Francois le Champi appeared as a serial in the Journal des Debats.  The denouement was delayed by another denouement, which the public found still more interesting.  This was nothing less than the catastrophe of the July Monarchy, in February, 1848.

After the terrible June troubles, George Sand had been heartbroken, and had turned once more to literature for consolation.  She wrote La Petite Fadette, so that the pastoral romances and the Revolution are closely connected with each other.  Beside the novels of this kind which we have already mentioned, we must add Jeanne, which dates from 1844, and the Maitres Sonneurs, written in 1853.  This, then, completes the incomparable series, which was the author’s chef-d’oeuvre, and one of the finest gems of French literature.  This was George Sand’s real style, and the note in literature which was peculiarly her own.  She was well fitted for such writing, both by her natural disposition and by circumstances.  She had lived nearly all her life in the country, and it was there only that she lived to the full.  She made great efforts, but Paris certainly made her homesick for her beloved Berry.  She could not help sighing when she thought of the ploughed fields, of the walnut-trees, and of the oxen answering to the voice of the labourers.

“It is no use,” she wrote about the same time, “if you are born a country person, you cannot get used to the noise of cities.  It always seems to me that our mud is beautiful mud, whilst that here makes me feel sick.  I very much prefer my keeper’s wit to that of certain of the visitors here.  It seems to me that I am livelier when I have eaten some of Nannette’s wheat-cake than I am after my coffee in Paris.  In short, it appears to me that we are all perfect and charming, that no one could be more agreeable than we are, and that Parisians are all clowns."(46)

     (46) Correspondance: To.  Ch.  Duvernet, November 12, 1842.

This was said in all sincerity.  George Sand was quite indifferent about all the great events of Parisian life, about social tittle-tattle and Boulevard gossip.  She knew the importance, though, of every episode of country life, of a sudden fog or of the overflowing of the river.  She knew the place well, too, as she had visited every nook and corner in all weathers and in every season.  She knew all the people; there was not a house she had not entered, either to visit the sick or to clear up some piece of business for the inmates.  Not only did she like the country and the country people because she was accustomed to everything there, but she had something of the nature of these people within her.  She had a certain turn of mind that was peasant-like, her slowness to take things in, her dislike of speech when thinking, her thoughts taking the form of “a series of reveries which gave her a sort of tranquil ecstasy, whether awake or asleep."(47) It does not seem as though there has ever been such an ensemble of favourable conditions.