About this time, she was anxious about the health of her son Maurice, and she thought she would take her family to Majorca.  This was a lamentable excursion, but it seemed satisfactory at first.  They travelled by way of Lyons, Avignon, Vaucluse and Nimes.  At Perpignan, Chopin arrived, “as fresh as a rose.”  “Our journey,” wrote George Sand, “seems to be under the most favourable conditions.”  They then went on to Barcelona and to Palma.  In November, 1838, George Sand wrote a most enthusiastic letter:  “It is poetry, solitude, all that is most artistic and chique on earth.  And what skies, what a country; we are delighted."(26) The disenchantment was soon to begin, though.  The first difficulty was to find lodgings, and the second to get furniture.  There was no wood to burn and there was no linen to be had.  It took two months to have a pair of tongs made, and it cost twenty-eight pounds at the customs for a piano to enter the country.  With great difficulty, the forlorn travellers found a country-house belonging to a man named Gomez, which they were able to rent.  It was called the “Windy House.”  The wind did not inconvenience them like the rain, which now commenced.  Chopin could not endure the heat and the odour of the fires.  His disease increased, and this was the origin of the great tribulations that were to follow.

     Buloz: 

     Monday 13th.

     MY DEAR CHRISTINE,

“I have only been at Palma four days.  My journey has been very satisfactory, but rather long and difficult until we were out of France.  I took up my pen (as people say) twenty times over to write the last five or six pages for which Spiridion has been waiting for six months.  It is not the easiest thing in the world, I can assure you, to give the conclusion of one’s own religious belief, and when travelling it is impossible.  At twenty different places I have resolved to think it solemnly over and to write down my conclusion.  But these stoppages were the most tiring part of our journey.  There were visits, dinners, walks, curiosities, ruins, the Vaucluse fountain, Reboul and the Nimes arena, the Barcelona cathedrals, dinners on board the war-ships, the Italian theatres of Spain (and what theatres and what Italians!), guitars and Heaven knows what beside.  There was the moonlight on the sea and above all Valma and Mallorca, the most delightful place in the world, and all this kept me terribly far away from philosophy and theology.  Fortunately I have found some superb convents here all in ruins, with palm-trees, aloes and the cactus in the midst of broken mosaics and crumbling cloisters, and this takes me back to Spiridion.  For the last three days I have had a rage for work, which I cannot satisfy yet, as we have neither fire nor lodging.  There is not an inn in Palma, no house to let and no furniture to be bought.  On arriving here people first have to buy some ground, then build, and