rne dedicated to Mdlle.
Stirling."--The nocturne which I called the dangerous one.--He
smiled, and played the fatal nocturne. "I," said another lady,
"should like to hear once played by you this mazurka, so sad and
so charming." He smiled again, and played the delicious mazurka.
The most profoundly artful among the ladies sought expedients to
attain their end: "I am practising the grand sonata which
commences with this beautiful funeral march," and "I should like
to know the movement in which the finale ought to be played." He
smiled a little at the stratagem, and played the finale, of the
grand sonata, one of the most magnificent pieces which he has
composed.

Although Madame Girardin's language and opinions are fair specimens of
those prevalent in the beatified regions in which Chopin delighted to
move, we will not follow her rhapsodic eulogy of his playing. That she
cannot be ranked with the connoisseurs is evident from her statement
that the sonata BEGINS with the funeral march, and that the FINALE is
one of the most magnificent creations of the composer. Notwithstanding
Madame Girardin's subsequent remark that Chopin's playing at Madame de
Courbonne's was quite an exception, her letter may mislead the reader
into the belief that the great pianist was easily induced to sit down
at the piano. A more correct idea may be formed of the real state of
matters from a passage in an article by Berlioz (Feuilleton du Journal
des Debats, October 27, 1849) in which the supremacy of style over
matter is a little less absolute than in the lady's elegant chit-chat:--

A small circle of select auditors, whose real desire to hear
him was beyond doubt, could alone determine him to approach
the piano. What emotions he would then call forth! In what
ardent and melancholy reveries he loved to pour out his soul!
It was usually towards midnight that he gave himself up with
the greatest ABANDON, when the big butterflies of the salon
had left, when the political questions of the day had been
discussed at length, when all the scandal-mongers were at the
end of their anecdotes, when all the snares were laid, all the
perfidies consummated, when one was thoroughly tired of prose,
then, obedient to the mute petition of some beautiful,
intelligent eyes, he became a poet, and sang the Ossianic
loves of the heroes of his dreams, their chivalrous joys, and
the sorrows of the absent fatherland, his