she never sang so well as on that evening (except the aria in “Agnese").  You know “O! quante lagrime per te versai.”  The tutto detesto down to the lower b came out so magnificently that Zielinski declared this b alone was worth a thousand ducats.

In Vienna the score and parts of the Krakowiak had been found to be full of mistakes, it was the same with the Concerto in Warsaw.  Chopin himself says that if Soliva had not taken the score with him in order to correct it, he (Chopin) did not know what might have become of the Concerto on the evening of the concert.  Carl Mikuli, who, as well as his fellow-pupil Tellefsen, copied many of Chopin’s MSS., says that they were full of slips of the pen, such as wrong notes and signatures, omissions of accidentals, dots, and intervals of chords, and incorrect markings of slurs and 8va’s.

Although Chopin wrote on October 5, 1830, that eight days after the concert he would certainly be no longer in Warsaw, that his trunk was bought, his whole outfit ready, the scores corrected, the pocket-handkerchiefs hemmed, the new trousers and the new dress-coat tried on, &c., that, in fact, nothing remained to be done but the worst of all, the leave-taking, yet it was not till the 1st of November, 1830, that he actually did take his departure.  Elsner and a number of friends accompanied him to Wola, the first village beyond Warsaw.  There the pupils of the Conservatorium awaited them, and sang a cantata composed by Elsner for the occasion.  After this the friends once more sat down together to a banquet which had been prepared for them.  In the course of the repast a silver goblet filled with Polish earth was presented to Chopin in the name of all.

May you never forget your country [said the speaker, according to Karasowski], wherever you may wander or sojourn, may you never cease to love it with a warm, faithful heart!  Remember Poland, remember your friends, who call you with pride their fellow-countryman, who expect great things of you, whose wishes and prayers accompany you!

How fully Chopin realised their wishes and expectations the sequel will show:  how much such loving words must have affected him the reader of this chapter can have no difficulty in understanding.  But now came pitilessly the dread hour of parting.  A last farewell is taken, the carriage rolls away, and the traveller has left behind him all that is dearest to him—­ parents, sisters, sweetheart, and friends.  “I have always a presentiment that I am leaving Warsaw never to return to it; I am convinced that I shall say an eternal farewell to my native country.”  Thus, indeed, destiny willed it.  Chopin was never to tread again the beloved soil of Poland, never to set eyes again on Warsaw and its Conservatorium, the column of King Sigismund opposite, the neighbouring church of the Bernardines (Constantia’s place of worship), and all those things and places associated in his mind with the sweet memories of his youth and early manhood.