With the Slavonians, the loyalty and frankness, the familiarity and captivating desinvoltura of their manners, do not in the least imply trust and effusiveness.  Their feelings reveal and conceal themselves like the coils of a serpent convoluted upon itself; it is only by a very attentive examination that one discovers the connection of the rings.  It would be naive to take their complimentary politeness, their pretended modesty literally.  The forms of this politeness and this modesty belong to their manners, which bear distinct traces of their ancient relations with the East.  Without being in the least infected by Mussulmanic taciturnity, the Slavonians have learned from it a defiant reserve on all subjects which touch the intimate chords of the heart.  One may be almost certain that, in speaking of themselves, they maintain with regard to their interlocutor some reticence which assures them over him an advantage of intelligence or of feeling, leaving him in ignorance of some circumstance or some secret motive by which they would be the most admired or the least esteemed; they delight in hiding themselves behind a cunning interrogatory smile of imperceptible mockery.  Having on every occasion a taste for the pleasure of mystification, from the most witty and droll to the most bitter and lugubrious kinds, one would say that they see in this mocking deceit a form of disdain for the superiority which they inwardly adjudge to themselves, but which they veil with the care and cunning of the oppressed.

And now we will turn our attention once more to musical matters.  In the letter to Hiller (August 2, 1832) Chopin mentioned the coming of Field and Moscheles, to which, no doubt, he looked forward with curiosity.  They were the only eminent pianists whom he had not yet heard.  Moscheles, however, seems not to have gone this winter to Paris; at any rate, his personal acquaintance with the Polish artist did not begin till 1839.  Chopin, whose playing had so often reminded people of Field’s, and who had again and again been called a pupil of his, would naturally take a particular interest in this pianist.  Moreover, he esteemed him very highly as a composer.  Mikuli tells us that Field’s A flat Concerto and nocturnes were among those compositions which he delighted in playing (spielte mit Vorliebe).  Kalkbrenner is reported [footnote:  In the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of April 3, 1833.] to have characterised Field’s performances as quite novel and incredible; and Fetis, who speaks of them in the highest terms, relates that on hearing the pianist play a concerto of his own composition, the public manifested an indescribable enthusiasm, a real delirium.  Not all accounts, however, are equally favourable.