loosening of this connection was probably brought about by the departure of Hiller in 1836 and the quarrel with Liszt some time after, which broke two links between the sensitive Pole and the fiery Frenchman.  The ageing Baillot and Cherubini died in 1842.  Kalkbrenner died but a short time before Chopin, but the sympathy existing between them was not strong enough to prevent their drifting apart.  Other artists to whom the new-comer had paid due homage may have been neglected, forgotten, or lost sight of when success was attained and the blandishments of the salons were lavished upon him.  Strange to say, with all his love for what belonged to and came from Poland, he kept compatriot musicians at a distance.  Fontana was an exception, but him he cherished, no doubt, as a friend of his youth in spite of his profession, or, if as a musician at all, chiefly because of his handiness as a copyist.  For Sowinski, who was already settled in Paris when Chopin arrived there, and who assisted him at his first concert, he did not care.  Consequently they had afterwards less and less intercourse, which, indeed, in the end may have ceased altogether.  An undated letter given by Count Wodziriski in “Les trois Romans de Frederic Chopin,” no doubt originally written in Polish, brings the master’s feelings towards his compatriot, and also his irritability, most vividly before the reader.

Here he is!  He has just come in to see me—­a tall strong individual who wears moustaches; he sits down at the piano and improvises, without knowing exactly what.  He knocks, strikes, and crosses his hands, without reason; he demolishes in five minutes a poor helpless key; he has enormous fingers, made rather to handle reins and whip somewhere on the confines of Ukraine.  Here you have the portrait of S...who has no other merit than that of having small moustaches and a good heart.  If I ever thought of imagining what stupidity and charlatanism in art are, I have now the clearest perception of them.  I run through my room with my ears reddening; I have a mad desire to throw the door wide open; but one has to spare him, to show one’s self almost affectionate.  No, you cannot imagine what it is:  here one sees only his neckties; one does him the honour of taking him seriously....There remains, therefore, nothing but to bear him.  What exasperates me is his collection of little songs, compositions in the most vulgar style, without the least knowledge of the most elementary rules of harmony and poetry, concluding with quadrille ritornelli, and which he calls Recueil de Chants Polonais.  You know how I wished to understand, and how I have in part succeeded in understanding, our national music.  Therefore you will judge what pleasure I experience when, laying hold of a motive of mine here and there, without taking account of the fact that all the beauty of a melody depends on the accompaniment, he reproduces it with the taste of a frequenter of suburban taverns (guinguettes) and public-houses (cabarets).