Although the exceeding fragility of his physical constitution might not have allowed him, under any circumstances, to have lingered long on earth, yet at least he might have been spared the bitter sufferings which clouded his last hours!  With a tender and ardent soul, though exacting through its fastidiousness and excessive delicacy, he could not live unless surrounded by the radiant phantoms he had himself evoked; he could not expel the profound sorrow which his heart cherished as the sole remaining fragment of the happy past.  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 mined in the painful awakening from the absorbing dream!  Terrible power exercised over man by the most exquisite gifts which he possesses!  Like the coursers of the sun, when the hand of Phaeton, in place of guiding their beneficent career, permits them to wander at random, disordering the beautiful structure of the celestial spheres, they bring devastation and flames in their train!  Chopin felt and often repeated that the sundering of this long friendship, the rupture of this strong tie, broke all the chords which bound him to life.

During this attack his life was despaired of for several days.  M. Gutman, his most distinguished pupil, and during the last years of his life, his most intimate friend, lavished upon him every proof of tender attachment.  His cares, his attentions, were the most agreeable to him.  With the timidity natural to invalids, and with the tender delicacy peculiar to himself, he once asked the Princess Czartoryska, who visited him every day, often fearing that on the morrow he would no longer be among the living:  “if Gutman was not very much fatigued?  If she thought he would be able to continue his care of him;” adding, “that his presence was dearer to him than that of any other person.”  His convalescence was very slow and painful, leaving him indeed but the semblance of life.  At this epoch he changed so much in appearance that he could scarcely be recognized The next summer brought him that deceptive decrease of suffering which it sometimes grants to those who are dying.  He refused to quit Paris, and thus deprived himself of the pure air of the country, and the benefit of this vivifying element.

The winter of 1847 to 1848 was filled with a painful and continual succession of improvements and relapses.  Notwithstanding this, he resolved in the spring to accomplish his old project of visiting London.  When the revolution of February broke out, he was still confined to bed, but with a melancholy effort, he seemed to try to interest himself in the events of the day, and spoke of them more than usual.  M. Gutman continued his most intimate and constant visitor.  He accepted through preference his cares until the close of his life.