Suffused with the Slavonic spirit and its tincture of Orientalism, the importation assumed a character of its own.

Liszt, who did not speak merely from hearsay, emphasises, in giving expression to his admiration of the elegant and refined manners of the Polish aristocracy, the absence of formalism and stiff artificiality:-- In these salons [he writes] the rigorously observed proprieties were not a kind of ingeniously-constructed corsets that served to hide deformed hearts; they only necessitated the spiritualisation of all contacts, the elevation of all rapports, the aristocratisation of all impressions.
But enough of this for the present.
A surer proof of Frederick's ability than the applause and favour of the aristocracy was the impression he made on the celebrated Catalani, who, in January, 1820, gave four concerts in the town-hall of Warsaw, the charge for admission to each of which was, as we may note in passing, no less than thirty Polish florins (fifteen shillings).

Hearing much of the musically-gifted boy, she expressed the wish to have him presented to her.

On this being done, she was so pleased with him and his playing that she made him a present of a watch, on which were engraved the words: "Donne par Madame Catalani a Frederic Chopin, age de dix ans." As yet I have said nothing of the boy's first attempts at composition.
Little Frederick began to compose soon after the commencement of his pianoforte lessons and before he could handle the pen.

His master had to write down what the pupil played, after which the youthful maestro, often dissatisfied with his first conception, would set to work with the critical file, and try to improve it.