GEORGE SAND. 557 is the victim of a mariage de convenance. The highly- wrought scenes of passion, and the exaggerated language of many passages which now repel the reader, were then admired. In the simple portions we can already recog- nize that simple, forcible, and picturesque style which so delights us in her tales of humble life — in La Petite- Fadette, and La Mare au Didble. The next work of Madame Sand — for her friends as well as the public now learned to call her by that name — was that Lelia, of which almost every one has heard, although it has now, at least in England and America, few readers. Lelia is a novel of impossible characters and incidents, written in a declamatory manner. Its only interest is as a psychological study of the author, for into this work she was wont to say she had put more of her- self than into any other. She nevertheless pronounced it in later years absurd as a work of art. Lelia surprised her friends at the time — although it pleased most of them — and was highly successful with the public. One of her friends, a naturalist, wrote to her : " Lelia is a fancy type. It is not like you — you who are merry, who dance the bourree, who appreciate lepidop- tera, who do not despise puns, who are not a bad needle- woman, and make very good preserves. Is it .possible that you should have thought so much, felt so much, with- out any one having any idea of it ? " It was a book written in a period of mental depression, at a time when her faith appeared to be forsaking her. Although it is by no means typical of her ordinary fiction, it was destined to produce an impression of her as a writer opposed to marriage and morality, and to create a prejudice which in England and our country has but recently begun to give way. Some critics had already accused her of propounding revolutionary doctrines in Indiana and Valentine. It is true she declared herself
