“You know, mother, how much joy and courage a look from your eyes, daily intercourse with you, and your pious and high-minded conversation, might bring me during my very short time.  But you also know my position, and you are too well acquainted with the natural course of all these painful inquiries, not to feel as I do, that such annoyance, continually recurring, would greatly trouble the pleasure of our companionship, if it did not indeed succeed in entirely destroying it.  Then, mother, after the long and fatiguing journey that you would be obliged to make in order to see me, think of the terrible sorrow of the farewell when the moment came to part in this world.  Let us therefore abide by the sacrifice, according to God’s will, and let us yield ourselves only to that sweet community of thought which distance cannot interrupt, in which I find my only joys, and which, in spite of men, will always be granted us by the Lord, our Father.

“As for my physical state, I knew nothing about it.  You see, however, since at last I am writing to you myself, that I have come past my first uncertainties.  As for the rest, I know too little of the structure of my own body to give any opinion as to what my wounds may determine for it.  Except that a little strength has returned to me, its state is still the same, and I endure it calmly and patiently; for God comes to my help, and gives me courage and firmness.  He will help me, believe me, to find all the joys of the soul and to be strong in mind.  Amen.

“May you live happy!—­Your deeply respectful son, “Karl-Ludwig sand.”

A month after this letter came tender answers from all the family.  We will quote only that of Sand’s mother, because it completes the idea which the reader may have formed already of this great-hearted woman, as her son always calls her.

“Dear, inexpressibly dear Karl,—­How Sweet it was to me to see the writing of your beloved hand after so long a time!  No journey would have been so painful and no road so long as to prevent me from coming to you, and I would go, in deep and infinite love, to any end of the earth in the mere hope of catching sight of you.

“But, as I well know both your tender affection and your profound anxiety for me, and as you give me, so firmly and upon such manly reflection, reasons against which I can say nothing, and which I can but honour, it shall be, my well-beloved Karl, as you have wished and decided.  We will continue, without speech, to communicate our thoughts; but be satisfied, nothing can separate us; I enfold you in my soul, and my material thoughts watch over you.

“May this infinite love which upholds us, strengthens us, and leads us all to a better life, preserve, dear Karl, your courage and firmness.

“Farewell, and be invariably assured that I shall never cease to love you strongly and deeply.

“Your faithful mother, who loves you to eternity.”