Mme. Sand, in her "Lettres d'un Voyageur," depicts the painful lethargy
which seizes the artist when, having incorporated the emotion which
inspired him in his work, his imagination still remains under the
dominance of the insatiate idea, without being able to find a new
incarnation. She was suffering in this way when the character of Chopin
excited her curiosity and suggested a healthful and happy relief. Chopin
dreaded to meet this modern Sibyl. The superstitious awe he felt was a
premonition whose meaning was hidden from him. They met, and Chopin lost
his fear in one of those passions which feed on the whole being with a
ceaseless hunger.
In the fall of 1837 Chopin yielded to a severe attack of the disease
which was hereditary in his frame. In company with Mme. Sand, who had
become his constant companion, he went to the isle of Majorca, to find
rest and medicine in the balmy breezes of the Mediterranean. All the
happiness of Chopin's life was gathered in the focus of this experience.
He had a most loving and devoted nurse, who yielded to all his whims,
soothed his fretfulness, and watched over him as a mother does over
a child. The grounds of the villa where they lived were as perfect as
Nature and art could make them, and exquisite scenes greeted the eye at
every turn. Here they spent long golden days.
The feelings of Chopin for his gifted companion are best painted
by herself in the pages of "Lucrezia Floriani," where she is the
"Floriani," Liszt "Count Salvator Albani," and Chopin "Prince Karol:"
"It seemed as if this fragile being was absorbed and consumed by the
strength of his affection.... But he loved for the sake of loving....
His love was his life, and, delicious or bitter, he had not the power
of withdrawing himself a single moment from its domination." Slowly she
nursed him back into temporary health, and in the sunlight of her love
his mind assumed a gayety and cheerfulness it had never known before.
It had been the passionate hope of Chopin to marry Mme. Sand, but
wedlock was alien alike to her philosophy and preference. After a
protracted intimacy, she wearied of his persistent entreaties, or
perhaps her self-development had exhausted what it sought in the
poet-musician. An absolute separation came, and his mistress buried
the episode in her life with the epitaph: "Two natures, one rich in its
exuberance, the other in its exclusiveness, could never really mingle,
and a whole world separated them." Chopin said: "All the cords that bind
me to life are broken." His sad summary of all was that his life had
been an episode which began and ended in Paris. What a contrast to the
being of a few years before, of whom it is written: "He was no longer
on the earth; he was in an empyrean of golden clouds and perfumes; his
imagination, so full of exquisite beauty, seemed engaged in a monologue
with God himself!"*
* "Lucrezia Floriani."
Both Liszt and Mme. Dudevant have painted Chopin somewhat as a sickly
sentimentalist, living in an atmosphere of moonshine and unreality.
Yet this was not precisely true. In spite of his delicacy of frame and
romantic imagination, Chopin was never ill till within the last ten
years of his life, when the seeds of hereditary consumption developed
themselves. As a young man he was lively and joyous, always ready
for frolic, and with a great fund of humor, especially in caricature.
Students of human character know how consistent these traits are with
a deep undercurrent of melancholy, which colors the whole life when the
immediate impulse of joy subsides.
From the date of 1840 Chopin's health declined; but through the
seven years during which his connection with Mme. Sand continued, he
persevered actively in his work of composition. The final rupture with
the woman he so madly loved seems to have been his death-blow. He spoke
of Mme. Sand without bitterness, but his soul pined in the bitter-sweet
of memory. He recovered partially, and spent a short season of
concert-giving in London, where he was feted and caressed by the best
society as he had been in Paris. Again he was sharply assailed by his
fatal malady, and he returned to Paris to die. Let us describe one of
his last earthly experiences, on Sunday, the 15th of October, 1849.
Chopin had lain insensible from one of his swooning attacks for some
time. His sister Louise was by his side, and the Countess Delphine
Potocka, his beautiful countrywoman and a most devoted friend, watched
him with streaming eyes. The dying musician became conscious, and
faintly ordered a piano to be rolled in from the adjoining room. He
turned to the countess, and whispered, feebly, "Sing." She had a lovely
voice, and, gathering herself for the effort, she sang that famous
canticle to the Virgin which, tradition says, saved Stradella's life
from assassins. "How beautiful it is!" he exclaimed. "My God! how very
beautiful!" Again she sang to him, and the dying musician passed into
a trance, from which he never fully aroused till he expired, two days
afterward, in the arms of his pupil, M. Gutman.
Chopin's obsequies took place at the Madeleine Church, and Lablache sang
on this occasion the same passage, the "Tuba Mirum" of Mozart's Requiem
Mass, which he had sung at the funeral of Beethoven in 1827; while the
other solos were given by Mme. Viardot Garcia and Mme. Castellan. He
lies in Père Lachaise, beside Cherubini and Bellini.