oming to the door, where a coupe was waiting, the
composer offered to drive him home, and when they were seated said:--

I had not seen Chopin for a long time, I love him very much. I
know no pianist like him, no composer for the piano like him.
The piano lives on nuances and on cantilena; it is an
instrument of intimacy [ein Intimitalsinstrument], I also was
once a pianist, and there was a time when I trained myself to
be a virtuoso. Visit me when you come to Berlin. Are we not
now comrades? When one has met at the house of so great a man,
it was for life.

Kwiatkowski told me a pretty story which se non vero is certainly ben
trovato. When on one occasion Meyerbeer had fallen out with his wife,
he sat down to the piano and played a nocturne or some other composition
which Chopin had sent him. And such was the effect of the music on his
helpmate that she came and kissed him. Thereupon Meyerbeer wrote Chopin
a note telling him of what had taken place, and asking him to come and
see their conjugal happiness. Among the few musicians with whom Chopin
had in later years friendly relations stands out prominently, both by
his genius and the preference shown him, the pianist and composer Alkan
aine (Charles Henri Valentine), who, however, was not so intimate
with the Polish composer as Franchomme, nor on such easy terms of
companionship as Hiller and Liszt had been. The originality of the
man and artist, his high aims and unselfish striving, may well have
attracted Chopin; but as an important point in Alkan's favour must be
reckoned the fact that he was also a friend of George Sand's. Indeed,
some of the limitations of Chopin's intercourse were, no doubt, made on
her account. Kwiatkowski told me that George Sand hated Chopin's Polish
friends, and that some of them were consequently not admitted at all and
others only reluctantly. Now suppose that she disliked also some of the
non-Polish friends, musicians as well as others, would not her influence
act in the same way as in the case of the Poles?

But now I must say a few words about Chopin and Liszt's friendship, and
how it came to an end. This connection of the great pianists has been
the subject of much of that sentimental talk of which writers on music
and of musical biography are so fond. This, however, which so often has
been represented as an ideal friendship, was really no friendship
at all, but merely comradeship. Both admired each other sincerely as