acquainted with Fontana during a stay which the latter made in
London in 1856 (May and early part of June), described him to me
as "an honourable and gentlemanly man." From the same informant I
learned that Fontana married a lady who had an income for life,
and that by this marriage he was enabled to retire from the
active exercise of his profession. Later on he became very deaf,
and this great trouble was followed by a still greater one, the
death of his wife. Thus left deaf and poor, he despaired, and,
putting a pistol to one of his ears, blew out his brains.
According to Karasowski he died at Paris in 1870. The
compositions he published (dances, fantasias, studies, &c.) are
of no importance. He is said to have published also two books,
one on Polish orthography in 1866 and one on popular astronomy in
1869. The above and all the following letters of Chopin to
Fontana are in the possession of Madame Johanna Lilpop, of
Warsaw, and are here translated from Karasowski's Polish edition
of his biography of Chopin. Many of the letters are undated, and
the dates suggested by Karasowski generally wrong. There are,
moreover, two letters which are given as if dated by Chopin; but
as the contents point to Nohant and 1841 rather than to Majorca
and 1838 and 1839, I shall place them in Chapter XXIV., where
also my reasons for doing so will be more particularly stated. A
third letter, supposed by Karasowski to be written at Valdemosa
in February, I hold to be written at Marseilles in April. It will
be found in the next chapter.]

My dear friend,--I am at Palma, among palms, cedars, cactuses,
aloes, and olive, orange, lemon, fig, and pomegranate trees,
&c., which the Jardin des Plantes possesses only thanks to its
stoves. The sky is like a turquoise, the sea is like lazuli,