Of all the artists whose acquaintance I have made, Klengel pleased me most.  He played me his fugues (one may say that they are a continuation of those of Bach.  There are forty- eight of them, and the same number of canons).  What a difference between him and Czerny!

Klengel’s opus magnum, the “Canons et Fugues dans tons les tons majeurs et mineurs pour le piano, en deux parties,” did not appear till 1854, two years after his death, although it had been completed some decades previously.  He carried it about with him on all his travels, unceasingly improving and perfecting it, and may be said to have worked at it for the space of half his life.  The two artists who met at Pixis’ house got on well together, unlike as they were in their characters and aims.  Chopin called on Klengel before the latter’s departure from Prague, and spent two hours with him in conversation, neither of them being for a moment at a loss for material to talk about.  Klengel gave Chopin a letter of introduction to Morlacchi, the address of which ran:  Al ornatissimo Signore Cavaliere Morlacchi, primo maestro della capella Reale, and in which he asked this gentleman to make the bearer acquainted with the musical life of Dresden.  How favourably Klengel had impressed his younger brother in art may be gathered from the above-quoted and the following remarks:  “He was to me a very agreeable acquaintance, whom I esteem more highly than Czerny, but of this also don’t speak, my beloved ones.”

[Footnote:  Their disparity of character would have revealed itself unpleasantly to both parties if the grand seigneur Chopin had, like Moritz Hauptmann, been the travelling-companion of the meanly parsimonious Klengel, who to save a few bajocchi left the hotels with uncleaned boots, and calculated the worth of the few things he cared for by scudi.—­See Moritz Hauptmann’s account of his “canonic” travelling-companion’s ways and procedures in the letters to Franz Hauser, vol. i., p. 64, and passim.]

The reader will no doubt notice and admire the caution of our young friend.  Remembering that not even Paganini had escaped being censured in Prague, Chopin felt no inclination to give a concert, as he was advised to do.  A letter in which he describes his Prague experiences reveals to us one of his weaknesses—­one, however, which he has in common with many men of genius.  A propos of his bursting into a wrong bedroom he says:  “I am absent-minded, you know.”

After three pleasant days at Prague the quatrefoil of friends betook themselves again to the road, and wended their way to Teplitz, where they arrived the same evening, and stopped two nights and one day.  Here they fell in with many Poles, by one of whom, Louis Lempicki, Chopin was introduced to Prince Clary and his family, in whose castle he spent an evening in very aristocratic society.  Among the guests were an Austrian prince, an Austrian and a Saxon general, a captain of the English navy, and several dandies whom Chopin suspected to be Austrian princes or counts.  After tea he was asked by the mother of the Princess Clary, Countess Chotek, to play something.  Chopin at once went to the piano, and invited those present to give him a theme to improvise upon.