This brings us to the end of the known letters written by Chopin and Madame Sand from Majorca.  And now let us see what we can find in George Sand’s books to complete the picture of the life of her and her party at Valdemosa, of which the letters give only more or less disconnected indications.  I shall use the materials at my disposal freely and cautiously, quoting some passages in full, regrouping and summing-up others, and keeping always in mind—­ which the reader should likewise do—­the authoress’s tendency to emphasise, colour, and embellish, for the sake of literary and moral effect.

Not to extend this chapter too much, I refer the curious to George Sand’s “Un Hiver a Majorque” for a description of the “admirable, grandiose, and wild nature” in the midst of which the “poetic abode” of her and her party was situated—­of the grandly and beautifully-varied surface of the earth, the luxuriant southern vegetation, and the marvellous phenomena of light and air; of the sea stretching out on two sides and meeting the horizon; of the surrounding formidable peaks, and the more distant round-swelling hills; of the eagles descending in the pursuit of their prey down to the orange trees of the monastery gardens; of the avenue of cypresses serpentining from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the gorge; of the torrents covered with myrtles; in short, of the immense ensemble, the infinite details, which overwhelm the imagination and outvie the poet’s and painter’s dreams.  Here it will be advisable to confine ourselves to the investigation of a more limited sphere, to inspect rather narrow interiors than vast landscapes.

As the reader has gathered from the preceding letters, there was no longer a monastic community at Valdemosa.  The monks had been dispersed some time before, and the monastery had become the property of the state.  During the hot summer months it was in great part occupied by small burghers from Palma who came in quest of fresh air.  The only permanent inhabitants of the monastery, and the only fellow-tenants of George Sand’s party, were two men and one woman, called by the novelist respectively the Apothecary, the Sacristan, and Maria Antonia.  The first, a remnant of the dispersed community, sold mallows and couch-grass, the only specifics he had; the second was the person in whose keeping were the keys of the monastery; and the third was a kind of housekeeper who, for the love of God and out of neighbourly friendship, offered her help to new-comers, and, if it was accepted, did not fail to levy heavy contributions.

The monastery was a complex of strongly-constructed, buildings without any architectural beauty, and such was, its circumference and mass of stones that it would have been easy to house an army corps.  Besides the dwelling of the superior, the cells of the lay-brothers, the lodgings for visitors, the stables, and other structures, there were three cloisters, each consisting of twelve cells and twelve chapels.  The most ancient of these cloisters, which is also the smallest, dates from the 15th century.