I am not at all fit for giving concerts, the crowd intimidates me, its breath suffocates me, I feel paralysed by its curious look, and the unknown faces make me dumb.  But you are destined for it, for when you do not win your public, you have the power to overwhelm it.

Opposition and indifference, which stimulate more vigorous natures, affected Chopin as touch does the mimosa pudica, the sensitive plant—­they made him shrink and wither.  Liszt observes correctly that the concerts did not so much fatigue Chopin’s physical constitution as provoke his irritability as a poet; that, in fact, his delicate constitution was less a reason than a pretext for abstention, he wishing to avoid being again and again made the subject of debate.  But it is more difficult for one in similar circumstances not to feel as Chopin did than for a successful virtuoso like Liszt to say:—­

If Chopin suffered on account of his not being able to take part in those public and solemn jousts where popular acclamation salutes the victor; if he felt depressed at seeing himself excluded from them, it was because he did not esteem highly enough what he had, to do gaily without what he had not.

To be sure, the admiration of the best men of his time ought to have consoled him for the indifference of the dull crowd.  But do we not all rather yearn for what we have not than enjoy what we have?  Nay, do we not even often bewail the unattainableness of vain bubbles when it would be more seasonable to rejoice in the solid possessions with which we are blessed?  Chopin’s discontent, however, was caused by the unattainableness not of a vain bubble, but of a precious crown.  There are artists who pretend to despise the great public, but their abuse of it when it withholds its applause shows their real feeling.  No artist can at heart be fully satisfied with the approval of a small minority; Chopin, at any rate, was not such a one.  Nature, who had richly endowed him with the qualities that make a virtuoso, had denied him one, perhaps the meanest of all, certainly the least dispensable, the want of which balked him of the fulfilment of the promise with which the others had flattered him, of the most brilliant reward of his striving.  In the lists where men much below his worth won laurels and gold in abundance he failed to obtain a fair share of the popular acclamation.  This was one of the disappointments which, like malignant cancers, cruelly tortured and slowly consumed his life.

The first performance of Bellini’s “I Puritani” at the Theatre-Italien (January 24, 1835), which as well as that of Halevy’s “La Juive” at the Academic (February 23, 1835), and of Auber’s “Le cheval de bronze” at the Opera-Comique (March 23, 1835), was one of the chief musico-dramatic events of the season 1834-1835, reminds me that I ought to say a few words about the relation which existed between the Italian and the Polish composer.  Most readers will have heard