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