Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/195

Rh unwearying applications for justice and mercy, addressed both to the dictator directly, and through his cousin, Prince Napoleon (Jerôme), between whom and herself there existed a cordial esteem. She clung as long as she could to her belief in the public virtue of the President, or Emperor as he already began to be called here and there. But the promised clemency limited itself to a number of particular cases for whom she had specially interceded.

The subsequent conditions of France precluded all free emission of socialist or republican opinions, but Madame Sand desired nothing better than to send in her political resignation; and it is impossible to share the regret of some of her fellow-republicans at finding her again devoting her best energies to her art of fiction, and in November 1853 writing to Mazzini such words of wisdom as these:—

You are surprised that I can work at literature. For my part, I thank God that he has let me preserve this faculty; for an honest and clear conscience like mine still finds, apart from all debate, a work of moralisation to pursue. What should I do if I relinquished my task, humble though it be? Conspire? It is not my vocation; I should make nothing of it. Pamphlets? I have neither the wit nor the wormwood required for that. Theories? We have made too many, and have fallen to disputing, which is the grave of all truth and all strength. I am, and always have been, artist before everything else. I know that mere politicians look on artists with great contempt, judging them by some of those mountebank-types which are a disgrace to art. But you, my friend, you well know that a real artist is as useful as the priest and the warrior, and that when he respects what is true and what is good, he is in the right path where the divine blessing will attend him. Art belongs to all countries and to all time, and its