What a strange mystery it is, among so many other mysteries, that of one mind taking possession of another mind.  We have come into contact with great minds which have made no impression on us, whilst other minds, of secondary intelligence, perhaps, and it may be inferior to our own, have governed us.

By the side of a Lamennais, this Pierre Leroux was a very puny personage.  He had been a compositor in a printing works, before founding the Globe.  This paper, in his hands, was to become an organ of Saint-Simonism.  He belonged neither to the bourgeois nor to the working-class.  He was Clumsy, not well built, and had an enormous shock of hair, which was the joy of caricaturists.  He was shy and awkward, in addition to all this.  He nevertheless appeared in various salons, and was naturally more or less ridiculous.  In January, 1840, Beranger writes:  “You must know that our metaphysician has surrounded himself with women, at the head of whom are George Sand and Marliani, and that, in gilded drawing-rooms, under the light of chandeliers, he exposes his religious principles and his muddy boots.”  George Sand herself made fun of this occasionally.  In a letter to Madame d’Agoult, she writes: 

“He is very amusing when he describes making his appearance in your drawing-room of the Rue Laffitte.  He says:  ’I was all muddy, and quite ashamed of myself.  I was keeping out of sight as much as possible in a corner. This lady came to me and talked in the kindest way possible.  She is very beautiful.’"(35)

     (35) Correspondance:  To Madame d’Agoult, October 16, 1837.

There are two features about him, then, which seem to strike every one, his unkemptness and his shyness.  He expressed his ideas, which were already obscure, in a form which seemed to make them even more obscure.  It has been said wittily that when digging out his ideas, he buried himself in them.(36) Later on, when he spoke at public meetings, he was noted for the nonsense he talked in his interminable and unintelligible harangues.

     (36) P. Thureau-Dangin, Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet.

And yet, in spite of all this, the smoke from this mind attracted George Sand, and became her pillar of light moving on before her.  His hazy philosophy seemed to her as clear as daylight, it appealed to her heart and to her mind, solved her doubts, and gave her tranquillity, strength, faith, hope and a patient and persevering love of humanity.  It seems as though, with that marvellous faculty that she had for idealizing always, she manufactured a Pierre Leroux of her own, who was finer than the real one.  He was needy, but poverty becomes the man who has ideas.  He was awkward, but the contemplative man, on coming down from the region of thought on to our earth once more, only gropes along.  He was not clear, but Voltaire tells us that when a man does not understand his own words, he is talking metaphysics.  Chopin had personified the artist for her; Pierre Leroux, with his words as entangled as his hair, figured now to her as the philosopher.  She saw in him the chief and the master. Tu duca e tu maestro.