nvenience 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.

...The fact is, that we are very much pleased with the freedom
which this gives us, because we have work to do; but we
understand very well that these poetic intervals which one
introduces into one's life are only times of transition and rest
allowed to the mind before it resumes the exercise of the
emotions. I mean this in the purely intellectual s