fine, poetic playing of the young Bohemian; his pale features grew animated, and by mien and gesture he showed to all who were present his lively approbation.  When Schulhoff had finished, Chopin held out his hand to him with the words:  “Vous etes un vrai artiste, un collegue!” Some days after Schulhoff paid the revered master a visit, and asked him to accept the dedication of the composition he had played to him.  Chopin thanked him in a heart-winning manner, and said in the presence of several ladies:  “Je suis tres flatte de l’honneur que vous me faites.”

The behaviour of Chopin during the latter part of this transaction made, no doubt, amends for that of the earlier.  But the ungracious manner in which he granted the young musician permission to play to him, and especially his turning his back to Schulhoff when the latter began to play, are not excused by the fact that he was often bothered by dilettante tormentors.

The Paris correspondent of the Musical World, writing immediately after the death of the composer, describes the feeling which existed among the musicians in the French capital, and also suggests an explanation and excuse.  In the number of the paper bearing date November 10, 1849, we read as follows:—­

Owing to his retired way of living and his habitual reserve, Chopin had few friends in the profession; and, indeed, spoiled from his original nature by the caprice of society, he was too apt to treat his brother-artists with a supercilious hauteur, which many, his equals, and a few, his superiors, were wont to stigmatise as insulting.  But from want of sympathy with the man, they overlooked the fact that a pulmonary complaint, which for years had been gradually wasting him to a shadow, rendered him little fit for the enjoyments of society and the relaxations of artistic conviviality.  In short, Chopin, in self-defence, was compelled to live in comparative seclusion, but we wholly disbelieve that this isolation had its source in unkindness or egotism.  We are the more inclined to this opinion by the fact that the intimate friends whom he possessed in the profession (and some of them were pianists) were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his aristocratic worshippers.

The reasoning does not seem to me quite conclusive.  Would it not have been possible to live in retirement without drawing upon himself the accusation of supercilious hauteur?  Moreover, as Chopin was strong enough to frequent fashionable salons, he cannot have been altogether unable to hold intercourse with his brother-artists.  And, lastly, who are the pianist friends that were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his aristocratic worshippers?  The fact that Chopin became subsequently less social and more reticent than he had been in his early Paris days, confined himself to a very limited number of friends and families, and had relations of an intimate nature with only