"Chopin spoke frequently and almost by preference of Madame Sand,
without bitterness or recrimination. Tears always filled his eyes
when he named her; but with a kind of bitter sweetness he gave
himself up to the memories of past days, alas, now stripped of
their manifold significance. . . . All attempts to fix his
attention upon other objects were made in vain; he refused to be
comforted, and would constantly speak of the one engrossing
subject. . . . He was another great and illustrious victim to the
transitory attachments occurring between persons of different
character, who, experiencing a surprise full of delight in their
first sudden meeting, mistake it for a durable feeling, and build
hopes and illusions upon it which can never be realized. It is
always the nature the most deeply moved, the most absolute in its
hopes and attachments, for which all transplantation is impossible,
which is destroyed and ruined in the painful awakening from the
absorbing dream. . . . Chopin felt, and often repeated, that the
sundering of this long friendship, the rupture of this strong tie,
broke all the cords which bound him to life."
Her friends say, upon her part, that he was a morbid, dreary invalid,
jealous beyond endurance, and that she suffered much at his hands, and
separated from him only when she could endure his exactions no longer.
He did not long survive the sundering of their relations, and died in
Paris in 1849, very deeply deplored by all admirers of his genius.
Chopin was a wonderfully gifted and very remarkable man, exceedingly
reserved, and with little of the egotism of genius. His eyes were blue
and dreamy, his smile very sweet, his complexion very fair and delicate,
his hair light in color, soft and silky, his nose slightly aquiline. His
bearing was so distinguished, and his manners stamped with so much high
breeding, that involuntarily he was always treated _en prince_. His
gestures were many and graceful, yet he was on the whole serene in his
bearing, and generally gay in company, though subject to moods of deep
melancholy. He was passionately devoted to Poland all his life, and when
he was dying requested the Countess Potocka to sing to him the melodies
of his country. He was deeply religious in nature, a devout Catholic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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