Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Palma, November 14, 1838:—­

I am leaving the town, and shall establish myself in the country:  I have a pretty furnished house, with a garden and a magnificent view, for fifty francs per month.  Besides, two leagues from there I have a cell, that is to say, three rooms and a garden full of oranges and lemons, for thirty-five francs per year, in the large monastery of Valdemosa.

The furniture of the villa was indeed of the most primitive kind, and the walls were only whitewashed, but the house was otherwise convenient, well ventilated—­in fact, too well ventilated—­and above all beautifully situated at the foot of rounded, fertile mountains, in the bosom of a rich valley which was terminated by the yellow walls of Palma, the mass of the cathedral, and the sparkling sea on the horizon.

Chopin to Fontana; Palma, November 15, 1838:—­

[Footnote:  Julius Fontana, born at Warsaw in 1810, studied music (at the Warsaw Conservatoire under Elsner) as an amateur and law for his profession; joined in 1830 the Polish insurrectionary army; left his country after the failure of the insurrection; taught the piano in London; played in 1835 several times with success in Paris; resided there for some years; went in 1841 to Havannah; on account of the climate, removed to New York; gave there concerts with Sivori; and returned to Paris in 1850.  This at least is the account we get of him in Sowinski’s “Les Musiciens polonais et slaves.”  Mr. A. J. Hipkins, who became acquainted with Fontana during a stay which the latter made in London in 1856 (May and early part of June), described him to me as “an honourable and gentlemanly man.”  From the same informant I learned that Fontana married a lady who had an income for life, and that by this marriage he was enabled to retire from the active exercise of his profession.  Later on he became very deaf, and this great trouble was followed by a still greater one, the death of his wife.  Thus left deaf and poor, he despaired, and, putting a pistol to one of his ears, blew out his brains.  According to Karasowski he died at Paris in 1870.  The compositions he published (dances, fantasias, studies, &c.) are of no importance.  He is said to have published also two books, one on Polish orthography in 1866 and one on popular astronomy in 1869.  The above and all the following letters of Chopin to Fontana are in the possession of Madame Johanna Lilpop, of Warsaw, and are here translated from Karasowski’s Polish edition of his biography of Chopin.  Many of the letters are undated, and the dates suggested by Karasowski generally wrong.  There are, moreover, two letters which are given as if dated by Chopin; but as the contents point to Nohant and 1841 rather than to Majorca and 1838 and 1839, I shall place them in Chapter XXIV., where also my reasons for doing so will be more particularly stated.  A third letter, supposed by Karasowski to be written at Valdemosa in February, I hold to be written at Marseilles in April.  It will be found in the next chapter.]