staken, because they thought they
recognised some of his traits; and, proceeding by this system,
too convenient to be sure, Liszt himself, in a Life of Chopin,
a little exuberant as regards style, but nevertheless full of
very good things and very beautiful pages, has gone astray in
good faith. I have traced in Prince Karol the character of a
man determined in his nature, exclusive in his sentiments,
exclusive in his exigencies.

Chopin was not such. Nature does not design like art, however
realistic it may be. She has caprices, inconsequences,
probably not real, but very mysterious. Art only rectifies
these inconsequences because it is too limited to reproduce
them.

Chopin was a resume of these magnificent inconsequences which
God alone can allow Himself to create, and which have their
particular logic. He was modest on principle, gentle by habit,
but he was imperious by instinct and full of a legitimate
pride which was unconscious of itself. Hence sufferings which
he did not reason and which did not fix themselves on a
determined object.

Moreover, Prince Karol is not an artist. He is a dreamer, and
nothing more; having no genius, he has not the rights of
genius. He is, therefore, a personage more true than amiable,
and the portrait is so little that of a great artist that
Chopin, in reading the manuscript every day on my writing-
desk, had not the slightest inclination to deceive himself, he
who, nevertheless, was so suspicious.

And yet afterwards, by reaction, he imagined, I am told, that
this was the case. Enemies, I had such about him who call
themselves his friends; as if embittering a suffering heart
was not murder, enemies made him believe that this romance was
a revelation of his character. At that time his memory was, no
doubt, enfeebled: he had forgotten the book, why did he not
reread it!

This history is so little ours! It was the very reverse of it
There were between us neither the same raptures [enivrements]
nor the same sufferings. Our history had nothing of a romance;
its foundation was too simple and too serious for us ever to
have had occasion for a quarrel with each other, a propos of
each other.

The arguments advanced by George Sand are anything but convincing; in
fact, her defence is extremely weak. She does not even tell us that she
did not make use of Chopin as a model. That she drew a caricature and
not