eir mother, the Princess Louise Czetwertynska,
who cultivated music with a true feeling for its beauties, and who soon
discovered the poet in the musician. Perhaps she was the first who
made Chopin feel the charm of being understood, as well as heard. The
Princess was still beautiful, and possessed a sympathetic soul united
to many high qualities. Her saloon was one of the most brilliant and
RECHERCHE in Warsaw. Chopin often met there the most distinguished women
of the city. He became acquainted there with those fascinating beauties
who had acquired a European celebrity, when Warsaw was so famed for the
brilliancy, elegance, and grace of its society. He was introduced by
the Princess Czetwertynska to the Princess of Lowicz; by her he was
presented to the Countess Zamoyska; to the Princess Radziwill; to the
Princess Jablonowska; enchantresses, surrounded by many beauties little
less illustrious.

While still very young, he has often cadenced their steps to the chords
of his piano. In these meetings, which might almost be called assemblies
of fairies, he may often have discovered, unveiled in the excitement of
the dance, the secrets of enthusiastic and tender souls. He could easily
read the hearts which were attracted to him by friendship and the grace
of his youth, and thus was enabled early to learn of what a strange
mixture of leaven and cream of roses, of gunpowder and tears of angels,
the poetic Ideal of his nation is formed. When his wandering fingers ran
over the keys, suddenly touching some moving chords, he could see how
the furtive tears coursed down the cheeks of the loving girl, or the
young neglected wife; how they moistened the eyes of the young men,
enamored of, and eager for glory. Can we not fancy some young beauty
asking him to play a simple prelude, then softened by the tones, leaning
her rounded arm upon the instrument to support her dreaming head, while
she suffered the young artist to divine in the dewy glitter of the
lustrous eyes, the song sung by her youthful heart? Did not groups, like
sportive nymphs, throng around him, and begging him for some waltz of
giddying rapidity, smile upon him with such wildering joyousness, as to
put him immediately in unison with the gay spirit of the dance? He saw
there the chaste grace of his brilliant countrywomen displayed in the
Mazourka, and the memories of their witching fascination, their winning
reserve, were never effaced from his soul.

In an apparently