pay the rent of my rooms till the New Year, 450 francs and you will give notice of my giving them up if you have a chance to get others from April.  If not it will be necessary to keep them for a quarter longer.  The rest of the amount, or 1,000 francs, you will return from me to Nougi.  Where he lives you will learn from Johnnie, but don’t tell the latter of the money, for he might attack Nougi, and I do not wish that anyone but you and I should know of it.  Should you succeed in finding rooms, you could send one part of the furniture to Johnnie and another to Grzymala.  You will tell Pleyel to send letters through you.

  I sent you before the New Year a bill of exchange for Wessel;
  tell Pleyel that I have settled with Wessel.

[Footnote:  The music-publisher Christian Rudolph Wessel, of Bremen, who came to London in 1825.  Up to 1838 he had Stodart, and from 1839 to 1845 Stapleton, as partner.  He retired in 1860, Messrs. Edwin Ashdown and Henry Parry being his successors.  Since the retirement of Mr. Parry, in 1882, Mr. Ashdown is the sole proprietor.  Mr. Ashdown, whom I have to thank for the latter part of this note, informs me that Wessel died in 1885.]

  In a few weeks you will receive a Ballade, a Polonaise, and a
  Scherzo.

  Until now I have not yet received any letters from my parents.

  I embrace you.

  Sometimes I have Arabian balls, African sun, and always before
  my eyes the Mediterranean Sea.

  I do not know when I shall be back, perhaps as late as May,
  perhaps even later.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, January 15, 1839:—­

...We inhabit the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, a really sublime place, which I have hardly the time to admire, so many occupations have I with my children, their lessons, and my work.

There are rains here of which one has elsewhere no idea:  it is a frightful deluge!  The air is on account of it so relaxing, so soft, that one cannot drag one’s self along; one is really ill.  Happily, Maurice is in admirable health; his constitution is only afraid of frost, a thing unknown here.  But the little Chopin [footnote:  Madame Marliani seems to have been in the habit of calling Chopin “le petit.”  In another letter to her (April 28, 1839) George Sand writes of Chopin as votre petit.  This reminds one of Mendelssohn’s Chopinetto.] is very depressed and always coughs much.  For his sake I await with impatience the return of fine weather, which will not be long in coming.  His piano has at last arrived at Palma; but it is in the clutches of the custom-house officers, who demand from five to six hundred francs duty, and show themselves intractable.

...I am plunged with Maurice in Thucydides and company; with Solange in the indirect object and the agreement of the participle.  Chopin plays on a poor Majorcan piano which reminds me