lorifier of mutinous emotion and the
apologist of lawless love, must have been taken aback by these pages, in
which she had devoted her most fervent energies to tracing the spiritual
history, _peu recreatif_, as she dryly observes, of a monk who, in the
days of the decadence of the monastic orders, retained earnestness and
sincerity; whose mind, revolted by the hypocrisy and worldliness around
him, passes through the successive stages of heresy and philosophic
doubt, and to whom is finally revealed an eternal gospel, which lies at
the core of his old religion, but which later growths have stifled, and
which outlasts all shocks and changes, and is to generate the religion
of the future.

The compositions of Chopin above alluded to, include the finest of his
well-known Preludes, which may easily be conceived of as suggested by
the strange mingling of contrasting impressions in the Chartreuse.
"Several of these Preludes," writes Madame Sand, "represent the visions
that haunted him of deceased monks, the sounds of funeral chants;
others are soft and melancholy; these came to him in his hours of
sunshine and health, at the sound of the children's laughter beneath the
window, the distant thrum of guitars and the songs of the birds under
the damp foliage; at the sight of the pale little roses in bloom among
the snow."

The loneliness and melancholy beauty of the spot, however congenial to
the romance writer or inspiring to the composer, were not the right
tonics for the nerves of the over-sensitive, imaginative invalid. The
care and nursing of Madame Sand made amends for much, and by her good
sense she saved him from being doctored to death by local practitioners.
But his fortitude, which bore up heroically against his personal danger,
was not proof against the dreary influences of Valdemosa in bad weather,
the fogs, the sound of the hurricane sweeping through the valley, and
bringing down portions of the dilapidated building, the noise of the
torrents, the cries of the scared sea-birds and the roar of the sea.

The elevation of the Chartreuse made the climate peculiarly disagreeable
at this season. She writes on:--

We lived in the midst of clouds, and for fifty days were unable to
get down into the plains; the roads were changed to torrents, and
we saw nothing more of the sun. I should have thought it all
beautiful if poor Chopin could only have got on. Maurice was none
the worse. The wind and th