eethoven's. Sonata in A flat major, Op. 26.

CHAPTER IX.

CHOPIN'S FIRST LOVE.--FRIENDSHIP WITH TITUS WOYCIECHOWSKI.--LIFE IN
WARSAW AFTER RETURNING FROM VIENNA.--VISIT TO PRINCE RADZIWILL AT
ANTONIN (OCTOBER, 1829).--NEW COMPOSITIONS.--GIVES TWO CONCERTS.

IN the preceding chapter I alluded to a new element that entered into
the life of Chopin and influenced his artistic work. The following
words, addressed by the young composer on October 3, 1829, to his friend
Titus Woyciechowski, will explain what kind of element it was and when
it began to make itself felt:--

Do not imagine that [when I speak of the advantages and
desirability of a stay in Vienua] I am thinking of Miss
Blahetka, of whom I have written to you; I have--perhaps to
my misfortune--already found my ideal, which I worship
faithfully and sincerely. Six months have elapsed, and I have
not yet exchanged a syllable with her of whom I dream every
night. Whilst my thoughts were with her I composed the Adagio
of my Concerto, and early this morning she inspired the Waltz
which I send along with this letter.

The influence of the tender passion on the development of heart and
mind cannot be rated too highly; it is in nine out of ten, if not in
ninety-nine out of a hundred cases that which transforms the rhymer into
a poet, the artificer into an artist. Chopin confesses his indebtedness
to Constantia, Schumann his to Clara. But who could recount all the
happy and hapless loves that have made poets? Countless is the number of
those recorded in histories, biographies, and anecdotes; greater still
the number of those buried in literature and art, the graves whence they
rise again as flowers, matchless in beauty, unfading, and of sweetest
perfume. Love is indeed the sun that by its warmth unfolds the
multitudinous possibilities that lie hidden, often unsuspected, in
the depths of the human soul. It was, then, according to Chopin, about
April, 1829, that the mighty power began to stir within him; and the
correspondence of the following two years shows us most strikingly how
it takes hold of him with an ever-increasing firmness of grasp, and
shakes the whole fabric of his delicate organisation with fearful
violence. The object of Chopin's passion, the being whom he worshipped
and in whom he saw the realisation of his ideal of womanhood, was
Constantia Gladkowska, a pupil at the Warsaw Conservatorium, of whom the
reader will l