his last orders in perfect
consciousness. He begged his sister to burn all his inferior
compositions. "I owe it to the public," he said, "and to myself to
publish only good things. I kept to this resolution all my life; I wish
to keep to it now." This wish has not been respected. The posthumous
publications are for the most part feeble stuff.

Chopin died, October 17, 1849, between three and four in the morning,
after having been shrived by the Abbe Jelowicki. His last word,
according to Gavard, was "Plus," on being asked if he suffered.
Regarding the touching and slightly melodramatic death bed scene on the
day previous, when Delphine Potocka sang Stradella and Mozart--or was
it Marcello?--Liszt, Karasowski, and Gutmann disagree.

The following authentic account of the last hours of Chopin appears
here for the first time in English, translated by Mr. Hugh Craig. In
Liszt's well-known work on Chopin, second edition, 1879, mention is
made of a conversation that he had held with the Abbe Jelowicki
respecting Chopin's death; and in Niecks' biography of Chopin some
sentences from letters by the Abbe are quoted. These letters, written
in French, have been translated and published in the "Allgemeine Musik
Zeitung," to which they were given by the Princess Marie Hohenlohe, the
daughter of Princess Caroline Sayn Wittgenstein, Liszt's universal
legatee and executor, who died in 1887.

For many years [so runs the document] the life of Chopin was
but a breath. His frail, weak body was visibly unfitted for
the strength and force of his genius. It was a wonder how in
such a weak state, he could live at all, and occasionally act
with the greatest energy. His body was almost diaphanous; his
eyes were almost shadowed by a cloud from which, from time to
time, the lightnings of his glance flashed. Gentle, kind,
bubbling with humor, and every way charming, he seemed no
longer to belong to earth, while, unfortunately, he had not
yet thought of heaven. He had good friends, but many bad
friends. These bad friends were his flatterers, that is, his
enemies, men and women without principles, or rather with bad
principles. Even his unrivalled success, so much more subtle
and thus so much more stimulating than that of all other
artists, carried the war into his soul and checked the
expression of faith and of prayer. The teachings of the
fondest, most pious mother became to him a recollection of his
childho