Of this meeting at the house of the Marquis de C.—­i.e., the Marquis de Custine—­I was furnished with a third version by an eye-witness—­namely, by Chopin’s pupil Adolph Gutmann.  From him I learned that the occasion was neither a full-dress ball nor a chance gathering of a jour fixe, but a musical matinee.  Gutmann, Vidal (Jean Joseph), and Franchomme opened the proceedings with a trio by Mayseder, a composer the very existence of whose once popular chamber-music is unknown to the present generation.  Chopin played a great deal, and George Sand devoured him with her eyes.  Afterwards the musician and the novelist walked together a long time in the garden.  Gutmann was sure that this matinee took place either in 1836 or in 1837, and was inclined to think that it was in the first-mentioned year.

Franchomme, whom I questioned about the matinee at the Marquis de Custine’s, had no recollection of it.  Nor did he remember the circumstance of having on this or any other occasion played a trio of Mayseder’s with Gutmann and Vidal.  But this friend of the Polish pianist—­composer, while confessing his ignorance as to the place where the latter met the great novelist for the first time, was quite certain as to the year when he met her.  Chopin, Franchomme informed me, made George Sand’s acquaintance in 1837, their connection was broken in 1847, and he died, as everyone knows, on October 17, 1849.  In each of these dates appears the number which Chopin regarded with a superstitious dread, which he avoided whenever he could-for instance, he would not at any price take lodgings in a house the number of which contained a seven—­ and which may be thought by some to have really exercised a fatal influence over him.  It is hardly necessary to point out that it was this fatal number which fixed the date in Franchomme’s memory.

But supposing Chopin and George Sand to have really met at the Marquis de Custine’s, was this their first meeting?

[FOONOTE:  That they were on one occasion both present at a party given by the Marquis de Custine may be gathered from Freiherr von Flotow’s Reminiscences of his life in Paris (published in the “Deutsche Revue” of January, 1883, p. 65); but not that this was their first meeting, nor the time when it took place.  As to the character of this dish of reminiscences, I may say that it is sauced and seasoned for the consumption of the blase magazine reader, and has no nutritive substance whatever.]

I put the question to Liszt in the course of a conversation I had with him some years ago in Weimar.  His answer was most positive, and to the effect that the first meeting took place at Chopin’s own apartments.  “I ought to know best,” he added, “seeing that I was instrumental in bringing the two together.”  Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more trustworthy witness in this matter than Liszt, who at that time not only was one of the chief comrades of Chopin, but also of George Sand.  According to him, then,