Palma, where I am writing these notes, the thermometer showed eighteen degrees above. However, this naturally did not improve my condition — quite the contrary. I was afraid I shouldn’t survive the first night in the hotel. Anyone familiar with this disease will know what I am talking about. I did well after my arrival to spend the whole day in bed with the curtains drawn. There was no question of my unpacking my suitcases. Naturally I knew in advance what such an abrupt change of climate entailed, but I hadn’t expected to be in such a parlous state. I confined myself to staying all day in bed and drinking a glass of water on two occasions, but I only drank the water because I had to take my tablets. They probably saw immediately at the reception desk how ill I was and gave me the room I asked for without any fuss. I’ll unpack my cases very slowly, I told myself as I lay flat out on the bed, gazing at the ceiling and able to resume my fantasies where I’d broken them off in Peiskam. The flight, like’all previous ones I’d survived, had been absolutely terrible. However, at about three o’clock on the second night, rather as though I were doing something I shouldn’t, I got up and began unpacking my cases. As I did so I discovered that I wasn’t as weak as I’d thought. I love these large rooms, which are normally intended for two people and have a large bathroom and an anteroom equally large, and from which one has a view not only of the old town, but also of the sea. And which are absolutely quiet. In the morning all I hear are the cocks crowing, a few dull thuds coming from the wharf, dogs barking, and perhaps a mother scolding a naughty child. I don’t have the impression here of being isolated from the local people, although in fact almost everything separates me from them, since I am living in luxury in a spacious room, while the people in the old town beneath me live in anything but luxury. Yet this luxury, I reflect, is excused by my sickness. But in fact I no longer have any scruples, I tell myself. To have scruples at the end of one’s life is quite ludicrous. After my first breakfast I began unpacking my cases. First the one with the clothes and underclothes in it. I’d hardly taken out one or two things and put them in the wardrobe when I was once more prostrate on the bed. An attack of breathlessness more severe than any I’d had for a long time caused me extreme distress. I put this down to the abrupt change of climate, which at first has a devastating effect even on a healthy person, let alone someone like me. However, having finally unpacked the first case, I set about unpacking the second, the one containing all the books and articles I’d brought with me for my work on Mendelssohn Bartholdy. At first I didn’t know where to put them, and I considered various places; finally I decided to put some of them on the table and others in the wardrobe, and this was the procedure I followed while unpacking. I wondered meanwhile whether it still made any sense to begin a project like this one on Mendelssohn Bartholdy. On the one hand I told myself it was senseless, on the other I told myself,