eing unhappiness which did not fail to
come, and led to separation) did not approve. Another cause, he thought,
was Chopin's disagreements with Maurice Sand. There were hasty remarks
and sharp retorts between lover and son, and scenes in consequence.
Gutmann is a very unsatisfactory informant, everything he read and
heard seemed to pass through the retort of his imagination and reappear
transformed as his own experience.

A more reliable witness is Franchomme, who in a letter to me summed up
the information which he had given me on this subject by word of mouth
as follows:--

Strange to say [chose bizarre], Chopin had a horror of the
figure 7; he would not have taken lodgings in a house which
bore the number 7; he would not have set out on a journey on
the 7th or 17th, &c. It was in 1837 that he formed the liaison
with George Sand; it was in 1847 that the rupture took place;
it was on the 17th October that my dear friend said farewell
to us. The rupture between Chopin and Madame Sand came about
in this way. In June, 1847, Chopin was making ready to start
for Nohant when he received a letter from Madame Sand to the
effect that she had just turned out her daughter and son-in-
law, and that if he received them in his house all would be
over between them [i.e., between George Sand and Chopin]. I
was with Chopin at the time the letter arrived, and he said to
me, "They have only me, and should I close my door upon them?
No, I shall not do it!" and he did not do it, and yet he knew
that this creature whom he adored would not forgive it him.
Poor friend, how I have seen him suffer!

Of the quarrel at Nohant, Franchomme gave the following account:--There
was staying at that time at Nohant a gentleman who treated Madame
Clesinger invariably with rudeness. One day as Clesinger and his wife
went downstairs the person in question passed without taking off his
hat. The sculptor stopped him, and said, "Bid madam a good day"; and
when the gentleman or churl, as the case may be, refused, he gave him a
box on the ear. George Sand, who stood at the top of the stairs, saw it,
came down, and gave in her turn Clesinger a box on the ear. After this
she turned her son-in-law together with his wife out of her house, and
wrote the above-mentioned letter to Chopin.

Madame Rubio had also heard of the box on the ear which George Sand gave
Clesinger. According to this informant there were many quarrels between