Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/148

138 Eugène Delacroix, one of Madame Sand's earliest and most valued friends in the artist-world, and one of the many with whom she enjoyed a long and unclouded friendship, gives in his letters some agreeable pictures of life at Nohant, during his visits there in the successive summers of 1845 and 1846:—

He describes a quiet, monastic-like existence, simple and studious: "We have not even the distraction of neighbours and friends around. In this country everybody stays at home, to look after his oxen and his land. One would become a fossil in a very short time."

The greatest event for the visitor was a village-festival—a wedding or a Saint's day—when the rustic dances went on under the tall elms to the roaring of the bagpipes. Peasant youths and peasant maids joined hands in the bourrée, the characteristic dance of the country; now, we fear, surviving in tradition only, but then still popular. The great artist was fired to paint a "Ste. Anne," patron-saint of Nohant, in honour of the place, but his work progressed but slowly. He writes in August, 1846:—"I am frightfully lazy, I can do nothing, I hardly read; and yet the days pass too