Volume I Part 18 (1/1)
As to the final separation, followingthe people tell their own stories so far as possible, I e Sand's own version:
”After the last relapse of the invalid, his loomy, and Maurice [her son], who had hitherto tenderly loved him, was suddenly wounded by hi subject They erain of sand had fallen into the tranquil lake, and little by little the pebbles fell there, one after another--all this was borne; but at last, one day, Maurice, tired of the pin-pricks, spoke of giving up the game That could not be, and should not be Chopin would not stand itimate and necessary intervention He bowed his head and said that I no longer loved hiht years of maternal devotion! But the poor bruised heart was not conscious of its deliriuht that some months passed at a distance and in silence would heal the wound, and ain calm and his memory equitable But the revolution of February came, and Paris beca to any commotion in the social form
Free to return to Poland, or certain to be tolerated there, he had preferred languishi+ng ten (and some more) years far fro his country transformed and deformed (_denature_) He had fled froain for an instant in March, 1848 I pressed his tre and icy hand I wished to speak to hier loved me I spared him this infliction, and entrusted all to the hands of Providence and the future
”I was not to see hiood ones, too, ere at a loss what to do There were frivolous ones who preferred not to meddle with such delicate retted ht fit to conceal froht fit to conceal this froe Sand's story, which has not been granted very ht call it--is blurred by the usual discrepancies of gossip Theto which Chopin hter and her son-in-lahen they were out of Sand's favour All accounts agree that this was to her only a pretext for breaking shackles that had begun to be irksoreed that it was Sand and not Chopin who ended the relationshi+p, and that she, as Niecks bluntly puts it, ”had recourse to the heroic , out-of-doors”
The wootten the man who had proved, at best, of little joy to her, for, as she says, she could never go to him with her troubles, since he had always a plenty of his own It was a relief, then, to her, being a far busier woman than he a man, to find herself free
But Chopin was robbed of his last support The strong woone, and he was alone with the consu his life away He started forth upon a concert tour, but the chill clies froh he was unconscious of want, thanks to the generosity of a Russian countess and a Scotch wo hours it is said that George Sand called at his house, but was not adh, as he wailed two days before his death, ”She said I should die in no other arms than hers” (_Que je ne mourrais que dans ses bras_)
But even the story of her visit is denied Turgeniev said that fifty countesses had clai the number was the Countess Potocka, who is cherished traditionally as one of Chopin's loves, and asfor hienius! hefor him! Potocka is best known by a familiar portrait that you will find in a thousand hoospel of tradition! The truth is that Chopin denied ever having been in love with her or she with him, and Huneker even claims that the famous portrait of her is not of her at all
But however attended, visited, caressed, Chopin died at the threshold of his pri of stars, one nocturne
END OF VOLUME I