"A great honour for me, is it not ?" writes the happy composer to his friend Titus.

The amiable publisher, however, thought that Chopin would do well to show the people of Vienna what his difficult and by no means easily comprehensible composition was like.

But the composer was not readily persuaded.

The thought of playing in the city where Mozart and Beethoven had been heard frightened him, and then he had not touched a piano for a whole fortnight.

Not even when Count Gallenberg entered and Haslinger presented Chopin to him as a coward who dare not play in public was the young virtuoso put on his mettle.