‘If I had a friend (a friend with a big, crooked nose, because that’s the one I mean) who several years ago had played with me in Szafarnia, who had always loved me with conviction, and my father and aunt with gratitude, and if he, having left the country, had not written a word to me, I should think the worst of him, and however much he begged and snivelled, I should never forgive him – and yet I, Fryc, still have the effrontery actually to try to excuse my negligence, and I write, after a long time of sitting tight like a beetle which only raises its head above the water when nobody has asked it to,’ was how Chopin opened a long-put-off letter to Dominik Dziewanowski. The rest of the letter decidedly gainsays the penitent tone:
But I shall not try to make excuses, I prefer to own up to my guilt, which may loom larger from afar than it does here, for I have been torn apart by people in all directions. I have made an entry into the highest society, I sit next to ambassadors, ministers, princes; and I don’t really know how it happened, because I didn’t push myself. At the moment this is very important to me, because that is apparently where good taste is dictated; you immediately have great talent if you have been heard in the English or Austrian embassy, you play better if the Princesse de Vaudemont patronised you – I cannot write patronises, since the woman died a week ago…(she had a multitude of black and white dogs, canaries, parrots, and was the owner of the most amusing monkey in Paris, which used to bite other countesses at her soirées). Amongst artists I have friendship and respect; I wouldn’t write this to you if I hadn’t been here over a year, but their respect is proved by the fact that people with great reputations dedicate their works to me before I have similarly honoured them; Pixis dedicated his new Variations with a Military Band to me, and they also compose variations on my themes; Kalkbrenner has written variations on one of my Mazurkas. Pupils of the Conservatoire, pupils of Moscheles, Herz, Kalkbrenner, in a word, accomplished artists, take lessons from me, place my name under Field’s – in fact, if I were even more stupid than I am, I would think that I had reached the peak of my career; but I can see how much I still have before me, I can see it all the more clearly as I live very close to the first artists, and I can see their short comings. But I’m ashamed of writing all this rubbish; I have been boasting like a child; I would cross it all out, but I haven’t got time to write another letter, and anyway, perhaps you still haven’t forgotten my character, and if you do remember it you’ll see that I haven’t changed much, with the exception that I have one side-whisker – the other won’t, simply won’t grow. Today I have to give five lessons; you may think I’ll make a fortune, but a cabriolet and white gloves cost more, and without them you wouldn’t have ton. – I love the Carlists, hate the Philippists, and I’m a revolutionary myself, so I don’t take any notice of money, only of friendship, for which I beg you.1
The tone of this letter betrays a degree of euphoria which, given Chopin’s character, could only mean that he was sure of himself and his future. He had achieved a distinctive reputation, and by the beginning of 1833 was considered one of the brightest stars of the Parisian firmament. The reason for his success in carving out a niche for himself among so many better-known artists was that he had something unique to offer, and offered it in such a way that he did not challenge or threaten any of his fellow musicians.
His piano-playing had developed greatly over the last couple of years, and was now quite unlike any other’s. Those who heard him play in the right circumstances were immediately captivated. Charles Hallé, a German pianist who came to Paris, was ‘fascinated beyond expression’ when he first heard Chopin. ‘I sat entranced, filled with wonderment, and if the room had suddenly been peopled with fairies I should not have been astonished,’ he wrote. ‘The marvellous charm, the poetry and originality, the perfect freedom and absolute lucidity of Chopin’s playing at that time cannot be described. It was perfection in every sense…I could have dropped to my knees to worship him.’2
The first thing that struck people about Chopin’s playing was the elegance and control he displayed. There was no apparent exertion, no difficulty, no exaggerated movement, his fingers moving quite effortlessly over the keys. ‘His delicate and slender hands cover wide stretches and skip with fabulous lightness,’ observed another pianist.3 He could play rapid trills or legato like nobody else, producing the effect of strings of pearls or, as Hiller put it, the flight of a swallow. Perhaps Chopin’s most distinctive characteristic was his touch: he could play the same note in various ways, producing a whole range of nuances. This was why he was so fond of Pleyel’s pianos, which were the most sensitive. He heightened these nuances with his revolutionary use of the sustaining pedal, but above all with his application of tempo rubato: while his left hand played in strict time, his right would just hint at the anticipation of a phrase, or else reluctance to begin it. ‘Let your left hand be your conductor and keep strict time,’ he would tell his pupils.4 According to Hiller, ‘Rhythmic precision in his case was linked with a freedom in his leading of a melody, which gave the impression of improvisation.’5
Combined with the look of harmonious concentration on his face – no knitted brows or passion, just an expression of deep thought – this always gave the impression that what he was playing was spontaneous creation, whether it was indeed an improvisation or a written work. ‘The whole man seemed to vibrate, while under his fingers the piano came to life with its own intensity,’ wrote another pianist. ‘It was so magnificent that it caused shivers of delight.’6
The idea of spontaneity fascinated the Romantics, and Chopin’s strongly developed gift for improvisation – sitting down at the piano and creating music out of nothing for an hour or two – held people spellbound, not merely by the beauty of the music, but also by the consciousness of something extraordinary taking place. This surely was communion with the gods, heaven speaking to mere mortals through the inspired agency of the divine interpreter, and it fitted perfectly the Romantic vision of the artist’s place in the scheme of things. It was as an expression of this concept that the poet Hyacinthe de la Touche always spoke with reverence of Chopin as ‘that pallid Pole who holds the Heavens open’.7
Chopin’s person was in complete harmony with the way he played. The frail, thin body suggested something ephemeral, while the more commanding head, with its abundant and fine dark blond hair, its pronounced nose, its tender and intelligent eyes and slightly fussy mouth, seemed to suggest superiority with an element of mocking irony. His movements and deportment were graceful, his whole figure emanated a sense of harmony and elegance. ‘His bearing had so much distinction,’ according to Liszt, ‘and his manners such a cachet of good breeding that one naturally treated him as a prince.’8 After his first meeting with Chopin, the critic Ernest Legouvé commented that ‘he looked like the natural son Weber might have had with a duchess’.9
This gave Chopin an enormous advantage in Parisian society. Before the July Revolution of 1830, musicians, even such as Liszt or Rossini, were generally let in by the back door, listened to and then sent out to be paid by the butler. After 1830 the agent of divinity could no longer be treated as a tradesman. The musician would more often be invited to the soirée as a guest, politely asked to play, and a gift or money would be discreetly forwarded to his address the following day. Chopin, who had learnt to sit at table at the Blue Palace and the Belvedere, and had been on easy terms with the most exalted from an early age, was both welcome and at ease in such circumstances. As a result, he was invited on all sides, and the invitation would often contain some such proviso as: ‘It is, of course, understood that you may leave your fingers at home.’10
Another consequence of his unique combination of musical and social gifts was that he had no shortage of pupils who could pay a high fee for lessons, and he soon became the most sought-after teacher in Paris. There are letters in which aristocratic ladies beg him in the most deferential terms to take on their daughters; in another, a marquess interceding on behalf of the daughter of the comte de Castellane concludes: ‘Liszt desperately wants to give lessons to Madame de Contades, and she to take them from you.’11 His popularity, moreover, did not merely embrace the aristocracy; Chopin was also giving lessons to Conservatoire students and professional musicians.
By the beginning of 1833 he was giving up to five lessons a day at twenty francs a time, which meant that he could earn six hundred francs a week from this source alone. When one considers that a cab fare was one franc, the best seats at the opera about ten, and the most expensive tailor would make a frock-coat for under 150, it is clear that Chopin was doing extremely well financially. On top of this there was the sporadic but substantial income from the publication of his music.
In December 1831 the publisher Schlesinger had commissioned Chopin to write something on a theme from the popular opera by Meyerbeer, Robert le Diable. With the help of Franchomme, Chopin had produced a Grand Duo Concertante for Piano and Cello, which appeared in print early in 1833. Following Chopin’s Paris debut in February 1832, Jacques Farrenc, a publisher of no great standing, bought the rights to all his larger works, paying a cash deposit while the scores were being copied for the printers. But Chopin, ‘out of indolence and a complete lack of interest in his affairs’, as Farrenc put it, failed to produce any fair copies as the months went by.12
He had taken the money from Farrenc because he needed it, but he was aware that there were better publishers about, notably Schlesinger in Paris and Probst in Leipzig, who had already written to him in Vienna enquiring about rights.13 While living off Farrenc’s advance, Chopin negotiated with them, and by the autumn of 1832 had reached a long-term agreement with Schlesinger. In November, Farrenc, exasperated with the ‘lazy and utterly eccentric’ Chopin who had still produced no clean copies, lost his temper and tore up the contract.14 One can only speculate as to whether he got his advance back.
For all his apparent insouciance in matters of money, Chopin had grown canny and highly suspicious of all entrepreneurs. He had rightly assessed Farrenc as a poor businessman, simply for the reason that he was proposing to publish a whole series of grand works for piano and orchestra by an unknown composer. Schlesinger, on the other hand, bought the rights to all the large works Farrenc had wanted, but also acquired those for three Nocturnes, eight Mazurkas and twelve Études. These were what he intended to publish first, knowing that they would sell easily and would pave the way for the others. He also farmed out the German rights to Probst in Leipzig. By April 1833 Nicolas Chopin wrote to his son that the Leipzig edition of the Nocturnes and Mazurkas had reached the music shops in Warsaw and sold out in a matter of days.
As Chopin’s financial situation improved, his father’s letters began to dwell persistently on the subject of putting aside some money, but in contradiction to his ever-dutiful answers, Chopin did nothing of the sort. He moved into an elegant apartment on the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, more central than, though not far from, his previous home. Although the higher rent was taken care of by his taking a lodger, a young Polish acquaintance, Dr Hoffmann, he indulged every temptation to spend money. He dressed at the best tailors, bought expensive furniture and drove everywhere in a hired cabriolet rather than a normal cab. He was continually buying presents for people and unnecessary luxuries for himself, and he spent a great deal of money on filling his rooms with flowers. He was always lending cash to impecunious Poles, and even seems to have lent Berlioz’s fiancée Harriet Smithson a generous sum when she broke her ankle.15
Chopin was busy, carefree, and seldom alone for long enough to worry about anything. He was healthier and stronger than he had been for years, and had apparently built up a resistance to the sort of ailments that had regularly laid him low hitherto. ‘Chopin is well and strong,’ wrote Antoni Orłowski. ‘He is turning the heads of all the ladies and making all the husbands jealous. He is in fashion. Soon we shall all be wearing gloves à la Chopin.’16 Who these ladies may have been, and what grounds for jealousy their husbands may have had, is impossible to tell in the absence of evidence.
Distressed to find a sexual blank in Chopin’s first six years in Paris, many biographers have seized on the person of one of his pupils, Countess Delfina Potocka, to fill it. Chopin could certainly not have made her husband jealous. Having been married off at an early age to the brutal Mieczysław Potocki, Countess Delfina subsequently left him to live with her parents, the Komars, who had moved to Paris. It was then, in November 1831, that Chopin started giving lessons to her and her two younger sisters. Her husband visited her in Paris several times, but it proved impossible to patch up the marriage, so he went back to his Ukrainian estates. She set up house on her own and began to enjoy life on the princely allowance he sent her. During the early 1830s she had a series of affairs, some of which, like the concurrent ones with the duc d’Orléans and Talleyrand’s natural son the comte de Flahaut, became notorious.
‘The Great Sinner’, as she was dubbed by Adam Mickiewicz, was three years Chopin’s senior. She had no trouble in indulging her epic sexual appetite, as her great beauty was enhanced by a seductive manner and one of the finest singing voices in Europe. It is more than likely that Chopin, who saw her often during his first years in Paris, and who valued highly both her talent for the piano and her voice, was under her spell. Gossips assumed a romantic liaison. Some biographers have gone on to assert the existence of an affair, and some to describe what they believe to have been its deeply carnal nature.
There are only two pieces of what might be termed evidence to support the existence of such a liaison. One is a letter from a Pole in Paris to his wife, in which he censures Countess Delfina’s conduct, and lists Chopin as one of her many lovers. It was, however, written after the composer’s death by someone who did not know him, and is at best a good specimen of contemporary gossip.17 The other is the information given to an early biographer by the widow of the Dr Hoffmann who shared Chopin’s apartment for a few months in 1833.
According to her, her husband had stated that Countess Delfina often came to the apartment late at night in order to play, sing and sleep with Chopin, and that he occasionally returned the courtesy at her house. But Mrs Hoffmann’s evidence is not as reliable as it might appear. She only married Hoffmann some ten years after the putative events, and related them fifty years after that to one who was determined to prove the existence of an affair, and almost certainly prompted her memory. She is also unreliable on points of detail, stating, for instance, that her husband had lived with Chopin for many years. She would even have us believe that the worthy doctor had helped Chopin with his compositions, suggesting alter native harmonies which were eagerly seized on.18
The possibility of a liaison between Chopin and Countess Delfina was dismissed by most serious biographers, but it was given a new lease of life by the appearance of what purported to be copies of his letters to her. These were produced in 1945 by someone who suggested various provenances, but could not be pinned down to a single version of where the originals were and where she had seen them. In the muddled conditions of post-war Poland, nobody paid much attention to such inconsistencies, and the texts were accepted by many as being authentic. The style in which they are written seems Chopinesque enough – too much so, on closer examination – but the texts reveal an entirely new Chopin. The reticent man who never made significant statements about music, who recoiled from making judgements on other musicians, and who rarely mentioned his own compositions, is seen here expatiating on the theory of music, making crude and merciless criticisms of Liszt and Schumann, and explaining the meaning of his own works. Moreover, the collection of texts includes two love letters full of extraordinarily earthy eroticism, which accords ill with what is known of Chopin’s character, style of conduct and tastes. They also feature words that were not current at the time, and use others, whose meaning has changed, in their modern sense. The texts have since been subjected to thorough examination and dismissed as forgeries (for a more detailed discussion of the texts and their history, see Appendix B). The fact is that, possible, likely or probable as the affair might seem, there is not one shred of real evidence for its existence.
All the evidence of a reliable nature points in a different direction. Konstancja’s marriage had not significantly altered Chopin’s passion for her. She had been little more than a piece of romantic furniture in his heart, and although its position had shifted somewhat, it was still there. As can be seen from Chopin’s letters to Tytus and to his sister Ludwika, he still regarded Konstancja as the now unworthy object of his affections, and her image remained a conveniently disembodied focus for surplus emotion and effusions of sentiment. This did not prevent him from being aware of other women, as his letters to Tytus bear out, but both the degree of his interest and his bashfulness can be gauged from an episode which he recounted in one of them.
The pianist Johann Peter Pixis, whom Chopin had first met in Stuttgart, arrived in Paris accompanied by a fifteen-year-old ‘pupil’, whom he kept securely locked away, with the intention of marrying her in due course. Chopin went to call on Pixis one day and, finding him absent, was just explaining the object of his visit to the young lady when her ageing beau came panting up the stairs. Pixis was convulsed with jealousy, much to the amusement of Chopin, who was astonished that ‘anyone could think me capable of such a thing!’, which suggests that he did not see himself as being capable of it. ‘Me – a seducer!’ He could not get over the drollness of the idea.19
Whatever turning of ladies’ heads there was seems to have remained on a fairly innocent level, as indeed Orłowski’s remark suggests. Chopin had had physical relations with at least one woman before reaching Paris, and may well have availed himself of the opportunities afforded by the chorus girls and the whores he mentions, but five years later, when he found himself on the point of consummating his love for a woman, he would recoil at the thought of transposing his emotions onto the physical plane.20 This strongly suggests that he had never, up to that point, taken an affection to its physical conclusion. This was not particularly surprising in his case, as his natural reticence was reinforced by his code of behaviour, which in turn was dictated by his position and career.
Chopin was invited to sit with exalted company and to teach young ladies from the most aristocratic families precisely because he knew how to behave and no whiff of scandal regarding a pupil attached itself to his person. His natural inclination was to avoid unseemliness in all things, and he was growing more fastidious than ever. As Liszt points out, he always wore an air of chastity, and winced as much at a crude word as he did at a muddy shoe or a speck of dust on his frock-coat.21 He loved the company of women, but he liked them well-bred, well-dressed and unattainable, and the resulting flirtations were little more than an understated game which enlivened his lessons and his social life.
Fond as he was of this kind of company, Chopin did not take up the invitation from Liszt’s mistress, the comtesse d’Agoult, to pass the summer on her estate. Instead, he spent it with Franchomme’s family near Tours. He was just as happy being looked after and fattened up by his friend’s family, who were of very humble standing, as staying in any château, and when he returned to Paris, he wrote that ‘when I look back on it all, it seems such a charming dream that I wish I could be still dreaming it’.22
Franchomme had become a close friend, and hardly a day passed without his calling on Chopin, often accompanied by Liszt. A typical afternoon is evoked by a letter from Chopin to Hiller, who was on holiday in Frankfurt. ‘I am writing without knowing what my pen is scribbling, because Liszt is playing my Études and banishing all other thoughts from my head,’ he wrote, adding wistfully: ‘I wish I could rob him of the way he plays my Études.’ This provoked a few scribbled lines of modesty from Liszt, and a few words by Franchomme. Liszt wrote that the Études were ‘magnificent’, which was followed by more modesty from Chopin, and tuttings from Liszt, interspersed with comments such as ‘by the way, I bumped into Heine yesterday, who told me to hug you cordially’, and ‘Berlioz sends his love’.23 Berlioz was less in evidence since he had married Harriet Smithson and moved to the village of Montmartre, but even there he would sometimes organise picnics for Liszt, Hiller, Chopin, the poet Alfred de Vigny and others, at whom he would prattle on about ‘art, poetry, thought, music, drama; in a word, everything that makes up life’.24
While he clearly enjoyed this extraordinary concentration of artistic talents, Chopin was happier with his less bombastic and more reflective friends, such as Franchomme and Hiller. And they both played an important role in his life. ‘I think I can say that Chopin loved me, but I was in love with him,’ explained Hiller.25 It was he who introduced Chopin to Vincenzo Bellini, who came to Paris in the autumn of 1833, and whom Chopin adored, both for his person and his music. They would congregate in the small apartment on the boulevard Saint-Germain of the singer Lina Freppa. ‘We used to chatter about music, sing and play; chatter, sing and play,’ records Hiller. ‘Chopin and Madame Freppa would take turns at the piano – I would also do my best to play a part – and Bellini would make observations, accompanying himself in one of his cantilenas, rather to illustrate what he was saying, than to show off to his listeners.’26
It was largely thanks to friendships such as these that Chopin’s yearning for family and home began to recede. He still suffered from bouts of homesickness, but there was no lack of antidotes. There were households, like the Czartoryskis’, now installed in a spacious apartment on the rue du Faubourg du Roule, or the Platers’, where he could go whenever he wanted. There was the Polish Club, around the corner from him in the rue Godot de Mauroy, with its collection of old generals and scruffy young poets, where he could have a cheap dinner or play billiards. Above all, he now had a few Polish friends settled in Paris, such as his Conservatoire colleague Fontana, who had failed to make a living in England, and Albert Grzymała.
Grzymała, a remarkable man in many respects, had led an eventful life which on two occasions led him into Russian jails, once in 1812 as a prisoner of war, once in 1826 for his connections with the Russian Decembrists. He had held high office in the Polish Treasury and during the insurrection had been sent to London to negotiate a loan. After staying there for a couple of years he had come to Paris, where he made a living from dealing on the Stock Exchange. His magnificent looks and zest for life involved him in a succession of affairs, and he soon became a well-known, even notorious, figure in Parisian society. He was a cultivated man with a wide range of artistic and musical interests. The forty-year-old Grzymała exuded strength and resilience, and gradually began to fulfil the role of elder brother in Chopin’s life, becoming his confidant and adviser in all matters.
Finally, at the beginning of 1834, Jan Matuszyński, whose medical studies were interrupted by the insurrection and who had been obliged to finish them in Germany, turned up in Paris to take a teaching post at the École de Médecine. ‘My first thought was to call on Chopin,’ he wrote to his brother-in-law. ‘I cannot tell you what joy it was to meet again after five years of separation. He has grown tall and strong, and I hardly recognised him.’27 Chopin was so delighted to see his friend again that he persuaded him to come and share his lodgings (Dr Hoffmann’s addiction to his pipe had irritated Chopin so much that he had got rid of him). According to Hiller, ‘Even when Chopin stayed in of an evening playing the piano, he had to have at least one friend with him.’28 He now had all the friends he could wish for.
Considering how he had settled down in Paris, it may appear strange that during the 1833–34 season Chopin did not, as far as is known, give a single concert. Paradoxically, this was a mark of his success: he no longer needed to perform. He appeared in public once, on 15 December, at Hiller’s concert, when he played a Bach Adagio with Liszt and Hiller, ‘with an understanding of its character and perfect delicacy’, according to the Revue Musicale.29 (True Romantics were appalled. ‘It was heartrending, I swear,’ wrote Berlioz, ‘to watch three astonishing talents, full of energy, glittering with youth and vitality, apply themselves to the execution of this absurd and ridiculous psalmody.’30)
Chopin did not mind taking part in a friend’s programme, but from now on he avoided giving concerts himself, as he could not stand the strain of putting together a programme, selecting other musicians and dealing with the arrangements. More to the point, he disliked what he saw as the tyranny of the concert form. He loved playing to people, but he liked to do it in an atmosphere of free association, as though a group of like-minded friends had come together. He wanted to be surrounded by people who understood what he was doing, who empathised with him.
His financial independence and his ability to steer his own artistic course were also reinforced by the growth of his reputation as a composer, following the publication of a greater number of his works. It is difficult to gauge the extent of his reputation solely from the reviews, as a partisan spirit prevailed in many quarters. In France, the Gazette Musicale, founded by Chopin’s publisher, Schlesinger, was consistently favourable, while the rival France Musicale passed his first works over in silence. This does not mean, however, that the opinions expressed were insincere. The Gazette indeed consistently pointed to his importance as a composer, but admitted that to many, even his most fervent admirers, Chopin was an ‘in explicable phenomenon’, in the sense that he did not seem to belong to any tradition.31 In Germany, Schumann continued to champion him, reviewing every work as it came out in more or less ecstatic terms in his own paper, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. While most other German critics were also generous in their praise, Rellstab simply could not bring himself to regard Chopin with anything but horror. Having accused the La ci darem la mano Variations of being Slavic vandalism, he attacked the Nocturnes no less vehemently, stating that if one were to hold Field’s ‘charming romances’ (his Nocturnes) up to a concave distorting mirror, one would see Chopin’s coarse new works reflected. When reviewing the Études op.10, he strongly advised anyone attempting to play them to have a surgeon in attendance, as permanent finger damage was likely.32
Whatever the critics wrote, the works sold and were played. The Nocturnes, Waltzes and Mazurkas were ideally suited to the home or the small gathering, which were by now dominated by the piano, thanks to the rapid technical development of the instrument. Throughout Europe the rise of a large middle class with cultural aspirations turned it into a kind of household altar at which culture was worshipped. By the 1830s there was a piano in every middle-class home, particularly in countries such as Germany, and where there was a piano there were scores of Chopin’s music.
When, in the spring of 1834, Hiller suggested that Chopin accompany him to the Lower Rhine Music Festival organised by Ferdinand Ries and Mendelssohn at Aachen, he agreed. It must have been in a spirit tinged with triumph that he set off to revisit Germany, which he had passed through only three years before as an unknown pianist. Mendelssohn was overjoyed to see them and offered them his box for the concerts. ‘They have both developed their technique,’ he wrote to his family, ‘and Chopin is now as a pianist one of the very best – he astonishes one with novelties, like Paganini on the violin, and introduces wonderful things which one would have thought impossible.’ At the same time he complained that ‘They both suffer a little from the Parisian love of despair and emotional exaggeration, too often losing sight of time and sobriety and of true musical thought.’ He confessed to being deficient in this respect himself, and to feeling ‘like an old schoolmaster faced by a couple of “mirliflores” or “incroyables”’.33
After the festival, Chopin and Hiller followed Mendelssohn back to Düsseldorf, where the exchange of virtuosity continued. Hiller recorded what was apparently a fairly typical occasion, in this case at the house of the painter Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow:
There we met several of the most promising young painters, and a lively conversation was struck up. Everything would have been fine but for poor old Chopin, whose reticence kept him in the corner, unnoticed. Both Mendelssohn and I knew that he would get his own back on us for this, and we waited in happy anticipation. Eventually, the piano was opened and I played for a while, followed by Mendelssohn. But when we asked Chopin to play something too, everyone looked around in surprise. He had only played a few bars when everyone, especially Schadow, began to look at him in a very different way – they had never heard anything like it before. In wild enthusiasm they begged him to play again and again.34
At the end of May they took a steamer up the Rhine, Mendelssohn accompanying them as far as Cologne, and Chopin and Hiller sailing on up to Koblenz. ‘Today I feel like the steam from our boat,’ Chopin wrote to Hiller’s mother. ‘I evaporate into the air and feel one half of me wafting off towards my country and my people, the other towards Paris and you.’35 A few days later he followed the second half back to Paris.