e sea sung sublimely as they beat against
the rocks. The vast and empty cloisters cracked over our heads. If
I had been there when I wrote the portion of _Lelia_ that takes
place in the convent, I should have made it finer and truer. But my
poor friend's chest got worse and worse. The fine weather did not
return.... A maid I had brought over from France, and who so far
had resigned herself, on condition of enormous wages, to cook and
do the housework, began to refuse attendance, as too hard. The
moment was coming when after having wielded the broom and managed
the _pot au feu_, I was ready to drop with fatigue--for besides my
work as tutor, besides my literary labor, besides the continual
attention necessitated by the condition of my invalid, I had
rheumatism in every limb.

The return of spring was hailed as offering a tardy release from their
island. The steamers were running again, and the party determined to
leave at all risks; for though Chopin's state was more precarious than
ever, nothing could be worse for him than to remain. They departed,
feeling, she admits, as though they were escaping from the tender
mercies of Polynesian savages, and once safely on board a French vessel
at Barcelona, they thankfully welcomed the day that restored them to
comfort and civilization, and saw the end of an expedition that had
turned out in most respects so disastrous a _fiasco_.

They remained throughout April at Marseilles, where Chopin, in the hands
of a good doctor, became convalescent. From Marseilles they made a short
tour in Italy, visiting Genoa and the neighborhood, and returning to
France in May, Chopin apparently on the high road to complete recovery.
It was in the following year that his illness returned in a graver form,
and unmistakable symptoms of consumption showed themselves. The life of
a fashionable pianist in Paris, the constant excitement, late hours, and
heavy strain of nervous exertion, were fatal to his future chances of
preserving his health; but it was a life to which he had now become
wedded, and which he never willingly left, except for his long annual
visits to Nohant.

Madame Sand repeatedly contemplated settling herself entirely in the
country. She had no love for Paris. "Parisian life strains our nerves
and kills us in the long run," she writes from Nohant to one of her
correspondents. "Ah, how I hate it, that centre of light! I would n