insolent reclame, the security of intercourse with him, and the exquisite delicacy of his manners, making him a friend equally serious and agreeable.

To tear Chopin away from so many gdteries, to associate him with a simple, uniform, and constantly studious life, him who had been brought up on the knees of princesses, was to deprive him of that which made him live, of a factitious life, it is true, for, like a painted woman, he laid aside in the evening, in returning to his home, his verve and his energy, to give the night to fever and sleeplessness; but of a life which would have been shorter and more animated than that of the retirement and of the intimacy restricted to the uniform circle of a single family.  In Paris he visited several salons every day, or he chose at least every evening a different one as a milieu.  He had thus by turns twenty or thirty salons to intoxicate or to charm with his presence.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Chopin in his social relations:  His predilection for the
fashionable salon society (accounts by Madame Girardin and
Berlioz); his neglect of the society of artists (Ary Scheffer,
Marmontel, Heller, Schulhoff, the Paris correspondent of the
musical world); aphorisms by Liszt on Chopin in his social
aspect.—­Chopin’s friendships.—­George sand, Liszt, Lenz, Heller,
Marmontel, and Hiller on his character (irritability, fits of
anger—­scene with Meyerbeer—­gaiety and raillery, love of
society, and little taste for reading, predilection for things
polish).—­His polish, German, English, and Russian friends.—­The
party made famous by Liszt’s account.—­His intercourse with
musicians (Osborne, Berlioz, Baillot, Cherubini, Kalkbrenner,
Fontana, Sowinski, Wolff, Meyerbeer, Alkan, etc.).—­His
friendship with Liszt.—­His dislike to letter-writing.