ense; for, as
regards the life of the heart, it cannot cease for a moment...

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 t