Liszt himself, Heine, Meyerbeer, Nourrit, Hiller, Delacroix,
Niemcewicz, Mickiewicz, George Sand, and the Comtesse d'Agoult. Of
course, this is a poetic licence: these men and women cannot have been
at one and the same time in Chopin's salon. Indeed, Hiller informed me
that he knew nothing of this party, and that, moreover, as long as
he was in Paris (up to 1836) there were hardly ever more numerous
gatherings at his friend's lodgings than of two or three. Liszt's
group, however, brings vividly before us one section of Chopin's social
surroundings: it shows us what a poetic atmosphere he was breathing,
amidst what a galaxy of celebrities he was moving. A glimpse of the real
life our artist lived in the early Paris years this extravagant effort
of a luxuriant imagination does not afford. Such glimpses we got in his
letters to Hiller and Franchomme, where we also met with many friends
and acquaintances with less high-sounding names, some of whom Chopin
subsequently lost by removal or death. In addition to the friends who
were then mentioned, I may name here the Polish poet Stephen Witwicki,
the friend of his youth as well as of his manhood, to whom in 1842 he
dedicated his Op. 41, three mazurkas, and several of whose poems he set
to music; and the Polish painter Kwiatkowski, an acquaintance of a later
time, who drew and painted many portraits of the composer, and more than
one of whose pictures was inspired by compositions of his friend. I have
not been able to ascertain what Chopin's sentiments were with regard to
Kwiatkowski, but the latter must have been a frequent visitor, for after
relating to me that the composer was fond of playing in the dusk, he
remarked that he heard him play thus almost all his works immediately
after they were composed.

As we have seen in the chapters treating of Chopin's first years
in Paris, there was then a goodly sprinkling of musicians among his
associates--I use the word "associates" advisedly, for many of them
could not truly be called friends. When he was once firmly settled,
artistically and socially, not a few of these early acquaintances
lapsed. How much this was due to the force of circumstances, how much to
the choice of Chopin, is difficult to determine. But we may be sure that
his distaste to the Bohemianism, the free and easy style that obtains
among a considerable portion of the artistic tribe, had at least as much
to do with the result as pressure of engagements. Of the musi