ms, sometimes in mine, sometimes in
Chopin's when he was inclined to give us some music. We dined
with her at common expense. It was a very good association,
economical like all associations, and enabled one to see society
at Madame Marliani's, my friends more privately in my apartments,
and to take up my work at the hour when it suited me to withdraw.
Chopin rejoiced also at having a fine, isolated salon where he
could go to compose or to dream. But he loved society, and made
little use of his sanctuary except to give lessons in it.

Although George Sand speaks only of a salon, Chopin's official
residence, as we may call it, consisted of several rooms. They were
elegantly furnished and always adorned with flowers--for he loved le
luxe and had the coquetterie des appartements.

[FOOTNOTE: When I visited in 1880 M. Kwiatkowski in Paris, he showed me
some Chopin relics: 1, a pastel drawing by Jules Coignet (representing
Les Pyramides d'Egypte), which hung always above the composer's piano;
2, a little causeuse which Chopin bought with his first Parisian
savings; 3, an embroidered easy-chair worked and presented to him by the
Princess Czartoiyska; and 4, an embroidered cushion worked and presented
to him by Madame de Rothschild. If we keep in mind Chopin's remarks
about his furniture and the papering of his rooms, and add to the
above-mentioned articles those which Karasowski mentions as having been
bought by Miss Stirling after the composer's death, left by her to his
mother, and destroyed by the Russians along with his letters in 1861
when in possession of his sister Isabella Barcinska--his portrait by Ary
Scheffer, some Sevres porcelain with the inscription "Offert par Louis
Philippe a Frederic Chopin," a fine inlaid box, a present from one of
the Rothschild family, carpets, table-cloths, easy-chairs, &c.,
worked by his pupils--we can form some sort of idea of the internal
arrangements of the pianist-composer's rooms.]

Nevertheless, they exhibited none of the splendour which was to be
found in the houses of many of the celebrities then living in Paris.
"He observed," remarks Liszt, "on this point as well as in the then so
fashionable elegancies of walking-sticks, pins, studs, and jewels, the
instinctive line of the comme il faut between the too much and the too
little." But Chopin's letters written from Nohant in 1839 to Fontana
have afforded the reader sufficient opportunities to make himself
acquai