nted isles where so many marvels are said to abound that
one regards them as fabulous; Chopin, whom one can never
forget after having once heard him; Chopin has just given a
grand concert at Rouen before 500 people for the benefit of a
Polish professor. Nothing less than a good action to be done
and the remembrance of his country could have overcome his
repugnance to playing in public. Well! the success was
immense! immense! All these enchanting melodies, these
ineffable delicacies of execution, these melancholy and
impassioned inspirations, and all that poesy of playing and of
composition which takes hold at once of your imagination and
heart, have penetrated, moved, enraptured 500 auditors, as
they do the eight or ten privileged persons who listen to him
religiously for whole hours; every moment there were in the
hall those electric fremissements, those murmurs of ecstasy
and astonishment which are the bravos of the soul. Forward
then, Chopin! forward! let this triumph decide you; do not be
selfish, give your beautiful talent to all; consent to pass
for what you are; put an end to the great debate which divides
the artists; and when it shall be asked who is the first
pianist of Europe, Liszt or Thalberg, let all the world reply,
like those who have heard you..."It is Chopin."

Chopin's artistic achievements, however, were not unanimously received
with such enthusiastic approval. A writer in the less friendly La France
musicale goes even so far as to stultify himself by ridiculing, a propos
of the A flat Impromptu, the composer's style. This jackanapes--who
belongs to that numerous class of critics whose smartness of verbiage
combined with obtuseness of judgment is so well-known to the serious
musical reader and so thoroughly despised by him--ignores the spiritual
contents of the work under discussion altogether, and condemns without
hesitation every means of expression which in the slightest degree
deviates from the time-honoured standards. We are told that Chopin's
mode of procedure in composing is this. He goes in quest of an idea,
writes, writes, modulates through all the twenty-four keys, and, if the
idea fails to come, does without it and concludes the little piece very
nicely (tres-bien). And now, gentle reader, ponder on this momentous and
immeasurably sad fact: of such a nature was, is, and ever will be the
great mass of criticism.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHOPIN'S