The tone of our author concerning this and subsequent revolutions which have come within her own observation is throughout temperate, hopeful, and charitable.  The noblest side of womanhood comes out in this; and however her fiery youth might have counselled, in the pages now under consideration she appears as the apologist of humankind, the world’s peacemaker.

George loves to linger over the details of her father’s early life.  They are, indeed, all she possesses of him, as she was still in early childhood when he died.  So much and such charming narrations has she to give us of his military life, his musical ability, his courage and disinterestedness, that she herself does not manage to get born until nearly the end of the third volume, and that through a series of concatenations which we must hastily review.

The imprisonment of Madame Dupin was not long; after some months of detention, she was allowed to rejoin her son at Passy, and the whole family-party speedily removed to Nohant, in the heart of Berry, which henceforth figures as the homestead in the pages of these volumes.  But Maurice is soon obliged to adopt a profession.  His mother’s revenues have been considerably diminished by the political troubles.  He feels in himself the power, the determination, to carve out a career for himself, and gallantly enters, as a simple soldier, the armies of the Republic,—­Napoleon Bonaparte being First Consul.  Although he soon saw service, his promotion seems to have been slow and difficult.  He was full of military ardor, and laborious in acquiring the science of his profession; but there were already so many candidates for every smallest distinction, and Maurice was no courtier, to help out his deserts with a little fortunate flattery.  He complains in his letters that the tide has already turned, and that even in the army diplomacy fares better than real bravery.  Still, he soon rose from the ranks, served with honor on the Rhine and in Italy, and became finally attached to the personnel of Murat, during the occupation of the Peninsula.  His title of grandson of the Marechal de Saxe was sometimes helpful, sometimes hurtful.  In the eyes of his comrades it won him honor; but Napoleon, on hearing his high descent urged as a claim to consideration, is said to have replied, brusquely,—­“I don’t want any of those people.”  In his letters to his mother, he recounts his adventures, military and amorous, with frankness, but without boasting; but his confidences soon become very partial, and before she knows it the poor mother has a dangerous rival.  We will let him give his own account of the origin of this new relation.

“You know that I was in love in Milan.  You guessed it, because I did not tell you of it.  At times I fancied myself beloved in return, and then I saw, or thought I saw, that I was not.  I wished to divert my thoughts; I went away, desiring to think no more of it.