But how could they have known that his real, though rare attachments, were so vivid, so profound, so undying ?...
"Association with him in the details of life was delightful.

He filled all the forms of friendship with an unaccustomed charm, and when he expressed his gratitude, it was with that deep emotion which recompenses kindness with usury.

He willingly imagined that he felt himself every day dying; he accepted the cares of a friend, hiding from him, lest it should render him unhappy, the little time he expected to profit by them.

He possessed great physical courage, and if he did not accept with the heroic recklessness of youth the idea of approaching death, at least he cherished the expectation of it with a kind of bitter pleasure."...
The attachment which he felt for a young lady, who never ceased to feel a reverential homage for him, may be traced back to his early youth.
The tempest which in one of its sudden gusts tore Chopin from his native soil, like a bird dreamy and abstracted surprised by the storm upon the branches of a foreign tree, sundered the ties of this first love, and robbed the exile of a faithful and devoted wife, as well as disinherited him of a country.

He never found the realization of that happiness of which he had once dreamed with her, though he won the glory of which perhaps he had never thought.