[Sidenote: BETROTHED TO MARIA WODZYNSKI.]
Chopin met in Paris some young Poles of good family—the brothers Wodzynski, who had been at his fatherʼs _pension_. Through them he became acquainted with their sister Maria, a charming and amiable girl. He felt attracted towards her at first sight, and his interest gradually changed to ardent love. Knowing that in the middle of July she would be with her mother at Marienbad he went thither, full of hope and longing. Chopin soon discovered that Maria returned his affection, and they were engaged with the glad consent of their relatives. When they left Marienbad the Wodzynski family decided to spend a few weeks with Chopin at Dresden.
Frederic felt at this time at the topmost pinnacle of happiness, and his gay humour communicated itself to everyone around him. His friends, remembering the harmless but clever jokes he used to play in his youth during his visits to the country, rejoiced that the famous artist, the darling of Parisian drawing rooms, had so preserved his natural simplicity and loveable modesty. They would laughingly recall how often he used to take his sistersʼ delicate evening gloves when he could not afford to buy new ones for himself, and how he promised to send them gloves from Paris by the dozen; a promise which, as soon as he had made a position in that city, he conscientiously performed.
He would often mimic the playing of the most celebrated European _virtuosi_, imitating them even in the minutest details. He frequently played his mazurkas, which are full of a sweet melancholy, and then show how the rhythm must be shortened to adapt them for dancing. Directly the conversation turned upon his own family he grew serious; he was no longer the artist indulging his own wayward fancies, but the grateful son and affectionate brother. From infancy till death he had constantly received proofs of the tenderest affection, and his glowing and sensitive heart was bound to his parents and sisters by innumerable and indissoluble ties; he therefore suffered more from absence than many another.
When full of the hope of becoming a happy bridegroom, he formed a plan for leaving Paris, his second home, with all its fascinating charms, its glittering _salons_, the scene of so many of his triumphs, and returning to Poland. He wished to withdraw from the world and to settle in the country near his family in the neighbourhood of Warsaw; there he would establish schools for the people, and, without troubling himself about the public, quietly pursue his beloved art. With this idea in his mind, he bade, as he thought, a short adieu to his betrothed, and set off for Paris through Leipsic.