local colouring in his case is stronger, more definite. The authoress (in chapter x.) attributes his unmanliness to "the conciliatory and yielding tendency" of the age, which she calls the age "of mental reservations"; she shows how Raymon, who is the advocate of political moderation, imagines that because he is devoid of political passions he is also devoid of political self-interest, and therefore stands on a higher level than that of any party--the fact of the matter being, that the existing condition of society is too advantageous to him for him to wish it changed. He is "not so ungrateful to Providence as to reproach it with the misfortunes of others." The numerous successors of this character in George Sand's novels all bear witness to a penetrating and delicate observation of human nature, from Sténio, the poet in _Lélia_, and Octave, the lover in _Jacques_, slightly sketched, weak characters, mere playthings of passion, to the carefully drawn, distinctly characterised figures like the dissolute young Italian singer, Anzoleto, in _Consuelo_, the ultra-refined, morbidly nervous and self-centred Prince Karol (Chopin) in _Lucrezia Floriani_, and the extravagantly capricious young painter, Laurent (Alfred de Musset), in _Elle et Lui_. In the end Indiana goes the length of discovering the ruthless egotism of the male sex in all the outward developments of society, even in the religion taught by men. They have made of God a man in their own image. She writes to her hypocritical lover: "I do not serve the same God as you, but I serve mine better and more purely. Yours is the man's God, a man, a king, the founder and the patron of your race; mine is the God of the universe, the creator, the preserver, and the hope of every living being. Yours has made everything for you alone; mine has made all his creatures for each other." Two things are noticeable in these words--a naïve protest against that order of society which is founded upon the subordination of woman to man, and the optimism of an innocent, youthfully trustful faith in God. This attitude George Sand did not long maintain. Only a few years later she brings _Lélia_ to a conclusion with an outburst of despairing pessimism. Shortly before her death the heroine says: "Alas! despair reigns, and moans of suffering emanate from every pore of the created world. The wave casts itself writhing and moaning on the beach, the wind weeps and wails in the forest. All those trees which bend and only rise to fall again under the lash of the storm, suffer frightful torture. There exists one miserable, cursed being, terrible, immense--the world which we inhabit cannot contain him. This invisible being is in everything, and his voice fills space with one eternal sob. Imprisoned in the universe he writhes, strives, struggles, beats his head and his shoulders against the confines of heaven and earth. He cannot pass beyond them; everything crushes him, everything curses him, everything torments