his romantic solitude had it not been for the sad spectacle of her
companion's sufferings and certain days of serious anxiety about his
life. And now I must quote a. long but very important passage from the
"Histoire de ma Vie":--

The poor great artist was a detestable patient. What I had
feared, but unfortunately not enough, happened. He became
completely demoralised. Bearing pain courageously enough, he
could not overcome the disquietude of his imagination. The
monastery was for him full of terrors and phantoms, even when
he was well. He did not say so, and I had to guess it. On
returning from my nocturnal explorations in the ruins with my
children, I found him at ten o'clock at night before his
piano, his face pale, his eyes wild, and his hair almost
standing on end. It was some moments before he could
recognise us.

He then made an attempt to laugh, and played to us sublime
things he had just composed, or rather, to be more accurate,
terrible or heartrending ideas which had taken possession of
him, as it were without his knowledge, in that hour of
solitude, sadness, and terror.

It was there that he composed the most beautiful of those
short pages he modestly entitled "Preludes." They are
masterpieces. Several present to the mind visions of deceased
monks and the sounds of the funeral chants which beset his
imagination; others are melancholy and sweet--they occurred
to him in the hours of sunshine and of health, with the noise
of the children's laughter under the window, the distant
sound of guitars, the warbling of the birds among the humid
foliage, and the sight of the pale little full-blown roses on
the snow.

Others again are of a mournful sadness, and, while charming
the ear, rend the heart. There is one of them which occurred
to him on a dismal rainy evening which produces a terrible
mental depression. We had left him well that day, Maurice and
I, and had gone to Palma to buy things we required for our
encampment. The rain had come on, the torrents had
overflowed, we had travelled three leagues in six hours to
return in the midst of the inundation, and we arrived in the
dead of night, without boots, abandoned by our driver, having
passed through unheard-of dangers. We made haste,
anticipating the anxiety of our invalid. It had been indeed
great, but it had become as it were congealed into