ists. Charades were acted; the forfeits
that were given, and the rebuses that were not guessed, had
to be redeemed by penances varying according to the nature of
the guilty ones. Gautier, Dumas, and Musset were condemned to
recite their last poem. Liszt or Chopin had to improvise on a
given theme, Mesdames Viardot, Falcon, and Euggnie Garcia had
also to discharge their melodic debts, and I myself remember
having paid many a forfeit.

The preceding chapter and the foregoing part of this chapter set forth
the most important facts of Chopin's social and artistic life in his
early Paris days. The following extract from a letter of his to Titus
Woyciechowski, dated December 25, 1831, reveals to us something of his
inward life, the gloom of which contrasts violently with the outward
brightness:--

Ah, how I should like to have you beside me!... You cannot
imagine how sad it is to have nobody to whom I can open my
troubled heart. You know how easily I make acquaintances, how
I love human society--such acquaintances I make in great
numbers--but with no one, no one can I sigh. My heart beats
as it were always "in syncopes," therefore I torment myself
and seek for a rest--for solitude, so that the whole day
nobody may look at me and speak to me. It is too annoying to
me when there is a pull at the bell, and a tedious visit is
announced while I am writing to you. At the moment when I was
going to describe to you the ball, at which a divine being
with a rose in her black hair enchanted me, arrives your
letter. All the romances of my brain disappear? my thoughts
carry me to you, I take your hand and weep...When shall we
see each other again?...Perhaps never, because, seriously, my
health is very bad. I appear indeed merry, especially when I
am among my fellow-countrymen; but inwardly something
torments me--a gloomy presentiment, unrest, bad dreams,
sleeplessness, yearning, indifference to everything, to the
desire to live and the desire to die. It seems to me often as
if my mind were benumbed, I feel a heavenly repose in my
heart, in my thoughts I see images from which I cannot tear
myself away, and this tortures me beyond all measure. In
short, it is a combination of feelings that are difficult to
describe...Pardon me, dear Titus, for telling you of all
this; but now I have said enough...I will dress now and go,
or rather driv