same, only with this one difference, that I have now
whiskers on one side--unfortunately they won't grow at all on
the other side. To-day I have to give five lessons; you will
imagine that I must soon have made a fortune, but the
cabriolet and the white gloves eat the earnings almost up,
and without these things people would deny my bon ton. I love
the Carlists, hate the Philippists, and am myself a
revolutionist; therefore I don't care for money, but only for
friendship, for the preservation of which I earnestly entreat
you.

This letter, and still more the letters which I shall presently
transcribe, afford irrefragable evidence of the baselessness of the
often-heard statement that Chopin's intercourse was in the first years
of his settlement in Paris confined to the Polish salons. The simple
unexaggerated truth is that Chopin had always a predilection for, and
felt more at home among, his compatriots.

In the winter 1832-1833 Chopin was heard frequently in public. At a
concert of Killer's (December 15, 1832) he performed with Liszt and the
concert-giver a movement of Bach's Concerto for three pianos, the three
artists rendering the piece "avec une intelligence de son caractere et
une delicatesse parfaite." Soon after Chopin and Liszt played between
the acts of a dramatic performance got up for the benefit of Miss
Smithson, the English actress and bankrupt manager, Berlioz's flame,
heroine of his "Episode de la vie d'un artiste," and before long his
wife. On April 3, 1833, Chopin assisted at a concert given by the
brothers Herz, taking part along with them and Liszt in a quartet
for eight hands on two pianos. M. Marmontel, in his silhouette of the
pianist and critic Amedee de Mereaux, mentions that in 1832 this artist
twice played with Chopin a duo of his own on "Le Pre aux Clercs," but
leaves us in uncertainty as to whether they performed it at public
concerts or private parties. M. Franchomme told me that he remembered
something about a concert given by Chopin in 1833 at the house of one of
his aristocratic friends, perhaps at Madame la Marechale de Lannes's! In
summing up, as it were, Chopin's activity as a virtuoso, I may make use
of the words of the Paris correspondent of the "Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung," who reports in April, 1833, that "Chopin and Osborne, as well
as the other celebrated masters, delight the public frequently." In
short, Chopin was becoming more and more of a fa