Frederick Chopin

While Frederick Chopin, in the year 1837, was living out the slow decomposition of his love, George Sand was back at her little Château de Nohant. There she spent long months alone, with her children and her work. The summer brought her the Liszt-d’Agoult ménage, nights of music, new dreams of happiness. Then her mother died unexpectedly, and she was obliged to return to Paris, while the Countess and Franz took the road for Italy. She planned to rejoin them there, but was prevented by a sudden inclination for the new tutor of her children, Félicien Mallefille. The rupture with Michel de Bourges still bled feebly, but George felt that she had finally “slain the dragon,” and that this attachment, more stubborn than she had dreamed, would be cured by a gentle affection, “less enthusiastic, but also less sharp,” and, she hoped, lasting. She was mistaken. Six months were sufficient to drain this spring to the bottom. Nevertheless she had pity on this rather vapid lover, who never interested her physically. For several months more she dragged him about with her luggage between Paris, Fontainebleau, and Nohant.

In January of 1838, the great Balzac stumbled one fine evening into this country seat and stayed for several days. The two novelists passed the nights in gossip and confidences. Balzac set down his still warm impressions for Countess Hanska: “I reached the Château de Nohant on Holy Saturday, about half-past seven in the evening, and I found comrade George Sand in her dressing-gown, smoking an after dinner cigar, in front of her fire in an immense empty room. She had lovely yellow slippers ornamented with fringe, bewitching stockings and red trousers. So much for her state of mind. As to physique, she had doubled her chin like a prebendary. She has not a single white hair in spite of her frightful misfortunes; her swarthy complexion has not changed; her fine eyes are as brilliant as ever; she has the same stupid air when she is thinking, because, as I told her after studying her, her whole countenance is in her eye. She has been at Nohant for a year, very sad and working prodigiously. She leads about the same life that I do. She goes to bed at six in the morning and gets up at noon; I go to bed at six in the evening and get up at midnight. But, naturally, I conformed to her habits, and for three days we have gossiped from five o’clock in the evening, after dinner, till five in the morning. The result is that I know her, and she knows me, better after these three talks than during the whole of the preceding four years, when she used to visit me while she was in love with Jules Sandeau and when she was attached to Musset... It was just as well that I saw her, for we exchanged mutual confidences regarding Jules Sandeau... However, she was even more unhappy with Musset, and now there she is, in profound seclusion, raging at both marriage and love, because in each she has found nothing but disappointment.

“Her right male was hard to find, that is all. All the harder because she is not amiable, and, consequently, loving her will always be beset with difficulties. She is a bachelor, she is an artist, she is big, generous, loyal, chaste; she has the features of a man. Ergo, she is not a woman. While I was near her, even in talking heart to heart for three days, I felt no more than before the itch of that gooseflesh of gallantry that in France and in Poland one is supposed to display for any kind of female.

“It was to a friend I was talking. She has high virtues, virtues that society regards askance. We discussed the great questions of marriage and of freedom with a seriousness, a good faith, a candour, a conscience worthy of the great shepherds who guide the herds of men.

“For, as she said, with immense pride (I should not have dared think of it myself), ‘Since by our writings we are preparing a revolution in the customs of the future, I am not less struck by the inconveniences of the one state than by those of the other.’

“We spent the whole night talking of this great problem. I am absolutely in favour of liberty for the young girl and bondage for the woman, that is, I want her to know before marriage what she is undertaking: I want her to have considered everything; then, when she has signed the contract, after having weighed the chances, to be faithful to it. I gained a great point in making Mme. Dudevant realize the necessity of marriage; but she will come to believe in it, I am sure, and I feel that I have done good in proving it to her.

“She is an excellent mother, adored by her children; but she dresses her daughter Solange like a little boy, and that is not right.

“She is like a man of twenty, morally, because she is chaste, modest, and only an artist on the outside. She smokes inordinately, she plays the princess, perhaps, a little too much, and I am convinced that she portrayed herself faithfully as the princess in Le Secrétaire Intime. She knew and said of herself, before I told her, just what I think,—that she has neither power of conception nor the gift of constructing plots, nor the ability to attain to the truth, nor the art of pathos; but that, without knowing the French language, she has style. This is true. She takes fame, as I do, lightly enough, and has a profound scorn for the public, whom she calls Jumento.

“I shall tell you of the immense and secret devotion of this woman for these two men, and you will say to yourself that there is nothing in common between the angels and the devils. All the follies she has committed entitle her to glory in the eyes of great and beautiful souls....

“Anyway, it is a man she would like to be, so much so that she has thrown off womanhood, and is no longer a woman. A woman attracts and she repels, and, since I am very masculine, if she produces that effect on me, she must produce it on men who are like me. She will be unhappy always. And so,—she is now in love with a man who is her inferior, and in that covenant there is only disillusionment and disappointment for a woman with a beautiful spirit. A woman should always love a man greater than she, or she be so blinded that it is the same as though he were.

“I have not come from Nohant unscathed. I carried away one enormous vice; she made me smoke a hooka with Lattakieh; it has suddenly become a necessity to me...”

Balzac’s eye and ear were not mistaken in their diagnosis. Yet he could neither fully see nor fully hear what was passing behind the windows of this being who was more complex than he knew. This spring of 1838 germinated once again the strong dark violet of a new love.

George Sand had been to Paris several times. She had seen Chopin again. And the drama of pleasure, of difficulties, of pains, had involved them. Both Sand and Chopin had come through too many sufferings to turn the new page of their story with anything but distrust and uncertainty. But with Chopin it had all been buried in silence, and his music alone had received his queries and his secret raptures. We may consult all his work of this period, which witnesses magnificently to this: the Twelve Studies, dedicated to Mme. d’Agoult (Vol. 2, op. 25), the Impromptu (Op. 29), the Second Scherzo (Op. 31), the Two Nocturnes (Op. 32), the four mazurkas of op. 30 (C minor, B minor, D flat major, and C sharp minor), the three Valses Brillantes of op. 34, and four other mazurkas (op. 33) dedicated to Mlle. la Comtesse Mostowska.

As for George, the first hint of her new passion is found in a letter to her friend, Mme. Marliani, dated the 23rd of May, where she says: “Pretty dear, I have received your letters and have delayed replying fully, because you know how changeable the weather is in the season of love. There is so much yes and no, if and but, in one week, and often in the morning one says: This is absolutely intolerable, only to add in the evening: Truly, it is supreme happiness. So I am holding off until I may tell you definitely that my barometer registers something, if not stable, at least set fair for any length of time at all. I have not the slightest reproach to make, but that is no reason to be happy....”

Yet it was not to Mme. Marliani that she showed the singular and interesting fluctuations of her sentimental barometer, but to Count Albert Grzymala, a close friend of Chopin. But here is what she wrote him at the beginning of that summer:

“Nothing could ever make me doubt the loyalty of your advice, dear friend; may you never have such a fear. I believe in your gospel without knowing or examining it, because once it has a disciple like you it must be the most sublime of all gospels. Bless you for your advice, and be at peace about my thoughts. Let us state the question clearly, for the last time, for on your final reply on this subject will depend my whole future conduct, and since it had to come to this I am vexed at not having conquered the repugnance I felt to questioning you in Paris. It seemed to me that what I was to hear would blanch my poem. And, indeed, now it has browned, or rather it is paling enormously. But what does it matter? Your gospel is mine when it prescribes thinking of oneself last and not thinking of oneself at all when the happiness of those we love claims all our strength. Listen to me well, and reply clearly, categorically, definitely. This person whom he wants, ought, or thinks he ought to love, is she the one to bring him happiness? Or would she heighten his suffering and his sadness? I do not ask if he loves her, if he is loved, if she is more or less to him than I. I know, approximately, by what is taking place in me, what must be happening to him. I want to know which of us two he must forget and forsake for his own peace, for his happiness, for his very life, which seems to me too precarious and frail to withstand great sorrows. I do not want to play the part of a bad angel. I am not Meyerbeer’s Bertram and I shall never fight against a childhood friend, provided she is a pure and lovely Alice. If I had known that there was a bond in the life of your child, a sentiment in his soul, I should never have stooped to inhale a perfume meant for another altar. By the same token, he would without doubt have drawn back from my first kiss had he known I was as good as married. We have neither of us deceived one another. We gave ourselves to the wind that passed, and for a few minutes it carried us both into another region. But we had, none the less, to come back down here, after this celestial embrace and this flight through the empyrean. Poor birds, we have wings, but our nest is on the ground, and when the song of the angels calls us on high, the cries of our family recall us below. For my part, I have no wish to abandon myself to passion, although there is in the depths of my heart a fire that still occasionally threatens. My children will give me the strength to break with anything that would draw me away from them, or from the manner of life that is best for their education, their health, their well-being.... Thus I am unable to establish myself at Paris because of Maurice’s illness, etc., etc. Then there is an excellent soul, perfect, in regard to heart and honour, whom I shall never leave, because he is the only man who, having been with me for a year, has never once, for one single minute, made me suffer by his fault. He is also the only man who has ever given himself absolutely and entirely to me, without regret for the past, without reserve for the future. Then, he has such a good and wise nature that I can in time teach him to understand everything, to know everything. He is soft wax on which I have put my seal. When I want to change the imprint, with some precaution and patience I shall succeed. But it cannot be done to-day, and his happiness is sacred to me.

“So much for me. Tied as I am, bound fairly tightly for years to come, I cannot wish that our child should on his side break the bonds that hold him. If he should come to lay his existence in my hands, I should be indeed dismayed because, having already accepted another, I could not offer him a substitute for what he had sacrificed for me. I believe that our love could last only under the conditions under which it was born, that is, that sometimes, when a good wind blows us together, we should again make a tour among the stars and then leave each other to plod upon the ground, because we are earth children and God has not decreed that we should finish our pilgrimage together. We ought to meet among the heavens, and the fleet moments we shall pass there shall be so beautiful that they shall outweigh all our lives below.

“So my task is set. But I can, without ever relinquishing it, accomplish it in two different ways; the one, by keeping as aloof as possible from C[hopin], by never seeking to occupy his thoughts, by never again being alone with him; the other, on the contrary, by drawing as close to him as possible without compromising the position of M[allefille], to insinuate myself gently into his hours of rest and happiness, to hold him chastely in my arms sometimes, when the wind of heaven sees fit to raise us and transport us up to the skies. The first way will be the one I shall adopt if you tell me that the person is fit to give him a pure, true happiness, to care for him, to arrange, regularize, and calm his life, if, in fact, he could be happy through her and I should be an impediment. If his spirit strongly, perhaps madly, perhaps wisely scrupulous, refuses to love two different beings, in two different ways, if the eight days I might pass with him in a whole season should keep him from inner happiness for the rest of the year,—then, yes, then I swear to you that I should try to make him forget me. I should adopt the second way if you should say one of two things: either that his domestic happiness could and should do with a few hours of chaste passion and of sweet poetry, or that domestic happiness is not possible to him, and that marriage or any union that resembled it would be the grave of this artist soul, that he must at any cost be saved from it and even helped to conquer his religious scruples. It is thereabouts that I arrive in my conjectures. You shall tell me if I am mistaken; I believe the person charming, worthy of all love and all respect, because such a being as he could love only the pure and the beautiful. But I believe that you dread marriage for him, the daily bond, real life, business, domestic cares, everything in a word that seems remote from his nature and detrimental to the inspiration of his muse. I too should fear it for him; but on this point I can say nothing and decide nothing, because there are many aspects under which he is quite unknown to me. I have seen only the side of his being that is warmed by the sun. You shall therefore settle my ideas on this point. It is of the very greatest importance that I should know his position, so that I can establish my own. If it were left to me, I should so arrange our poem that I should know nothing, absolutely nothing of his positive life, nor he of mine, and that he should follow all his own ideas, religious, social, poetic, artistic, without question from me, and vice versa, but that always, in whatever place or at whatever moment of our lives we might meet, our souls should be at their apogee of happiness and goodness. Because, I am sure, one is better when one loves with a heavenly love, and, far from committing a sin, one comes near to God, the fountain-head of this love. It is perhaps this, as a last resort, that you must try to make him thoroughly understand, my friend, and without opposing his ideas of duty, of devotion and of religious sacrifice, you may put his heart more at ease. What I fear above anything in the world, what would be most painful to me, what would make me decide even to make myself dead for him, would be to see myself become a horror and a remorse in his soul. I cannot (unless, quite apart from me, she should be tragic for him) fight against the image and memory of someone else. I have too much respect for decency for that, or rather it is the only decency I respect. I will steal no one from anyone, except captives from jailers and victims from executioners and, consequently Poland from Russia. Tell me if it is a Russia whose portrait haunts our child. Then I would ask heaven to lend me all the seductions of Armida to keep him from throwing himself away on her. But if it is a Poland, let him be. There is nothing like a native land, and when you have one you must not take another. In that case, I shall be an Italy to him, an Italy which one goes to see and where one enjoys the days of spring, but where one does not stay, because there is more sun than there are beds and tables, and the comforts of life are elsewhere. Poor Italy! The whole world dreams of her, desires her, and sorrows for her, but no one may live with her, because she is unhappy and cannot give the happiness which she has not. There is a final supposition that I must tell you. It might be possible that he no longer loves the childhood friend at all, and that he would have a real repugnance towards any alliance, but that the feeling of duty, the honour of a family, or what not, demands a remorseless sacrifice of himself. In that case, my friend, be his good angel. I could scarcely meddle in it, but you should. Keep him from too sharp attacks of conscience, save him from his own virtues, prevent him, at all costs, from sacrificing himself, because in this sort of thing (I mean marriage or those unions that, without the same publicity, have the same binding power and duration), in this sort of thing, I say, the sacrifice of him who gives his future is not in proportion to what he has received in the past. The past is something appreciable and limited; the future is infinite, because it is unknown. The being who, for a certain known sum of devotion, demands in return the devotion of a whole lifetime, asks too much, and if he on whom the demand is made is hard pressed to defend his rights and satisfy at the same time both generosity and justice, it is the part of friendship to save him and to be the sole judge of his rights and his duties. Be firm in this regard, and believe that I, who detest seducers, I, who always take the part of outraged and deceived women, I who am thought the spokesman of my sex and who pride myself on so being; I, when it has been necessary, have on my authority as a sister or mother or friend broken more than one engagement of this kind. I have always condemned the woman when she has wanted to be happy at the expense of the man; I have always absolved the man when more was demanded of him than it is given to freedom and human dignity to undertake. A pledge of love and faithfulness is criminal or cowardly when the mouth speaks what the heart disavows, and one may ask anything of a man save a crime or a cowardice. Except in that case, my friend, that is to say except he should want to make too great a sacrifice, I believe we must not oppose his ideas, nor violate his instincts. If his heart can, like mine, hold two quite different loves, one which might be called the body of life, the other the soul, that would be best, because our situation would dominate our feelings and thoughts. Just as one is not always sublime, neither is one always happy. We shall not see each other every day, we shall not possess the sacred fire every day, but there will be beautiful days, and heavenly flames.

“Perhaps we should also think of telling him my position regarding M[allefille]. It is to be feared that, not knowing it, he might conjure up a kind of duty towards me which would irk him and come to oppose the other painfully. I leave you absolutely to judge and decide about this confidence; you may make it if you think the moment opportune, or delay it if you feel that it would add to his too recent sufferings. Possibly you have already made it. I approve of and confirm anything and everything you have done or will do.

“As to the question of possession or non-possession, that seems secondary to the question we are now discussing. It is, however, an important question in itself, it is a woman’s whole life, her dearest secret, her most pondered philosophy, her most mysterious coquetry. As for me, I shall tell you quite simply, you, my brother and my friend, this great mystery, about which everyone who mentions my name makes such curious observations. I have no secrets about it, no theory, no doctrine, no definite opinion, no prejudice, no pretence of power, no spiritual aping—in fact, nothing studied and no set habit, and (I believe) no false principles, either of licence or of restraint. I have trusted largely to my instincts, which have always been worthy; sometimes I have been deceived in people, never in myself. I reproach myself for many stupidities, but for no platitudes or wickednesses. I hear many things said on the question of human morality, of shame and of social virtue. All that is still not clear to me. Nor have I ever reached a conclusion. Yet I am not unmindful of the question; I admit to you that the desire to fit any philosophy at all to my own sentiments has been the great preoccupation and the great pain of my life. Feelings have always been stronger than reason with me, and the limits I have wanted to set for myself have never been of any use to me. I have changed my ideas twenty times. Above everything I have believed in fidelity. I have preached it, practised it, demanded it. Others have lacked it and so have I. And yet I have felt no remorse, because in my infidelities I have always submitted to a kind of fatality, an instinct for the ideal which pushed me into leaving the imperfect for what seemed to me to come nearer to the perfect. I have known many kinds of love. The love of the artist, the love of the woman, the love of the sister, the love of the mother, the nun’s love, the poet’s love,—I know not what. Some have been born and dead in me within the same day without being revealed to the person who inspired them. Some have martyred my life and have hurled me into despair, almost into madness. Some have held me cloistered for years in an excessive spirituality. All of it has been perfectly sincere. My being passed through these different phases as the sun, as Sainte-Beuve said, passes through the signs of the zodiac. To one who watched my progress superficially I would have seemed mad or hypocritical; to one who watched, reading me deeply, I seemed just what I am, a lover of beauty, greedy for truth, very sensitive of heart, very weak of judgment, often absurd, always sincere, never small or vindictive, hot tempered enough, and, thank God, perfectly forgetful of evil things and evil people.

“That is my life, dear friend. You see it is not much. There is nothing to admire, much to regret, nothing for good souls to condemn. I am sure that those who have accused me of being bad have lied, and it would be very easy to prove it if I wished to take the trouble to remember and recount it; but that bores me, and I have no more memory than I have rancour.

“Thus far I have been faithful to what I loved, absolutely faithful, in the sense that I have never deceived anyone, and that I have never been unfaithful without very strong reasons, which, by the fault of others, have killed the love in me. I am not inconstant by nature. On the contrary, I am so accustomed to loving him who loves me, so difficult to inflame, so habituated to living with men without consciousness of being a woman, that really I have been a little confused and dismayed by the effect produced on me by this little being. I have not yet recovered from my astonishment, and if I had a great deal of pride I should be greatly humiliated to have fallen full into an infidelity of the heart, at the very moment when I believed myself for ever calm and settled. I think this would be wrong; if I had been able to foresee, to reason, and combat this inroad; but I was suddenly attacked, and it is not in my nature to govern myself by reason when love possesses me. So I am not reproaching myself, but I realize that I am still very impressionable and weaker than I thought. That matters little; I have small vanity. This proves to me that I should have none at all, and should never make any boast of valour and strength. This makes me sad, for here is my beautiful sincerity, that I had practised for so long and of which I was a little proud, bruised and compromised. I shall be forced to lie like the others. I assure you that this is more mortifying to my self-respect than a bad novel or a hissed play. It hurts me a little; this hurt is perhaps the remains of pride; perhaps it is a voice from above that cries to me that I must guard more carefully my eyes and my ears, and above all my heart. But if heaven wishes us to remain faithful to our earthly affections, why does it sometimes allow the angels to stray among us and meet us on our path?

“So the great question of love is raised again in me! No love without fidelity, I said only two words ago, and certainly, alas! I did not feel the same tenderness for poor M[allefille] when I saw him again. Certainly since he went back to Paris (you must have seen him), instead of awaiting his return with impatience and being sad while he is away, I suffer less and breathe more freely. If I believed that a frequent sign of C[hopin] would increase this chill, I would feel it my duty to refrain.

“That is what I wanted to get to—a talk with you on this question of possession, which to some minds constitutes the whole question of faithfulness. This is, I believe, a false idea; one can be more unfaithful or less, but when one has allowed one’s soul to be invaded, and has granted the simplest caress, with a feeling of love, then the infidelity is already consummated, and the rest is less serious; because whoever has lost the heart has lost everything. It would be better to lose the body and keep the soul intact. So, in principle, I do not believe a complete consecration to the new bond would greatly increase the sin; but, in practice, it is possible that the attachment might become more human, more violent, more dominating, after possession. It is even probable. It is even certain. That is why, when two people wish to live together, they must not outrage either nature or truth in recoiling from a complete union; but when they are forced to live apart, doubtless it is the part of prudence. Consequently, it is the part of duty and of true virtue (which is sacrifice) to abstain. I have not reflected seriously on this and, if he had asked me in Paris, I should have given in, because of this natural straightness that makes me hate precautions, restrictions, false distinctions and subtleties of any kind. But your letter makes me think of scuttling that resolution. Then, too, the trouble and sadness I have endured in again experiencing the caresses of M[allefille], the courage it has taken to hide it, is a warning to me. So I shall follow your advice, dear friend. May this sacrifice be a kind of expiation for the perjury I have committed.

“I say sacrifice, because it would be painful for me to see this angel suffer. So far he has had great strength; but I am not a child. I saw clearly that human passion was making rapid progress in him and that it was time we parted. That is why, the night before my departure, I did not wish to stay with him and why I almost sent you both home.

“And since I am telling you everything, I want to say to you that only one thing about him displeased me; that is, that he himself had bad reasons for abstaining. Until then I thought it fine that he should abstain out of respect for me, from timidity, even from fidelity for someone else. All that was sacrifice, and consequently strength and chastity, of course. That is what charmed and attracted me most in him. But at your house, just as he was leaving us, and as if he wished to conquer one last temptation, he said two or three words to me that did not answer to my ideas. He seemed, after the fashion of devotees, to despise human grossness and to redden at the temptations he had had, and to fear to soil our love by one more transport. This way of looking at the last embrace of love has always been repugnant to me. If the last embrace is not as sacred, as pure, as devoted as the rest, there is no virtue in abstaining from it. These words, physical love, by which we call what has no name under heaven, displease and shock me, like a sacrilege and at the same time like a false notion. Can there be, for lofty natures, a purely physical love, and for sincere natures a purely intellectual one? Is there ever love without a single kiss and a kiss of love without passion? To despise the flesh cannot be good and useful except for those who are all flesh; with someone one loves, not the word despise, but the word respect must serve when one abstains. Besides, these are not the words he used. I do not exactly remember them. He said, I think, that certain acts could spoil a memory. Surely, that was a stupid thing to say, and he did not mean it? Who is the unhappy woman who left him with such ideas of physical love? Has he then had a mistress unworthy of him? Poor angel! They should hang all the women who degrade in men’s eyes the most honourable and sacred thing in creation, the divine mystery, the most serious act of life and the most sublime in the life of the universe. The magnet embraces the iron, the animals come together by the difference of sex. Plants obey love, and man, who alone on this earth has received from God the gift of feeling divinely what the animals, the plants and the metals feel only materially, man in whom the electric attraction is transformed into an attraction felt, understood, intelligent, man alone regards this miracle which takes place simultaneously in his soul and in his body as a miserable necessity, and he speaks of it with scorn, with irony or with shame! This is passing strange! The result of this fashion of separating the spirit from the flesh is that it has necessitated convents and bad places.

“This is a frightful letter. It will take you six weeks to decipher it. It is my ultimatum. If he is happy, or would be happy through her, let him be. If he would be unhappy, prevent him. If he could be happy through me, without ceasing to be happy through her, I can for my part do likewise. If he cannot be happy through me without being unhappy with her, we must not see each other and he must forget me. There is no way of getting around these four points. I shall be strong about it, I promise you, because it is a question of him, and if I have no great virtue for myself, I have great devotion for those I love. You are to tell me the truth frankly. I count on it and wait for it.

“It is absolutely useless to write me a discreet letter that I can show. We have not reached that point, M[allefille] and I. We respect each other too much to demand, even in thought, an account of the details of our lives....

“There has been some question of my going to Paris, and it is still not impossible that if my business, which M[allefille] is now looking after, should be prolonged I shall join him. Do not say anything about it to the child. If I go, I shall notify you and we will surprise him. In any case, since it takes time for you to get freedom to travel, begin your preparations now, because I want you at Nohant this summer, as soon and for as long as possible. You shall see how happy you will be. There is not a hint of what you fear There is no spying, no gossip, no provincialism; it is an oasis in the desert. There is not a soul in the country who knows what a Chopin or a Grzymala is. No one knows what happens in my house. I see no one but intimate friends, angels like you, who have never had an evil thought about those they love. You will come, my dear good friend, we shall talk at our ease and your battered soul will regenerate itself in the country. As for the child, he shall come if he likes; but in that case I should like to be forewarned, for I should send M[allefille] either to Paris or to Geneva. There is no lack of pretexts, and he will never suspect anything. If the child does not want to come, leave him to his ideas; he fears the world, he fears I know not what. I respect in those I love everything I do not understand. I shall go to Paris in September myself, before the final departure. I shall conduct myself with him according to your reply to this letter. If you have no solution for the problems I put, try to draw one from him, ransack his soul; I must know what he feels.

“But now you know me through and through. This is such a letter as I do not write twice in ten years. I am too lazy, and I do so hate talking about myself. But this will spare me further talk on that subject. You know me by heart now, and you can fire at sight on me when you balance the accounts of the Trinity.

“Yours, dear good friend, yours with all my heart. Ostensibly I have not spoken of you in all this long chat. That is because it seemed as though I were talking of myself to another me, the better and the dearer of the two, I swear.

“George Sand.”

Let us, above all, admire the woman’s method of so conducting her battle that she necessarily remains victorious, no matter what the attacks or shifts of the enemy. Everything is foreseen, arranged, admitted, except the omission to become the lover of George Sand. Besides, she must have known perfectly well that the little “Russia” she pretended to fear had already surrendered her arms, that Chopin had flung her out of his proud heart. But such a letter, such a rare psychological document, deserves to be included intact in the dossier of this love. The personality of the writer becomes clearly illuminated, even—perhaps above all—in what it tries to hide. One feels the intelligence; weighs the slightly heavy goodness, once more maternal, pelicanish; one wonders at the moist-lipped desire of a woman of thirty-four for the “child” of twenty-eight, who looked still younger and whose very purity intoxicated the voluptuous woman enamoured of it. She called it “doing her duty.” It is all a matter of well-chosen words. She admitted also: “I must love or die,” which is less pretentious.

To sum up the matter, be it admitted that Chopin needed a fine, generous tenderness after the poor, dried-up little romance he had hidden in an envelope. He also needed care. George began by sending him to Doctor Gaubert, who sounded him, and swore that he was not phthisical. But he needed air, walks, rest. The new lovers set out in quest of solitude.

Paris soon heard that the novelist had left with her three children: Maurice, Solange and Chopin, for the Balearic Isles.