The rest of the audience, who had gone there en masse, and had been led by curiosity to pay as much as fifty centimes for a chair (an unheard-of price for Marseilles), were very much disappointed; for it was expected that he would make a tremendous noise and break at least two or three stops. They expected also to see me, in full dress, in the very middle of the choir; what not? They did not see me at all; I was hidden in the organ-loft, and through the balustrade I descried the coffin of poor Nourrit.
Thanks to the revivifying influences of spring and Dr. Cauviere's attention and happy treatment, Chopin was able to accompany George Sand on a trip to Genoa, that vaga gemma del mar, fior delta terra. It gave George Sand much pleasure to see again, now with her son Maurice by her side, the beautiful edifices and pictures of the city which six years before she had visited with Musset. Chopin was probably not strong enough to join his friends in all their sight-seeing, but if he saw Genoa as it presents itself on being approached from the sea, passed along the Via Nuova between the double row of magnificent palaces, and viewed from the cupola of S. Maria in Carignano the city, its port, the sea beyond, and the stretches of the Riviera di Levante and Riviera di Ponente, he did not travel to Italy in vain. Thus Chopin got at last a glimpse of the land where nine years before he had contemplated taking up his abode for some time.
On returning to Marseilles, after a stormy passage, on which Chopin suffered much from sea-sickness, George Sand and her party rested for a few days at the house of Dr. Cauviere, and then set out, on the 22nd of May, for Nohant.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Marseilles, May 20, 1839:—
We have just arrived from Genoa, in a terrible storm. The bad weather kept us on sea double the ordinary time; forty hours of rolling such as I have not seen for a long time. It was a fine spectacle, and if everybody had not been ill, I would have greatly enjoyed it…
We shall depart the day after to-morrow for Nohant. Address your next letter to me there, we shall be there in eight days. My carriage has arrived from Chalon at Arles by boat, and we shall post home very quietly, sleeping at the inns like good bourgeois.
CHAPTER XXIII.
JUNE TO OCTOBER, 1839.
GEORGE SAND AND CHOPIN'S RETURN TO NOHANT.—STATE OF HIS HEALTH.- -HIS POSITION IN HIS FRIEND'S HOUSE.—HER ACCOUNT OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP.—HIS LETTERS TO FONTANA, WHICH, AMONG MANY OTHER MATTERS, TREAT OF HIS COMPOSITIONS AND OF PREPARATIONS TO BE MADE FOR HIS AND GEORGE SAND'S ARRIVAL IN PARIS.
The date of one of George Sand's letters shows that the travellers were settled again at Nohant on the 3rd of June, 1839. Dr. Papet, a rich friend of George Sand's, who practised his art only for the benefit of the poor and his friends, took the convalescent Chopin at once under his care. He declared that his patient showed no longer any symptoms of pulmonary affection, but was suffering merely from a slight chronic laryngeal affection which, although he did not expect to be able to cure it, need not cause any serious alarm.