that in Silesia the women work
generally more than the men, but as I am doing nothing myself
just now I have no difficulty in falling in with this
arrangement.

During his stay at Reinerz he gave also a concert on behalf of two
orphans who had come with their sick mother to this watering-place, and
at her death were left so poor as to be unable even to pay the funeral
expenses and to return home with the servant who took care of them.

From Reinerz Frederick went to Strzyzewo, the property of Madame
Wiesiolowska, his godmother, and sister of his godfather, Count
Frederick Skarbek. While he was spending here the rest of his holidays,
he took advantage of an invitation he had received from Prince Radziwill
(governor of the grand duchy of Posen, and, through his wife, a daughter
of Prince Ferdinand, related to the royal family of Prussia) to visit
him at his country-seat Antonin, which was not very far from Strzyzewo.
The Prince, who had many relations in Poland, and paid frequent visits
to that country, must on these occasions have heard of and met with the
musical prodigy that was the pet of the aristocracy. Moreover, it is
on record that he was present at the concert at Warsaw in 1825 at
which Frederick played. We have already considered and disposed of the
question whether the Prince, as has been averred by Liszt, paid for
young Chopin's education. As a dilettante Prince Radziwill occupied a
no less exalted position in art and science than as a citizen and
functionary in the body politic. To confine ourselves to music, he was
not only a good singer and violoncellist, but also a composer; and in
composition he did not confine himself to songs, duets, part-songs, and
the like, but undertook the ambitious and arduous task of writing music
to the first part of Goethe's Faust. By desire of the Court the Berlin
Singakademie used to bring this work to a hearing once every year, and
they gave a performance of it even as late as 1879. An enthusiastic
critic once pronounced it to be among modern works one of those that
evince most genius. The vox populi seems to have repealed this judgment,
or rather never to have taken cognisance of the case, for outside Berlin
the work has not often been heard. Dr. Langhans wrote to me after the
Berlin performance in 1879:--

I heard yesterday Radziwill's Faust for the first time, and,
I may add, with much satisfaction; for the old-fashioned
things to be found in it (for