“Today, however, is a very serious day, the last day of spring and the anniversary of that on which I lost my noble and good Dittmar.  I am a prey to a thousand different and confused feelings; but I have only two passions left in me which remain upright and like two pillars of brass support this whole chaos—­the thought of God and the love of my country.”

During all this time Sand’s life remains apparently calm and equal; the inward storm is calmed; he rejoices in his application to work and his cheerful temper.  However, from time to time, he makes great complaints to himself of his propensity to love dainty food, which he does not always find it possible to conquer.  Then, in his self-contempt, he calls himself “fig-stomach” or “cake-stomach.”  But amid all this the religious and political exaltation and visits all the battlefields near to the road that he follows.  On the 18th of October he is back at Jena, where he resumes his studies with more application than ever.  It is among such university studies that the year 1818 closes far him, and we should hardly suspect the terrible resolution which he has taken, were it not that we find in his journal this last note, dated the 31st of December: 

“I finish the last day of this year 1818, then, in a serious and solemn mood, and I have decided that the Christmas feast which has just gone by will be the last Christmas feast that I shall celebrate.  If anything is to come of our efforts, if the cause of humanity is to assume the upper hand in our country, if in this faithless epoch any noble feelings can spring up afresh and make way, it can only happen if the wretch, the traitor, the seducer of youth, the infamous Kotzebue, falls!  I am fully convinced of this, and until I have accomplished the work upon which I have resolved, I shall have no rest.  Lord, Thou who knowest that I have devoted my life to this great action, I only need, now that it is fixed in my mind, to beg of Thee true firmness and courage of soul.”

Here Sand’s diary ends; he had begun it to strengthen himself; he had reached his aim; he needed nothing more.  From this moment he was occupied by nothing but this single idea, and he continued slowly to mature the plan in his head in order to familiarise himself with its execution; but all the impressions arising from this thought remained in his own mind, and none was manifested on the surface.  To everyone else he was the same; but for some little time past, a complete and unaltered serenity, accompanied by a visible and cheerful return of inclination towards life, had been noticed in him.  He had made no charge in the hours or the duration of his studies; but he had begun to attend the anatomical classes very assiduously.  One day he was seen to give even more than his customary attention to a lesson in which the professor was demonstrating the various functions of the heart; he examined with the greatest care the place occupied by it in the chest, asking to have some of the demonstrations repeated two or three times, and when he went out, questioning some of the young men who were following the medical courses, about the susceptibility of the organ, which cannot receive ever so slight a blow without death ensuing from that blow:  all this with so perfect an indifference and calmness that no one about him conceived any suspicion.