This last work appeared at Paris first in an Album des Pianistes, a collection of unpublished pieces by Thalberg, Chopin, Doehler, Osborne, Liszt, and Mereaux.  Two things in connection with this album may yet be mentioned—­namely, that Mereaux contributed to it a Fantasia on a mazurka by Chopin, and that Stephen Heller reviewed it in the Gazette musicale.  Chopin was by no means pleased with the insertion of the waltzes in Schlesinger’s Album des Pianistes.  But more of this and his labours and grievances as a composer in the next chapter.

There are also to be recorded some public and semi-public appearances of Chopin as a virtuoso.  On February 25, 1838, the Gazette musicale informs its readers that Chopin, “that equally extraordinary and modest pianist,” had lately been summoned to Court to be heard there en cercle intime.  His inexhaustible improvisations, which almost made up the whole of the evening’s entertainment, were particularly admired by the audience, which knew as well as a gathering of artists how to appreciate the composer’s merits.  At a concert given by Valentin Alkan on March 3, 1838, Chopin performed with Zimmermann, Gutmann, and the concert-giver, the latter’s arrangement of Beethoven’s A major Symphony (or rather some movements from it) for two pianos and eight hands.  And in the Gazette musicale of March 25, 1838, there is a report by M. Legouve of Chopin’s appearance at a concert given by his countryman Orlowski at Rouen, where the latter had settled after some years stay in Paris.  From a writer in the Journal de Rouen (December 1, 1849) we learn that ever since this concert, which was held in the town-hall, and at which the composer played his E minor Concerto with incomparable perfection, the name of Chopin had in the musical world of Rouen a popularity which secured to his memory an honourable and cordial sympathy.  But here is what Legouve says about this concert.  I transcribe the notice in full, because it shows us both how completely Chopin had retired from the noise and strife of publicity, and how high he stood in the estimation of his contemporaries.

Here is an event which is not without importance in the musical world.  Chopin, who has not been heard in public for several years; Chopin, who imprisons his charming genius in an audience of five or six persons; Chopin, who resembles those enchanted isles where so many marvels are said to abound that one regards them as fabulous; Chopin, whom one can never forget after having once heard him; Chopin has just given a grand concert at Rouen before 500 people for the benefit of a Polish professor.  Nothing less than a good action to be done and the remembrance of his country could have overcome his repugnance to playing in public.  Well! the success was immense! immense!  All these enchanting melodies, these ineffable delicacies of execution, these melancholy and impassioned inspirations, and all that poesy of playing and of composition which