From this moment we became an object of dread and horror to the population.  We were accused and convicted of pulmonary phthisis, which is equivalent to the plague in the prejudices regarding contagion entertained by Spanish physicians.  A rich doctor, who for the moderate remuneration of forty-five francs deigned to come and pay us a visit, declared, nevertheless, that there was nothing the matter, and prescribed nothing.

Another physician came obligingly to our assistance; but the pharmacy at Palma was in such a miserable state that we could only procure detestable drugs.  Moreover, the illness was to be aggravated by causes which no science and no devotion could efficiently battle against.

One morning, when we were given up to serious fears on account of the duration of these rains and these sufferings which were bound up together, we received a letter from the fierce Gomez [the landlord], who declared, in the Spanish style, that we held a person who held a disease which carried contagion into his house, and threatened prematurely the life of his family; in consequence of which he requested us to leave his palace with the shortest delay possible.

This did not cause us much regret, for we could no longer stay there without fear of being drowned in our rooms; but our invalid was not in a condition to be moved without danger, especially by such means of transport as are available in Majorca, and in the weather then obtaining.  And then the difficulty was to know where to go, for the rumour of our phthisis had spread instantaneously, and we could no longer hope to find a shelter anywhere, not even at a very high price for a night.  We knew that the obliging persons who offeredto take us in were themselves not free from prejudices, and that, moreover, we should draw upon them, in going near them, the reprobation which weighed upon us.  Without the hospitality of the French consul, who did wonders in order to gather us all under his roof, we were threatened with the prospect of camping in some cavern like veritable Bohemians.

Another miracle came to pass, and we found an asylum for the winter.  At the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa there was a Spanish refugee, who had hidden himself there for I don’t know what political reason.  Visiting the monastery, we were struck with the gentility of his manners, the melancholy beauty of his wife, and the rustic and yet comfortable furniture of their cell.  The poesy of this monastery had turned my head.  It happened that the mysterious couple wished to leave the country precipitately, and—­that they were as delighted to dispose to us of their furniture and cell as we were to acquire them.  For the moderate sum of a thousand francs we had then a complete establishment, but such a one as we could have procured in France for 300 francs, so rare, costly, and difficult to get are the most necessary things in Majorca.

The outcasts decamped speedily from the Son-Vent.  But before Senor Gomez had done with his tenants, he made them pay for the whitewashing and the replastering of the whole house, which he held to have been infected by Chopin.