Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: he told me;
you might never succeed in seeing him at all without a laissez-passer; that is the custom among authors and artists of the first rank, we cannot afford to lose our time. About two o'clock, go to the Cite d'Orleans, where he lives? where, also, live the Sand, the Viardot, and Dan- tan ?[the famous caricaturist, who drew a picture of Liszt playing the piano with four hands].
In the evening, these people assemble at the house of a Spanish countess, who is a political refugee. Perhaps Chopin will take you there; but do not ask him to present you to the Sand, he is very mistrustful!
He has not your courage, then ?
No, he has not, pauvre Frederic !
At last I could go to Chopin ! The Cite d'Orleans was a new structure of large proportions, with a spacious court, ?the first undertaking of this description; a collection of apartments, with numbers, and a name (Cite), is always popular with Parisians. The Cite lay behind the Rue de Provence, in the fashionable quarter of Paris. It looked aristocratic ?and that was and is the end and aim of everything’ there! I gave Liszt’s card to the servant in the anteroom; a man-servant is an article of luxury in Paris, a rarissima avis in the home of an artist. The servant said that M. Chopin was not in Paris. I did not allow myself to be put out, and repeated:
Deliver this card, I will attend to the rest. Chopin soon came out to me, the card in his hand; a young man, of middle height, ‘slim, haggard, with a sad, though very expressive countenance, and elegant Parisian bearing?stood before me. I have seldom, if ever, met with an apparition so entirely engaging. He did not press me to sit down; I stood before him as before a monarch. ? What do you wish ? Are you a pupil of Liszt, an artist ?
A friend of Liszt. I…
