Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/140

130 she writes in a later preface to her socialist novel, Le Péché de M. Antoine, "at which as yet but a small number of conservative spirits had taken alarm, had as yet only really begun to sprout in a small number of attentive, laborious minds. The Government, so long as no actual form of political application was assumed, was not to be disquieted by theories, and let every man make his own, put forth his dream, and innocently construct his city of the future, by his own fireside, in the garden of his imagination."

She was aware that her readers thought her novels getting more and more tedious, in proportion as she communicated to her fictitious heroes and heroines the preoccupations of her brain, and that she was thus stepping out of the domain of art. But she affirmed she could never help writing of whatever was absorbing her thoughts and feelings at the moment, and must take her chance of boring the public. Fortunately for Le Péché de M. Antoine, nature and human nature are here allowed to claim the larger share of our attention, and philosophy is a secondary feature. The scene is laid in the picturesque Marche country on the confines of Berry, a day's journey from Nohant, and we are glad to linger with her along the rocky banks of the Creuse, or among the ruined castles of Crozant and Châteaubrun. The novel contains much that is original and admirable in the drawing of characters of the most opposite classes.