Fondness of society is a characteristic trait in Chopin’s mental constitution.  Indeed, Hiller told me that his friend could not be without company.  For reading, on the other hand, he did not much care.  Alkan related to me that Chopin did not even read George Sand’s works—­which is difficult to believe—­and that Pierre Leroux, who liked Chopin and always brought him his books, might have found them any time afterwards uncut on the pianist’s table, which is not so difficult to believe, as philosophy and Chopin are contraries.  According to what I learned from Hiller, Chopin took an interest in literature but read very little.  To Heller it seemed that Chopin had no taste for literature, indeed, he made on him the impression of an uneducated man.  Heller, I must tell the reader parenthetically, was both a great reader and an earnest thinker, over whom good books had even the power of making him neglect and forget mistress Musica without regret and with little compunction.  But to return to Chopin.  Franchomme excused his friend by saying that teaching and the claims of society left him no time for reading.  But if Chopin neglected French literature—­not to speak of other ancient and modern literatures—­he paid some attention to that of his native country; at any rate, new publications of Polish books were generally to be found on his table.  The reader will also remember that Chopin, in his letters to Fontana, alludes twice to books of poetry—­one by Mickiewicz which was sent him to Majorca, the other by Witwicki which he had lost sight of.

Indeed, anything Polish had an especial charm and value for Chopin.  Absence from his native country so far from diminishing increased his love for it.  The words with which he is reported to have received the pianist Mortier de Fontaine, who came to Paris in 1833 and called on him with letters of introduction, are characteristic in this respect:  “It is enough that you have breathed the air of Warsaw to find a friend and adviser in me.”  There is, no doubt, some exaggeration in Liszt’s statement that whoever came to Chopin from Poland, whether with or without letters of introduction, was sure of a hearty welcome, of being received with open arms.  On the other hand, we may fully believe the same authority when he says that Chopin often accorded to persons of his own country what he would not accord to anyone else—­namely, the right of disturbing his habits; that he would sacrifice his time, money, and comfort to people who were perhaps unknown to him the day before, showing them the sights of the capital, having them to dine with him, and taking them in the evening to some theatre.  We have already seen that his most intimate friends were Poles, and this was so in the aristocratic as well as in the conventionally less-elevated circles.  However pleasant his relations with the Rothschilds may have been—­ indeed, Franchomme told me that his friend loved the house of Rothschild and that this house loved him, and that