On today’s date in 1836, the Polish composer Frederic Chopin held a musical soiree in his apartment in Paris. The famous Paris Opéra tenor Adolphe Nourit, the Pavarotti of his day, sang some Schubert songs, accompanied at the piano by Chopin’s friend, Franz Liszt. Liszt and Chopin also played a new Sonata in E-flat for piano four-hands by Ignaz Moscheles.

Curiously enough, one of the people Chopin invited was a petite, olive-skinned Baroness turned writer, who, despite her sex, went by the name George Sand. Sand was notorious for her novels, which included passages considered quite racy in that day, and for her highly unorthodox lifestyle. She liked cigars, for example, and often showed up at parties dressed as a man.

Chopin had met her earlier, and at first was frankly repulsed. The 26 year-old composer was engaged to a much younger girl back home in Poland, a pale, childlike beauty who couldn’t be more unlike the 32-year-old Sand. But, as they say, opposites attract. Anxious to make a good impression, Sand showed up for Chopin’s soiree wearing white pantaloons and a scarlet sash (the colors of the Polish flag)—and left her stogies at home!

All it took was a “Dear Frederic” letter from the girl back home, and before long the Chopin-Sand romance was the talk of Paris. “My heart was conquered,” wrote Chopin in his journal, “She understood me.”