did. On the 7th of December, at the Théâtre Italien, he appeared at a

concert organized by Berlioz in honour of Harriet Smithson, the Irish actress he had just married. On Christmas Day, at the Salle Pleyel, he played, with Liszt at the other piano, a duet by Liszt on a theme of Mendelssohn. On the 15th of February, 1835, he took part in a concert at the Salle Erard, and on April 4th he played for the benefit of the Polish refugees. Berlioz wrote in the _Rénovateur_, “Chopin, as a player and as a composer, is an artist apart. He has no point of resemblance to any other musician I know. Unhappily, there is no one but Chopin himself who can play his music and give it that original turn, that impromptu that is one of its principal charms; his execution is veined with a thousand nuances of movement of which he alone has the secret, and which cannot be indicated... The detail in his mazurkas is unbelievable; then he has found a way to make them doubly interesting by playing them to the last degree of softness, with superlative _piano_, the hammers touching the strings so lightly that one is tempted to bend the ear over the instrument as one might at a concert of sylphs and pixies.”

But the crowd always awards the palms to brilliance, and Chopin, deciding that it had not given his _Concerto in E minor_ the reception he expected, declared that he was neither understood nor made for concerts, and made up his mind to abstain from appearing in public for a long time.

Nevertheless, he played once more in public, on the 26th of April, 1835, at the Conservatory. This was the only time he ever appeared in that famous hall. He played his _Polonaise brillante_, preceded by an _Andante Spianato_.

He found compensation for these slight professional disappointments in the friendship of the Italian Bellini, towards whom he was drawn by a quick sympathy and whom he often saw. He was further distracted by an interest in a celebrated beauty, Countess Delphine Potoçka.

She was twenty-five, of regal bearing, with a delicately chiselled nose, a most passionate mouth, and the high, pensive forehead of the true voluptuary. Her whole appearance suggested a slender and puissant goddess, but whatever luxuriance she had was cooled by the severity of her glance.

Miçkiewicz said that she was “the greatest of all sinners,” and Krasinski apostrophized her in a poem in the manner of Mephistopheles: “O stay, for thou art true beauty.” Frederick let himself float in the sensual _rayonnement_ of this beautiful animal of love. For the first time his head was turned. The sumptuous voice of Delphine enchanted him. He accompanied her at the piano, strove to make her soul be born again, to give it back its flower, and watched for possible beautiful vibrations; but the soul was the servant of this imperial flesh. Once or twice, however, she seemed to come out of her lethargy, to spread herself on an admirable note that sprang from the depths of her unconscious self, but immediately after, the shrieks, the laughter, the exigencies of this ravishing hysteric extinguished these gleams. And as the platonic love towards which Chopin wanted to direct her seemed to Delphine both comic and impossible, she gave herself before he had ever dreamed of asking her.

The adventure was of short duration. The Countess had a jealous husband, who, by cutting off her allowance, obliged this prodigal lady to make a prompt departure for Poland, whence she did not return till later on. But she retained a lasting affection for Chopin. The only lines from her to the artist that have been discovered furnish discreet witness to the fact:

“I shall not annoy you with a long letter, but I do not want to remain longer without news of your health and your plans for the future. I am sad to think of you abandoned and alone... Here my time is passed in an annoying fashion, and I hope not to have still more vexations. But I am disgusted. Everyone for whom I have done anything has repaid me with ingratitude. On the whole, life is one long dissonance. God bless you, dear Chopin. Good-bye.”

“One long dissonance,” so had Liszt already spoken. There was in these tormented bodies an invincible straining towards the suavest harmonies. At least in these beings—male or female—in whom the feminine predominates. But this is not the case with Chopin, whose musical travail was always virile. He would have subscribed to the words of Beethoven: “Emotion is good only for women; for man, music must draw fire from his spirit.” And even more, perhaps, to those quoted by Schumann from the German poet Johann-Paul Richter: “Love and friendship pass through this earth veiled and with closed lips. No human being can tell another how much he loves him; he knows only that he does love him. The inner man has no language; he is mute.”