es, 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 may have occasionally been
shocked by unrestrained vivacity, loud laughter, and perhaps even coarse
words; that his uncompromising idealism may have been disturbed by the
discordance of literary squabbles, intrigues, and business transactions;
that his peaceable, non-speculative, and non-argumentative disposition
may have been vexed and wearied by discussions of political, social,
religious, literary, and artistic problems. Unless his own art was the
subject, Chopin did not take part in discussions. And Liszt tells us
that Chopin not only, like most artists, lacked a generalising
mind [esprit generalisateur], but showed hardly any inclination for
aesthetics, of which he had not even heard much. We may be sure that
to Chopin to whom discussions of any kind were distasteful, those of a
circle in which, as in that of George Sand, democratic and socialistic,
theistic and atheistic views prevailed, were particularly so. For,
notwithstanding his bourgeois birth, his sympathies were with the
aristocracy; and notwithstanding his neglect of ritual observances, his
attachment to the Church of Rome remained unbroken. Chopin does not seem
to have concealed his dislike to George Sand's circle; if he did not
give audible expression to it, he made it sufficiently manifest by
seeking other company. That she was aware of the fact and displeased
with it, is evident from what she says of her lover's social habits
in Ma Vie. The following excerpt from that work is an important
biographical contribution; it is written not without bitterness, but
with hardly any exaggeration:--

He was a man of the world par excellence, not of the too
formal and too numerous world, but of the intimate world, of
the salons of twenty persons, of the hour when the crowd goes
away and the habitues crowd round the artist to wrest from him
by amiable importunity his purest inspiration. It was then
only that he exhibited all his genius and all his talent. It
was then also that after having plunged his audience into a
profound recueillement or into a painful sadness, for his
music sometimes discouraged one's soul terribly, especially
when he improvised, he wou