"
Her political and social hopes and aims were always dear to her, but
to interpret nature, to live the quiet life of the affections were the
phases of her middle life. And so she wrote a "sweet song" in prose,
one of the most delightful of her Bergeries, "La Petite Fadette." It
was her contribution to the hatreds and agitations of the time--she
gave a refuge to the souls that could accept it--an "Ideal of calmness
and innocence and reverie." "La Petite Fadette" and "Le Meunier
d'Angibault" reveal her fascinating intelligence and her idyllic
imagination. "Le Meunier d'Angibault," she tells us, was the result of
a walk, a meeting, a day of leisure, an hour of _far niente_, followed
by Reverie, that play of the imagination which, clothes with beauty
and perfects, and interprets, the isolated and small events and facts
of life. There are books of hers in early life that are simply
self-revelations--outpourings of her indignations. She is not at her
best in these. "Indiana," written in her age of revolt, is too
obviously a pamphlet to reveal her passionate hatred of marriage. In
it she looked on marriage as "un malheur insupportable." But
"Consuelo," "La Comtesse de Rudolstadt," "Lettres d'un voyageur,"
Lelia, Spiridion, Valvedre, Valentine, "History of her Life and
letters," and many other books reveal her agonies and agitations, her
hope and power, her love of beauty both outward and inward as
represented in Consuelo herself, who is contrasted with the mere
beautiful "animal" Anzoleto, the artist in his lowest form.
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