As regards these etudes, I have the advantage of having heard most of them played by Chopin himself, and, as Florestan whispered in my ear at the time, “He plays them very much a la Chopin.”  Imagine an AEolian harp that had all the scales, and that these were jumbled together by the hand of an artist into all sorts of fantastic ornaments, but in such a manner that a deeper fundamental tone and a softly-singing higher part were always audible, and you have an approximate idea of his playing.  No wonder that we have become fondest of those pieces which we heard him play himself, and therefore we shall mention first of all the first one in A flat, which is rather a poem than an etude.  It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that he brought out every one of the little notes with distinctness; it was more like a billowing of the A flat major chord, swelled anew here and there by means of the pedal; but through the harmonies were heard the sustained tones of a wondrous melody, and only in the middle of it did a tenor part once come into greater prominence amid the chords along with that principal cantilena.  After listening to the study one feels as one does after a blissful vision, seen in a dream, which, already half awake, one would fain bring back.  He soon came to the one in F minor, the second in the book, likewise one which impresses one indelibly with his originality; it is so charming, dreamy, and soft, somewhat like the singing of a child in its sleep.  Beautiful also, although less new in character than in the figure, was the following one in F major; here the object was more to exhibit bravura, the most charming bravura, and we could not but praise the master highly for it....But of what use are descriptive words?

This time we cannot cite a letter of Mendelssohn’s; he was elsewhere similarly occupied as Chopin in Marienbad.  After falling in love with a Frankfort lady, Miss Jeanrenaud, he had gone to Scheweningen to see whether his love would stand the test of absence from the beloved object.  It stood the test admirably, and on September 9, a few days before Chopin’s arrival in Leipzig, Mendelssohn’s engagement to the lady who became his wife on March 28, 1837, took place.

But another person who has been mentioned in connection with Chopin’s first visit to Leipzig, Henrietta Voigt, [footnote:  The editor of “Acht Briefe und ein Facsimile van Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy” speaks of her as “the artistic wife of a Leipzig merchant, whose house stood open to musicians living in and passing through Leipzig.”] has left us an account of the impression made upon her.  An entry in her diary on September 13, 1836, runs thus:—­