Mereaux, in which it is stated that Frederick Chopin was
descended from the French family Chopin d'Arnouville, of which
one member, a victim of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
had taken refuge in Poland. [Footnote: In scanning the Moniteur
of 1835, I came across several prefects and sous-prefects of the
name of Choppin d'Arnouville. (There are two communes of the name
of Arnouville, both are in the departement of the Seine et Oise--
the one in the arrondissement Mantes, the other in the
arrondissement Pontoise. This latter is called Arnouville-les-
Gonesse.) I noticed also a number of intimations concerning plain
Chopins and Choppins who served their country as maires and army
officers. Indeed, the name of Chopin is by no means uncommon in
France, and more than one individual of that name has illustrated
it by his achievements--to wit: The jurist Rene Chopin or Choppin
(1537--1606), the litterateur Chopin (born about 1800), and the
poet Charles-Auguste Chopin (1811--1844).] Although this
confidently-advanced statement is supported by the inscription on
the composer's tombstone in Pere Lachaise, which describes his
father as a French refugee, both the Catholicism of the latter
and contradictory accounts of his extraction caution us not to
put too much faith in its authenticity. M. A. Szulc, the author
of a Polish book on Chopin and his works, has been told that
Nicholas Chopin, the father of Frederick, was the natural son of
a Polish nobleman, who, having come with King Stanislas
Leszczynski to Lorraine, adopted there the name of Chopin. From
Karasowski we learn nothing of Nicholas Chopin's parentage. But
as he was a friend of the Chopin family, and from them got much
of his information, this silence might with equal force be
adduced for and against the correctness of Szulc's story, which
in itself is nowise improbable. The only point that could strike