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"Chère grand'mère," disait le très pratique personnage, "je suis certain que vous apprendrez avec plaisir que je n'ai pas besoin de vous ennuyer pour de l'argent en ce moment, car j'ai vendu votre dernière lettre pour 30 shillings
I made use of the time to improve my knowledge of French by the study of a novel, La Derniere Aldini, by George Sand. We also derived some entertainment from associating with the crew. There was an elderly and peculiarly taciturn sailor named Koske, whom we observed carefully because Robber, who was usually so friendly, had taken an irreconcilable dislike to him.
In the last days of 1833, she and the author of Rolla started on a journey to Italy, where George Sand spent six months, and where she has laid the scene of a number of her novels: the first and best part of Consuelo, La Dernière Aldini, Leone, Leoni, La Daniella, and others.
So instinct with emotion, so alive and receptive and creative that a passing impulse resulted in a work of art of the touching beauty of "La Derniere Aldini." So unanalytic of self, that she could not remember the driving impulse that caused her to write the novel. Impulses like clouds come and go, and the artist soul is the sure recipient of them.
Perhaps the keynote to the charm of George Sand's art is given in her preface to her exquisite novel "La Derniere Aldini." Here is none of the accuracy and patience of the scientific enquirer into the "mysterious mixture" man, which we find in George Eliot's preface to "Middlemarch." Indeed these prefaces sum up the remarkably differing characteristics of the two writers. George Eliot is occupied with "the function of knowledge" in regard to the "ardently willing soul." She explains in her preface that the aim of her book is to trace the fate of the Saint. Theresas of a past age, in the ordinary environment and circumstances of our time. The problem was, how were detachment of mind and spiritual longing and love to find their developments in a modern prosaic setting. George Eliot brought to bear on this enquiry all her great powers of observation, discrimination and thought. Each page of the novel reveals the conscious endeavour of the born thinker to express in artistic form some conception that would help to clear the outlook on which the answer to the problem depended. George Sand, who had also her philosophising, and her analysing moods, was yet capable of feeling that novels may be romances. She could write under the sway of pure emotion and apart from theory. George Eliot never regarded her novels as mere romances. "Romances," said George Sand in her preface, "are always 'fantasies, and these fantasies of the imagination are like the clouds which pass. Whence come the clouds and whither do they go? In wandering about the Forest of Fontainebleau tête
But besides these there is a certain number of pure stories works of art which already exist for us, and which illuminate facts and epochs almost without need of sidelights. Such may stand by themselves, or be used with only enough explanation to give background. Probably the best story of this kind known to lovers of modern literature is Daudet's famous La Dernière Classe.
Probably the man Grousset noticed my emotion, for he came to my rescue and said, politely, "Madame Moulton, j'ai eu l'honneur de vous voir a un bal a l'Hotel de Ville l'annee derniere." I looked up with surprise. He was a very handsome fellow, and I remembered quite well having seen him somewhere; but did not remember where.
"L'Heritiere" brought in about thirty-two pounds, and "Jean-Louis" fifty-three pounds, unfortunately both in bills at long date; but it was the first money Honore had ever earned, and he was naturally excited. However, with "La Derniere Fee" he was not so fortunate, as both versions one of which appeared in 1823 and the other in 1824 were published at his own cost.
Darwin has given, and see nothing there but a "derniere erreur du dernier siecle" a personification of Nature leads us indeed to cry with him: "O lucidite! O solidite de l'esprit Francais, que devenez-vous?" M. Flourens has, in fact, utterly failed to comprehend the first principles of the doctrine which he assails so rudely.
"J'ai deja dit ce qu'il faut penser de 'l'election naturelle'. Ou 'l'election naturelle' n'est rien, ou c'est la nature: mais la nature douee 'd'election', mais la nature personnifiee: derniere erreur du dernier siecle: Le xixe fait plus de personnifications." M. Flourens cannot imagine an unconscious selection it is for him a contradiction in terms.
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