“I apply this especially to a Prelude[30] he wrote one evening, which thrills one almost to despair. One day Maurice and I went to Palma to make some necessary purchases. Chopin was pretty well when we left him. Towards evening a heavy rain set in; the rivers swelled rapidly; we lost our boots in the floods; our driver deserted us; and we were exposed to great danger. It was with difficulty that we accomplished a mile and a half in six hours, and we did not reach home till midnight. We were greatly vexed at arriving so late, as we knew our dear invalid would be very uneasy. We found him, indeed, in a state of great agitation, and already beginning to despair. With tears in his eyes he had composed this noble and beautiful Prelude. When he saw us come in, he jumped up with a cry, stood almost motionless, and in a strange, hollow voice, exclaimed: “Ah, I thought you were dead!” By degrees he grew calm, but when he saw our soaked and ruined clothes, the thought of the danger to which we had been exposed again unnerved him. [Sidenote: AN UNEASY VISION.] He told us afterwards that during our absence he had had a vision, and that he could not distinguish the dream from the reality. He had sunk into a kind of stupor and fancied, while he was playing, that he had been removed from earth, and was no longer in the land of the living. He imagined that he was drowned, and as he lay at the bottom of the sea could feel the cold drops keeping time as they dropped upon his breast. When I called his attention to the even fall of the rain upon the roof, he obstinately maintained that he had not heard it before.
“He was vexed with me for using the expression, ‘harmonie imitative,’ and he was right, for imitation is an absurdity which can only tickle the ear. There was in Chopinʼs genius a subtle innate harmony which reflected the expression of his musical thoughts by a lofty assonance of tone, not through the material repetition of the outward sound. The Prelude he wrote that evening recalls, indeed, the rain drops falling on the roof of the cloister, but according to his conception these drops are tears falling from heaven on his heart.
“As yet, no other genius has appeared so full of deep poetic feeling as Chopin. Under his hand the piano spoke an immortal longing. A short piece of scarcely half a page will contain the most sublime poetry. Chopinʼs rich genius never needed the aid of gross material means. No! He required no trumpets and ophicleides to awaken terror or enthusiasm. Hitherto he has not been understood, and even now is not generally appreciated. Musical taste and feeling must make considerable progress before Chopinʼs works can be popular.