Paris in 1838, 1841, and 1846, partly for the purpose of making arrangements for the publication of his compositions, among which are Etudes dedicated to Chopin.] visited Paris, he begged his countryman to bring him in contact with Kalkbrenner, Liszt, and Pixis.  Chopin, replying that he need not put himself to the trouble of going in search of these artists if he wished to make their acquaintance, forthwith sat down at the piano and assumed the attitude, imitated the style of playing, and mimicked the mien and gestures, first of Liszt and then of Pixis.  Next evening Chopin and Nowakowski went together to the theatre.  The former having left the box during one of the intervals, the latter looked round after awhile and saw Pixis sitting beside him.  Nowakowski, thinking Chopin was at his favourite game, clapped Pixis familiarly on the shoulder and said:  “Leave off, don’t imitate now!” The surprise of Pixis and the subsequent confusion of Nowakowski may be easily imagined.  When Chopin, who at this moment returned, had been made to understand what had taken place, he laughed heartily, and with the grace peculiar to him knew how to make his friend’s and his own excuses.  One thing in connection with Chopin’s mimicry has to be particularly noted--it is very characteristic of the man.  Chopin, we learn from Liszt, while subjecting his features to all kinds of metamorphoses and imitating even the ugly and grotesque, never lost his native grace, “la grimace ne parvenait meme pas a l’enlaidir.”

We shall see presently what George Sand has to say about her lover’s imitative talent; first, however, we will make ourselves acquainted with the friends with whom she especially associated.  Besides Pierre Leroux, Balzac, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, and others who have already been mentioned in the foregoing chapters, she numbered among her most intimate friends the Republican politician and historian Louis Blanc, the Republican litterateur Godefroy Cavaignac, the historian Henri Martin, and the litterateur Louis Viardot, the husband of Pauline Garcia.

[Footnote:  This name reminds me of a passage in Louis Blanc’s “Histoire de la Revolution de 1840” (p. 210 of Fifth Edition.  Paris, 1880).  “A short time before his [Godefroy Cavaignac’s] end, he was seized by an extraordinary desire to hear music once more.  I knew Chopin.  I offered to go to him, and to bring him with me, if the doctor did not oppose it.  The entreaties thereupon took the character of a supplication.  With the consent, or rather at the urgent prayer, of Madame Cavaignac, I betook myself to Chopin.  Madame George Sand was there.  She expressed in a touching manner the lively interest with which the invalid inspired her; and Chopin placed himself at my service with much readiness and grace.  I conducted him then into the chamber of the dying man, where there was a bad piano.  The great artist begins...Suddenly he is interrupted by sobs.  Godefroy, in a transport of sensibility which gave him a moment’s physical