consequently would not suit him.  But the ladies were bolder, and did not cease entreating him till he sat down and played his Nocturne in E flat (Op. 9, No. 2).  After the lapse of forty-two years Wenzel was still in raptures about the wonderful, fairy-like lightness and delicacy of Chopin’s touch and style.  The conversation seems to have turned on Schubert, one of Schumann’s great favourites, for Chopin, in illustration of something he said, played the commencement of Schubert’s Alexander March.  Meanwhile Wieck was sorely tried by his curiosity when Chopin was playing, and could not resist the temptation of listening in the adjoining room, and even peeping through the door that stood slightly ajar.  When the visit came to a close; Schumann conducted Chopin to the house of his friend Henrietta Voigt, a pupil of Louis Berger’s, and Wenzel, who accompanied them to the door, heard Schumann say to Chopin:  “Let us go in here where we shall find a thorough, intelligent pianist and a good piano.”  They then entered the house, and Chopin played and also stayed for dinner.  No sooner had he left, than the lady, who up to that time had been exceedingly orthodox in her musical opinions and tastes, sent to Kistner’s music-shop, and got all the compositions by Chopin which were in stock.

The letter of Mendelssohn which I shall quote presently and an entry in Henrietta Voigt’s diary of the year 1836, which will be quoted in the next chapter, throw some doubt on the latter part of Herr Wenzel’s reminiscences.  Indeed, on being further questioned on the subject, he modified his original information to this, that he showed Chopin, unaccompanied by Schumann, the way to the lady’s house, and left him at the door.  As to the general credibility of the above account, I may say that I have added nothing to my informant’s communications, and that in my intercourse with him I found him to be a man of acute observation and tenacious memory.  What, however, I do not know, is the extent to which the mythopoeic faculty was developed in him.

[Footnote:  Richard Pohl gave incidentally a characterisation of this exceedingly interesting personality in the Signale of September, 1886, No. 48.  Having been personally acquainted with Wenzel and many of his friends and pupils, I can vouch for its truthfulness.  He was “one of the best and most amiable men I have known,” writes R. Pohl, “full of enthusiasm for all that is beautiful, obliging, unselfish, thoroughly kind, and at the same time so clever, so cultured, and so many-sided as—­excuse me, gentlemen—­I have rarely found a pianoforte-teacher.  He gave pianoforte lessons at the Conservatorium and in many private houses; he worked day after day, year after year, from morning till night, and with no other outcome as far as he himself was concerned than that all his pupils—­especially his female pupils—­loved him enthusiastically.  He was a pupil of Friedrich Wieck and a friend of Schumann.”]

In a letter dated October 6, 1835, and addressed to his family, Mendelssohn describes another part of Chopin’s sojourn in Leipzig and gives us his opinion of the Polish artist’s compositions and playing:—­