My dear friend,—­I am at Palma, among palms, cedars, cactuses, aloes, and olive, orange, lemon, fig, and pomegranate trees, &c., which the Jardin des Plantes possesses only thanks to its stoves.  The sky is like a turquoise, the sea is like lazuli, and the mountains are like emeralds.  The air?  The air is just as in heaven.  During the day there is sunshine, and consequently it is warm—­everybody wears summer clothes.  During the night guitars and songs are heard everywhere and at all hours.  Enormous balconies with vines overhead, Moorish walls...The town, like everything here, looks towards Africa...In one word, a charming life”!

  Dear Julius, go to Pleyel—­the piano has not yet arrived—­and
  ask him by what route they have sent it.

  The Preludes you shall have soon.

I shall probably take up my quarters in a delightful monastery in one of the most beautiful sites in the world:  sea, mountains, palm trees, cemetery, church of the Knights of the Cross, ruins of mosques, thousand-year-old olive trees!...Ah, my dear friend, I am now enjoying life a little more; I am near what is most beautiful—­I am a better man.

  Letters from my parents and whatever you have to send me give
  to Grzymala; he knows the safest address.

  Embrace Johnnie. [Footnote:  The Johnnie so frequently
  mentioned in the letters to Fontana is John Matuszynski.] How
  soon he would recover here!

Tell Schlesinger that before long he will receive Ms. To acquaintances speak little of me.  Should anybody ask, say that I shall be back in spring.  The mail goes once a week; I write through the French Consulate here.

  Send the enclosed letter as it is to my parents; leave it at
  the postoffice yourself.

     Yours,

       Chopin.

George Sand relates in “Un Hiver a Majorque” that the first days which her party passed at the Son-Vent (House of the Wind)—­this was the name of the villa they had rented—­were pretty well taken up with promenading and pleasant lounging, to which the delicious climate and novel scenery invited.  But this paradisaic condition was suddenly changed as if by magic when at the end of two or three weeks the wet season began and the Son-Vent became uninhabitable.

The walls of it were so thin that the lime with which our rooms were plastered swelled like a sponge.  For my part I never suffered so much from cold, although it was in reality not very cold; but for us, who are accustomed to warm ourselves in winter, this house without a chimney was like a mantle of ice on our shoulders, and I felt paralysed.  Chopin, delicate as he was and subject to violent irritation of the larynx, soon felt the effects of the damp.

  We could not accustom ourselves to the stifling odour of the
  brasiers, and our invalid began to ail and to cough.