was so weak that Dr.
Lyschinski had always to carry him upstairs. After dinner he sat before
the fire, often shivering with cold. Then all on a sudden he would cross
the room, seat himself at the piano, and play himself warm. He could
bear neither dictation nor contradiction: if you told him to go to the
fire, he would go to the other end of the room where the piano stood.
Indeed, he was imperious. He once asked Mrs. Lyschinski to sing. She
declined. At this he was astonished and quite angry. "Doctor, would
you take it amiss if I were to force your wife to do it?" The idea of a
woman refusing him anything seemed to him preposterous. Mrs. Lyschinski
says that Chopin was gallant to all ladies alike, but thinks that he had
no heart. She used to tease him about women, saying, for instance, that
Miss Stirling was a particular friend of his. He replied that he had no
particular friends among the ladies, that he gave to all an equal
share of his attention. "Not even George Sand then," she asked, "is
a particular friend?" "Not even George Sand," was the reply. Had Mrs.
Lyschinski known the real state of matters between Chopin and George
Sand, she certainly would not have asked that question. He, however, by
no means always avoided the mention of his faithless love. Speaking
one day of his thinness he remarked that she used to call him mon cher
cadavre. Miss Stirling was much about Chopin. I may mention by the way
that Mrs. Lyschinski told me that Miss Stirling was much older than
Chopin, and her love for him, although passionate, purely Platonic.
Princess Czartoryska arrived some time after Chopin, and accompanied
him, my informant says, wherever he went. But, as we see from one of his
letters, her stay in Scotland was short. The composer was always on the
move. Indeed, Dr. Lyschinski's was hardly more than a pied-a-terre for
him: he never stayed long, and generally came unexpectedly. A number
of places where Chopin was a guest are mentioned in his letters. Mrs.
Lyschinski thinks that he also visited the Duke of Hamilton.

At the end of August and at the end of September and beginning of
October, this idling was interrupted by serious work, and a kind of work
which, at no time to his liking, was particularly irksome in the then
state of his health.

The Manchester Guardian of August 19, 1848, contained the following
advertisement:--

Concert Hall.--The Directors beg to announce to the
Subscribers that a Dress Concert has