It presents a charming coup d’oeil.  The court which it encloses with its broken-down walls is the ancient cemetery of the monks.  No inscription distinguishes these tombs...The graves are scarcely indicated by the swellings of the turf.

In the cells were stored up the remains of all sorts of fine old furniture and sculpture, but these could only be seen through the chinks, for the cells were carefully locked, and the sacristan would not open them to anyone.  The second cloister, although of more recent date, was likewise in a dilapidated state, which, however, gave it character.  In stormy weather it was not at all safe to pass through it on account of the falling fragments of walls and vaults.

I never heard the wind sound so like mournful voices and utter such despairing howls as in these empty and sonorous galleries.  The noise of the torrents, the swift motion of the clouds, the grand, monotonous sound of the sea, interrupted by the whistling of the storm and the plaintive cries of sea- birds which passed, quite terrified and bewildered, in the squalls; then thick fogs which fell suddenly like a shroud and which, penetrating into the cloisters through the broken arcades, rendered us invisible, and made the little lamp we carried to guide us appear like a will-o’-the-wisp wandering under the galleries; and a thousand other details of this monastic life which crowd all at once into my memory:  all combined made indeed this monastery the most romantic abode in the world.

I was not sorry to see for once fully and in reality what I had seen only in a dream, or in the fashionable ballads, and in the nuns’ scene in Robert le Diable at the Opera.  Even fantastic apparitions were not wanting to us. [Footnote:  “Un Hiver a Majorque,” pp. 116 and 117.]

In the same book from which the above passage is extracted we find also a minute description of the new cloister; the chapels, variously ornamented, covered with gilding, decorated with rude paintings and horrible statues of saints in coloured wood, paved in the Arabic style with enamelled faience laid out in various mosaic designs, and provided with a fountain or marble conch; the pretty church, unfortunately without an organ, but with wainscot, confessionals, and doors of most excellent workmanship, a floor of finely-painted faience, and a remarkable statue in painted wood of St. Bruno; the little meadow in the centre of the cloister, symmetrically planted with box-trees, &c., &c.

George Sand’s party occupied one of the spacious, well-ventilated, and well-lighted cells in this part of the monastery.  I shall let her describe it herself.