Also known as 'Palma' mazurka: it was composed, so Niecks avers, at Palma, when Chopin's health fully accounts for the depressed character of the piece, for it is sad to the point of tears.

Letter from Chopin to Fontana dated Palma, December 28, 1838: "....Between rocks and the sea, in a great abandoned Carthusian monastery, in one of the cells with doors bigger than the gates in Paris, you may imagine me with my hair uncurled, without white gloves, pale as usual. The cell is in the shape of a coffin, high, and full of dust on the vault. The window small, before the window orange, palm, and cypress trees. Opposite the window, under a Moorish filigree rosette, stands my bed. By its side an old square thing like a table for writing, scarcely serviceable; on it a leaden candlestick (a great luxury) with a little tallow-candle, Works of Bach, my jottings, and old scrawls that are not mine, this is all I possess. Quietness...one may shout and nobody will hear...in short, I am writing to you from a strange place...."