less disfigured condition. George Sand's own allusion to the
commencement of the acquaintance agrees best with Liszt's
account. After passing in the latter part of 1836 some months in
Switzerland with Liszt and the Comtesse d'Agoult, she meets them
again at Paris in the December of the same year:--

At the Hotel de France, where Madame d'Agoult had persuaded me
to take quarters near her, the conditions of existence were
charming for a few days. She received many litterateurs,
artists, and some clever men of fashion. It was at Madame
d'Agoult's, or through her, that I made the acquaintance of
Eugene Sue, Baron d'Eckstein, Chopin, Mickiewicz, Nourrit,
Victor Schoelcher, &c. My friends became also hers. Through me
she got acquainted with M. Lamennais, Pierre-Leroux, Henri
Heine, &c. Her salon, improvised in an inn, was therefore a
reunion d'elite over which she presided with exquisite grace,
and where she found herself the equal of all the eminent
specialists by reason of the extent of her mind and the
variety of her faculties, which were at once poetic and
serious. Admirable music was performed there, and in the
intervals one could instruct one's self by listening to the
conversation.

To reconcile Liszt's account with George Sand's remark that
Chopin was one of those whose acquaintance she made at Madame
d'Agoult's or through her, we have only to remember the intimate
relation in which Liszt stood to this lady (subsequently known in
literature under the nom de plume of Daniel Stern), who had left
her husband, the Comte d'Agoult, in 1835.