 Alkan was not always remote or aloof . Chopin describes , in a letter to friend , visiting the theatre with Alkan in 1847 to see the comedian Arnal : " [ Arnal ] tells the audience how he was desperate to pee in a train , but couldn 't get to a toilet before they stopped at Orléans . There wasn 't a single vulgar word in what he said , but everyone understood and split their sides laughing . " Hugh Macdonald notes that Alkan " particularly enjoyed the patronage of Russian aristocratic ladies , ' des dames très parfumées et froufroutantes [ highly perfumed and frilled ladies ] ' , as Isidore Philipp described them . " 
