In the foregoing accounts the reader will find contradictions enough to exercise his ingenuity upon.  But the involuntary tricks of memory and the voluntary ones of imagination make always such terrible havoc of facts that truth, be it ever so much sought and cared for, appears in history and biography only in a more or less disfigured condition.  George Sand’s own allusion to the commencement of the acquaintance agrees best with Liszt’s account.  After passing in the latter part of 1836 some months in Switzerland with Liszt and the Comtesse d’Agoult, she meets them again at Paris in the December of the same year:—­

At the Hotel de France, where Madame d’Agoult had persuaded me to take quarters near her, the conditions of existence were charming for a few days.  She received many litterateurs, artists, and some clever men of fashion.  It was at Madame d’Agoult’s, or through her, that I made the acquaintance of Eugene Sue, Baron d’Eckstein, Chopin, Mickiewicz, Nourrit, Victor Schoelcher, &c.  My friends became also hers.  Through me she got acquainted with M. Lamennais, Pierre-Leroux, Henri Heine, &c.  Her salon, improvised in an inn, was therefore a reunion d’elite over which she presided with exquisite grace, and where she found herself the equal of all the eminent specialists by reason of the extent of her mind and the variety of her faculties, which were at once poetic and serious.  Admirable music was performed there, and in the intervals one could instruct one’s self by listening to the conversation.

To reconcile Liszt’s account with George Sand’s remark that Chopin was one of those whose acquaintance she made at Madame d’Agoult’s or through her, we have only to remember the intimate relation in which Liszt stood to this lady (subsequently known in literature under the nom de plume of Daniel Stern), who had left her husband, the Comte d’Agoult, in 1835.

And now at last we can step again from the treacherous quicksand of reminiscences on the terra firma of documents.  The following extracts from some letters of George Sand’s throw light on her relation to Chopin in the early part of 1837:—­

  Nohant, March 28, 1837.

[To Franz Liszt.]...Come and see us as soon as possible.  Love, esteem, and friendship claim you at Nohant.  Love (Marie [footnote:  The Comtesse d’Agoult.]) is some what ailing, esteem (Maurice and Pelletan [footnote:  The former, George Sand’s son; the latter, Eugene Pelletan, Maurice’s tutor.]) pretty well, and friendship (myself) obese and in excellent health.

  Marie told me that there was some hope of Chopin.  Tell Chopin
  that I beg of him to accompany you; that Marie cannot live
  without him, and that I adore him.