As yet not a word from you, and this is my third or fourth letter.  Did you prepay?  Perhaps my parents did not write.  Maybe some misfortune has befallen them.  Or are you so lazy?  But no, you are not lazy, you are so obliging.  No doubt you sent my two letters to my people (both from Palma).  And you must have written to me, only the post of this place, which is the most irregular in the world, has not yet delivered your letters.

Only to-day I was informed that on the ist of December my piano was embarked at Marseilles on a merchant vessel.  The letter took fourteen days to come from that town.  Thus there is some hope that the piano may pass the winter in the port, as here nobody stirs when it rains.  The idea of my getting it just at my departure pleases me, for in addition to the 500 francs for freight and duty which I must pay, I shall have the pleasure of packing it and sending it back.  Meanwhile my manuscripts are sleeping, whereas I cannot sleep, but cough, and am covered with plasters, waiting anxiously for spring or something else.

To-morrow I start for this delightful monastery of Valdemosa.  I shall live, muse, and write in the cell of some old monk who may have had more fire in his heart than I, and was obliged to hide and smother it, not being able to make use of it.

  I think that shortly I shall be able to send you my Preludes
  and my Ballade.  Go and see Leo; do not mention that I am ill,
  he would fear for his 1,000 francs.

  Give my kind remembrances to Johnnie and Pleyel.

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

...What is really beautiful here is the country, the sky, the mountains, the good health of Maurice, and the radoucissement of Solange.  The good Chopin is not in equally brilliant health.  He misses his piano very much.  We received news of it to-day.  It has left Marseilles, and we shall perhaps have it in a fortnight.  Mon Dieu, how hard, difficult, and miserable the physical life is here!  It is beyond what one can imagine.

By a stroke of fortune I have found for sale a clean suite of furniture, charming for this country, but which a French peasant would not have.  Unheard-of trouble was required to get a stove, wood, linen, and who knows what else.  Though for a month I have believed myself established, I am always on the eve of being so.  Here a cart takes five hours to go three leagues; judge of the rest.  They require two months to manufacture a pair of tongs.  There is no exaggeration in what I say.  Guess about this country all I do not tell you.  For my part I do not mind it, but I have suffered a little from it in the fear of seeing my children suffer much from it.

Happily, my ambulance is doing well.  To-morrow we depart for the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, the most poetic residence on earth.  We shall pass there the winter, which has hardly begun and will soon end.  This is the sole happiness of this country.  I have never in my life met with a nature so delicious as that of Majorca.

  ...The people of this country are generally very gracious,
  very obliging; but all this in words...