e audience with him wherever he
wishes without either over-exciting or wearying it. The truth, no
doubt, is rather with Schumann than with Liszt. Although Thalberg's
compositions cannot be ranked with the great works of ideal art, they
are superior to the morceaux of Czerny, Herz, and hoc genus omne, their
appearance marking indeed an improvement in the style of salon music.

But what did Chopin think of Thalberg? He shared the opinion of
Liszt, whose side he took. In fact, Edouard Wolff told me that Chopin
absolutely despised Thalberg. To M. Mathias I owe the following
communication, which throws much light on Chopin's attitude:--

I saw Chopin with George Sand at the house of Louis Viardot,
before the marriage of the latter with Pauline Garcia. I was
very young, being only twelve years old, but I remember it as
though it had been yesterday. Thalberg was there, and had
played his second fantasia on Don Giovanni (Op. 42), and upon
my word Chopin complimented him most highly and with great
gravity; nevertheless, God knows what Chopin thought of it in
his heart, for he had a horror of Thalberg's arrangements,
which I have seen and heard him parody in the most droll and
amusing manner, for Chopin had the sense of parody and
ridicule in a high degree.

Thalberg had not much intercourse with Chopin, nor did he exercise the
faintest shadow of an influence over him; but as one of the foremost
pianist-composers--indeed, one of the most characteristic phenomena
of the age--he could not be passed by in silence. Moreover, the noisy
careers of Liszt and Thalberg serve as a set-off to the noiseless one of
Chopin.

I suspect that Chopin was one of that race of artists and poets "qui
font de la passion un instrument de l'art et de la poesie, et dont
l'esprit n'a d'activite qu'autant qu'il est mis en mouvement par
les forces motrices du coeur." At any rate, the tender passion was a
necessary of his existence. That his disappointed first love did not
harden his heart and make him insensible to the charms of the fair sex
is apparent from some remarks of George Sand, who says that although
his heart was ardent and devoted, it was not continuously so to any one
person, but surrendered itself alternately to five or six affections,
each of which, as they struggled within it, got by turns the mastery
over all the others. He would passionately love three women in the
course of one evening party and forget