in the Menestrel of February
15, 1885, and reprinted in "Un nid d'autographes," lettres
incites recueillies et annotees par Oscar Comettant (Paris: E.
Dentu), is appended the following P.S.:--"Do not forget,
please, friend Herbeault. Till to-morrow, then; I expect you
both."

La Mara's Musikerbriefe (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hartel)
contains likewise a friendly letter of Chopin to Camille
Pleyel. It runs thus:

"Dearest friend,--I received the other day your piano, and
give you my best thanks. It arrived in good tune, and is
exactly at concert-pitch. As yet I have not played much on it,
for the weather is at present so fine that I am almost always
in the open air. I wish you as pleasant weather for your
holidays. Write me a few words (if you find that you have not
sufficiently exercised your pen in the course of the day). May
you all remain well--and lay me at the feet of your mother and
sister.--Your devoted, "F. CHOPIN."

The date given by La Mara is "Monday [May 20, 1842], Nohant,
near La Chatre, Indre." This, however, cannot be right, for
the 20th of May in 1842 was a Friday.]

And, again, how atrociously he reviles in the same letters the banker
Leo, who lends him money, often takes charge of his manuscripts,
procures payment for them, and in whose house he has been for years
a frequent visitor. Mr. Ch. Halle informed me that Chopin was on
particularly good terms with the Leos. From Moscheles' diary we learn
that the writer made Chopin's acquaintance at the banker's house.
Stephen Heller told me that he met Chopin several times at Leo's, and
that the Polish composer visited there often, and continued to go there
when he had given up going to many other houses. And from the same
informant I learned also that Madame Leo as well as her husband took a
kindly interest in Chopin, showing this, for instance, by providing him
with linen. And yet Leo, this man who does him all sorts of services,
and whose smiling guest he is before and after, is spoken of by Chopin
as if he were the most "despicable wretch imaginable"; and this for no
other reason than that everything has not been done exactly as he wished
it to be done. Unless we assume these revilings to be no more than
explosions of momentary ill-humour, we must find Chopin convicted of
duplicity and ingratitude. In the letters to Fontana there are also
certain remarks about Matuszynski which I do not like. Nor can they be
wh