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That is why Providence delivers it from passions too personal or too general, and has given to its organization patience and persistence, an enduring sensibility, and that contemplative sense upon which rests invincible faith. Her novel, Les Maîtres Sonneurs, the first-fruits of the year 1853, is what most will consider a very good equivalent for party pamphlets and political diatribes.
It is longer, more complex in form and sentiment, more of an ideal composition. Les Maîtres Sonneurs, is a delightful pastoral, woodland fantasy, standing by itself among romances much as stands a kindred work of imagination, "As You Like It," among plays, yet thoroughly characteristic of George Sand, the nature-lover, the seer into the mysteries of human character, and the imaginative artist.
Other archaeological treasures are here, notably the so-called "Pierre des Sonneurs de Jouarre," or Stone of the Jouarre Bell-ringers, a quaint design representing two bell-ringers at their task, with a legend underneath, dating from the fourteenth century. It must be mentioned that the traveller's patience may undergo a trial here.
Les Maîtres Sonneurs, whilst illustrating some of the most striking merits of George Sand, is free from the defects often laid to her charge; and although of all her pastorals it must suffer the most when rendered in any language but the original, it is much to be regretted that some good translation of this work should not put it within the reach of all English readers.
More than one English reader of Les Maîtres Sonneurs may have been struck by the picture there presented of peasant-folk in a state of peace and comfort, such as we do not suppose to have been common in France before the Revolution.
It contained La Mare au Diable, Francois le Champi, La Petite Fadette, and Les Maitres Sonneurs.
The cellar then, was the dram-shop. The descent to it was through a low door and by a staircase as steep as a classic Alexandrine. Over the door, by way of a sign there hung a marvellous daub, representing new sons and dead chickens,* with this, pun below: Aux sonneurs pour les trepasses, The wringers for the dead. * Sols neufs: poulets tues.
Their number was never to be thus augmented, but the idea is recalled by the chapter-headings of Les Maîtres Sonneurs, in which Étienne Despardieu, or Tiennet, the rustic narrator, tells, in the successive veillées of a month, the romance of his youth. It is a work of a very different type to the rural tales that had preceded it, and should be regarded apart from them.
Over the propriety of this proceeding, adopted also in Les Maîtres Sonneurs, French critics are disagreed, though for the most part they regret it. It is not for a foreigner to decide between them.
Her delicious romance of "Francois le Champi" attracted a new and enthusiastic audience to her, and her entire emancipation from "problems" was marked in the pages of "La Petite Fadette" and of "La Mare au Diable." To the same period belong "Les Visions de la Nuit des les Campagnes," "Les Maitres Sonneurs," and "Cosina."
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