…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 of that of Bouffe in "Pauvre Jacques." I pass my nights generally in scrawling. When I raise my nose, it is to see through the sky-light of my cell the moon which shines in the midst of the rain on the orange trees, and I think no more of it than she.
Madame Sand to M. A. M. Duteil; Valdemosa, January 20, 1839:—
…This [the slowness and irregularity of the post] is not the only inconvenience of the country. There are innumerable ones, and yet this is the most beautiful country. The climate is delicious. At the time I am writing, Maurice is gardening in his shirt-sleeves, and Solange, seated under an orange tree loaded with fruit, studies her lesson with a grave air. We have bushes covered with roses, and spring is coming in. Our winter lasted six weeks, not cold, but rainy to a degree to frighten us. It is a deluge! The rain uproots the mountains; all the waters of the mountain rush into the plain; the roads become torrents. We found ourselves caught in them, Maurice and I. We had been at Palma in superb weather. When we returned in the evening, there were no fields, no roads, but only trees to indicate approximately the way which we had to go. I was really very. frightened, especially as the horse refused to proceed, and we were obliged to traverse the mountain on foot in the night, with torrents across our legs.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, February 22, 1839:—
…You see me at my Carthusian monastery, still sedentary, and occupied during the day with my children, at night with my work. In the midst of all this, the warbling of Chopin, who goes his usual pretty way, and whom the walls of the cell are much astonished to hear.
The only remarkable event since my last letter is the arrival of the so much-expected piano. After a fortnight of applications and waiting we have been able to get it out of the custom-house by paying three hundred francs of duty. Pretty country this! After all, it has been disembarked without accident, and the vaults of the monastery are delighted with it. And all this is not profaned by the admiration of fools-we do not see a cat.
Our retreat in the mountains, three leagues from the town, has freed us from the politeness of idlers.
Nevertheless, we have had one visitor, and a visitor from Paris!—namely, M. Dembowski, an Italian Pole whom Chopin knew, and who calls himself a cousin of Marliani—I don't know in what degree.