of gossip. The most probable account seems to be
that according to which Chopin mortally wounded Sand by receiving her
daughter and her son-in-law when they were out of Sand's favour. All
accounts agree that this was to her only a pretext for breaking shackles
that had begun to be irksome. All are agreed that it was Sand and not
Chopin who ended the relationship, and that she, as Niecks bluntly puts
it, "had recourse to the heroic means of kicking him, metaphorically
speaking, out-of-doors."

The woman seems easily to have forgotten the man who had proved, at
best, of little joy to her, for, as she says, she could never go to him
with her troubles, since he had always a plenty of his own. It was a
relief, then, to her, being a far busier woman than he a man, to find
herself free.

But Chopin was robbed of his last support. The strong woman he had
leaned upon was gone, and he was alone with the consumption that was
eating his life away. He started forth upon a concert tour, but the
chill climates of England and Scotland were not refuges from his
haunting disease. He died slowly and in poverty, though he was
unconscious of want, thanks to the generosity of a Russian countess and
a Scotch woman. Dependent upon women to the last! In his dying hours it
is said that George Sand called at his house, but was not admitted to
see him, though, as he wailed two days before his death, "She said I
should die in no other arms than hers" (_Que je ne mourrais que dans ses
bras_).

But even the story of her visit is denied. Turgeniev said that fifty
countesses had claimed that he died in their arms. Among the number was
the Countess Potocka, who is cherished traditionally as one of Chopin's
loves, and who was much with him during his last days, and sang for him,
at his request, as he lay dying. Poor genius! he must even have a woman
sing his swan-song for him! Potocka is best known by a familiar portrait
that you will find in a thousand homes. But how the higher criticism
undermines the gospel of tradition! The truth is that Chopin denied ever
having been in love with her or she with him, and Huneker even claims
that the famous portrait of her is not of her at all.

But however attended, visited, caressed, Chopin died at the threshold of
his prime, his life, lighted at most with a little feverish twinkling of
stars, one nocturne.

END OF VOLUME I.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Love Affairs of Great Musicians,