[FOOTNOTE: Count Wodzinski, after indicating the general features
of Polish villages--the dwor (manor-house) surrounded by a
"bouquet of trees"; the barns and stables forming a square with a
well in the centre; the roads planted with poplars and bordered
with thatched huts; the rye, wheat, rape, and clover fields, &c.--
describes the birthplace of Frederick Chopin as follows: "I have
seen there the same dwor embosomed in trees, the same outhouses,
the same huts, the same plains where here and there a wild pear-
tree throws its shadow. Some steps from the mansion I stopped
before a little cot with a slated roof, flanked by a little
wooden perron. Nothing has been changed for nearly a hundred
years. A dark passage traverses it. On the left, in a room
illuminated by the reddish flame of slowly-consumed logs, or by
the uncertain light of two candles placed at each extremity of
the long table, the maid-servants spin as in olden times, and
relate to each other a thousand marvellous legends. On the right,
in a lodging of three rooms, so low that one can touch the
ceiling, a man of some thirty years, brown, with vivacious eyes,
the face closely shaven." This man was of course Nicholas Chopin.
I need hardly say that Count Wodzinski's description is
novelistically tricked out. His accuracy may be judged by the
fact that a few pages after the above passage he speaks of the
discoloured tiles of the roof which he told his readers before
was of slate.]

The son of the latter, Count Frederick Skarbek, Nicholas Chopin's
pupil, a young man of seventeen, stood godfather and gave his
name to the new-born offspring of his tutor. Little Frederick's
residence at the village cannot have been of long duration.