Here then was a medium which was the other side of
good and evil, a new transvaluation of morals, as Nietzsche would
say. Frederic deplored the union for he was theoretically a
Catholic. Did he not once resent the visit of Liszt and a
companion to his apartments when he was absent? Indeed he may be
fairly called a moralist. Carefully reared in the Roman Catholic
religion he died confessing that faith. With the exception of the
Sand episode, his life was not an irregular one, He abhorred the
vulgar and tried to conceal this infatuation from his parents.
This intimacy, however, did the pair no harm artistically,
notwithstanding the inevitable sorrow and heart burnings at the
close. Chopin had some one to look after him--he needed it--and
in the society of this brilliant Frenchwoman he throve amazingly:
his best work may be traced to Nohant and Majorca. She on her
side profited also. After the bitterness of her separation from
Alfred de Musset about 1833 she had been lonely, for the Pagello
intermezzo was of short duration. The De Musset-Sand story was
not known in its entirety until 1896.
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