latter business could not be entrusted to Maria Antonia without the sacrifice of their night’s rest. [Footnote:  George Sand’s share of the household work was not so great as she wished to make the readers of Un Hiver a Majorque believe, for it consisted, as we gather from her letters, only in giving a helping hand to her maid, who had undertaken to cook and clean up, but found that her strength fell short of the requirements.] Then George Sand would teach her children for some hours.  These lessons over, the young ones ran about and amused themselves for the rest of the day, while their mother sat down to her literary studies and labours.  In the evening they either strolled together through the moonlit cloisters or read in their cell, half of the night being generally devoted by the novelist to writing.  George Sand says in the “Histoire de ma Vie” that she wrote a good deal and read beautiful philosophical and historical works when she was not nursing her friend.  The latter, however, took up much of her time, and prevented her from getting out much, for he did not like to be left alone, nor, indeed, could he safely be left long alone.  Sometimes she and her children would set out on an expedition of discovery, and satisfy their curiosity and pleasantly while away an hour or two in examining the various parts of the vast aggregation of buildings; or the whole party would sit round the stove and laugh over the rehearsal of the morning’s transactions with the villagers.  Once they witnessed even a ball in this sanctuary.  It was on Shrove-Tuesday, after dark, that their attention was roused by a strange, crackling noise.  On going to the door of their cell they could see nothing, but they heard the noise approaching.  After a little there appeared at the opposite end of the cloister a faint glimmer of white light, then the red glare of torches, and at last a crew the sight of which made their flesh creep and their hair stand on end—­he-devils with birds’ heads, horses’ tails, and tinsel of all colours; she-devils or abducted shepherdesses in white and pink dresses; and at the head of them Lucifer himself, horned and, except the blood-red face, all black.  The strange noise, however, turned out to be the rattling of castanets, and the terrible-looking figures a merry company of rich farmers and well-to-do villagers who were going to have a dance in Maria Antonia’s cell.  The orchestra, which consisted of a large and a small guitar, a kind of high-pitched violin, and from three to four pairs of castanets, began to play indigenous jotas and fandangos which, George Sand tells us, resemble those of Spain, but have an even bolder form and more original rhythm.  The critical spectators thought that the dancing of the Majorcans was not any gayer than their singing, which was not gay at all, and that their boleros had “la gravite des ancetres, et point de ces graces profanes qu’on admire en Andalousie.”  Much of the music of these islanders was rather interesting