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Until recently the only sources of information bearing on Chopin's stay in Majorca were George Sand's "Un Hiver a Majorque" and "Histoire de ma Vie." Remembering the latter's tendency to idealise everything, and her disinclination to descend to the prose of her subject, I shall make the letters the backbone of my narrative, and for the rest select my material cautiously.
There is one statement in George Sand's above-quoted narrative which it is difficult to reconcile with other statements in "Un Hiver a Majorque" and in her and Chopin's letters. From this, I think, we may conclude that it must have taken place after January 15. But, then, how could Chopin have composed on that occasion a Prelude included in a work the manuscript of which he sent away on the lath?
Not to extend this chapter too much, I refer the curious to George Sand's "Un Hiver a Majorque" for a description of the "admirable, grandiose, and wild nature" in the midst of which the "poetic abode" of her and her party was situated of the grandly and beautifully-varied surface of the earth, the luxuriant southern vegetation, and the marvellous phenomena of light and air; of the sea stretching out on two sides and meeting the horizon; of the surrounding formidable peaks, and the more distant round-swelling hills; of the eagles descending in the pursuit of their prey down to the orange trees of the monastery gardens; of the avenue of cypresses serpentining from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the gorge; of the torrents covered with myrtles; in short, of the immense ensemble, the infinite details, which overwhelm the imagination and outvie the poet's and painter's dreams.
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