Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/250

240 and King William taken prisoner; then of fatal catastrophes befallen to private friends—stories which often proved equally unfounded.

She had friends shut up in Paris of whom she knew not whether they were alive or dead. The strain of anxiety and painful excitement made sleep impossible to her except in the last extremity of fatigue. Yet she had her little grandchildren to care for; and when they came round her, clamouring for the fairy-tales she was used to supply, she contented them as well as she could and gave them their lessons as usual, anxious to keep them from realising the sadness the causes of which they were too young to understand.

It was the first time that she had known a distress that forbade her to find a solace in nature. She describes how one day walking out with some friends and following the course of the river Tarde, she had half-abandoned herself to the enjoyment of the scene—the cascade, the dragon-flies skimming the surface, the purple scabious flowers, the goats clambering on the boulders of rock that strewed the borders and bed of the stream—when one of the party remarks, "Here's a retreat pretty well fortified against the Prussians."

And the present, forgotten for an instant in reverie, came back upon her with a shock.

Letters in that district took three or four days to travel thirty miles. Newspapers were rarely to be