they would give me
instructions. Shall I go to Paris? My acquaintances here
advise me to wait a little longer. Shall I return home? Shall
I stay here? Shall I kill myself? Shall I not write to you
any more?

Chopin's dearest wish was to be at home again. "How I should like to be
in Warsaw!" he writes. But the fulfilment of this wish was out of the
question, being against the desire of his parents, of whom especially
the mother seems to have been glad that he did not execute his project
of coming home.

I would not like to be a burden to my father; were it not for
this fear I should return home at once. I am often in such a
mood that I curse the moment of my departure from my sweet
home! You will understand my situation, and that since the
departure of Titus too much has fallen upon me all at once.

The question whether he should go to Italy or to France was soon decided
for him, for the suppressed but constantly-increasing commotion which
had agitated the former country ever since the July revolution at last
vented itself in a series of insurrections. Modena began on February
3,1831, Bologna, Ancona, Parma, and Rome followed. While the "where to
go" was thus settled, the "when to go" remained an open question for
many months to come. Meanwhile let us try to look a little deeper into
the inner and outer life which Chopin lived at Vienna.

The biographical details of this period of Chopin's life have to
be drawn almost wholly from his letters. These, however, must be
judiciously used. Those addressed to his parents, important as they are,
are only valuable with regard to the composer's outward life, and even
as vehicles of such facts they are not altogether trustworthy, for it
is always his endeavour to make his parents believe that he is well and
cheery. Thus he writes, for instance, to his friend Matuszyriski, after
pouring forth complaint after complaint:--"Tell my parents that I am
very happy, that I am in want of nothing, that I amuse myself famously,
and never feel lonely." Indeed, the Spectator's opinion that nothing
discovers the true temper of a person so much as his letters, requires
a good deal of limitation and qualification. Johnson's ideas on the same
subject may be recommended as a corrective. He held that there was
no transaction which offered stronger temptations to fallacy and
sophistication than epistolary intercourse:--

In the eagerness of conversation the first em