allow me to say so) fills in it; a better example. The few who see this, such as Madame Sand among the dead, and M. Renan[343] among the living, perhaps awaken on that account, amongst quiet observers at a distance, all the more sympathy; but in France they are isolated.
All the later work of George Sand, however, all her hope of genuine social renovation, take the simple and serious ground so necessary. "The cure for us is far more simple than we will believe. All the better natures amongst us see it and feel it. It is a good direction given by ourselves to our hearts and consciences;--_une bonne direction donnée par nous-mêmes à nos coeurs et à nos consciences_."[344] These are among the last words of her _Journal_ of 1870.