It has been impossible to discover the exact cause which led to the rupture between Chopin, the musician, and George Sand. However caused, this rupture was final and was followed almost at once by the novelist’s publication of her _Lucrezia Floriani_, in which, under the mask of Prince Karol, she caricatured the sensitive Chopin, holding him up to ridicule and contempt, and wounded him deeply. As we know, the excitement following this event and the mental distress and mortification connected with it threw the musician once more upon the sick bed, where he lingered a long time, really dangerously ill. We know too that he recovered. It was then that he wrote and distributed among the old friends of the “Nohant days,” and among the world of arts and letters in Paris, with which he and George Sand were so closely associated, a story called the “Little White Black Bird,” known to us of the present day, by tradition only. And it is because this tradition, at least as far as I have learned, has reached but few people, that I have taken it upon myself to tell simply, as I have heard it, this story of the “Little White Black Bird,” which, as an act of retaliation, was, we must confess, a dignified and just one, and which apart from this, forms an allegory that is beautiful and perhaps instructive. * * * * * There was once a little white bird that lived in such a beautiful forest that one might think no creature with such a home and such a playground could fail to be happy. But in truth this little bird was far from happy, because of his loneliness, for in all that wood there seemed to be no white bird but himself. There were many other birds there, but they were all black; these had their mates and their nests where they rested at night, and whence early in the morning they would fly away together, making the silent woods echo with their song, peeping at the little elves, one of whom lives hidden away in each beautiful flower and plant, and sharing with each other all that they learned of the wonderful world about them. All this the white bird knew they did, for in his loneliness he watched them closely, following them often a long distance in their flights, grateful for even this companionship. And always he looked about him for that little white object, which vaguely, in his dreams perhaps, he felt he might one day find in this mysterious forest, and which might prove to be his mate. And one bright happy day this happened: he found another little white bird who seemed to have suffered for companionship just as he had done, and they built their home upon a lofty tree and there they lived, and life seemed to him a wonderful thing and full of joy. For many days this lasted.