Soiree de M. Chopin,
dans l’un des salons de mm.  Pleyel et Cie.,
20, Rue Rochechouart,
Le mercredi 16 fevrier 1848 a 8 heures 1/2. 
Rang....Prix 20 francs....Place reservee.

M. Comettant, in contradiction to what has been said by others about Chopin’s physical condition, states that when the latter came on the platform, he walked upright and without feebleness; his face, though pale, did not seem greatly altered; and he played as he had always played.  But M. Comettant was told that Chopin, having spent at the concert all his moral and physical energy, afterwards nearly fainted in the artists’ room.

In March Chopin and George Sand saw each other once more.  We will rest satisfied with the latter’s laconic account of the meeting already quoted:  “Je serrai sa main tremblante et glacee.  Je voulu lui parler, il s’echappa.”  Karasowski’s account of this last meeting is in the feuilleton style and a worthy pendant to that of the first meeting:—­

A month before his departure [he writes], in the last days of March, Chopin was invited by a lady to whose hospitable house he had in former times often gone.  Some moments he hesitated whether he should accept this invitation, for he had of late years less frequented the salons; at last—­as if impelled by an inner voice—­he accepted.  An hour before he entered the house of Madame H...

And then follow wonderful conversations, sighs, blushes, tears, a lady hiding behind an ivy screen, and afterwards advancing with a gliding step, and whispering with a look full of repentance:  “Frederick!” Alas, this was not the way George Sand met her dismissed lovers.  Moreover, let it be remembered she was at this time not a girl in her teens, but a woman of nearly forty-four.

The outbreak of the revolution on February 22, 1848, upset the arrangements for the second concert, which was to take place on the 10th of March, and, along with the desire to seek forgetfulness of the grievous loss he had sustained in a change of scene, decided him at last to accept the pressing and unwearied invitations of his Scotch and English friends to visit Great Britain.  On April 2 the Gazette musicale announced that Chopin would shortly betake himself to London and pass the season there.  And before many weeks had passed he set out upon his journey.  But the history of his doings in the capital and in other parts of the United Kingdom shall be related in another chapter.

CHAPTER XXX.

Difference of style in Chopin’s works.——­Their characteristics
discussed, and popular prejudices controverted.——­Polish
national music and its influence on Chopin.——­Chopin A personal
as well as national tone-poet.—­A