When one was in the same salon with him, his vicinity inspired one with a certain anxiety mingled with the fascination of terror which repelled and attracted at the same time.  His puns were not always of an amusing kind.  Hiller also mentions Bellini’s bad grammar and pronunciation, but he adds that the contrast between what he said and the way he said it gave to his gibberish a charm which is often absent from the irreproachable language of trained orators.  It is impossible to conjecture what Bellini might have become as a musician if, instead of dying before the completion of his thirty-third year (September 24, 1835), he had lived up to the age of fifty or sixty; thus much, however, is certain, that there was still in him a vast amount of undeveloped capability.  Since his arrival in Paris he had watched attentively the new musical phenomena that came there within his ken, and the “Puritani” proves that he had not done so without profit.  This sweet singer from sensuous Italy was not insensible even to the depth and grandeur of German music.  After hearing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, for instance, he said to Hiller, his eyes glistening as if he had himself done a great deed:  “E bel comme la nature!” [Footnote:  I give the words literally as they are printed in Hiller’s Kimmerleben.  The mixture of Italian and French was no doubt intended, but hardly the spelling.] In short, Bellini was a true artist, and therefore a meet companion for a true artist like Chopin, of whose music it can be said with greater force than of that of most composers that “it is all soul.”  Chopin, who of course met Bellini here and there in the salons of the aristocracy, came also in closer contact with him amidst less fashionable but more congenial surroundings.  I shall now let Hiller, the pleasant story-teller, speak, who, after remarking that Bellini took a great interest in piano-forte music, even though it was not played by a Chopin, proceeds thus:—­

I can never forget some evenings which I spent with him [Bellini] and Chopin and a few other guests at Madame Freppa’s.  Madame Freppa, an accomplished and exceedingly musical woman, born at Naples, but of French extraction, had, in order to escape from painful family circumstances, settled in Paris, where she taught singing in the most distinguished circles.  She had an exceedingly sonorous though not powerful voice, and an excellent method, and by her rendering of Italian folk-songs and other simple vocal compositions of the older masters charmed even the spoiled frequenters of the Italian Opera.  We cordially esteemed her, and sometimes went together to visit her at the extreme end of the Faubourg St. Germain, where she lived with her mother on a troisieme au dessus de l’entresol, high above all the noise and tumult of the ever-bustling city.  There music was discussed, sung, and played, and then again discussed, played, and sung.  Chopin and Madame Freppa seated themselves by turns at