ot
sympathetic. Schubert he found rough, Weber, in his piano music, too
operatic and Schumann he dismissed without a word. He told Heller that
the "Carneval" was really not music at all. This remark is one of the
curiosities of musical anecdotage.

But he had his gay moments when he would gossip, chatter, imitate every
one, cut up all manner of tricks and, like Wagner, stand on his head.
Perhaps it was feverish, agitated gayety, yet somehow it seemed more
human than that eternal Thaddeus of Warsaw melancholy and regret for
the vanished greatness and happiness of Poland--a greatness and
happiness that never had existed. Chopin disliked letter writing and
would go miles to answer one in person. He did not hate any one in
particular, being rather indifferent to every one and to political
events--except where Poland was concerned. Theoretically he hated Jews
and Russians, yet associated with both. He was, like his music, a
bundle of unreconciled affirmations and evasions and never could have
been contented anywhere or with any one. Of himself he said that "he
was in this world like the E string of a violin on a contrabass." This
"divine dissatisfaction" led him to extremes: to the flouting of
friends for fancied affronts, to the snubbing of artists who sometimes
visited him. He grew suspicious of Liszt and for ten years was not on
terms of intimacy with him although they never openly quarrelled.

The breach which had been very perceptibly widening became hopeless in
1847, when Sand and Chopin parted forever. A literature has grown up on
the subject. Chopin never had much to say but Sand did; so did Chopin's
pupils, who were quite virulent in their assertions that she killed
their master. The break had to come. It was the inevitable end of such
a friendship. The dynamics of free-love have yet to be formulated. This
much we know: two such natures could never entirely cohere. When the
novelty wore off the stronger of the two--the one least in love--took
the initial step. It was George Sand who took it with Chopin. He would
never have had the courage nor the will.

The final causes are not very interesting. Niecks has sifted all the
evidence before the court and jury of scandal-mongers. The main quarrel
was about the marriage of Solange Sand with Clesinger the sculptor. Her
mother did not oppose the match, but later she resented Clesinger's
actions. He was coarse and violent, she said, with the true
mother-in-law spirit--and