A staircase leads from the entrance directly into it; there I
   shall have an old writing-desk, and this nook will be my
   retreat.

This remark calls up a passage in a letter written two years later from Vienna to his friend John Matuszynski:—­

When your former colleagues, for instance, Rostkowski, Schuch, Freyer, Kyjewski, Hube, &c., are holding merry converse in my room, then think that I am laughing and enjoying myself with you.

A charming little genre picture of Chopin’s home-life is to be found in one of his letters from Vienna (December 1, 1830) Having received news from Warsaw, he writes:—­

The joy was general, for Titus also had letters from home.  I thank Celinski lor the enclosed note; it brought vividly back to me the time when I was still amongst you:  it seemed to me as if I were sitting at the piano and Celinski standing opposite me looking at Mr. Zywny, who just then treated Linowski to a pinch of snuff.  Only Matuszynski was wanting to make the group complete.

Several names in the above extract remind me that I ought to say a few words about the young men with whom Chopin at that time associated.  Many of them were no doubt companions in the noblest sense of the word.  Of this class may have been Celinski, Hube, Eustachius Marylski, and Francis Maciejowski (a nephew of the previously-mentioned Professor Waclaw Maciejowski), who are more or less frequently mentioned in Chopin’s correspondence, but concerning whom I have no information to give.  I am as badly informed about Dziewanowski, whom a letter quoted by Karasowski shows to have been a friend of Chopin’s.  Of two other friends, Stanislas Kozmian and William Kolberg, we know at least that the one was a few years ago still living at Posen and occupied the post of President of the Society of the Friends of Science, and that the other, to whom the earliest letters of Chopin that have come down to us are addressed, became, not to mention lesser offices and titles, a Councillor of State, and died on June 4,1877.  Whatever the influence of the friends I have thus far named may have been on the man Chopin, one cannot but feel inclined to think that Stephen Witwicki and Dominic Magnuszewski, especially the former, must have had a greater influence on the artist.  At any rate, these two poets, who made their mark in Polish literature, brought the musician in closest contact with the strivings of the literary romanticism of those days.  In later years Chopin set several of Witwicki’s songs to music.  Both Magnuszewski and Witwicki lived afterwards, like Chopin, in Paris, where they continued to associate with him.  Of the musical acquaintances we have to notice first and foremost Julius Fontana, who himself said that he was a daily visitor at Chopin’s house.  The latter writes in the above-mentioned letter (December 27, 1828) to Titus Woyciechowski:—­