consul's cook, they might have done fairly well had not wet weather been
against them. But, alas, their eagerly-awaited provisions often arrived
spoiled with rain, oftener still they did not arrive at all. Many a time
they had to eat bread as hard as ship-biscuits, and content themselves
with real Carthusian dinners. The wine was good and cheap, but,
unfortunately, it had the objectionable quality of being heady.

These discomforts and wants were not painfully felt by George Sand and
her children, nay, they gave, for a time at least, a new zest to life.
It was otherwise with Chopin. "With his feeling for details and the
wants of a refined well-being, he naturally took an intense dislike to
Majorca after a few days of illness." We have already seen what a bad
effect the wet weather and the damp of Son-Vent had on Chopin's health.
But, according to George Sand, [FOOTNOTE: "Un Hiver a Marjorque," pp.
161-168. I suspect that she mixes up matters in a very unhistorical
manner; I have, however, no means of checking her statements, her and
her companion's letters being insufficient for the purpose. Chopin
certainly was not likely to tell his friend the worst about his health.]
it was not till later, although still in the early days of their sojourn
in Majorca, that his disease declared itself in a really alarming
manner. The cause of this change for the worse was over-fatigue incurred
on an excursion which he made with his friends to a hermitage three
miles [FOOTNOTE: George Sand does not say what kind of miles] distant
from Valdemosa; the length and badness of the road alone would have been
more than enough to exhaust his fund of strength, but in addition to
these hardships they had, on returning, to encounter a violent wind
which threw them down repeatedly. Bronchitis, from which he had
previously suffered, was now followed by a nervous excitement that
produced several symptoms of laryngeal phthisis. [FOOTNOTE: In the
Histoire de ma Vie George Sand Bays: "From the beginning of winter,
which set in all at once with a diluvian rain, Chopin showed, suddenly
also, all the symptoms of pulmonary affection."] The physician, judging
of the disease by the symptoms that presented themselves at the time of
his visits, mistook its real nature, and prescribed bleeding, milk diet,
&c. Chopin felt instinctively that all this would be injurious to him,
that bleeding would even be fatal. George Sand, who was an experienced
nurse, and whose