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168 but fear, rancour and distrust,—was heartrending to her whose heart had been thrown into the national troubles.

Great was the panic in Berry, an after-clap of the disturbances in the capital. Madame Sand's position became more unpleasant than ever. She describes herself as "blasée d'outrages—threatened perpetually by the coward hatreds and imbecile terrors of country places." But to all this she was well-nigh insensible in her despair over the public calamities oppressing her nation—the end of all long-struggling aspirations in "frightful confusion, complete moral anarchy, a morbid condition, in which the most courageous of us lost heart and wished for death."

"You say that the bourgeoisie prevails," she writes to Mazzini, in September 1848, and that thus it is quite natural that selfishness should be the order of the day. But why does the bourgeoisie prevail, whilst the people is sovereign, and the principle of its sovereignty, universal suffrage, is still standing? We must open our eyes at last, and the vision of reality is horrible. The majority of the French people is blind, credulous, ignorant, ungrateful, wicked, and stupid; it is bourgeoise itself!"

Under no conceivable circumstances is it likely that Madame Sand would not very soon have become disgusted with active politics, for which her temperament unfitted her in every respect. Impetuous and