e inspired him to
much verse, especially his "In der Schweiz." But all this while the
little vixen corresponded with Chopin. He improvised in Paris on themes
she composed, and then she repeated his inspirations to keep Slovaki
hovering at her piano.

When Chopin met the Wodzinskis in Dresden, he composed for Maria his
F-minor Etude which he called "the soul-portrait" of the comtesse. A
year later he passed a month with the family at Marienbad, where he
proposed for her hand and was accepted. In his bridegroom mood he
composed the graceful F-minor Waltz, and later the C-sharp minor
Nocturne.

In the meantime, Slovaki travelled on in blissful ignorance, glorifying
Chopin's fiancee in poetic songs full of passionate admiration. The
distant Slovaki finally learned that Chopin had won his muse, and he
wrote to his mother:

"They say that Chopin and 'my Maria' are to be a pair. How sentimental
to marry a person who is the image of one's first love. Swedenborg says
that in a case of this kind, after death, not out of two of the souls
but out of all three only one angel can be created."

But this tripartite angel died unborn, for in 1837 Chopin found himself
deserted by her. So much we learn from Hoesick. And now we may return to
Chopin's immortal, if immoral, affair with George Sand.

George Sand will be remembered for the famous love affairs she has
contributed to history long after her books have lost their last reader.
It has been my habit in these papers to take the woman's side, and even
for George Sand there is much to be said in praise and in palliation.
For her peculiar views of life her peculiar husband may be largely
blamed, along with the peculiar ideals of the literary circle into which
her unhappy married life drove her. That she showed good taste in either
the management or the publication of her amorous entanglements one could
hardly maintain, and yet the men in the case seem to have been at least
as caddish as she was unwomanly. But it would take volumes to recount
what volumes have already recounted, and bewilderment and contradiction
would still be the chief result. Since so much of the story is familiar,
I can be brief with it here.

George Sand's relations with Chopin have been accepted in almost every
conceivable manner. There have even been writers of such intelligence as
Hadow who have maintained that she was entirely and solely a mother to
him. Before a trust in humanity as bland as this, before