the pianoforte; I, too, did my best; Bellini made remarks, and accompanied himself in one or other of his cantilene, rather in illustration of what he had been saying than for the purpose of giving a performance of them.  He knew how to sing better than any German composer whom I have met, and had a voice less full of sound than of feeling.  His pianoforte- playing sufficed for the reproduction of his orchestra, which, indeed, is not saying much.  But he knew very well what he wanted, and was far from being a kind of natural poet, as some may imagine him to have been.

In the summer of 1835, towards the end of July, Chopin journeyed to Carlsbad, whither his father had been sent by the Warsaw physicians.  The meeting of the parents and their now famous son after a separation of nearly five years was no doubt a very joyous one; but as no accounts have come down to us of Chopin’s doings and feelings during his sojourn in the Bohemian watering-place, I shall make no attempt to fill up the gap by a gushing description of what may have been, evolved out of the omniscience of my inner consciousness, although this would be an insignificant feat compared with those of a recent biographer whose imaginativeness enabled her to describe the appearance of the sky and the state of the weather in the night when her hero became a free citizen of this planet, and to analyse minutely the characters of private individuals whose lives were passed in retirement, whom she had never seen, and who had left neither works nor letters by which they might be judged.

From Carlsbad Chopin went to Dresden.  His doings there were of great importance to him, and are of great interest to us.  In fact, a new love-romance was in progress.  But the story had better be told consecutively, for which reason I postpone my account of his stay in the Saxon capital till the next chapter.

Frederick Wieck, the father and teacher of Clara, who a few years later became the wife of Robert Schumann, sent the following budget of Leipzig news to Nauenburg, a teacher of music in Halle, in the autumn of 1835:—­

The first subscription concert will take place under the direction of Mendelssohn on October 4, the second on October 4.  To-morrow or the day after to-morrow Chopin will arrive here from Dresden, but will probably not give a concert, for he is very lazy.  He could stay here for some time, if false friends (especially a dog of a Pole) did not prevent him from making himself acquainted with the musical side of Leipzig.  But Mendelssohn, who is a good friend of mine and Schumann’s, will oppose this.  Chopin does not believe, judging from a remark he made to a colleague in Dresden, that there is any lady in Germany who can play his compositions—­we will see what Clara can do.

The Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, Schumann’s paper, of September 29, 1835, contained the following announcement:—­