In the winter of 1838–9 Stephen Heller arrived in Paris, which makes an epoch in my life. A friendship sprang up between us almost at once, which endured uninterruptedly to the end of his days in 1888, and had a most decided influence upon my intellectual development. Only those who have known him as intimately as I have (and I doubt if there are any) can appreciate the high quality of his gifts, the superiority of his intelligence, and the soundness of his judgment in all matters musical, artistic, and literary. He brought few of his compositions with him, and, in fact, nearly all his works date from Paris, but these few revealed the real musician, the original thinker, and had already attracted Schumann's attention, with whom Heller corresponded frequently. I was happy to meet a man whose whole soul was wrapped up in music–as my own was–and the long hours we spent together at the piano playing duets form some of my most cherished recollections. It was during these séances in my humble lodgings in the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette that we made acquaintance with and revelled in the beauties of Schubert's great C major symphony, then recently discovered and published as a pianoforte duet. It was a revelation to us, and we were never tired of playing it through.