Meanwhile, during this, her second period, George Sand allowed herself to be the mouthpiece of others—"un echo qui embellis sait la voix," as Delatouche expressed it. Spiridion (1838) and Les Sept cordes de la lyre (1840) are mystic echoes of Lamen nais. Le Compagnon du tour de France (1841), Les Maitres mosaistes and Le Meunier d'Angibault Le Peche de M. Antoine (1847) are all socialistic novels. George Sand had adopted her socialism from Pierre Leroux, and many works of this period are inspired by his humanitarianism. Consuelo (184a 1844) and its sequel La Comtesse de Rudolstadt (1843-1845) are fantaisies a la Chopin, though the stage on which they are played is the Venice of Musset. Chopin is the Prince Karol of Lucrezia Floriani (1847), a self-portraiture unabashed as the Tagebuch einer V erlorenen and innocent as Paul et Virginie.
George Sand wrote with the rapidity of Walter Scott and the regularity of Anthony Trollope. For years her custom was to retire to her desk at io P.M. and not to rise from it till 5 A.M. She wrote a la diable, starting with some central thesis to set forth or some problem to investigate, but with no predetermined plot or plan of action. Round this nucleus her characters (too often mere puppets) grouped themselves, and the story gradually crystallized. This unmethodical method produces in her longer i and more ambitious novels, in Consuelo for instance and its con tinuation, a tangled wilderness, the clue to which is lost or for gotten ; but in her novelettes, when there is no change of scenery and the characters are few and simple, it results in the perfection of artistic writing, "an art that nature makes." The Pastoral Novels.—From novels of revolt and tendency novels George Sand turned at last to simple stories of rustic life, the genuine pastoral. It is here that she shows her true origi nality and by these she will chiefly live. George Sand by her birth and bringing-up was half a peasant herself, in M. Faguet's
phrase, "un paysan qui savait parler." She had got to know the heart of the peasant—his superstitions, his suspiciousness and low cunning, no less than his shrewdness, his sturdy independence and his strong domestic attachments. Jeanne (1844) begins the series which has been happily called the Bucolics of France. To paint a Joan of Arc who lives and dies inglorious is the theme she sets herself, and through most of the novel it is perfectly executed. The last chapters when Jeanne appears as the Velida of Mont Barbot and the Grande Pastoure are a falling off and a survival of the romanticism of her second manner. La Mare au diable (1846) is a clear-cut gem, perfect as a work of Greek art. Francois le champi and La Petite Fadette are of no less exquisite workmanship. Les Maitres sonneurs (1853) brings the series of village novels to a close, but as closely akin to them must be mentioned the Contes d'une grande-mere, delightful fairy tales of the Talking Oak, Wings of Courage and Queen Coax, told to her grandchildren in the last years of her life.
The revolution of 1848 arrested for a while her novelistic activities. She composed manifestos for her friends, addressed letters to the people, and even started a newspaper. But her political ardour was short-lived; she cared little about forms of government, and, when the days of June dashed to the ground her hopes of social regeneration, she returned to her quiet coun try ways and her true vocation as an interpreter of nature, a spiritualizer of the commonest sights of earth and the homeliest household affections. In 1849 she writes from Berry to a political friend : "You thought that I was drinking blood from the skulls of aristocrats. No, I am studying Virgil and learning Latin!" In her latest works she went back to her earlier themes of romantic and unchartered love, but the scene is shifted from Berry, which she felt she had exhausted, to other provinces of France, and instead of passionate manifestos we have a gallery of genre pic tures treated in the spirit of Francois le champi. "Vous faites," she said to her friend Honore de Balzac, "la comedie humaine ; et moi, c'est l'eglogue humaine que j'ai voulu faire." George Sand was as fond of acting as Goethe, and like him began with a puppet stage, succeeded by amateur theatricals, the chief entertainment provided for her guests at Nohant. Un daunted by many failures, she dramatized several of her novels with moderate success—Francois le champi, played at the Odeon in 1849, and Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore (1862) were the best ; Claudie, produced in 1851, is a charming pastoral play, and Le Marquis de Villemer (1864) (in which she was helped by Dumas fils) was a genuine triumph. Her statue by Clesinger was placed in the foyer of the The5.tre Francais in 1877.