Chopin has been talking about his going abroad ever so long, more especially since his return from Vienna, and will go on talking about it for a long time yet.  First he intends to leave Warsaw in the winter of 1829-1830; next he makes up his mind to start in the summer of 1830, the question being only whether he shall go to Berlin or Vienna; then in May, 1830, Berlin is already given up, but the time of his departure remains still to be fixed.  After this he is induced by the consideration that the Italian Opera season at Vienna does not begin till September to stay at home during the hot summer months.  How he continues to put off the evil day of parting from home and friends we shall see as we go on.  I called Chopin’s vigorously-expressed resolve a flash of energy.  Here is what he wrote not much more than a week after (on August 31, 1830):—­

I am still here; indeed, I do not feel inclined to go abroad.  Next month, however, I shall certainly go.  Of course, only to follow my vocation and reason, which latter would be in a sorry plight if it were not strong enough to master every other thing in my head.

But that his reason was in a sorry plight may be gathered from a letter dated September 4, 1830, which, moreover, is noteworthy, as in the confessions which it contains are discoverable the key-notes of the principal parts that make up the symphony of his character.

I tell you my ideas become madder and madder every day.  I am still sitting here, and cannot make up my mind to fix definitively the day of my departure.  I have always a presentiment that I shall leave Warsaw never to return to it; I am convinced that I shall say farewell to my home for ever.  Oh, how sad it must be to die in any other place but where one was born!  What a great trial it would be to me to see beside my death-bed an unconcerned physician and paid servant instead of the dear faces of my relatives!  Believe me, Titus, I many a time should like to go to you and seek rest for my oppressed heart; but as this is not possible, I often hurry, without knowing why, into the street.  But there also nothing allays or diverts my longing.  I return home to... long again indescribably...  I have not yet rehearsed my Concerto; in any case I shall leave all my treasures behind me by Michaelmas.  In Vienna I shall be condemned to sigh and groan!  This is the consequence of having no longer a free heart!  You who know this indescribable power so well, explain to me the strange feeling which makes men always expect from the following day something better than the preceding day has bestowed upon them?  “Do not be so foolish!” That is all the answer I can give myself; if you know a better, tell me, pray, pray....

After saying that his plan for the winter is to stay two months in Vienna and pass the rest of the season in Milan, “if it cannot be helped,” he makes some remarks of no particular interest, and then comes back to the old and ever new subject, the cud that humanity has been chewing from the time of Adam and Eve, and will have to chew till the extinction of the race, whether pessimism or optimism be the favoured philosophy.