hand are gossiping [footnote:  “Lewa reka unisono z prawa, ogaduja po Marszu.”] after the March.  I have a new “Nocturne” in G major, which will go along with the Nocturne in G minor, [footnote:  “Deux Nocturnes,” Op.37.] if you remember such a one.

You know that I have four new mazurkas:  one from Palma in E minor, three from here in B major, A flat major, and C sharp minor. [Footnote:  Quatre mazurkas, Op. 41.] They seem to me pretty, as the youngest children usually do when the parents grow old.

Otherwise I do nothing; I correct for myself the Parisian edition of Bach; not only the stroke-makers’ [footnote:  In Polish strycharz, the usual meaning of which is “brickmaker.”  Chopin may have played upon the word.  A mistake, however, is likewise possible, as the Polish for engraver is sztycharz.] (engravers’) errors, but, I think, the harmonic errors committed by those who pretend to understand Bach.  I do not do it with the pretension that I understand him better than they, but from a conviction that I sometimes guess how it ought to be.

  You see I have praised myself enough to you.

Now, if Grzymata will visit me (which is doubtful), send me through him Weber for four hands.  Also the last of my Ballade in manuscript, as I wish to change something in it.  I should like very much to have your copy of the last mazurkas, if you have such a thing, for I do not know if my gallantry went so far as to give you a copy.

  Pleyel wrote to me that you were very obliging, and have
  corrected the Preludes.  Do you know how much Wessel paid him
  for them?  It would be well to know this for the future.

My father has written to me that my old sonata has been published by Haslinger, and that the Germans praise it. [Footnote:  There must have been some misunderstanding; the Sonata, Op. 4, was not published till 1851.]

I have now, counting those you have, six manuscripts; the devil take them if they get them for nothing.  Pleyel did not do me any service with his offers, for he thereby made Schlesinger indifferent about me.  But I hope this will be set right, f wrote to ask him to let me know if he had been paid for the piano sent to Palma, and I did so because the French consul in Majorca, whom I know very well, was to be changed, and had he not been paid, it would have been very difficult for me to settle this affair at such a distance.  Fortunately, he is paid, and very liberally, as he wrote to me only last week.

  Write to me what sort of lodgings you have.  Do you board at
  the club?

Woyciechowski wrote to me to compose an oratorio.  I answered him in the letter to my parents.  Why does he build a sugar- refinery and not a monastery of Camaldolites or a nunnery of Dominican sisters!

  [2.]

  I give you my most hearty thanks for your upright, friendly,
  not English but Polish soul.