Thus we find these lines written in his journal for April 13th:"Life,without some high aim towards which all thoughts and actions tend,is an empty desert:my day yesterday is a proof of this;Ispent it with my own people,and that,of course,was a great pleasure to me;but how did I spend it?In continual eating,so that when I wanted to work I could do nothing worth doing.Full of indolence and slackness,I dragged myself into the company of two or three sets of people,and came from them in the same state of mind as I went to them."Far these expeditions Sand made use of a little chestnut horse which belonged to his brother,and of which he was very fond.This little horse had been bought with great difficulty;for,as we have said,the whole family was poor.The following note,in relation to the animal,will give an idea of Sand's simplicity of heart:--"19th April "To-day I have been very happy at the ironworks,and very industrious beside my kind mother.In the evening I came home on the little chestnut.Since the day before yesterday,when he got a strain and hurt his foot,he has been very restive and very touchy,and when he got home he refused his food.I thought at first that he did not fancy his fodder,and gave him some pieces of sugar and sticks of cinnamon,which he likes very much;he tasted them,but would not eat them.The poor little beast seems to have same other internal indisposition besides his injured foot.If by ill luck he were to become foundered or ill,everybody,even my parents,would throw the blame on me,and yet I have been very careful and considerate of him.
My God,my Lord,Thou who canst do things both great and small,remove from me this misfortune,and let him recover as quickly as possible.If,however,Thou host willed otherwise,and if this fresh trouble is to fall upon us,I will try to bear it with courage,and as the expiation of same sin.Meanwhile,O my Gad,I leave this matter in Thy hands,as I leave my life and my soul."On the 20th of April he wrote:--
"The little horse is well;God has helped me."German manners and customs are so different from ours,and contrasts occur so frequently in the same man,on the other side of the Rhine,that anything less than all the quotations which we have given would have been insufficient to place before our readers a true idea of that character made up of artlessness and reason,childishness and strength,depression and enthusiasm,material details and poetic ideas,which renders Sand a man incomprehensible to us.We will now continue the portrait,which still wants a few finishing touches.
When he returned to Erlangen,after the completion of his "cure,"Sand read Faust far the first time.At first he was amazed at that work,which seemed to him an orgy of genius;then,when he had entirely finished it,he reconsidered his first impression,and wrote:--"4th May "Oh,horrible struggle of man and devil!What Mephistopheles is in me I feel far the first time in this hour,and I feel it,O God,with consternation!
"About eleven at night I finished reading the tragedy,and I felt and saw the fiend in myself,so that by midnight,amid my tears and despair,I was at last frightened at myself."Sand was falling by degrees into a deep melancholy,from which nothing could rouse him except his desire to purify and preach morality to the students around him.To anyone who knows university life such a task will seem superhuman.Sand,however,was not discouraged,and if he could not gain an influence over everyone,he at least succeeded in forming around him a considerable circle of the most intelligent and the best;nevertheless,in the midst of these apostolic labours strange longings for death would overcome him;he seemed to recall heaven and want to return to it;he called these temptations "homesickness for the soul's country."His favourite authors were Lessing,Schiller,Herder,and Goethe;after re-reading the two last for the twentieth time,this is what he wrote:
"Good and evil touch each other;the woes of the young Werther and Weisslingen's seduction,are almost the same story;no matter,we must not judge between what is good and what is evil in others;for that is what God will do.I have just been spending much time over this thought,and have become convinced that in no circumstances ought we to allow ourselves to seek for the devil in others,and that we have no right to judge;the only creature over wham we have received the power to judge and condemn is ourself,and that gives us enough constant care,business,and trouble.