This solitude,
surrounded by the blue waves of the Mediterranean, and shaded by groves
of orange, seemed fitted by its exceeding loveliness for the ardent vows
of youthful lovers, still believing in their naive and sweet illusions,
sighing for happiness in some desert isle. In this case it was the
refuge of those who had grown weary and disenchanted with life, but who
hoped in deep devotion to each other to find some solace for their
sadness. The memory of those days, like the remembrance of an entrancing
ecstasy which Fate grants but once in a lifetime to her most favored
children, always remained dear to the heart of Chopin. When he was
restored to health they returned to Paris, where their friendship was
continued for about eight years. She then severed her connection with
him. Liszt asks in regard to this, in his life of Chopin:--

"Has genius ever attained that utter self-abnegation, that sublime
humility of heart which gives the power to make those strange
sacrifices of the entire Past, of the whole Future; those
immolations as courageous as mysterious; those mystic and utter
holocausts of self, not temporary and changing, but monotonous and
constant,--through whose might alone tenderness may justly claim
the higher word devotion? Has not the force of genius its own
exclusive and legitimate exactions, and does not the force of woman
consist in the abdication of all exactions? Can the purple and
burning flames of genius ever float over the immaculate azure of a
woman's destiny?"

Liszt also tells us that--

"Chopin spoke frequently and almost by preference of Madame Sand,
without bitterness or recrimination. Tears always filled his eyes
when he named her; but with a kind of bitter sweetness he gave
himself up to the memories of past days, alas, now stripped of
their manifold significance. . . . All attempts to fix his
attention upon other objects were made in vain; he refused to be
comforted, and would constantly speak of the one engrossing
subject. . . . He was another great and illustrious victim to the
transitory attachments occurring between persons of different
character, who, experiencing a surprise full of delight in their
first sudden meeting, mistake it for a durable feeling, and build
hopes and illusions upon it which can never be realized. It is
always the nature the most deeply mov