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 560 GEORGE SAND. After the overthrow of the Provisional Government, she had no desire to enter politics again. Her theory of government remained unshaken, but she had little hope of seeing it successfully realized in France during her life- time. She mingled no more in public affairs except so far as after the coup d'etat to ask of Louis Napoleon, with whom she had at one time corresponded, a pardon for some of her old friends who had been condemned to transportation. Her petition was granted at once. Born in the last year of the First Empire, George Sand lived through the Franco-Prussian War, and saw the return of peace and prosperity. She was always sure that the good time would come, although during the dark days of that long struggle she was in deep sorrow for her unhappy country, and painfully anxious for the safety of her own home. At one time the Prussians approached near, and she wrote to a friend that she worked " expect- ing her scrawls to light the pipes of the Prussians." But, in another letter, written to M. Flaubert, she says cheerily : " Mustn't be ill, mustn't be cross, my old troubadour ! Say that France is mad, humanity stupid, and that we are unfinished animals every one of us ; you must love on all the same, yourself, your race, above all, your friends. I have my sad hours. I look at my blossoms, those two little girls, smiling as ever, their charming mother, and my good, hard-working son, whom the end of the world will find hunting, cataloguing, doing his daily task, and yet as merry as Punch in his rare leisure moments." Again, less lightly, but quite as hopefully, she wrote : " I do not say that humanity is on the road to the heights ; I believe it in spite of all, but I do not argue about it, which is useless, for every one judges according to his own eyesight, and the general outlook at the present moment is ugly and poor. Besides, I do not need