s there is nothing whatever to guide us to a trustworthy
decision. To Professor Niecks, also, do we owe much of interest
concerning these last hours of the master, inasmuch as he has brought
to light much new testimony of a further witness, M. Gavard, who
relates how, on the day following, Chopin called around him those
friends who were with him in his apartment. To the Princess
Czartoryska and Mlle. Gavard, he said, "You will play together, you
will think of me, and I shall listen to you." Beckoning to Franchomme,
he said to the princess, "I recommend Franchomme to you; you will play
Mozart together, and I shall listen to you!" How well he was cared
for, and how much devotion and tenderness were lavished upon him, we
can judge from another letter of M. Gavard, quoted by Professor Niecks,
in which he says: "In the back room lay the poor sufferer, tormented by
fits of breathlessness, and only sitting in bed resting in the arms of
a friend could he procure air for his oppressed lungs. It was Gutmann,
the strongest amongst us, who knew best how to manage the patient, and
who mostly thus supported him. At the head of his bed sat Princess
Czartoryska; she never left him, guessing his most secret wishes,
nursing him like a Sister of Mercy, with a serene countenance which did
not betray her deep sorrow. Other friends gave a helping hand to
relieve her,--every one according to his power; but most of them stayed
in the two adjoining rooms. Every one had assumed a part; every one
helped as much as he could,--one ran to the doctor's, to the
apothecary; another introduced the persons asked for; a third shut the
door on intruders.

"But, alas! the door was not to be shut upon the greatest of all
intruders, and on the evening of the 16th of October the Abbe Alexander
Jelowicki, the Polish priest, was sent for, as Chopin, saying that he
had not confessed for many years, wished to do so now. After the
confession was over, and the absolution pronounced, Chopin, embracing
his confessor, exclaimed, 'Thanks! thanks to you, I shall not now die
like a pig.' The same evening two doctors examined him. His
difficulty in breathing now seemed intense; but on being asked whether
he still suffered, he replied, 'No longer.' His face had already
assumed the pure serenity of death, and every minute was expected to be
the last. Just before the end--at two o'clock of the morning of the
seventeenth--he drank some wine handed to him by Gutman