His sister Louise, whom he dearly loved, frequently came to Paris from Warsaw to see him; and he kept up a regular correspondence with his own family.  Yet he abhorred writing so much that he would go to any shifts to avoid answering a note.  Some of his beautiful countrywomen, however, possess precious memorials in the shape of letters written in Polish, which he loved much more than French.  His thoughtfulness was continually sending pleasant little gifts and souvenirs to his Warsaw friends.  This tenderness and consideration displayed itself too in his love of children.  He would spend whole evenings in playing blind-man’s-buff or telling them charming fairy-stories from the folk-lore in which Poland is singularly rich.

Always gentle, he yet knew how to rebuke arrogance, and had sharp repartees for those who tried to force him into musical display.  On one occasion, when he had just left the dining-room, an indiscreet host, who had had the simplicity to promise his guests some piece executed by him as a rare dessert, pointed him to an open piano.  Chopin quietly refused, but on being pressed said, with a languid and sneering drawl:  “Ah, sir, I have just dined; your hospitality, I see, demands payment.”

IV.

Mme. Sand, in her “Lettres d’un Voyageur,” depicts the painful lethargy which seizes the artist when, having incorporated the emotion which inspired him in his work, his imagination still remains under the dominance of the insatiate idea, without being able to find a new incarnation.  She was suffering in this way when the character of Chopin excited her curiosity and suggested a healthful and happy relief.  Chopin dreaded to meet this modern Sibyl.  The superstitious awe he felt was a premonition whose meaning was hidden from him.  They met, and Chopin lost his fear in one of those passions which feed on the whole being with a ceaseless hunger.

In the fall of 1837 Chopin yielded to a severe attack of the disease which was hereditary in his frame.  In company with Mme. Sand, who had become his constant companion, he went to the isle of Majorca, to find rest and medicine in the balmy breezes of the Mediterranean.  All the happiness of Chopin’s life was gathered in the focus of this experience.  He had a most loving and devoted nurse, who yielded to all his whims, soothed his fretfulness, and watched over him as a mother does over a child.  The grounds of the villa where they lived were as perfect as Nature and art could make them, and exquisite scenes greeted the eye at every turn.  Here they spent long golden days.

The feelings of Chopin for his gifted companion are best painted by herself in the pages of “Lucrezia Floriani,” where she is the “Floriani,” Liszt “Count Salvator Albani,” and Chopin “Prince Karol:”  “It seemed as if this fragile being was absorbed and consumed by the strength of his affection....  But he loved for the sake of loving....  His love was his life, and, delicious or bitter, he had not the power of withdrawing himself a single moment from its domination.”  Slowly she nursed him back into temporary health, and in the sunlight of her love his mind assumed a gayety and cheerfulness it had never known before.