solation of being able to offer the slightest resistance . . . I look at my garden, I dine, I play with the children, whilst waiting in expectation of seeing the trees felled roots upwards; of getting no more bread to eat, and of having to carry my grandchildren off on my shoulders; for the horses have all been requisitioned. I work, expecting my scrawls to light the pipes of the Prussians.
But the enemy, though so near, never passed the boundaries of the "Black Valley." The department of the Indre remained uninvaded, though compassed on all sides by the foreign army; and George Sand was able to say afterwards that she at least had never seen a Prussian soldier.
A sad Christmas was passed. On the last night of 1870 a meeting of friends at Nohant broke up with the parting words, "All is lost!"
"The execrable year is out," writes Madame Sand, "but to all appearances we are entering upon a worse."
On the 15th of January 1871 her little drama François le Champi, first represented in the troublous months of 1849, was acted in Paris for the benefit of an ambulance. She notes the singular fate of this piece to be reproduced in time of bombardment. A pastoral!
The worst strain of suspense ended January 29, with the capitulation of Paris. Here the Journal d'un Voyageur breaks off. It would be sad indeed had her life, like that of more than one of her compeers, closed then over France in mourning. Although it was impossible but that such an ordeal must have
