moral consumption of any kind prevented him from attending
freely to his labours as well as to his pleasures"], slender,
and in a nonchalant attitude, gentlemanlike in the highest
degree: the forehead superb, the hands of a rare distinction,
the eyes small, the nose prominent, but the mouth of an
exquisite fineness and gently closed, as if to keep back a
melody that wishes to escape.

M. Marmontel, with, "his [Chopin's] admirable portrait" by Delacroix
before him, penned the following description:--

This is the Chopin of the last years, ailing, broken by
suffering; the physiognomy already marked by the last seal [le
sceau supreme], the look dreamy, melancholy, floating between
heaven and earth, in the limbos of dream and agony. The
attenuated and lengthened features are strongly accentuated:
the relief stands out boldly, but the lines of the countenance
remain beautiful; the oval of the face, the aquiline nose and
its harmonious curve, give to this sickly physiognomy the
stamp of poetic distinction peculiar to Chopin.

Poetic distinction, exquisite refinement, and a noble bearing are the
characteristics which strike one in all portraits of Chopin, [FOOTNOTE:
See Appendix IV.] and which struck the beholder still more strongly in
the real Chopin, where they were reinforced by the gracefulness of his
movements, and by manners that made people involuntarily treat him as
a prince...[FOOTNOTE: See my description of Chopin, based on the most
reliable information, in Chapter XX.] And pervading and tincturing every
part of the harmonious whole of Chopin's presence there was delicacy,
which was indeed the cardinal factor in the shaping not only of his
outward conformation, but also of his character, life, and art-practice.
Physical delicacy brought with it psychical delicacy, inducing a
delicacy of tastes, habits, and manners, which early and continued
intercourse with the highest aristocracy confirmed and developed.
Many of the charming qualities of the man and artist derive from this
delicacy. But it is likewise the source of some of the deficiencies and
weaknesses in the man and artist. His exclusiveness, for instance, is,
no doubt, chargeable to the superlative sensitiveness which shrank from
everything that failed to satisfy his fastidious, exacting nature, and
became more and more morbid as delicacy, of which it was a concomitant,
degenerated into disease. Yet, notwithstanding the lack of