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Sunday evening, Friedrich despatches Ziethen's Report; which punctually came to Finck's hand; but was the last thing he received from Friedrich, or Friedrich from him. The intervening Pandours picked up all the rest.
Finck's people, too, behave well, some of them conspicuously well, though in gloomier mood; and make stubborn fight, successful here and there, but, as a whole, not capable of succeeding. By 3 in the afternoon, the Austrians have forced the Maxen Post; they "enter Maxen with great shoutings;" extrude the obstinate Prussian remnants; and, before long, have the poor Village "on fire in every part."
While on this matter of love considered as a disorder of mind and body, I recall a recent magazine article of Mr. Finck's, in which he analyzes Sappho's conception of love.
Pfau undertook, and tried his utmost, for a carriage to Kleist; did send one of Finck's own carriages; but after such delays that the Prussians were now yielding: poor Kleist's had become Russian ground, and the carriage could not get in. "Kleist lay helpless; no luck worse than his.
But Brentano makes such cannonading, the Cavalry swerve to a Hollow on their right; then find they have not ground, and retire quite fruitless. Finck's Cavalry, and the Cavalry generally, with their horses all sliding on the frosty mountain-gnarls, appear to be good for little this day.
Finck's Generals endeavoring to rank and rearrange through the night, find that their very cartridges are nearly spent, and that of men, such wounding, such deserting has there been, they have, at this time, by precise count, 2,836 rank and file. Evidently desperate. At daylight, Daun's cannon beginning again from the Maxen side, Finck sends to capitulate.
Contemporary critics appear to have been highly pleased with the result but there is some excuse for H. T. Finck's impatience, expressed in "Songs and Song Writers": "The favourites of the eighteenth-century Italian audiences were artificial male sopranos, like Farinelli, who was frantically applauded for such circus tricks as beating a trumpeter in holding on to a note, or racing with an orchestra and getting ahead of it; or Caffarelli, who entertained his audiences by singing, in one breath, a chromatic chain of trills up and down two octaves.
He reached Dresden August 26, heard Spohr's "Faust" and met capellmeister Morlacchi that same Morlacchi whom Wagner succeeded as a conductor January 10, 1843 vide Finck's "Wagner." By September 12, after a brief sojourn in Breslau, Chopin was again safe at home in Warsaw. About this time he fell in love with Constantia Gladowska, a singer and pupil of the Warsaw Conservatory.
But Madame de Cruchecassee, and Madame de Schlangenbad, and those horrid people whom the men speak to, but whom the women salute with silent curtseys, persisted in declaring that there was no prude like an English prude; and to Dr. Finck's oaths, assertions, explanations, only replied, with a shrug of their bold shoulders, "Taisez-vous, Docteur, vous n'ete qu'une vieille bete."
Dannreuther see Finck's "Wagner and his Works" that "Mozart's music and Mozart's orchestra are a perfect match; an equally perfect balance exists between Palestrina's choir and Palestrina's counterpoint, and I find a similar correspondence between Chopin's piano and some of his Etudes and Preludes I do not care for the Ladies' Chopin; there is too much of the Parisian salon in that, but he has given us many things which are above the salon."