leasant, and the hosts do their utmost to
please me. When we are not assembled to dine, breakfast, play at
billiards, or walk, we are in our rooms, reading, or resting on
our sofas. Now and then there come to you through the window
opening on the garden, whiffs of the music of Chopin, who is
working in his room; this mingles with the song of the
nightingales and the odour of the roses. You see that so far I am
not much to be pitied, and, nevertheless, work must come to give
the grain of salt to all this. This life is too easy, I must
purchase it with a little racking of my brains; and like the
huntsman who eats with more appetite when he has got his skin
torn by bushes, one must strive a little after ideas in order to
feel the charm of doing nothing.

Nohant, June 14, 1842.

...Although I am in every respect most agreeably circumstanced,
both as regards body and mind, for I am in much better health, I
have not been able to prevent myself from thinking of work. How
strange! this work is fatiguing, and yet the species of activity
it gives to the mind is necessary to the body itself. In vain did
I try to get up a passion for billiards, in which I receive a
lesson every day, in vain have I good conversations on all the
subjects that please me, music that I seize on the wing and by
whiffs, I have felt the need of doing something. I have begun a
Sainte-Anne for the parish, and I have already set it agoing.

Nohant, June 22, 1842.

...Pen and ink certainly become more and more repugnant to me. I
have no more than you any event to record. I lead a monastic
life, and as monotonous as it well can be. No event varies the
course of it. We expected Balzac, who has not come, and I am not
sorry. He is a babbler who would have destroyed this harmony of
NONCHALANCE which I am enjoying thoroughly; at intervals a little
painting, billiards, and walking, that is more than is necessary
to fill up the days. There is not even the distraction of
neighbours and friends from the environs; in this part of the
country everyone remains at home and occupies him self with his
oxen and his land. One would become a fossil here in a very short
time.

I have interminable private interviews with Chopin, whom I
love much, and who is a man of a rare distinction; he is the
most true artist I have met. He is one of the few one can
admire and esteem. Madame Sand suffe