fternoon, when there were but three persons present, and
Chopin had been playing for a long time, one of the most distinguished
women in Paris remarked, that she felt always more and more filled
with solemn meditation, such as might be awakened in presence of the
grave-stones strewing those grounds in Turkey, whose shady recesses
and bright beds of flowers promise only a gay garden to the startled
traveller. She asked him what was the cause of the involuntary, yet
sad veneration which subdued her heart while listening to these pieces,
apparently presenting only sweet and graceful subjects:--and by what
name he called the strange emotion inclosed in his compositions, like
ashes of the unknown dead in superbly sculptured urns of the purest
alabaster... Conquered by the appealing tears which moistened the
beautiful eyes, with a candor rare indeed in this artist, so susceptible
upon all that related to the secrets of the sacred relics buried in
the gorgeous shrines of his music, he replied: "that her heart had not
deceived her in the gloom which she felt stealing upon her, for whatever
might have been his transitory pleasures, he had never been free from
a feeling which might almost be said to form the soil of his heart,
and for which he could find no appropriate expression except in his
own language, no other possessing a term equivalent to the Polish word:
ZAL!" As if his ear thirsted for the sound of this word, which expresses
the whole range of emotions produced by an intense regret, through all
the shades of feeling, from hatred to repentance, he repeated it again
and again.

ZAL! Strange substantive, embracing a strange diversity, a strange
philosophy! Susceptible of different regimens, it includes all the
tenderness, all the humility of a regret borne with resignation and
without a murmur, while bowing before the fiat of necessity, the
inscrutable decrees of Providence: but, changing its character, and
assuming the regimen indirect as soon as it is addressed to man, it
signifies excitement, agitation, rancor, revolt full of reproach,
premeditated vengeance, menace never ceasing to threaten if retaliation
should ever become possible, feeding itself meanwhile with a bitter, if
sterile hatred.

ZAL! In very truth, it colors the whole of Chopin's compositions:
sometimes wrought through their elaborate tissue, like threads of dim
silver; sometimes coloring them with more passionate hues. It may be
found in his sweetest