in his sympathies, in short, too individual a composer, to successfully express the emotions of others, to objectively conceive and set forth the characters of men and women unlike himself.  Still, the master’s confidence in his pupil, though unfounded in this particular, is beautiful to contemplate; and so also is his affection for him, which even the pedantic style of his letters cannot altogether hide.  Nor is it possible to admire in a less degree the reciprocation of these sentiments by the great master’s greater pupil:—­

What a pity it is [are the concluding words of Elsner’s letter of September 14, 1834] that we can no longer see each other and exchange our opinions!  I have got so much to tell you.  I should like also to thank you for the present, which is doubly precious to me.  I wish I were a bird, so that I might visit you in your Olympian dwelling, which the Parisians take for a swallow’s nest.  Farewell, love me, as I do you, for I shall always remain your sincere friend and well-wisher.

In no musical season was Chopin heard so often in public as in that of 1834-35; but it was not only his busiest, it was also his last season as a virtuoso.  After it his public appearances ceased for several years altogether, and the number of concerts at which he was subsequently heard does not much exceed half-a-dozen.  The reader will be best enabled to understand the causes that led to this result if I mention those of Chopin’s public performances in this season which have come under my notice.  On December 7, 1834, at the third and last of a series of concerts given by Berlioz at the Conservatoire, Chopin played an “Andante” for the piano with orchestral accompaniments of his own composition, which, placed as it was among the overtures to “Les Francs-Juges” and “King Lear,” the “Harold” Symphony, and other works of Berlioz, no doubt sounded at the concert as strange as it looks on the programme.  The “Andante” played by Chopin was of course the middle movement of one of his concertos. [Footnote:  Probably the “Larghetto” from the F minor Concerto.  See Liszt’s remark on p. 282.]

On December 25 of the same year, Dr. Francois Stoepel gave a matinee musicale at Pleyel’s rooms, for which he had secured a number of very distinguished artists.  But the reader will ask—­ “Who is Dr. Stoepel?” An author of several theoretical works, instruction books, and musical compositions, who came to Paris in 1829 and founded a school on Logier’s system, as he had done in Berlin and other towns, but was as unsuccessful in the French capital as elsewhere.  Disappointed and consumptive he died in 1836 at the age of forty-two; his income, although the proceeds of teaching were supplemented by the remuneration for contributions to the “Gazette musicale,” having from first to last been scanty.  Among the artists who took part in this matinee musicale were Chopin, Liszt, the violinist Ernst, and the singers Mdlle.  Heinefetter, Madame Degli-Antoni, and M. Richelmi.  The programme comprised also an improvisation on the orgue expressif (harmonium) by Madame de la Hye, a grand-niece of J.J.  Rousseau’s.  Liszt and Chopin opened the matinee with a performance of Moscheles’ “Grand duo a quatre mains,” of which the reporter of the “Gazette musicale” writes as follows:—­