that the work was in print on the 1st of June,1834, and published by Schlesinger, of Paris, not by Pleyel.] Thus the barrier was removed, and the friends set out for Aix-la-Chapelle.  There Hiller was quartered in the house of the burgomaster, and Chopin got a room close by.  They went without much delay to the rehearsal of “Deborah,” where they met Mendelssohn, who describes their meeting in a letter addressed to his mother (Dusseldorf, May 23, 1834):—­

On the first tier sat a man with a moustache reading the score, and as he was coming downstairs after the rehearsal, and I was going up, we met in the side-scenes, and Ferdinand Hiller stumbled right into my arms, almost crushing me in his joyful embrace.  He had come from Paris to hear the oratorio, and Chopin had left his pupils in the lurch and come with him, and thus we met again.  Now I had my full share of pleasure in the musical festival, for we three now remained together, got a box in the theatre (where the performances are given) to ourselves, and as a matter of course betook ourselves next morning to a piano, where I enjoyed myself greatly.  They have both still further developed their execution, and Chopin is now one of the very first pianoforte- players; he produces as novel effects as Paganini does on the violin, and performs wonders which one would never have imagined possible.  Hiller, too, is an excellent player, powerful and coquettish enough.  Both are a little infected by the Parisian mania for despondency and straining after emotional vehemence [Verzweif-lungssucht und Leidenschaftssucherei], and often lose sight of time and repose and the really musical too much.  I, on the other hand, do so perhaps too little.  Thus we made up for each other’s deficiencies, and all three, I think, learned something, while I felt rather like a schoolmaster, and they like mirliflores or incroyables.

After the festival the three musicians travelled together to Dusseldorf, where since the preceding October Mendelssohn was settled as musical director.  They passed the morning of the day which Chopin and Hiller spent in the town at Mendelssohn’s piano, and in the afternoon took a walk, at the end of which they had coffee and a game at skittles.  In this walk they were accompanied by F. W. Schadow, the director of the Academy of Art and founder of the Dusseldorf School, and some of his pupils, among whom may have been one or more of its brightest stars—­Lessing, Bendemann, Hildebrandt, Sohn, and Alfred Rethel.  Hiller, who furnishes us with some particulars of what Mendelssohn calls “a very agreeable day passed in playing and discussing music,” says that Schadow and his pupils appeared to him like a prophet surrounded by his disciples.  But the dignified manner and eloquent discourse of the prophet, the humble silence of the devoutly-listening disciples, seem to have prevented Chopin from feeling quite at ease.