admirers, mostly Poles, Chopin was not understood by the Paris public.
At first he could not even make his living there, and was in
consequence on the point of emigrating to America when a friend
dragged him to a _soirée_ at Rothschild's, where his playing was so
much admired that he was at once engaged as a teacher by several
ladies present. In a very short time he became the fashionable teacher
in aristocratic circles, where his refined manners made him
personally liked. As he refused to take any but talented pupils,
teaching was not so irksome to him as it might have been. Nevertheless
one cannot but marvel at the obtuseness of the Parisians who put into
the utilitarian harness an artist who might have enchanted them every
evening with a concert, had their taste been more cultivated. He _did_
play once, when he first arrived, but the receipts did not even meet
the expenses, and the audience received his work so coldly that his
artistic sensibilities were wounded, and he did not again appear in
public for fourteen years. Occasionally he played for the select
aristocratic circles into which he had been introduced; but even here
he did not often meet with the genuine appreciation and sympathy which
the artist craves. "Whoever could read in his face," says Liszt,
"could see how often he felt convinced that among all these handsome,
well-dressed gentlemen, among all the perfumed, elegant ladies, not
one understood him."

As for the French critics they seem to have been as obtuse as their
German colleagues. To give only one instance: M. Fétis, author of the
well-known musical dictionary, states in his article on Chopin, that
this composer is overrated to-day, and his popularity largely due to
the fact that he is fashionable. And in his article on Heller, he
asserts, more pointedly still, that "the time will undoubtedly come
when the world will recognize that Heller, much more than Chopin, is