sed the musical part of the
entertainment. All this is, however, so much better and so much
more fully told by George Sand (in Dernieres Pages: Le Theatre des
Marionnettes de Nohant) that we will take our information from her. It
was in the long nights of a winter that she conceived the plan of these
private theatricals in imitation of the comedia dell' arte--namely,
of "pieces the improvised dialogue of which followed a written sketch
posted up behind the scenes."

They resembled the charades which are acted in society and
which are more or less developed according to the ensemble and
the talent of the performers. We had begun with these. By
degrees the word of the charade disappeared and we played
first mad saynetes, then comedies of intrigues and adventures,
and finally dramas of incidents and emotions. The whole thing
began by pantomime, and this was of Chopin's invention; he
occupied the place at the piano and improvised, while the
young people gesticulated scenes and danced comic ballets. I
leave you to imagine whether these now wonderful, now charming
improvisations quickened the brains and made supple the legs
of our performers. He led them as he pleased and made them
pass, according to his fancy, from the droll to the severe,
from the burlesque to the solemn, from the graceful to the
passionate. We improvised costumes in order to play
successively several roles. As soon as the artist saw them
appear, he adapted his theme and his accent in a marvellous
manner to their respective characters. This went on for three
evenings, and then the master, setting out for Paris, left us
thoroughly stirred up, enthusiastic, and determined not to
suffer the spark which had electrified us to be lost.

To get away from the quicksands of Souvenirs--for George Sand's pages,
too, were written more than thirty years after the occurrences she
describes, and not published till 1877--I shall make some extracts from
the contemporaneous correspondence of George Sand's great friend,
the celebrated painter Eugene Delacroix. [FOOTNOTE: Lettres de Eugene
Delacroix (1815 a 1863) recucillies et publiees par M. Philippe Burty.
Paris, 1878.] The reader cannot fail to feel at once the fresh breeze
of reality that issues from these letters, which contain vivid sketches
full of natural beauties and free from affectation and striving after
effect:--

Nohant, June 7, 1842.

...The place is very p