he who was born and bred in Poland, only he who had breathed the perfume of her fields and woods, could fully comprehend with heart and mind Polish national music, the three agreed to play in turn, by way of experiment, the mazurka “Poland is not lost yet.”  Liszt began, Hiller followed, and Chopin came last and carried off the palm, his rivals admitting that they had not seized the true spirit of the music as he had done.  Another anecdote, told me by Hiller, shows how intimate the Polish artist was with this family of compatriots, the Platers, and what strange whims he sometimes gave way to.  One day Chopin came into the salon acting the part of Pierrot, and, after jumping and dancing about for an hour, left without having spoken a single word.

Abbe Bardin was a great musical amateur, at whose weekly afternoon gatherings the best artists might be seen and heard, Mendelssohn among the rest when he was in Paris in 1832-1833.  In one of the many obituary notices of Chopin which appeared in French and other papers, and which are in no wise distinguished by their trustworthiness, I found the remark that the Abbe Bardin and M.M.  Tilmant freres were the first to recognise Chopin’s genius.  The notice in question is to be found in the Chronique Musicale of November 3, 1849.

In Franck, whose lodgings Chopin had taken, the reader will recognise the “clever [geistreiche], musical Dr. Hermann Franck,” the friend of many musical and other celebrities, the same with whom Mendelssohn used to play at chess during his stay in Paris.  From Hiller I learned that Franck was very musical, and that his attainments in the natural sciences were considerable; but that being well-to-do he was without a profession.  In the fifth decade of this century he edited for a year Brockhaus’s Deutsche allgemeine Zeitung.

In the following letter which Chopin wrote to Franchomme—­the latter thinks in the autumn of 1833—­we meet with some new names.  Dr. Hoffmann was a good friend of the composer’s, and was frequently found at his rooms smoking.  I take him to have been the well-known litterateur Charles Alexander Hoffmann, [Footnote:  This is the usual German, French, and English spelling.  The correct Polish spelling is Hofman.  The forms Hoffman and Hofmann occur likewise.] the husband of Clementina Tanska, a Polish refugee who came to Paris in 1832 and continued to reside there till 1848.  Maurice is of course Schlesinger the publisher.  Of Smitkowski I know only that he was one of Chopin’s Polish friends, whose list is pretty long and comprised among others Prince Casimir Lubomirski, Grzymala, Fontana, and Orda.