* * * * * [Sidenote: Vigor at sixty-eight.] To-day, _my sixty-eighth birthday_, I will write to you. My health is perfect, in spite of a whooping cough, which, however, does not longer disturb my rest, since I daily plunge myself in a foaming, icy-cold little torrent, winding its way among the pebbles, the flowers, and the grass, under a delightful shade.... I walk all the way to the river, and, quite hot with perspiration, plunge myself in the icy-cold water. The doctor says I am mad; I let him talk and cure myself, whilst his patients nurse themselves and _croak_. I am like the grass in the fields--water and sun are all I require. GEORGE SAND: _Letter to M. Gustave Flaubert_, 5th July, 1872, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Still later.] I am still discharging the duties of assiduous and patient teacher, and I have little time left for _professional writing_, seeing that I spend the evening with my family, and can now no longer work after midnight; yet my being pinched for time acts like a stimulant upon me, and causes me to find much pleasure in hard work; it is to me like secretly relishing some forbidden fruit. GEORGE SAND: _Letter to M. Gustave Flaubert_, December, 1875, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: George Sand’s creed.] There is for me but one creed and one refuge: faith in God and our own immortality. My secret is not new, but there is no other. GEORGE SAND: _Letter to Mlle. Leroyer de Chantepie_, August, 1836, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’ * * * * * I see future and eternal life before me as a certainty; as a light in the glimmer of which every thing is only dimly seen; but that light is there, and that is all I wish for. I know full well that my Jeanne [her granddaughter] is not dead.... I know well that I shall meet her again, and that she will recognize me, even though she should not recollect or I either. She was part of my own self and that fact will always remain. GEORGE SAND: _Letter to M. Edouard Charton_, February, 1855, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Her last words.] Up to her last hour she preserved consciousness and lucidity. The words, “_Ne touchez pas à la verdure_,” among the last that fell from her lips, were understood by her children, who knew her wish that the trees should be undisturbed under which, in the village cemetery, she was soon to find a resting-place. BERTHA THOMAS: ‘George Sand.’ * * * * *