...The place is very pleasant, and the hosts do their utmost to please me.  When we are not assembled to dine, breakfast, play at billiards, or walk, we are in our rooms, reading, or resting on our sofas.  Now and then there come to you through the window opening on the garden, whiffs of the music of Chopin, who is working in his room; this mingles with the song of the nightingales and the odour of the roses.  You see that so far I am not much to be pitied, and, nevertheless, work must come to give the grain of salt to all this.  This life is too easy, I must purchase it with a little racking of my brains; and like the huntsman who eats with more appetite when he has got his skin torn by bushes, one must strive a little after ideas in order to feel the charm of doing nothing.

  Nohant, June 14, 1842.

...Although I am in every respect most agreeably circumstanced, both as regards body and mind, for I am in much better health, I have not been able to prevent myself from thinking of work.  How strange! this work is fatiguing, and yet the species of activity it gives to the mind is necessary to the body itself.  In vain did I try to get up a passion for billiards, in which I receive a lesson every day, in vain have I good conversations on all the subjects that please me, music that I seize on the wing and by whiffs, I have felt the need of doing something.  I have begun a Sainte-Anne for the parish, and I have already set it agoing.

  Nohant, June 22, 1842.

...Pen and ink certainly become more and more repugnant to me.  I have no more than you any event to record.  I lead a monastic life, and as monotonous as it well can be.  No event varies the course of it.  We expected Balzac, who has not come, and I am not sorry.  He is a babbler who would have destroyed this harmony of nonchalance which I am enjoying thoroughly; at intervals a little painting, billiards, and walking, that is more than is necessary to fill up the days.  There is not even the distraction of neighbours and friends from the environs; in this part of the country everyone remains at home and occupies him self with his oxen and his land.  One would become a fossil here in a very short time.

I have interminable private interviews with Chopin, whom I love much, and who is a man of a rare distinction; he is the most true artist I have met.  He is one of the few one can admire and esteem.  Madame Sand suffers frequently from violent headaches and pains in her eyes, which she tries to master as much as possible and with much strength of will, so as not to weary us with what she suffers.

The greatest event of my stay has been a peasants’ ball on the lawn of the chateau with the best bagpipers of the place.  The people of this part of the country present a remarkable type of gentleness and good nature; ugliness is rare here, though beauty is not often seen, but there is not