crossed the Square d’Orleans and paid Chopin a visit in his apartments.  The master received her with all the grace and amiability he was capable of.  Noticing that her pardessus was bespattered with mud, he seemed to be much vexed, and the exquisitely-elegant gentleman (l’homme de toutes les elegances ) began to rub off with his small, white hands the stains which on any other person would have caused him disgust.  And Mdlle.  O’Meara, child as she still was, watched what was going on from the corner of her eye and thought:  “Comme il aime cette femme!” [Footnote:  Madame A. Audley gives an altogether incorrect account of this incident in her Frederic Chopin.  Madame Girardin was not one of the actors, and Mdlle.  O’Meara did not think the thoughts attributed to her.]

Whenever Chopin’s connection with George Sand is mentioned, one hears a great deal of the misery and nothing or little of the happiness which accrued to him out of it.  The years of tenderness and devotion are slurred over and her infidelities, growing indifference, and final desertion are dwelt upon with undue emphasis.  Whatever those of Chopin’s friends who were not also George Sand’s friends may say, we may be sure that his joys outweighed his sorrows.  Her resoluteness must have been an invaluable support to so vacillating a character as Chopin’s was; and, although their natures were in many respects discordant, the poetic element of hers cannot but have found sympathetic chords in his.  Every character has many aspects, but the world is little disposed to see more than one side of George Sand’s—­namely, that which is most conspicuous by its defiance of law and custom, and finds expression in loud declamation and denunciation.  To observe her in one of her more lovable attitudes of mind, we will transport ourselves from Chopin’s to her salon.

Louis Enault relates how one evening George Sand, who sometimes thought aloud when with Chopin—­this being her way of chatting—­ spoke of the peacefulness of the country and unfolded a picture of the rural harmonies that had all the charming and negligent grace of a village idyl, bringing, in fact, her beloved Berry to the fireside of the room in the Square d’Orleans.

  “How well you have spoken!” said Chopin naively.

“You think so?” she replied.  “Well, then, set me to music!” Hereupon Chopin improvised a veritable pastoral symphony, and George Sand placing herself beside him and laying her hand gently on his shoulder said:  “Go on, velvet fingers [courage, doigts de velour]!”

Here is another anecdote of quiet home-life.  George Sand had a little dog which was in the habit of turning round and round in the endeavour to catch its tail.  One evening when it was thus engaged, she said to Chopin:  “If I had your talent, I would compose a pianoforte piece for this dog.”  Chopin at once sat down at the piano, and improvised the charming Waltz in D flat (Op. 64), which hence has obtained the name of Valse du petit chien.  This story is well known among the pupils and friends of the master, but not always told in exactly the same way.  According to another version, Chopin improvised the waltz when the little dog was playing with a ball of wool.  This variation, however, does not affect the pith of the story.