We have seen that Sand,carried away by the general movement,had gone through the campaign of 1815as a volunteer,although he was then only nineteen years old.On his return,he,like others,had found his golden hopes deceived,and it is from this period that we find his journal assuming the tone of mysticism and sadness which our readers must have remarked in it.He soon entered one of these associations,the Teutonia;and from that moment,regarding the great cause which he had taken up as a religious one,he attempted to make the conspirators worthy of their enterprise,and thus arose his attempts to inculcate moral doctrines,in which he succeeded with some,but failed with the majority.Sand had succeeded,however,in forming around him a certain circle of Puritans,composed of about sixty to eighty students,all belonging to the group of the 'Burschenschaft'which continued its political and religious course despite all the jeers of the opposing group--the 'Landmannschaft'.
One of his friends called Dittmar and he were pretty much the chiefs,and although no election had given them their authority,they exercised so much influence upon what was decided that in any particular case their fellow-adepts were sure spontaneously to obey any impulse that they might choose to impart.The meetings of the Burschen took place upon a little hill crowned by a ruined castle,which was situated at some distance from Erlangen,and which Sand and Dittmar had called the Ruttli,in memory of the spot where Walter Furst,Melchthal,and Stauffacher had made their vow to deliver their country;there,under the pretence of students'games,while they built up a new house with the ruined fragments,they passed alternately from symbol to action and from action to symbol.
Meanwhile the association was making such advances throughout Germany that not only the princes and kings of the German confederation,but also the great European powers,began to be uneasy.France sent agents to bring home reports,Russia paid agents on the spot,and the persecutions that touched a professor and exasperated a whole university often arose from a note sent by the Cabinet of the Tuileries or of St.Petersburg.
It was amid the events that began thus that Sand,after commending himself to the protection of God,began the year 1817,in the sad mood in which we have just seen him,and in which he was kept rather by a disgust for things as they were than by a disgust for life.On the 8th of May,preyed upon by this melancholy,which he cannot conquer,and which comes from the disappointment of all his political hopes,he writes in his diary:
"I shall find it impassible to set seriously to work,and this idle temper,this humour of hypochondria which casts its black veil over everything in life,--continues and grows in spite of the moral activity which I imposed on myself yesterday."In the holidays,fearing to burden his parents with any additional expense,he will not go home,and prefers to make a walking tour with his friends.No doubt this tour,in addition to its recreative side,had a political aim.Be that as it may,Sand's diary,during the period of his journey,shows nothing but the names of the towns through which he passed.That we may have a notion of Sand's dutifulness to his parents,it should be said that he did not set out until he had obtained his mother's permission.On their return,Sand,Dittmar,and their friends the Burschen,found their Ruttli sacked by their enemies of the Landmannschaft;the house that they had built was demolished and its fragments dispersed.Sand took this event for an omen,and was greatly depressed by it.
"It seems to me,O my God!"he says in his journal,"that everything swims and turns around me.My soul grows darker and darker;my moral strength grows less instead of greater;I work and cannot achieve;walk towards my aim and do not reach it;exhaust myself,and do nothing great.The days of life flee one after another;cares and uneasiness increase;I see no haven anywhere for our sacred German cause.The end will be that we shall fall,for I myself waver.OLord and Father!protect me,save me,and lead me to that land from which we are for ever driven back by the indifference of wavering spirits."About this time a terrible event struck Sand to the heart;his friend Dittmar was drowned.