[Quite a novel representation of her powers of conversation],
he felt that he was understood as he had never been.

All this is undoubtedly very pretty, and would be invaluable in a novel,
but I am afraid we should embarrass Karasowski were we to ask him to
name his authorities.

Of this meeting at the house of the Marquis de C.--i.e., the Marquis de
Custine--I was furnished with a third version by an eye-witness--namely,
by Chopin's pupil Adolph Gutmann. From him I learned that the occasion
was neither a full-dress ball nor a chance gathering of a jour fixe, but
a musical matinee. Gutmann, Vidal (Jean Joseph), and Franchomme opened
the proceedings with a trio by Mayseder, a composer the very existence
of whose once popular chamber-music is unknown to the present
generation. Chopin played a great deal, and George Sand devoured him
with her eyes. Afterwards the musician and the novelist walked together
a long time in the garden. Gutmann was sure that this matinee took place
either in 1836 or in 1837, and was inclined to think that it was in the
first-mentioned year.

Franchomme, whom I questioned about the matinee at the Marquis
de Custine's, had no recollection of it. Nor did he remember the
circumstance of having on this or any other occasion played a trio
of Mayseder's with Gutmann and Vidal. But this friend of the Polish
pianist--composer, while confessing his ignorance as to the place where
the latter met the great novelist for the first time, was quite certain
as to the year when he met her. Chopin, Franchomme informed me, made
George Sand's acquaintance in 1837, their connection was broken in 1847,
and he died, as everyone knows, on October 17, 1849. In each of these
dates appears the number which Chopin regarded with a superstitious
dread, which he avoided whenever he could-for instance, he would not
at any price take lodgings in a house the number of which contained a
seven--and which may be thought by some to have really exercised a fatal
influence over him. It is hardly necessary to point out that it was this
fatal number which fixed the date in Franchomme's memory.

But supposing Chopin and George Sand to have really met at the Marquis
de Custine's, was this their first meeting?

[FOONOTE: That they were on one occasion both present at a party given
by the Marquis de Custine may be gathered from Freiherr von Flotow's
Reminiscences of his life in Paris (published in the "Deutsche Revue"
of January, 18