Such poetic sufferings were well understood by Byron, when he makes Tasso shed his most bitter tears, not for his chains, not for his physical sufferings, not for the ignominy heaped upon him, but for his finished Epic, for the ideal world created by his thought and now about to close its doors upon him, and by thus expelling him from its enchanted realm, rendering him at last sensible of the gloomy realities around him:-- "But this is o'er--my pleasant task is done:-- My long-sustaining friend of many years: If I do blot thy final page with tears, Know that my sorrows have wrung from me none.
But thou, my young creation! my soul's child! Which ever playing round me came and smiled, And woo'd me from myself with thy sweet sight, Thou too art gone--and so is my delight." LAMENT OF TASSO .-- BYRON.
At this epoch, Madame Sand often heard a musician, one of the friends who had greeted Chopin with the most enthusiastic joy upon his arrival at Paris, speak of him.

She heard him praise his poetic genius even more than his artistic talent.

She was acquainted with his compositions, and admired their graceful tenderness.

She was struck by the amount of emotion displayed in his poems, with the effusions of a heart so noble and dignified.

Some of the countrymen of Chopin spoke to her of the women of their country, with the enthusiasm natural to them upon that subject, an enthusiasm then very much increased by a remembrance of the sublime sacrifices made by them during the last war.