In the prevailing key of his Sonata, the key of B flat minor, one of the most sombre in all the realms of tone, Chopin's Funeral March at once reveals itself as no chapter of private sorrows; the mourning of a multitude is in its deep-voiced chords telling the burial of a people's loss. Fit for the final pageant of emperors and kings, yet little varied as the monotone of some grave discourse, the weighty measures move majestically and slow while everywhere bared heads are bending, and the dull, despondent look is downward for now the dust shall hide yon poor reminder of a vanished life. Ah, how those earth-bound chords, for less than two brief measures, struggle free and lift us on their glorious, upward wings! Alas, they falter ere yet they attain, and then, in feebler soaring, turn and sink exhausted to the very charnel place of Death. Once more with mighty final strength the massive chords are mounting only to falter and attempt and fall again even to the dismal housing of the dead. Then, suddenly unto that comfortless abode a song of heaven is wafted from her angel choir. At once complaining Doubt is dumb, and Sorrow hath her respite, and Hope her sweet uplooking to the rest of heroes from their finished days. Long afterward, when acute grief has changed to pensive musing, that song in tones of unforgettable beauty steals upon the silence of the soul; a tender message from the never-dying dead. But whatever of balm in such serene outpouring, the torn heart must look for ease to Time the great healer, and so the deep wounds reopen, the insurmountable doubt and grief again are undergone, and in this wise the sublime march, so masterfully epitomizing certain human experiences, draws to its pathetic close and ends on the sombre chord which characterized its beginning. IV During this study of Frederic Chopin, the musician, certain incidents in his career, those favorably or unfavorably affecting his artistic development, have been touched on. Notable among them was his friendship with Liszt; but we have now to record the effects of another coming together, that of Chopin and George Sand. This latter was not the marriage of two minds musically preëminent, but, in fact, the result of the drawing near, until under one sky, of two related worlds: that of the musician, and that of the poet, for such, in fact, was the world of the imaginative French novelist. From this meeting and blending of abodes resulted a drama, and, for Chopin, a final tragedy; therefore a word in regard to the two distinguished actors.