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ntinually asserted and reasserted itself, with a constant tendency towards that higher liberty which she had sought in the abandonment of outward restraints, but which can never be thus attained. Some great moral safeguards she had in her tireless industry, her love of art, her honesty and geniality of nature, and, above all, in her passionate love for her children. Happily, these deep and solid forces of Nature are calculated to outlast the heyday of the blood, and to redeem its errors.
In connection with her domestic life, she gives some explanations which must not be overlooked. She did not at first quit her husband's roof with an intention of permanent absence, but with the intention of a periodical return thither. In time, however, her presence there became unwelcome, and she found those arrangements of which, as she says, she had no right to complain, but which she could not recognize. Friends intervened, advising an effectual reintegration of the broken marriage; but against this, she says, her conscience, no less than her heart, rebelled. There existed, indeed, no virtual bond between herself and her late husband. Whatever may have been the beginning of their estrangement, it seems certain that he acquiesced in her independence with easy satisfaction. He wrote to her,--"I shall not put up at your lodgings when I come to Paris, because I wish as little to be in your way as I wish to have you in mine." At the same time, by visiting her there, and appearing with her in public, he had given a certain recognition to her position. There was, therefore, no room for penitence on the one side, for forgiveness on the other, and, through these, for a renewable moral relation between the two. The law took cognizance of these facts, when, some years later, M. Dudevant brought an action for civil divorce, wishing to recover possession of his children. His complicity in what had taken place, and the amicable nature of the separation, were so fully established, that the court, recognizing in the parties neither h