horus the
most edifying discourses on the future life. "This consumptive
person," they said, "is going to hell, first because he is
consumptive, secondly, because he does not confess. If he is
in this condition when he dies, we shall not bury him in
consecrated ground, and as nobody will be willing to give him
a grave, his friends will have to manage matters as well as
they can. It remains to be seen how they will get out of the
difficulty; as for me, I will have Inothing to do with it,--
Nor I--Nor I: and Amen!"

In fact, Valdemosa, which at first was enchanting to them, lost
afterwards much of its poesy in their eyes. George Sand, as we have
seen, said that their sojourn was I in many respects a frightful fiasco;
it was so certainly as far as Chopin was concerned, for he arrived with
a cough and left the place spitting blood.

The passage from Palma to Barcelona was not so pleasant as that from
Barcelona to Palma had been. Chopin suffered much from sleeplessness,
which was caused by the noise and bad smell of the most favoured class
of passengers on board the Mallorquin--i.e., pigs. "The captain showed
us no other attention than that of begging us not to let the invalid
lie down on the best bed of the cabin, because according to Spanish
prejudice every illness is contagious; and as our man thought already of
burning the couch on which the invalid reposed, he wished it should be
the worst." [FOOTNOTE: "Un Hiver a Majorque," pp. 24--25.]

On arriving at Barcelona George Sand wrote from the Mallorquin and sent
by boat a note to M. Belves, the officer in command at the station, who
at once came in his cutter to take her and her party to the Meleagre,
where they were well received by the officers, doctor, and all the crew.
It seemed to them as if they had left the Polynesian savages and were
once more in civilised society. When they shook hands with the French
consul they could contain themselves no longer, but jumped for joy and
cried "Vive La France!"

A fortnight after their leaving Palma the Phenicien landed them at
Marseilles. The treatment Chopin received from the French captain of
this steamer differed widely from that he had met with at the hands
of the captain of the Mallorquin; for fearing that the invalid was not
quite comfortable in a common berth, he gave him his own bed. [FOOTNOTE:
"Un Hiver a Majorque," p. 183.]

An extract from a letter written by George Sand from Marseilles on March