Since my return I have not yet visited her, and must tell you openly that I often attribute the cause of my distress to her; it seems to me as if people shared this view, and that affords me a certain satisfaction.  My father smiles at it; but if he knew all, he would perhaps weep.  Indeed, I am seemingly quite contented, whilst my heart....

This is one of the occasions, which occur so frequently in Chopin’s letters, where he breaks suddenly off in the course of his emotional outpourings, and subsides into effective silence.  On such occasions one would like to see him go to the piano and hear him finish the sentence there.  “All I can write to you now is indeed stupid stuff; only the thought of leaving Warsaw...”  Another musical opportunity!  Where words fail, there music begins.

Only wait, the day will come when you will not fare any better.  Man is not always happy; sometimes only a few moments of happiness are granted to him in this life; therefore why should we shun this rapture which cannot last long?

After this the darkness of sadness shades gradually into brighter hues:—­

As on the one hand I consider intercourse with the outer world a sacred duty, so, on the other hand, I regard it as a devilish invention, and it would be better if men... but I have said enough!...

The reader knows already the rest of the letter; it is the passage in which Chopin’s love of fun gets the better of his melancholy, his joyous spirits of his sad heart, and where he warns his friend, as it were with a bright twinkle in his tearful eyes and a smile on his face, not to kiss him at that moment, as he must wash himself.  This joking about his friend’s dislike to osculation is not without an undercurrent of seriousness; indeed, it is virtually a reproach, but a reproach cast in the most delicate form and attired in feminine coquetry.

On September 18, 1830, Chopin is still in Warsaw.  Why he is still there he does not know; but he feels unspeakably happy where he is, and his parents make no objections to this procrastination.

To-morrow I shall hold a rehearsal [of the E minor Concerto] with quartet, and then drive to—­whither?  Indeed, I do not feel inclined to go anywhere; but I shall on no account stay in Warsaw.  If you have, perhaps, a suspicion that something dear to me retains me here, you are mistaken, like many others.  I assure you I should be ready to make any sacrifice if only my own self were concerned, and I—­although I am in love—­had yet to keep my unfortunate feelings concealed in my bosom for some years to come.

Is it possible to imagine anything more inconsistent and self-delusive than these ravings of our friend?  Farther on in this very lengthy epistle we come first of all once more to the pending question.