ng beside him. Nowakowski, thinking Chopin was at his
favourite game, clapped Pixis familiarly on the shoulder and said:
"Leave off, don't imitate now!" The surprise of Pixis and the subsequent
confusion of Nowakowski may be easily imagined. When Chopin, who at this
moment returned, had been made to understand what had taken place, he
laughed heartily, and with the grace peculiar to him knew how to make
his friend's and his own excuses. One thing in connection with Chopin's
mimicry has to be particularly noted--it is very characteristic of the
man. Chopin, we learn from Liszt, while subjecting his features to all
kinds of metamorphoses and imitating even the ugly and grotesque, never
lost his native grace, "la grimace ne parvenait meme pas a l'enlaidir."

We shall see presently what George Sand has to say about her lover's
imitative talent; first, however, we will make ourselves acquainted with
the friends with whom she especially associated. Besides Pierre Leroux,
Balzac, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, and others who have already been
mentioned in the foregoing chapters, she numbered among her most
intimate friends the Republican politician and historian Louis Blanc,
the Republican litterateur Godefroy Cavaignac, the historian Henri
Martin, and the litterateur Louis Viardot, the husband of Pauline
Garcia.

[FOOTNOTE: This name reminds me of a passage in Louis Blanc's "Histoire
de la Revolution de 1840" (p. 210 of Fifth Edition. Paris, 1880). "A
short time before his [Godefroy Cavaignac's] end, he was seized by an
extraordinary desire to hear music once more. I knew Chopin. I offered
to go to him, and to bring him with me, if the doctor did not oppose it.
The entreaties thereupon took the character of a supplication. With the
consent, or rather at the urgent prayer, of Madame Cavaignac, I betook
myself to Chopin. Madame George Sand was there. She expressed in a
touching manner the lively interest with which the invalid inspired her;
and Chopin placed himself at my service with much readiness and grace. I
conducted him then into the chamber of the dying man, where there was a
bad piano. The great artist begins...Suddenly he is interrupted by
sobs. Godefroy, in a transport of sensibility which gave him a moment's
physical 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