Chapter XXVI (2)

Let us try to get some glimpses of Chopin in his new home. Lindsay Sloper, who--owing, no doubt, to a great extent at least, to the letter of recommendation from Moscheles which he brought with him--had got permission from Chopin to come for a lesson as often as he liked at eight o'clock in the morning, found the master at that hour not in deshabille, but dressed with the greatest care. Another early pupil, M. Mathias, always fell in with the daily-attending barber. M. Mathias told me also of Chopin's habit of leaning with his back against the mantel-piece while he was chatting at the end of the lesson. It must have been a pretty sight to see the master in this favourite attitude of his, his coat buttoned up to the chin (this was his usual style), the most elegant shoes on his small feet, faultless exquisiteness characterising the whole of his attire, and his small eyes sparkling with esprit and sometimes with malice.

Of all who came in contact with Chopin, however, no one made so much of his opportunities as Lenz: some of his observations on the pianist have already been quoted, those on the man and his surroundings deserve likewise attention. [FOOTNOTE: W. von Lenz: "Die Grossen Pianoforte-Virtuosen unserer Zeit."] Lenz came to Paris in the summer or autumn of the year 1842; and as he wished to study Chopin's mazurkas with the master himself, he awaited impatiently his return from Nohant. At last, late in October, Lenz heard from Liszt that Chopin had arrived in town; but Liszt told him also that it was by no means an easy thing to get lessons from Chopin, that indeed many had journeyed to Paris for the purpose and failed even to get sight of him. To guard Lenz against such a mishap, Liszt gave him a card with the words "Laissez passer, Franz Liszt" on it, and advised him to call on Chopin at two o'clock. The enthusiastic amateur was not slow in availing himself of his artist friend's card and advice. But on reaching his destination he was met in the anteroom by a male servant--"an article of luxury in Paris, a rarissima avis in the house of an artist," observes Lenz--who informed him that Chopin was not in town. The visitor, however, was not to be put off in this way, and insisted that the card should be taken in to Chopin. Fortune favours the brave. A moment after the servant had left the room the great artist made his appearance holding the card in his hand: "a young man of middle height, slim, thin, with a careworn, speaking face and the finest Parisian tournure." Lenz does not hesitate to declare that he hardly ever met a person so naturally elegant and winning. But here is what took place at this interview.

Chopin did not press me to sit down [says Lenz], I stood as
before a reigning sovereign. "What do you wish? a pupil of
Liszt's, an artist?" "A friend of Liszt's. I wish to have the
happiness of making, under your guidance, acquaintance with
your mazurkas, which I regard as a literature. Some of them I
have already studied with Liszt." I felt I had been
imprudent, but it was too late. "Indeed!" replied Chopin, with
a drawl, but in the politest tone, "what do you want me for
then? Please play to me what you have played with Liszt, I
have still a few minutes at my disposal"--he drew from his
fob an elegant, small watch--"I was on the point of going out,
I had told my servant to admit nobody, pardon me!"

Lenz sat down at the piano, tried the gue of it--an expression at which Chopin, who was leaning languidly on the piano and looking with his intelligent eyes straight in his visitor's face, smiled-- and then struck up the Mazurka in B flat major. When he came to a passage in which Liszt had taught him to introduce a volata through two octaves, Chopin whispered blandly:--

"This TRAIT is not your own; am I right? HE has shown it you--
he must meddle with everything; well! he may do it, he plays
before THOUSANDS, I rarely before ONE. Well, this will do, I
will give you lessons, but only twice a week, I never give
more, it is difficult for me to find three-quarters of an
hour." He again looked at his watch. "What do you read then?
With what do you occupy yourself generally?" This was a
question for which I was well prepared. "George Sand and Jean
Jacques I prefer to all other writers," said I quickly. He
smiled, he was most beautiful at that moment. "Liszt has told
you this. I see, you are initiated, so much the better. Only
be punctual, with me things go by the clock, my house is a
pigeon-house (pigeonnier). I see already we shall become more
intimate, a recommendation from Liszt is worth something, you
are the first pupil whom he has recommended to me; we are
friends, we were comrades."

Lenz had, of course, too imaginative a turn of mind to leave facts in their native nakedness, but this tendency of his is too apparent to need pointing out. What betrays him is the wonderful family likeness of his portraits, a kind of vapid esprit, not distantly related to silliness, with which the limner endows his unfortunate sitters, Chopin as well as Liszt and Tausig. Indeed, the portraits compared with the originals are like Dresden china figures compared with Greek statuary. It seems to me also very improbable that so perfect a gentleman as Chopin was should subject a stranger to an examination as to his reading and general occupation. These questions have very much the appearance of having been invented by the narrator for the sake of the answers. However, notwithstanding the many unmistakable embellishments, Lenz's account was worth quoting, for after all it is not without a basis of fact and truth. The following reminiscences of the lively Russian councillor, although not wanting in exaggerations, are less open to objections:--

I always made my appearance long before my hour and waited.
One lady after another came out, one more beautiful than the
other, on one occasion Mdlle. Laure Duperre, the daughter of
the admiral, whom Chopin accompanied to the staircase, she was
the most beautiful of all, and as straight as a palm; to her
Chopin has dedicated two of his most important Nocturnes (in C
minor and F sharp minor, Op. 48); she was at that time his
favourite pupil. In the anteroom I often met little Filtsch,
who, unfortunately, died too young, at the age of thirteen, a
Hungarian and a genius. He knew how to play Chopin! Of Filtsch
Liszt said in my presence at a soiree of the Comtesse
d'Agoult: "When the little one begins to travel, I shall shut
up my shop" (Quand le petit voyagera, je fermerai boutique). I
was jealous of Filtsch, Chopin had eyes only for him.

How high an opinion the master had of this talented pupil appears from his assertion that the boy played the E minor Concerto better than he himself. Lenz mentions Filtsch and his playing of the E minor Concerto only in passing in "Die grossen Pianoforte- Virtuosen unserer Zeit," but devotes to them more of his leisure in an article which appeared in the Berliner Musikzeitung (Vol. XXVI.), the amusing gossip of which deserves notice here on account of the light thrown by some of its details on Chopin's ways and the company he received in his salon. On one occasion when Filtsch had given his master particular satisfaction by a tasteful rendering of the second solo of the first movement of the E minor Concerto, Chopin said: "You have played this well, my boy (mon garcon), I must try it myself." Lenz relates that what now followed was indescribable: the little one (der Kleine) burst into tears, and Chopin, who indeed had been telling them the story of his artist life, said, as if speaking to himself, "I have loved it! I have already once played it!" Then, turning to Filtsch, he spoke these words: "Yours is a beautiful artist nature (une belle nature d'artiste), you will become a great artist." Whilst the youthful pianist was studying the Concerto with Chopin, he was never allowed to play more than one solo at a time, the work affecting too much the feelings of the composer, who, moreover, thought that the whole was contained in every one of the solos; and when he at last got leave to perform the whole, an event for which he prepared himself by fasting and prayers of the Roman Catholic Church, and by such reading as was pointed out by his master, practising being forbidden for the time, Chopin said to him: "As you have now mastered the movement so well, we will bring it to a hearing."

The reader must understand that I do not vouch for the strict correctness of Lenz's somewhat melodramatic narrative; and having given this warning I shall, to keep myself free from all responsibility, simply translate the rest of what is yet to be told:--

Chopin invited a party of ladies, George Sand was one of them,
and was as quiet as a mouse; moreover, she knew nothing of
music. The favoured pupils from the highest aristocracy
appeared with modest demeanour and full of the most profound
devotion, they glided silently, like gold-fishes in a vase,
one after another into the salon, and sat down as far as
possible from the piano, as Chopin liked people to do. Nobody
spoke, Chopin only nodded, and shook hands with one here and
there, not with all of them. The square pianoforte, which
stood in his cabinet, he had placed beside the Pleyel concert
grand in the salon, not without the most painful embarras to
him. The most insignificant trifle affected him; he was a noli
me tangere. He had said once, or rather had thought aloud: "If
I saw a crack more in the ceiling, I should not be able to
bring out a note." Chopin poured the whole dreamy, vaporous
instrumentation of the work into his incomparable
accompaniment. He played without book. I have never heard
anything that could be compared to the first tutti, which he
played alone on the piano. The little one did wonders. The
whole was an impression for all the rest of one's life. After
Chopin had briefly dismissed the ladies (he loved praise
neither for himself nor for others, and only George Sand was
permitted to embrace Filtsch), he said to the latter, his
brother, who always accompanied the little one, and me: "We
have yet to take a walk." It was a command which we received
with the most respectful bow.

The destination of this walk was Schlesinger's music-shop, where Chopin presented his promising young pupil with the score of Beethoven's "Fidelio":--

"I am in your debt, you have given me much pleasure to-day. I
wrote the Concerto in happier days. Receive, my dear little
friend, this great master-work; read therein as long as you
live, and remember me also sometimes." The little one was as
if stunned, and kissed Chopin's hand. We were all deeply
moved, Chopin himself was so. He disappeared immediately
through the glass door on a level with the Rue Richelieu, into
which it leads.

A scene of a very different nature which occurred some years later was described to me by Madame Dubois. This lady, then still Mdlle. O'Meara and a pupil of Chopin's, had in 1847 played, accompanied on a second piano by her master, the latter's Concerto in E minor at a party of Madame de Courbonne's. Madame Girardin, who was among the guests, afterwards wrote most charmingly and eulogistically about the young girl's beauty and talent in one of her Lettres parisiennes, which appeared in La Presse and were subsequently published in a collected form under the title of "Le Vicomte de Launay." Made curious by Madame Girardin's account, and probably also by remarks of Chopin and others, George Sand wished to see the heroine of that much-talked- of letter. Thus it came to pass that one day when Miss O'Meara was having her lesson, George Sand crossed the Square d'Orleans and paid Chopin a visit in his apartments. The master received her with all the grace and amiability he was capable of. Noticing that her pardessus was bespattered with mud, he seemed to be much vexed, and the exquisitely-elegant gentleman (l'homme de toutes les elegances ) began to rub off with his small, white hands the stains which on any other person would have caused him disgust. And Mdlle. O'Meara, child as she still was, watched what was going on from the corner of her eye and thought: "Comme il aime cette femme!" [FOOTNOTE: Madame A. Audley gives an altogether incorrect account of this incident in her FREDERIC CHOPIN. Madame Girardin was not one of the actors, and Mdlle. O'Meara did not think the thoughts attributed to her.]

Whenever Chopin's connection with George Sand is mentioned, one hears a great deal of the misery and nothing or little of the happiness which accrued to him out of it. The years of tenderness and devotion are slurred over and her infidelities, growing indifference, and final desertion are dwelt upon with undue emphasis. Whatever those of Chopin's friends who were not also George Sand's friends may say, we may be sure that his joys outweighed his sorrows. Her resoluteness must have been an invaluable support to so vacillating a character as Chopin's was; and, although their natures were in many respects discordant, the poetic element of hers cannot but have found sympathetic chords in his. Every character has many aspects, but the world is little disposed to see more than one side of George Sand's--namely, that which is most conspicuous by its defiance of law and custom, and finds expression in loud declamation and denunciation. To observe her in one of her more lovable attitudes of mind, we will transport ourselves from Chopin's to her salon.

Louis Enault relates how one evening George Sand, who sometimes thought aloud when with Chopin--this being her way of chatting-- spoke of the peacefulness of the country and unfolded a picture of the rural harmonies that had all the charming and negligent grace of a village idyl, bringing, in fact, her beloved Berry to the fireside of the room in the Square d'Orleans.

"How well you have spoken!" said Chopin naively.

"You think so?" she replied. "Well, then, set me to music!"
Hereupon Chopin improvised a veritable pastoral symphony, and
George Sand placing herself beside him and laying her hand
gently on his shoulder said: "Go on, velvet fingers [courage,
doigts de velour]!"

Here is another anecdote of quiet home-life. George Sand had a little dog which was in the habit of turning round and round in the endeavour to catch its tail. One evening when it was thus engaged, she said to Chopin: "If I had your talent, I would compose a pianoforte piece for this dog." Chopin at once sat down at the piano, and improvised the charming Waltz in D flat (Op. 64), which hence has obtained the name of Valse du petit chien. This story is well known among the pupils and friends of the master, but not always told in exactly the same way. According to another version, Chopin improvised the waltz when the little dog was playing with a ball of wool. This variation, however, does not affect the pith of the story.

The following two extracts tell us more about the intimate home- life at Nohant and in the Court d'Orleans than anything we have as yet met with.

Madame Sand to her son; October 17, 1843:--

Tell me if Chopin is ill; his letters are short and sad. Take
care of him if he is ailing. Take a little my place. He would
take my place with so much zeal if you were ill.

Madame Sand to her son; November 16, 1843:--

If you care for the letter which I have written you about her
[Solange], ask Chopin for it. It was for both of you, and it
has not given him much pleasure. He has taken it amiss, and
yet I did not wish to annoy him, God forbid! We shall all see
each other soon again, and hearty embraces [de bonnes
bigeades] [FOOTNOTE: Biger is in the Berry dialect "to kiss."]
all round shall efface all my sermons.

In another of George Sand's letters to her son--it is dated November 28, 1843--we read about Chopin's already often-mentioned valet. Speaking of the foundation of a provincial journal, "L'Eclaireur de l'Indre," by herself and a number of her friends, and of their being on the look-out for an editor who would be content with the modest salary of 2,000 francs, she says:--

This is hardly more than the wages of Chopin's domestic, and
to imagine that for this it is possible to find a man of
talent! First measure of the Committee of Public Safety: we
shall outlaw Chopin if he allows himself to have lackeys
salaried like publicists.

Chopin treated George Sand with the greatest respect and devotion; he was always aux petits soins with her. It is characteristic of the man and exemplifies strikingly the delicacy of his taste and feeling that his demeanour in her house showed in no way the intimate relation in which he stood to the mistress of it: he seemed to be a guest like any other occasional visitor. Lenz wishes to make us believe that George Sand's treatment of Chopin was unworthy of the great artist, but his statements are emphatically contradicted by Gutmann, who says that her behaviour towards him was always respectful. If the lively Russian councillor in the passages I am going to translate describes correctly what he heard and saw, he must have witnessed an exceptional occurrence; it is, however, more likely that the bad reception he received from the lady prejudiced him against her.

Lenz relates that one day Chopin took him to the salon of Madame Marliani, where there was in the evening always a gathering of friends.

George Sand [thus runs his account of his first meeting with
the great novelist] did not say a word when Chopin introduced
me. This was rude. Just for that reason I seated myself beside
her. Chopin fluttered about like a little frightened bird in
its cage, he saw something was going to happen. What had he
not always feared on this terrain? At the first pause in the
conversation, which was led by Madame Sand's friend, Madame
Viardot, the great singer whose acquaintance I was later to
make in St. Petersburg, Chopin put his arm through mine and
led me to the piano. Reader! if you play the piano you will
imagine how I felt! It was an upright or cottage piano [Steh-
oder Stutzflugel] of Pleyel's, which people in Paris regard as
a pianoforte. I played the Invitation in a fragmentary
fashion, Chopin gave me his hand in the most friendly manner,
George Sand did not say a word. I seated myself once more
beside her. I had obviously a purpose. Chopin looked anxiously
at us across the table, on which was burning the inevitable
carcel.

"Are you not coming sometime to St. Petersburg," said I to
George Sand in the most polite tone, "where you are so much
read, so highly admired?"

"I shall never lower myself by visiting a country of slaves!"
answered George Sand shortly.

This was indecorous [unanstandig] after she had been uncivil.

"After all, you are right NOT to come," I replied in the same
tone; "you might find the door closed! I was thinking of the
Emperor Nicholas."

George Sand looked at me in astonishment, I plunged boldly
into her large, beautiful, brown, cow-like eyes. Chopin did
not seem displeased, I knew the movements of his head.

Instead of giving any answer George Sand rose in a theatrical
fashion, and strode in the most manly way through the salon to
the blazing fire. I followed her closely, and seated myself
for the third time beside her, ready for another attack.

She would be obliged at last to say something.

George Sand drew an enormously thick Trabucco cigar out of her
apron pocket, and called out "Frederic! un fidibus!"

This offended me for him, that perfect gentleman, my master; I
understood Liszt's words: "Pauvre Frederic!" in all their
significance.

Chopin immediately came up with a fidibus.

As she was sending forth the first terrible cloud of smoke,
George Sand honoured me with a word:

"In St. Petersburg," she began, "I could not even smoke a
cigar in a drawing-room?"

"In NO drawing-room have I ever seen anyone smoke a cigar,
Madame," I answered, not without emphasis, with a bow!

George Sand fixed her eyes sharply upon me--the thrust had
gone home! I looked calmly around me at the good pictures in
the salon, each of which was lighted up by a separate lamp.
Chopin had probably heard nothing; he had returned to the
hostess at the table.

Pauvre Frederic! How sorry I was for him, the great artist!
The next day the Suisse [hall-porter] in the hotel, Mr.
Armand, said to me: "A gentleman and a lady have been here, I
said you were not at home, you had not said you would receive
visitors; the gentleman left his name, he had no card with
him." I read: Chopin et Madame Sand. After this I quarrelled
for two months with Mr. Armand.

George Sand was probably out of humour on the evening in question; that it was not her usual manner of receiving visitors may be gathered from what Chopin said soon after to Lenz when the latter came to him for a lesson. "George Sand," he said, "called with me on you. What a pity you were not at home! I regretted it very much. George Sand thought she had been uncivil to you. You would have seen how amiable she can be. You have pleased her."

Alexander Chodzko, the learned professor of Slavonic literature at the College de France, told me that he was half-a-dozen times at George Sand's house. Her apartments were furnished in a style in favour with young men. First you came into a vestibule where hats, coats, and sticks were left, then into a large salon with a billiard-table. On the mantel-piece were to be found the materials requisite for smoking. George Sand set her guests an example by lighting a cigar. M. Chodzko met there among others the historian and statesman Guizot, the litterateur Francois, and Madame Marliani. If Chopin was not present, George Sand would often ask the servant what he was doing, whether he was working or sleeping, whether he was in good or bad humour. And when he came in all eyes were directed towards him. If he happened to be in good humour George Sand would lead him to the piano, which stood in one of the two smaller apartments adjoining the salon. These smaller apartments were provided with couches for those who wished to talk. Chopin began generally to prelude apathetically and only gradually grew warm, but then his playing was really grand. If, however, he was not in a playing mood, he was often asked to give some of his wonderful mimetic imitations. On such occasions Chopin retired to one of the side-rooms, and when he returned he was irrecognisable. Professor Chodzko remembers seeing him as Frederick the Great.

Chopin's talent for mimicry, which even such distinguished actors as Bocage and Madame Dorval regarded with admiration, is alluded to by Balzac in his novel "Un Homme d'affaires," where he says of one of the characters that "he is endowed with the same talent for imitating people which Chopin, the pianist, possesses in so high a degree; he represents a personage instantly and with astounding truth." Liszt remarks that Chopin displayed in pantomime an inexhaustible verve drolatique, and often amused himself with reproducing in comical improvisations the musical formulas and peculiar ways of certain virtuosos, whose faces and gestures he at the same time imitated in the most striking manner. These statements are corroborated by the accounts of innumerable eye and ear-witnesses of such performances. One of the most illustrative of these accounts is the following very amusing anecdote. When the Polish musician Nowakowski [FOOTNOTE: He visited Paris in 1838, 1841, and 1846, partly for the purpose of making arrangements for the publication of his compositions, among which are Etudes dedicated to Chopin.] visited Paris, he begged his countryman to bring him in contact with Kalkbrenner, Liszt, and Pixis. Chopin, replying that he need not put himself to the trouble of going in search of these artists if he wished to make their acquaintance, forthwith sat down at the piano and assumed the attitude, imitated the style of playing, and mimicked the mien and gestures, first of Liszt and then of Pixis. Next evening Chopin and Nowakowski went together to the theatre. The former having left the box during one of the intervals, the latter looked round after awhile and saw Pixis sitting beside him. Nowakowski, thinking Chopin was at his favourite game, clapped Pixis familiarly on the shoulder and said: "Leave off, don't imitate now!" The surprise of Pixis and the subsequent confusion of Nowakowski may be easily imagined. When Chopin, who at this moment returned, had been made to understand what had taken place, he laughed heartily, and with the grace peculiar to him knew how to make his friend's and his own excuses. One thing in connection with Chopin's mimicry has to be particularly noted- -it is very characteristic of the man. Chopin, we learn from Liszt, while subjecting his features to all kinds of metamorphoses and imitating even the ugly and grotesque, never lost his native grace, "la grimace ne parvenait meme pas a l'enlaidir."

We shall see presently what George Sand has to say about her lover's imitative talent; first, however, we will make ourselves acquainted with the friends with whom she especially associated. Besides Pierre Leroux, Balzac, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, and others who have already been mentioned in the foregoing chapters, she numbered among her most intimate friends the Republican politician and historian Louis Blanc, the Republican litterateur Godefroy Cavaignac, the historian Henri Martin, and the litterateur Louis Viardot, the husband of Pauline Garcia.

[FOOTNOTE: This name reminds me of a passage in Louis Blanc's "Histoire de la Revolution de 1840" (p. 210 of Fifth Edition. Paris, 1880). "A short time before his [Godefroy Cavaignac's] end, he was seized by an extraordinary desire to hear music once more. I knew Chopin. I offered to go to him, and to bring him with me, if the doctor did not oppose it. The entreaties thereupon took the character of a supplication. With the consent, or rather at the urgent prayer, of Madame Cavaignac, I betook myself to Chopin. Madame George Sand was there. She expressed in a touching manner the lively interest with which the invalid inspired her; and Chopin placed himself at my service with much readiness and grace. I conducted him then into the chamber of the dying man, where there was a bad piano. The great artist begins...Suddenly he is interrupted by sobs. Godefroy, in a transport of sensibility which gave him a moment's physical strength, had quite unexpectedly raised himself in his bed of suffering, his face bathed in tears. Chopin stopped, much disturbed; Madame Cavaignac, leaning towards her son, anxiously interrogated him with her eyes. He made an effort to become self- possessed; he attempted to smile, and with a feeble voice said, 'Do not be uneasy, mamma, it is nothing; real childishness...Ah! how beautiful music is, understood thus!' His thought was--we had no difficulty in divining it--that he would no longer hear anything like it in this world, but he refrained from saying so."]

Friends not less esteemed by her than these, but with whom she was less intimate, were the Polish poet Mickiewicz, the famous bass singer Lablache, the excellent pianist and composer Alkan aine, the Italian composer and singing-master Soliva (whom we met already in Warsaw), the philosopher and poet Edgar Quinet, General Guglielmo Pepe (commander-in-chief of the Neapolitan insurrectionary army in 1820-21), and likewise the actor Bocage, the litterateur Ferdinand Francois, the German musician Dessauer, the Spanish politician Mendizabal, the dramatist and journalist Etienne Arago, [FOOTNOTE: The name of Etienne Arago is mentioned in "Ma Vie," but it is that of Emmanuel Arago which occurs frequently in the "Corrcspcndance."] and a number of literary and other personages of less note, of whom I shall mention only Agricol Perdiguier and Gilland, the noble artisan and the ecrivain proletaire, as George Sand calls them.

Although some of George Sand's friends were also Chopin's, there can be no doubt that the society which gathered around her was on the whole not congenial to him. Some remarks which Liszt makes with regard to George Sand's salon at Nohant are even more applicable to her salon in Paris.

An author's relations with the representatives of publicity
and his dramatic executants, actors and actresses, and with
those whom he treats with marked attention on account of their
merits or because they please him; the crossing of incidents,
the clash and rebound of the infatuations and disagreements
which result therefrom; were naturally hateful to him [to
Chopin]. For a long time he endeavoured to escape from them by
shutting his eyes, by making up his mind not to see anything.
There happened, however, such things, such catastrophes
[denouements], as, by shocking too much his delicacy,
offending too much his habits of the moral and social comme-il-
faut, ended in rendering his presence at Nohant impossible,
although he seemed at first to have felt more content [plus de
repif] there than elsewhere.

These are, of course, only mere surmises, but Liszt, although often wrong as to incidents, is, thanks to his penetrative genius, generally right as to essences. Indeed, if George Sand's surroundings and Chopin's character and tastes are kept in view nothing seems to be more probable than that his over-delicate susceptibilities may have occasionally been shocked by unrestrained vivacity, loud laughter, and perhaps even coarse words; that his uncompromising idealism may have been disturbed by the discordance of literary squabbles, intrigues, and business transactions; that his peaceable, non-speculative, and non- argumentative disposition may have been vexed and wearied by discussions of political, social, religious, literary, and artistic problems. Unless his own art was the subject, Chopin did not take part in discussions. And Liszt tells us that Chopin not only, like most artists, lacked a generalising mind [esprit generalisateur], but showed hardly any inclination for aesthetics, of which he had not even heard much. We may be sure that to Chopin to whom discussions of any kind were distasteful, those of a circle in which, as in that of George Sand, democratic and socialistic, theistic and atheistic views prevailed, were particularly so. For, notwithstanding his bourgeois birth, his sympathies were with the aristocracy; and notwithstanding his neglect of ritual observances, his attachment to the Church of Rome remained unbroken. Chopin does not seem to have concealed his dislike to George Sand's circle; if he did not give audible expression to it, he made it sufficiently manifest by seeking other company. That she was aware of the fact and displeased with it, is evident from what she says of her lover's social habits in Ma Vie. The following excerpt from that work is an important biographical contribution; it is written not without bitterness, but with hardly any exaggeration:--

He was a man of the world par excellence, not of the too
formal and too numerous world, but of the intimate world, of
the salons of twenty persons, of the hour when the crowd goes
away and the habitues crowd round the artist to wrest from him
by amiable importunity his purest inspiration. It was then
only that he exhibited all his genius and all his talent. It
was then also that after having plunged his audience into a
profound recueillement or into a painful sadness, for his
music sometimes discouraged one's soul terribly, especially
when he improvised, he would suddenly, as if to take away the
impression and remembrance of his sorrow from others and from
himself, turn stealthily to a glass, arrange his hair and his
cravat, and show himself suddenly transformed into a
phlegmatic Englishman, into an impertinent old man, into a
sentimental and ridiculous Englishwoman, into a sordid Jew.
The types were always sad, however comical they might be, but
perfectly conceived and so delicately rendered that one could
not grow weary of admiring them.

All these sublime, charming, or bizarre things that he knew
how to evolve out of himself made him the soul of select
society, and there was literally a contest for his company,
his noble character, his disinterestedness, his self-respect,
his proper pride, enemy of every vanity of bad taste and of
every insolent reclame, the security of intercourse with him,
and the exquisite delicacy of his manners, making him a friend
equally serious and agreeable.

To tear Chopin away from so many gdteries, to associate him
with a simple, uniform, and constantly studious life, him who
had been brought up on the knees of princesses, was to deprive
him of that which made him live, of a factitious life, it is
true, for, like a painted woman, he laid aside in the evening,
in returning to his home, his verve and his energy, to give
the night to fever and sleeplessness; but of a life which
would have been shorter and more animated than that of the
retirement and of the intimacy restricted to the uniform
circle of a single family. In Paris he visited several salons
every day, or he chose at least every evening a different one
as a milieu. He had thus by turns twenty or thirty salons to
intoxicate or to charm with his presence.