ent after his meeting with his parents at Carlsbad,
mentioned in the preceding chapter (p. 288). Count Wodzinski says in his
Les trois Romans de Frederic Chopin that Chopin had spoken to his father
about his project of marrying Maria Wodzinska, and that this idea had
sprung up in his soul by the mere force of recollections. The young
lady was then nineteen years of age, and, according to the writer just
mentioned, tall and slender in figure, and light and graceful in gait.
The features, he tells us, were distinguished neither by regularity nor
classical beauty, but had an indefinable charm. Her black eyes were
full of sweetness, reverie, and restrained fire; a smile of ineffable
voluptuousness played around her lips; and her magnificent hair was as
dark as ebony and long enough to serve her as a mantle. Chopin and Maria
saw each other every evening at the house of her uncle, the Palatine
Wodzinski. The latter concluded from their frequent tete-a-tete at the
piano and in corners that some love-making was going on between them.
When he found that his monitory coughs and looks produced no effect on
his niece, he warned his sister-in-law. She, however, took the matter
lightly, saying that it was an amitie d'enfance, that Maria was fond of
music, and that, moreover, there would soon be an end to all this--their
ways lying in opposite directions, hers eastward to Poland, his westward
to France. And thus things were allowed to go on as they had begun,
Chopin passing all his evenings with the Wodzinskis and joining them
in all their walks. At last the time of parting came, the clock of the
Frauenkirche struck the hour of ten, the carriage was waiting at the
door, Maria gave Chopin a rose from a bouquet on the table, and he
improvised a waltz which he afterwards sent her from Paris, and which
she called L'Adieu. Whatever we may think of the details of this scene
of parting, the waltz composed for Maria at Dresden is an undeniable
fact. Facsimiles may be seen in Szulc's Fryderyk Chopin and Count
Wodziriski's Les trois Romans de Frederic Chopin. The manuscript bears
the superscription: "Tempo de Valse" on the left, and "pour Mile.
Marie" on the right; and the subscription: "F. Chopin, Drezno [Dresden],
September, 1835." [FOOTNOTE: It is Op. 69, No. 1, one of the posthumous
works published by Julius Fontana.]

The two met again in the following summer, this time at Marienbad, where
he knew she and her mother were going. They resumed