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 surmis