t major?). Maurice Bourges's account is not altogether free from
strictures. He finds Chopin's ornamentations always novel, but sometimes
mannered (manierees). He says: "Trop de recherche fine et minutieuse
n'est pas quelquefois sans pretention et san froideur." But on the whole
the critique is very laudatory. "Liszt and Thalberg excite, as is well
known, violent enthusiasm; Chopin also awakens enthusiasm, but of a
less energetic, less noisy nature, precisely because he causes the most
intimate chords of the heart to vibrate."

From the report in the "France musicale" we see that the audience was
not less brilliant than that of the first concert:--

...Chopin has given in Pleyel's hall a charming soiree, a fete
peopled with adorable smiles, delicate and rosy faces, small and
well-formed white hands; a splendid fete where simplicity was
combined with grace and elegance, and where good taste served as
a pedestal to wealth. Those ugly black hats which give to men the
most unsightly appearance possible were very few in number. The
gilded ribbons, the delicate blue gauze, the chaplets of
trembling pearls, the freshest roses and mignonettes, in short, a
thousand medleys of the prettiest and gayest colours were
assembled, and intersected each other in all sorts of ways on the
perfumed heads and snowy shoulders of the most charming women for
whom the princely salons contend. The first success of the seance
was for Madame George Sand. As soon as she appeared with her two
charming daughters [daughter and cousin?], she was the observed
of all observers. Others would have been disturbed by all those
eyes turned on her like so many stars; but George Sand contented
herself with lowering her head and smiling...

This description is so graphic that one seems to see the actual scene,
and imagines one's self one of the audience. It also points out a very
characteristic feature of these concerts--namely, the preponderance of
the fair sex. As regards Chopin's playing, the writer remarks that the
genre of execution which aims at the imitation of orchestral effects
suits neither Chopin's organisation nor his ideas:--

In listening to all these sounds, all these nuances, which
follow each other, intermingle, separate, and reunite to
arrive at one and the same goal, melody, do you not think you
hear little fairy voices sighing under silver bells, or a rain
of pearls falling on crystal tables? Th