s me."

And then, of course, he fell in love with her, for she leaned on his
piano and improvised flatteries across the strings to him and turned
full on him the luminous midnight of her ox-eyed beauty. A punster would
say that he was oxidised, at once. The two lovers were strangely
unlike--of course. She was masculine, self-poised, and self-satisfied;
she had taken excellent care of herself at a time when the independent
woman had less encouragement than now. So more than masculinely coarse
she was in some ways, indeed, that Henry James once insinuated that,
while she may have been to all intents and purposes a man, she was
certainly no gentleman. Heine raved over her beauty, but, judging from
her portrait, she later had a face as homely as that of George Eliot,
who, as Carlyle said, looked like a horse. The poet De Musset, one of
Sand's later lovers, said her dark complexion gave reflections like
bronze; therefore De Musset found her very beautiful. Chopin was--well,
some say he was not effeminate; and he could break chairs when he was
angry at a pupil. But they also speak of his frail, fairylike, ethereal
manner, and those qualities I, for one, have never known in any
non-effeminate man--outside of books.

The first meeting of Chopin and Sand was a curious proof of the value of
presentiments, and should interest those who have such things and
believe them. Chopin, according to Karasovski, went to the salon of the
Countess de Custine. As he climbed the stairs he fancied that he was
followed by a shadow odorous of violets; he wanted to turn back, but
resisted the superstitious thrill. Those violets were the perfumery of
George Sand. She snared him first with violet-water, and thereafter
surrounded him with her multitudinous wreaths of tobacco--though he
neither made nor liked smoke. She, however, puffed voluminously at
cigarettes, and even, according to Von Lenz, at long black cigars--as
did Liszt's princess.

Other accounts are given of the first meeting, and Liszt claims the
credit for arranging it all at her request, in spite of Chopin's desire
not to meet her. But, be that as it may, he came, he saw, and she
conquered. The two were alike chiefly in their versatility as lovers.

Chopin's first loves were his family, on whom he doted with Polish
fervour. George Sand once exclaimed that his mother was his only love.
She was a Polish woman whose name was Krzyzanovska--a good name to
change for the shorter tinkle of