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hair stand on end--he-devils with birds' heads, horses' tails, and
tinsel of all colours; she-devils or abducted shepherdesses in white
and pink dresses; and at the head of them Lucifer himself, horned and,
except the blood-red face, all black. The strange noise, however, turned
out to be the rattling of castanets, and the terrible-looking figures a
merry company of rich farmers and well-to-do villagers who were going to
have a dance in Maria Antonia's cell. The orchestra, which consisted
of a large and a small guitar, a kind of high-pitched violin, and from
three to four pairs of castanets, began to play indigenous jotas and
fandangos which, George Sand tells us, resemble those of Spain, but have
an even bolder form and more original rhythm. The critical spectators
thought that the dancing of the Majorcans was not any gayer than their
singing, which was not gay at all, and that their boleros had "la
gravite des ancetres, et point de ces graces profanes qu'on admire en
Andalousie." Much of the music of these islanders was rather interesting
than pleasing to their visitors. The clicking of the castanets with
which they accompany their festal processions, and which, unlike the
broken and measured rhythm of the Spaniards, consists of a continuous
roll like that of a drum "battant aux champs," is from time to time
suddenly interrupted in order to sing in unison a coplita on a phrase
which always recommences but never finishes. George Sand shares the
opinion of M. Tastu that the principal Majorcan rhythms and favourite
fioriture are Arabic in type and origin.

Of quite another nature was the music that might be heard in those
winter months in one of the cells of the monastery of Valdemosa. "With
what poesy did his music fill this sanctuary, even in the midst of his
most grievous troubles!" exclaims George Sand. I like to picture
to myself the vaulted cell, in which Pleyel's piano sounded so
magnificently, illumined by a lamp, the rich traceries of the Gothic
chair shadowed on the wall, George Sand absorbed in her studies, her
children at play, and Chopin pouring out his soul in music.

It would be a mistake to think that those months which the friends
spent in Majorca were for them a time of unintermittent or even
largely-predominating wretchedness. Indeed, George Sand herself admits
that, in spite of the wildness of the country and the pilfering habits
of the people, their existence might have been an agreeable one in
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