reddish flame of slowly-consumed logs, or by the uncertain light of two candles placed at each extremity of the long table, the maid-servants spin as in olden times, and relate to each other a thousand marvellous legends.  On the right, in a lodging of three rooms, so low that one can touch the ceiling, a man of some thirty years, brown, with vivacious eyes, the face closely shaven.”  This man was of course Nicholas Chopin.  I need hardly say that Count Wodzinski’s description is novelistically tricked out.  His accuracy may be judged by the fact that a few pages after the above passage he speaks of the discoloured tiles of the roof which he told his readers before was of slate.]

The son of the latter, Count Frederick Skarbek, Nicholas Chopin’s pupil, a young man of seventeen, stood godfather and gave his name to the new-born offspring of his tutor.  Little Frederick’s residence at the village cannot have been of long duration.

The establishment of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 had ushered in a time big with chances for a capable man, and we may be sure that a young husband and father, no doubt already on the look-out for some more lucrative and independent employment, was determined not to miss them.  Few peaceful revolutions, if any, can compare in thoroughness with the one that then took place in Poland; a new sovereign ascended the throne, two differently-constituted representative bodies superseded the old Senate and Diet, the French code of laws was introduced, the army and civil service underwent a complete re-organisation, public instruction obtained a long-needed attention, and so forth.  To give an idea of the extent of the improvement effected in matters of education, it is enough to mention that the number of schools rose from 140 to 634, and that a commission was formed for the publication of suitable books of instruction in the Polish language.  Nicholas Chopin’s hopes were not frustrated; for on October 1, 1810, he was appointed professor of the French language at the newly-founded Lyceum in Warsaw, and a little more than a year after, on January 1, 1812, to a similar post at the School of Artillery and Engineering.

The exact date when Nicholas Chopin and his family settled in Warsaw is not known, nor is it of any consequence.  We may, however, safely assume that about this time little Frederick was an inhabitant of the Polish metropolis.  During the first years of his life the parents may have lived in somewhat straitened circumstances.  The salary of the professorship, even if regularly paid, would hardly suffice for a family to live comfortably, and the time was unfavourable for gaining much by private tuition.  M. de Pradt, describing Poland in 1812, says:—­