n at their own will and pleasure, and the eagles
clamour over our heads."

A cell in this monastery was composed of three rooms: the one in the
middle was intended for reading, prayer and meditation, the other
two were the bedroom and the workshop. All three rooms looked on to a
garden. Reading, rest and manual labour made up the life of these men.
They lived in a limited space certainly, but the view stretched out
infinitely, and prayer went up direct to God. Among the ruined buildings
of the enormous monastery there was a cloister still standing, through
which the wind howled desperately. It was like the scenery in the nuns'
act in _Robert le Diable_. All this made the old monastery the most
romantic place in the world.(28)

(28) George Sand to Madame Buloz. Postscript to the letter
already quoted:

"I am leaving for the country where I have a furnished house
with a garden, magnificently situated for 50 francs a month.
I have also taken a cell, that is three rooms and a garden
for 35 francs a year in the Chartreuse of Valdemosa, a
magnificent, immense monastery quite lonely in the midst of
mountains. Our garden is full of oranges and lemons. The
trees break under them. We have hedges of cactus twenty to
thirty feet high, the sea is about a mile and a half away.
We have a donkey to take us to the town, roads inaccessible
to visitors, immense cloisters and the most beautiful
architecture, a charming church, a cemetery with a palm-tree
and a stone cross like the one in the third act of _Robert
le Diable_. Then, too, there are beds of shrubs cut in
form. All this we have to ourselves with an old woman to
wait on us, and the sacristan who is warder, steward,
majordomo and Jack-of-all-trades. I hope we shall have
ghosts. The door of my cell leads into an enormous
cloister, and when the wind slams the door it is like a
cannon going off through all the monastery. I am delighted
with everything, and fancy I shall be more often in the cell
than in the country-house, which is about six miles away.
You see that I have plenty of poetry and solitude, so that
if I do not work I shall be a stupid thing."

The only drawback was that it was most difficult to live there. There
was no way of getting warm. The stove was a kind of iron furnace which
gave out a terrible odour, and did not prevent the rooms