Time works wonders, for we have an indisputable proof that certain of his opinions soon became hers.  This proof is the Republican catechism contained in her letters to her son Maurice, who was then twelve years of age.  He was at the Lycee Henri IV, in the same class as the princes of Orleans.  It is interesting to read what his mother says to him concerning the father of his young school friends.  In a letter, written in December, 1835, she says:  “It is certainly true that Louis-Philippe is the enemy of humanity. . . .”  Nothing less than that!  A little later, the enemy of humanity invites the young friends of his son Montpensier to his chateau for the carnival holiday.  Maurice is allowed to accept the invitation, as he wishes to, but he is to avoid showing that gratitude which destroys independence.  “The entertainments that Montpensier offers you are favours,” writes this mother of the Gracchi quite gravely.  If he is asked about his opinions, the child is to reply that he is rather too young to have opinions yet, but not too young to know what opinions he will have when he is free to have them.  “You can reply,” says his mother, “that you are Republican by race and by nature.”  She then adds a few aphorisms.  “Princes are our natural enemies,” she says; and then again:  “However good-hearted the child of a king may be, he is destined to be a tyrant.”  All this is certainly a great commotion to make about her little son accepting a glass of fruit syrup and a few cakes at the house of a schoolfellow.  But George Sand was then under the domination of “Robespierre in person.”

Michel had brought George Sand over to republicanism.  Without wishing to exaggerate the service he had rendered her by this, it appears to me that it certainly was one, if we look at it in one way.  Rightly or wrongly, George Sand had seen in Michel the man who devotes himself entirely to a cause of general interest.  She had learnt something in his school, and perhaps all the more thoroughly because it was in his school.  She had learnt that love is in any case a selfish passion.  She had learnt that another object must be given to the forces of sympathy of a generous heart, and that such an object may be the service of humanity, devotion to an idea.

This was a turn in the road, and led the writer on to leave the personal style for the impersonal style.

There was another service, too, which Michel had rendered to George Sand.  He had pleaded for her in her petition for separation from her husband, and she had won her case.

Ever since George Sand had taken back her independence in 1831, her intercourse with Dudevant had not been disagreeable.  She and her husband exchanged cordial letters.  When he came to Paris, he made no attempt to stay with his wife, lest he should inconvenience her.  “I shall put up at Hippolyte’s,” he says in his letter to her.  “I do not want to inconvenience you in the least, nor to be inconvenienced myself, which is quite natural.”  He certainly was a most discreet husband.  When she started for Italy, he begs her to take advantage of so good an opportunity for seeing such a beautiful country.  He was also a husband ready to give good advice.  Later on, he invited Pagello to spend a little time at Nohant.  This was certainly the climax in this strange story.