rds all fell on their knees, and even the
Protestants joined in the litanies and prayers for the dying.

Day and night he held my hand, and would not let me leave him.
"No, you will not leave me at the last moment," he said, and
leaned on my breast as a little child in a moment of danger
hides itself in its mother's breast.

Soon he called upon Jesus and Mary, with a fervor that reached
to heaven; soon he kissed the crucifix in an excess of faith,
hope and love. He made the most touching utterances. "I love
God and man," he said. "I am happy so to die; do not weep, my
sister. My friends, do not weep. I am happy. I feel that I am
dying. Farewell, pray for me!"

Exhausted by deathly convulsions he said to the physicians,
"Let me die. Do not keep me longer in this world of exile. Let
me die; why do you prolong my life when I have renounced all
things and God has enlightened my soul? God calls me; why do
you keep me back?"

Another time he said, "O lovely science, that only lets one
suffer longer! Could it give me back my strength, qualify me
to do any good, to make any sacrifice--but a life of fainting,
of grief, of pain to all who love me, to prolong such a life--
O lovely science!"

Then he said again: "You let me suffer cruelly. Perhaps you
have erred about my sickness. But God errs not. He punishes
me, and I bless him therefor. Oh, how good is God to punish me
here below! Oh, how good God is!"

His usual language was always elegant, with well chosen words,
but at last to express all his thankfulness and, at the same
time, all the misery of those who die unreconciled to God, he
cried, "Without you I should have croaked (krepiren) like a
pig."

While dying he still called on the names of Jesus, Mary,
Joseph, kissed the crucifix and pressed it to his heart with
the cry "Now I am at the source of Blessedness!"

Thus died Chopin, and in truth, his death was the most
beautiful concerto of all his life.

The worthy abbe must have had a phenomenal memory. I hope that it was
an exact one. His story is given in its entirety because of its
novelty. The only thing that makes me feel in the least sceptical is
that La Mara,--the pen name of a writer on musical
subjects,--translated these letters into German. But every one agrees
that Chopin's end was serene; indeed it is one of the musical
death-beds of history, another was Mozart's. His face was bea