uish of his heart is not expressed in
the nocturnes but in the preludes and etudes, strange as these names
may seem for such pathetic effusions of his heart. The etude, opus 10,
No. 6, seems as if it were in a sort of double minor; as much sadder
than ordinary minor, as ordinary minor is sadder than major. Chopin
had abundant cause to be melancholy. He inherited that national
melancholy of the Poles which causes them even to dance to tunes in
minor keys, and which is commonly attributed to the long-continued
political oppression under which they have suffered. But, apart from
this national trait, Chopin had sufficient personal reasons for
writing the greater part of his mazurkas and his other pieces in
minor keys. Like other men of genius, he keenly felt the anguish of
not being fully appreciated by his contemporaries. Moreover, although
he was greatly admired by the French and Polish women in Paris, and
was even conceded a lady-killer, he was, in his genuine affairs of the
heart, thrice disappointed. His first love, who wore his engagement
ring when he left Warsaw, proved faithless to the absent lover, and
married another man. The second love deceived him in the same way,
preferring a Count to a genius. And his third love, George Sand, after
apparently reciprocating his attachment, for a few years, not only
discarded him, but tried to justify her conduct to the world, by
giving an exaggerated portraiture of his weaknesses, in her novel
"Lucrezia Floriani."

Nevertheless, it was in one respect fortunate for the world that
George Sand was Chopin's friend so long, for we owe to her facile pen
many interesting accounts of Chopin's habits and the origin of some of
his compositions. The winter which he spent with her on the Island of
Majorca was one of the most important in his life, for it was here
that he composed some of those masterpieces, his preludes--a word
which might be paraphrased as Introductions to a new world of musical
emotion. There is a strange discrepancy in the accounts which Liszt
and George Sand give of the Majorca episode in Chopin's life. Liszt
describes it as a period of calm enjoyment, George Sand as one of
discomfort and distress. As she was an eye-witness, her testimony
appears the more trustworthy, especially as it is borne out by the
character of the preludes which he composed there. There are among
Chopin's preludes a few which breathe the spirit of contentment and
grace, or of religious grandeu