Dearest friend [Cherissime],—­Here is what Onslow has written to me.  I wished to call on you and tell you, but I feel very feeble and am going to lie down.  I love you always more, if this is possible [je vous aime toujours plus si c’est possible].

  Chopin.

[Footnote:  To the above, unfortunately undated, note, which was published for the first time in the Menestrel of February 15, 1885, and reprinted in “Un nid d’autographes,” lettres incites recueillies et annotees par Oscar Comettant (Paris:  E. Dentu), is appended the following P.S.:—­“Do not forget, please, friend Herbeault.  Till to-morrow, then; I expect you both.”

  La Mara’s Musikerbriefe (Leipzig:  Breitkopf and Hartel)
  contains likewise a friendly letter of Chopin to Camille
  Pleyel.  It runs thus: 

“Dearest friend,—­I received the other day your piano, and give you my best thanks.  It arrived in good tune, and is exactly at concert-pitch.  As yet I have not played much on it, for the weather is at present so fine that I am almost always in the open air.  I wish you as pleasant weather for your holidays.  Write me a few words (if you find that you have not sufficiently exercised your pen in the course of the day).  May you all remain well—­and lay me at the feet of your mother and sister.—­Your devoted, “F.  Chopin.”

  The date given by La Mara is “Monday [May 20, 1842], Nohant,
  near La Chatre, Indre.”  This, however, cannot be right, for
  the 20th of May in 1842 was a Friday.]

And, again, how atrociously he reviles in the same letters the banker Leo, who lends him money, often takes charge of his manuscripts, procures payment for them, and in whose house he has been for years a frequent visitor.  Mr. Ch.  Halle informed me that Chopin was on particularly good terms with the Leos.  From Moscheles’ diary we learn that the writer made Chopin’s acquaintance at the banker’s house.  Stephen Heller told me that he met Chopin several times at Leo’s, and that the Polish composer visited there often, and continued to go there when he had given up going to many other houses.  And from the same informant I learned also that Madame Leo as well as her husband took a kindly interest in Chopin, showing this, for instance, by providing him with linen.  And yet Leo, this man who does him all sorts of services, and whose smiling guest he is before and after, is spoken of by Chopin as if he were the most “despicable wretch imaginable”; and this for no other reason than that everything has not been done exactly as he wished it to be done.  Unless we assume these revilings to be no more than explosions of momentary ill-humour, we must find Chopin convicted of duplicity and ingratitude.  In the letters to Fontana there are also certain remarks about Matuszynski which I do not like.  Nor can they be wholly explained away by saying that they are in part fun and in part