In the fall of 1837, Chopin was attacked by an alarming illness, which left him almost without force to support life.  Dangerous symptoms forced him to go South to avoid the rigor of winter.  Madame Sand, always so watchful over those whom she loved, so full of compassion for their sufferings, would not permit him, when his health required so much care, to set out alone, and determined to accompany him.  They selected the island of Majorca for their residence because the air of the sea, joined to the mild climate which prevails there, is especially salubrious for those who are suffering from affections of the lungs.  Though he was so weak when he left Paris that we had no hope of his ever returning; though after his arrival in Majorca he was long and dangerously ill; yet so much was he benefited by the change that big health was improved during several years.

Was it the effect of the balmy climate alone which recalled him to health?  Was it not rather because his life was full of bliss that he found strength to live?  Did he not regain strength only because he now wished to live?  Who can tell how far the influence of the will extends over the body?  Who knows what internal subtle aroma it has the power of disengaging to preserve the sinking frame from decay; what vital force it can breathe into the debilitated organs?  Who can say where the dominion of mind over matter ceases?  Who knows how far our senses are under the dominion of the imagination, to what extent their powers may be increased, or their extinction accelerated, by its influence?  It matters not how the imagination gains its strange extension of power, whether through long and bitter exercise, or, whether spontaneously collecting its forgotten strength, it concentrates its force in some new and decisive moment of destiny:  as when the rays of the sun are able to kindle a flame of celestial origin when concentrated in the focus of the burning glass, brittle and fragile though the medium be.

All the long scattered rays of happiness were collected within this epoch of the life of Chopin; is it then surprising that they should have rekindled the flame of life, and that it should have burned at this time with the most vivid lustre?  The solitude surrounded by the blue waves of the Mediterranean and shaded by groves of orange, seemed fitted in its exceeding loveliness for the ardent vows of youthful lovers, still believing in their naive and sweet illusions, sighing for happiness in “some desert isle.”  He breathed there that air for which natures unsuited for the world, and never feeling themselves happy in it, long with such a painful home-sickness; that air which may be found everywhere if we can find the sympathetic souls to breathe it with us, and which is to be met nowhere without them; that air of the land of our dreams; and which in spite of all obstacles, of the bitter real, is easily discovered when sought by two!  It is the air of the country of the ideal to which we gladly entice the being we cherish, repeating with poor Mignon:  DAHIN!  DAHIN!...LASST UNS ZIEHN!