Extravagant, unbelievable, unreal, surreal, strange are the adjectives which apply, and, unlike most of Sand's fictional creations, there is no one logical explanation which the reader must accept. He is quite free to choose the fantastic interpretation.

While in his poorly titled but stimulating volume Voyage dans le cristal (containing not just the subtitle for Laura and that novel, but also four of the Contes d'une grand'mère, La Coupe, and an "annexe" of small pertinent texts), Francis Lacassin has declared: "L'oeuvre fantastique de George Sand se reconnaît enfin à une disposition assez rare: la triple absence de la mort (violente), l'horreur et la peur, ces trois auxiliaires dévoués du surnatural" (28). We beg to differ slightly: not only is there horror to imaginative children (and adults) in "Le Géant Yéous" (1), which he also mentions as fantastic, but there seems to be fear on the part of Mouny-Robin when he leaves, forbidding the young men to accompany him. Later in the work, his death, though not immediate, has also been caused by a violent happening.

But let us return to details of Mouny-Robin's creation. George Sand spoke little about the work, other than of its publications, from the Sand correspondence Georges Lubin has made available. Lubin does mention he is in disagreement with Wladimir Karénine asserting that the prototype for Mouny-Robin was a Nohant servant named Jeanny; he adds that it was probably "un nommé Mouny, dont (Hippolyte) Chatiron disait dans une lettre du 11 avril (1844): "Mouny en est quitte pour 19 f. et son fusil; il doit en remercier Simonet qui l'a bien défendu et a tourné la questionâ" (Sand, Corr., VI 557 n4).

The work was first published in the Revue des deux mondes on June 15, 1841 (Lubin, Sand Corr., V 207, 279). It was next published by Hippolyte Souverain in Volume VII of Le Foyer de l'Opéra with "Melchior" and "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" (V 895). Then it appeared with Pauline and Les Majorcains at the end of Volume XIV of the Perrotin edition of the Oeuvres complètes in 1843 (IX 335).

Mouny-Robin differs from other texts dealing with Berrichon peasants in that, as its point of departure, there is a vivid discussion of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz (1821) prior to Sand's introduction to hunting in la Vallée Noire. To her contemporaries, the parallels were obvious, but to twentieth-century readers, unaware of the tremendous popularity of the Weber opera in Paris after December 7, 1824 (Marix-Spire 24 n41) this is not always the case. The plot concerns a marksman, Max, who accepts help from Samiel, the Evil one, to become successor to the head game-keeper and to win his daughter Agnès in marriage. The contests which Max must win are those of sharp-shooting.

Aside from hunting and from possible help from the devil trying to gain a soul, Sand's hero is different from the protagonist of Weber's plot, which derives, moreover, from an old German legend. Her use of Weber's music and the theatrical production as her deliberate beginning, as well as at later moments, show her sure hand at fictional techniques and convince her readers of not only her but their own sophistications. She draws her audience by an argument between a bourgeois Frenchman and a "bon Allemand" at the Second Act of the opera; then has the argument commented on by a narrator, speaking in the first person, between acts, with a "spectateur cosmopolite." Sand often uses this dialogue approach, both in her journalism and in her fiction, perhaps to distance herself from her readers, but more probably as a means of showing various sides to questions and later for convincing, by the strength of her narrator's reasoning. She pulls her readers into thinking that they, too, are more knowledgeable than the first middle class discussants; and she flatters their curiosity first by establishing their superiority in judgment and then by leading them into speculation about how common folk are quite naturally closer to legends and fables and traditions than cultivated individuals, who are much too rational.

The use Sand makes of nationality differences between French and Germans is actually quite good: she has her intellectual knowledge well in hand. She distinguishes the German as auditory and the French as visual. Then she denotes the French as insisting on truth (la vérité), while the German seeks fantasy, the embellishment of truth, about which she has her narrator add:

We learn of the Moulin Blanchet, where Mouny-Robin had been the miller in the times he alone had always had water. But in the third sentence, after we first read Mouny's name, we also learn:

The method Sand uses to present Mouny, (unlike "les sorciers," who are always reputed to be nasty and harmful) is to show him gentle and obliging even though he is "vu de mauvais oeil" (258). The narrator tells how he first began their relations when, one day trying to avoid a long detour, he and a younger boy were afraid to attempt crossing a very wide ditch filled with water and mud. Seeing Mouny, and not really believing the legend, he had suggested: "Si tu es un brave sorcier, fais-mois passer par le meilleur chemin puisque tu me connais" (258). Mouny, satisfied by this deference, took them safely across, and, from that time on, showed the narrator special friendship.

Years pass. The narrator's brother, back from military service with a "régiment de hussards" (261), is passionately interested in hunting. The narrator, rather like the author, preferring country-side pleasures, such as smoking under the shade of a walnut tree or reading a novel beside the stream, willingly accompanies his brother, who wants to learn from the best hunter, Mouny. With the unnamed brother, Sand has now created again another pair of commentators following 1) the good German and the bourgeois Frenchman, 2) the narrator and the cosmopolitan spectator. The third pair permits the two brothers to share their rational and irrational feelings about Mouny, to question and contradict one another, to show both sides of the interpretations, while, frequently, Mouny furthers either side of the interpretation himself. Sand suggests the deviltries by the numerous concrete details she furnishes and the exploitation of words suggesting more than logical explanation. Like Casper of The Enchanted Marksman, "[l]a chasse l'absorbait tout entier" (260). When she wants to emphasize the irrational of Mouny's "sens mystérieux," she has a "garde-champêtre" (of course, a man of the people) announce: "Un beau jour (Mouny) trouvera son maître, et Georgeon finira par le tourer" (George Sand's note: "tourer" is Berrichon for "terrasser dans une lutte" (261 n1).

Mouny's rules for their first hunt also suggest of the devil, because he insists that they begin at the hour of the "grand'messe" (261), that everyone be in the church before the first shot, and that they must meet neither girl nor woman. When they see a shepherdess watching her sheep, Mouny declares that luck is against them, and that they will be two hours without shooting anything.

One after another, during the four and one-half years, Mouny's predictions are astonishingly accurate, be they about time, the sort of animal or bird shot, the specific location or the number, (for example, of birds to be felled at one moment). Mouny discredits all references to Georgeon and bullets which "portent juste" (262), but, when he says luck will be with them, when he kills a magpie but then prohibits them from picking it up, because "Cela n'est bon qu'à lever le sort" (262), George Sand, once again, has destroyed and then rebuilt a fantasy. She has Mouny insist "je veux tuer un lièvre, il faut que je le tue, ce diable de lièvre" (263). The language can mean nothing; it also can suggest. She reinforces her suggestions with the narrator admitting "Ma foi, je commençais à croire que Georgeon s'était mis de la partie" (263).

At the middle of the story, the two disbelievers almost believe. But each time Mouny vociferously denies it, a new possibility for the devil's participation is advanced. Is it talent? Is it Georgeon? Where Mouny's habits do not conform so much as the brothers had first imagined, they note with him that there is "une sorte de divination à l'endroit de la chasse" (265), and that, at moments he seems tormented by a sort of sickness or suffering. When their dogs chase snakes and hedgehogs, Mouny forbids shooting these vile animals saying that it spoiled one's capacities. Sand again intermingles a peasant interpretation, that Mouny protected " ...les mauvaises bêtes vouées au diable, car Georgeon livre au chasseur qu'il protège le plus noble gibier, à condition qu'il respectera les animaux immondes dont il fait sa société dans les nuits de sabbat "(265). These animals are owls, wildcats, toads, foxes, otters, bats, wolves (265).

Furthermore, when hunting goes poorly, Mouny announces in a state of extreme agitation: "je vais me retirer" (265), which he defines as not stopping hunting but rather going off, mysteriously, alone. Shortly after, he returns, trembling all over, in a state of fatigue, suffering or fear, and looking as if he had been "terrassé dans une lutte violente" (266), the earlier definition of the berrichon touré. Has he fought with Georgeon? In his usual attitude of denial he insists "Rien, rien, ... Ce n'est rien" (266), and proclaims that they are going to have a good hunt. Once again, all his predictions come true, even the most unbelievable.

The last elements Sand introduces are Mouny's insistence his wife should know nothing about how and where they hunt, because women, knowing more than just what they've bagged in game, bring bad luck. This enables the narrator to re-state that if Mouny didn't believe in the devil and bad spirits, and wasn't superstitious, he did believe in good or harmful influences. And the narrator points out his science of instinct or of observation (268). But Sand undermines her own ideas when the others question Mouny only to find that he is cleverer than they, while his answers are "evasive" (268). Mouny's sort of fits continue, but, when the young men sneak around to observe him secretly, they say his brief attacks are not epilepsy (he doesn't foam at the mouth or moan), that they are nervousness: "une agitation convulsive, un étouffement pénible, quelque chose de plus douloureux qu'effrayant à voir" (269).

At the very moment the author seems to have little more to add, Sand has her narrator detail Mouny's mysterious sensual gifts, his faculty of "seconde vue" (271), or of "odorat porté jusquâ'à la puissance canine" (271). The tale-teller expounds at great length on mysterious qualities of the mind, on magnetism, and, as a humorous note (on the part of Sand perhaps mocking herself), he ends by putting the cosmopolitan spectator to sleep. Sand thus cleverly brings everyone back to the Freischütz by having the narrator wake his neighbor from deep slumber to hear Weber's admirable finale.

Still the story has not come a full circle. The wakened spectator's suggestion that they go afterward to the celebrated Café Tortoni for the end of the story of Mouny-Robin/Gaspard and of Georgeon-Samiel is a nice means of equalizing the two works.

The narrator declines the invitation to a place whose influences are contrary to those his story should produce, but he counter-proposes a walk in the open air, under the light of the moon. There he reveals how Mouny, unlike Max, is not freed from Samiel/Georgeon, but rather falls (for no explainable reason, because he never drinks) under the wheel of the mill, and is so seriously injured that, six months later, he dies. Everyone around, including Jeanne his wife, agrees that he has been touré (275) by Georgeon, which, to his very end, Mouny has continued to deny.

The description of Mouny's accident is rapid and brutal, though in no way does it equal the horror of a tale by Edgar Allan Poe. At the same time, we are told other details to allow rational reactions: Jeanne has taken as her lover "un gros garçon du moulin, noir, rauque et crépu" (276), but Mouny had never shown any jealousy and had openly announced: "Jeanne est beaucoup plus jeune que moi [...] Elle est jolie; je l'ai toujours négligée [...] Je l'aime de tout mon coeur mais j'aime encore mieux la chasse" (276). It is not presumable then that he was assassinated by his rival, and Jeanne had had everything to lose in losing him as her husband. Was it somnambulism or a cateleptic fit? "Quoi qu'il en soit, sa fin a été mystérieuse comme sa vie" (276). And Sand has her narrator conclude that the Germans don't have the monopoly on the fantastic, for country people in France are just as inclined toward the fantastic as those in other lands.

In our estimation, George Sand (with this novella) was realizing something which she had actually criticized as lacking in French literature. In the first pages she had spoken of Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, Mickiewicz, the mythical Ossian and Walter Scott as examples of their respective national literatures, and had stated flatly:  Nous n'avons rien de semblable. Nos superstitions nont point eu d'illustres interprètes et n'en auront pas; l'esprit voltairien leur a porté le dernier coup, et notre moderne école fantastique n'a été qu'une pâle imitation de celles de nos voisins. Elle na rien produit de durable (253).
 

Wasn't this tale perhaps an attempt by Sand to produce a literary piece that was "durable"? As we all know, she would go on to create her Légendes rustiques, which would exploit Berrichon folklore in all its richness, and she would later write a fantastic play Le Drac. A few years before her death, she wrote "Le Géant Yéous" and "Les Orgues du Titan."

What George Sand did with Mouny-Robin was extremely clever: the background of a popular opera with music she had loved (and had already mentioned in the early Lettres d'un voyageur), three sets of counter-exchanges and dialogues surrounding a hero whose life and death can be whatever the reader chooses to interpret. Mouny-Robin ends, living not "happily every after" like Max and Agnès. With a Sandian touch of rustic realism, Mouny's wife Jeanne, the apparently minor love object, less important than hunting, appears only in the last moments of the story. But the reader can also continue to wonder about the hunter's accident. Might Jeanne have been the cause for a suicide wish on the part of Mouny? Jeanne or Georgeon? George Sand, with consummate skill has juxtaposed German fantastic with that of her own fantastic from Berry.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bornecque, Pierre. La France et sa littérature. Lyon: IAC. Éditions de Lyon, 1953.

Kaufman, Helen, I. The Story of a Hundred Composers. NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1943.

Marix-Spire, Thérèse. Les Romantiques et la musique: le Cas George Sand 1804-1838.

Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1954.

Mendelssohn, Felix. The Story of a Hundred Operas. 2nd edition. NY: Grosset &

Dunlap, 1940.

Sand, George. Correspondance. Ed. Georges Lubin. 23 Vols. Paris: Garnier, 1964.

-----. Simon, La Marquise, Monsieur Rousset, Mouny-Robin, Les Sauvages de Paris.

Paris: Michel Levy frères, 1865.

-----. Voyage dans le cristal. Préface: Francis Lacassin. City missing , France: Union

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