elf to
breathe the air of your room since you left it. Arrangements
will be made to put up all those you may bring with you. I
count on the maestro, on Chopin, on the Rat, [FOOTNOTE:
Liszt's pupil, Hermann Cohen.] if he does not weary you too
much, and all the others at your choice.

Chopin's love for George Sand was not instantaneous like that of Romeo
for Juliet. Karasowski remembers having read in one of those letters of
the composer which perished in 1863: "Yesterday I met George Sand...;
she made a very disagreeable impression upon me." Hiller in his Open
Letter to Franz Liszt writes:--

One evening you had assembled in your apartments the
aristocracy of the French literary world--George Sand was of
course one of the company. On the way home Chopin said to me
"What a repellent [antipathische] woman the Sand is! But is
she really a woman? I am inclined to doubt it."

Liszt, in discussing this matter with me, spoke only of Chopin's
"reserve" towards George Sand, but said nothing of his "aversion" to
her. And according to this authority the novelist's extraordinary mind
and attractive conversation soon overcame the musician's reserve. Alfred
de Musset's experience had been of a similar nature. George Sand did
not particularly please him at first, but a few visits which he paid her
sufficed to inflame his heart with a violent passion. The liaisons
of the poet and musician with the novelist offer other points of
resemblance besides the one just mentioned: both Musset and Chopin were
younger than George Sand--the one six, the other five years; and both,
notwithstanding the dissimilarity of their characters, occupied the
position of a weaker half. In the case of Chopin I am reminded of a
saying of Sydney Smith, who, in speaking of his friends the historian
Grote and his wife, remarked: "I do like them both so much, for he is
so lady-like, and she is such a perfect gentleman." Indeed, Chopin was
described to me by his pupil Gutmann as feminine in looks, gestures, and
taste; as to George Sand, although many may be unwilling to admit her
perfect gentlemanliness, no one can doubt her manliness:--

Dark and olive-complexioned Lelia! [writes Liszt] thou hast
walked in solitary places, sombre as Lara, distracted as
Manfred, rebellious as Cain, but more fierce [farouche], more
pitiless, more inconsolable than they, because thou hast found
among the hearts of men none feminine enough to love thee