Madame de Girardin, after having described in one of her “Lettres parisiennes” (March 7, 1847) [footnote:  The full title of the work is:  “Le Vicomte de Launay—­Lettres parisiennes par Mdme. Emile de Girardin.” (Paris:  Michel Levy freres.)] with what success Mdlle.  O’Meara accompanied by her master played his E minor Concerto at a soiree of Madame de Courbonne, proceeds thus:- -

  Mdlle.  Meara is a pupil of Chopin’s.  He was there, he was
  present at the triumph of his pupil, the anxious audience
  asked itself:  “Shall we hear him?”

The fact is that it was for passionate admirers the torment of Tantalus to see Chopin going about a whole evening in a salon and not to hear him.  The mistress of the house took pity on us; she was indiscreet, and Chopin played, sang his most delicious songs; we set to these joyous or sad airs the words which came into our heads; we followed with our thoughts his melodious caprices.  There were some twenty of us, sincere amateurs, true believers, and not a note was lost, not an intention was misunderstood; it was not a concert, it was intimate, serious music such as we love; he was not a virtuoso who comes and plays the air agreed upon and then disappears; he was a beautiful talent, monopolised, worried, tormented, without consideration and scruples, whom one dared ask for the most beloved airs, and who full of grace and charity repeated to you the favourite phrase, in order that you might carry it away correct and pure in your memory, and for a long time yet feast on it in remembrance.  Madame so-and-so said:  “Please, play this pretty nocturne dedicated to Mdlle.  Stirling.”—­The nocturne which I called the dangerous one.—­He smiled, and played the fatal nocturne.  “I,” said another lady, “should like to hear once played by you this mazurka, so sad and so charming.”  He smiled again, and played the delicious mazurka.  The most profoundly artful among the ladies sought expedients to attain their end:  “I am practising the grand sonata which commences with this beautiful funeral march,” and “I should like to know the movement in which the finale ought to be played.”  He smiled a little at the stratagem, and played the finale, of the grand sonata, one of the most magnificent pieces which he has composed.

Although Madame Girardin’s language and opinions are fair specimens of those prevalent in the beatified regions in which Chopin delighted to move, we will not follow her rhapsodic eulogy of his playing.  That she cannot be ranked with the connoisseurs is evident from her statement that the sonata begins with the funeral march, and that the finale is one of the most magnificent creations of the composer.  Notwithstanding Madame Girardin’s subsequent remark that Chopin’s playing at Madame de Courbonne’s was quite an exception, her letter may mislead the reader into the belief that the great pianist was easily induced to sit down at the piano.  A more correct idea may be formed of the real state of matters from a passage in an article by Berlioz (Feuilleton du Journal des Debats, October 27, 1849) in which the supremacy of style over matter is a little less absolute than in the lady’s elegant chit-chat:—­