musical menu thought worth mentioning by the reporter.  A soiree at Lewicki’s offers matter of more interest.  Chopin, who had drawn up the programme, played Hummel’s “La Sentinelle” and his Op. 3, the Polonaise for piano and violoncello composed at Antonin with a subsequently-added introduction; and Prince Galitzin was one of the executants of a quartet of Rode’s.  Occasionally, however, better works were performed.  Some months later, for instance, at the celebration of a gentleman’s name-day, Spohr’s Quintet for piano, flute, clarinet, horn, and bassoon was played.  Chopin’s criticism on this work is as usual short:—­

Wonderfully beautiful, but not quite suitable for the piano.  Everything Spohr has written for the piano is very difficult, indeed, sometimes it is impossible to find any fingering for his passages.

On Easter-day, the great feasting day of the Poles, Chopin was invited to breakfast by the poet Minasowicz.  On this occasion he expected to meet Kurpinski; and as in the articles which had appeared in the papers a propos of his concerts the latter and Elsner had been pitted against each other, he wondered what would be the demeanour of his elder fellow-countryman and fellow-composer towards him.  Remembering Chopin’s repeated injunctions to his parents not to mention to others his remarks on musicians, we may be sure that in this as in every other case Chopin proceeded warily.  Here is another striking example of this characteristic and highly-developed cautiousness.  After hearing the young pianist Leskiewicz play at a concert he writes:—­

   It seems to me that he will become a better player than
   Krogulski; but I have not yet dared to express this opinion,
   although I have been often asked to do so.

In the first half of April, 1830, Chopin was so intent on finishing the compositions he had begun that, greatly as he wished to pay his friend Titus Woyciechowski a visit at his country-seat Poturzyn, he determined to stick to his work.  The Diet, which had not been convoked for five years, was to meet on the 28th of May.  That there would be a great concourse of lords and lordlings and their families and retinues followed as a matter of course.  Here, then, was an excellent opportunity for giving a concert.  Chopin, who remembered that the haute voice had not yet heard him, did not overlook it.  But be it that the Concerto was not finished in time, or that the circumstances proved less favourable than he had expected, he did not carry out his plan.  Perhaps the virtuosos poured in too plentifully.  In those days the age of artistic vagrancy had not yet come to an end, and virtuosity concerts were still flourishing most vigorously.  Blahetka of Vienna, too, had a notion of coming with his daughter to Warsaw and giving some concerts there during the sitting of the Diet.  He wrote to Chopin to this effect, and asked his advice.  The latter told him that many musicians and amateurs had indeed often expressed a desire to hear Miss Blahetka, but that the expenses of a concert and the many distinguished artists who had arrived or were about to arrive made the enterprise rather hazardous.