"Chopin." It was from her that Chopin
took that deep-burning patriotism which characterised him and gave his
music a national tinge. And at that time Polish patriotism was bound to
be all one elegy. But Chopin's father was a Frenchman, and when finally
the composer reached Paris, he found himself instantly at home, and the
darling of the salons. How different this feeling was from the
loneliness and disgust that Paris filled Mozart's soul withal!

As we found Mozart's first serious wound in the heart coming from a
public singer, so Chopin (unless we except his pupil, the Princess Elisa
Radziwill) seems to have been caught very young by Constantia
Gladkovska. She made a great success at Warsaw in the year which was
Chopin's twentieth. He had previously indulged in a mild flirtation with
a pretty little pianist and composer, Leopoldine Blahetka, but in her
case he seems less to have loved than to have graciously permitted
himself to be loved. When he fell under the witchery of Gladkovska,
however, he was genuinely pierced to the heart, and his letters are as
full of vague morose yearning as his Preludes. He left Warsaw for
Vienna, but the memory of her pursued him. She had sung at his farewell
concert in Warsaw, and made a ravishing success as a picture and as a
singer. In Vienna he longed for her so deeply that he went about wearing
the black velvet mantle of gloom which was so effective on the musicians
and poets of that day.

To-day we will hardly permit an artist an extra half-inch of hair, and
he must be very well groomed, very prosperous, businesslike, and, in
appearance at least, athletic--even if he must ask his tailor to furnish
the look of brawn. Personally, I prefer the mode of to-day, but with
to-day's fashion we should not have had Chopin, such music as he drew
from his familiar and daemon, the piano, and such letters as he wrote
about the Gladkovska to his friend Matuszynski:

"God forbid that she should suffer in any way on my account. Set her
mind at rest, and tell her that as long as my heart beats I shall not
cease to adore her. Tell her that even after my death my ashes shall be
strewn under her feet."

While Chopin was thus mooning over her memory, she seems to have been
finding consolation elsewhere than in her music, even as Mozart's
Aloysia had done. This letter was sent on New Year's Day, 1831. After a
few more references to her, her name vanishes from his letters, and the
incident is closed.