Our invalid (she says) did not seem to be in a state to stand
the passage, but he seemed equally incapable of enduring
another week in Majorca. The situation was frightful; there
were days when I lost hope and courage. To console us, Maria
Antonia and her village gossips repeated to us in chorus the
most edifying discourses on the future life. "This consumptive
person," they said, "is going to hell, first because he is
consumptive, secondly, because he does not confess. If he is
in this condition when he dies, we shall not bury him in
consecrated ground, and as nobody will be willing to give him
a grave, his friends will have to manage matters as well as
they can. It remains to be seen how they will get out of the
difficulty; as for me, I will have Inothing to do with it,—
Nor I—Nor I: and Amen!"
In fact, Valdemosa, which at first was enchanting to them, lost afterwards much of its poesy in their eyes. George Sand, as we have seen, said that their sojourn was I in many respects a frightful fiasco; it was so certainly as far as Chopin was concerned, for he arrived with a cough and left the place spitting blood.
The passage from Palma to Barcelona was not so pleasant as that from Barcelona to Palma had been. Chopin suffered much from sleeplessness, which was caused by the noise and bad smell of the most favoured class of passengers on board the Mallorquin—i.e., pigs. "The captain showed us no other attention than that of begging us not to let the invalid lie down on the best bed of the cabin, because according to Spanish prejudice every illness is contagious; and as our man thought already of burning the couch on which the invalid reposed, he wished it should be the worst." [FOOTNOTE: "Un Hiver a Majorque," pp. 24—25.]
On arriving at Barcelona George Sand wrote from the Mallorquin and sent by boat a note to M. Belves, the officer in command at the station, who at once came in his cutter to take her and her party to the Meleagre, where they were well received by the officers, doctor, and all the crew. It seemed to them as if they had left the Polynesian savages and were once more in civilised society. When they shook hands with the French consul they could contain themselves no longer, but jumped for joy and cried "Vive La France!"
A fortnight after their leaving Palma the Phenicien landed them at Marseilles. The treatment Chopin received from the French captain of this steamer differed widely from that he had met with at the hands of the captain of the Mallorquin; for fearing that the invalid was not quite comfortable in a common berth, he gave him his own bed. [FOOTNOTE: "Un Hiver a Majorque," p. 183.]
An extract from a letter written by George Sand from Marseilles on March 8, 1839, to her friend Francois Rollinat, which contains interesting details concerning Chopin in the last scenes of the Majorca intermezzo, may fitly conclude this chapter.
Chopin got worse and worse, and in spite of all offers of
service which were made to us in the Spanish manner, we should
not have found a hospitable house in all the island. At last
we resolved to depart at any price, although Chopin had not
the strength to drag himself along. We asked only one—a first
and a last service—a carriage to convey him to Palma, where
we wished to embark. This service was refused to us, although
our FRIENDS had all equipages and fortunes to correspond. We
were obliged to travel three leagues on the worst roads in a
birlocho [FOOTNOTE: A cabriolet. In a Spainish Dictionary I
find a birlocho defined as a vehicle open in front, with two
seats, and two or four wheels. A more detailed description is
to be found on p. 101 of George Sand's "Un Hiver a
Marjorque.">[ that is to say, a brouette.
On arriving at Palma, Chopin had a frightful spitting of
blood; we embarked the following day on the only steamboat of
the island, which serves to transport pigs to Barcelona. There
is no other way of leaving this cursed country. We were in
company of 100 pigs, whose continual cries and foul odour left
our patient no rest and no respirable air. He arrived at
Barcelona still spitting basins full of blood, and crawling
along like a ghost. There, happily, our misfortunes were
mitigated! The French consul and the commandant of the French
maritime station received us with a hospitality and grace
which one does not know in Spain. We were brought on board a
fine brig of war, the doctor of which, an honest and worthy
man, came at once to the assistance of the invalid, and
stopped the hemorrhage of the lung within twenty-four hours.
From that moment he got better and better. The consul had us
driven in his carriage to an hotel. Chopin rested there a
week, at the end of which the same vessel which had conveyed
us to Spain brought us back to France. When we left the hotel
at Barcelona the landlord wished to make us pay for the bed in
which Chopin had slept, under the pretext that it had been
infected, and that the police regulations obliged him to burn
it.
CHAPTER XXII.
STAY AT MARSEILLES (FROM MARCH TO MAY, 1839) AS DESCRIBED IN CHOPIN'S AND MADAME SAND'S LETTERS.—HIS STATE OF HEALTH.—COMPOSITIONS AND THEIR PUBLICATION.—PLAYING THE ORGAN AT A FUNERAL SERVICE FOR NOURRIT.—AN EXCURSION TO GENOA.—DEPARTURE FOR NOHANT.