He was met upon his arrival by a surprise as painful as unexpected.  Dr. Molin, whose advice and intelligent prescriptions had saved his life in the winter of 1847, to whom alone he believed himself indebted for the prolongation of his life, was dead.  He felt his loss painfully, nay, it brought a profound discouragement with it; at a time when the mind exercises so much influence over the progress of the disease, he persuaded himself that no one could replace the trusted physician, and he had no confidence in any other.  Dissatisfied with them all, without any hope from their skill, he changed them constantly.  A kind of superstitious depression seized him.  No tie stronger than life, no more powerful as death, came now to struggle against this bitter apathy!  From the winter of 1848, Chopin had been in no condition to labor continuously.  From time to time he retouched some scattered leaves, without succeeding in arranging his thoughts in accordance with his designs.  A respectful care of his fame dictated to him the wish that these sketches should be destroyed to prevent the possibility of their being mutilated, disfigured, and transformed into posthumous works unworthy of his hand.

He left no finished manuscripts, except a very short waltz, and a last nocturne, as parting memories.  In the later period of his life he thought of writing a method for the Piano, in which he intended to give his ideas upon the theory and technicality of his art, the results of his long and patient studies, his happy innovations, and his intelligent experience.  The task was a difficult one, demanding redoubled application even from one who labored as assiduously as Chopin.  Perhaps he wished to avoid the emotions of art, (affecting those who reproduce them in serenity of soul so differently from those who repeat in them their own desolation of heart,) by taking refuge in a region so barren.  He sought in this employment only an absorbing and uniform occupation, he only asked from it what Manfred demanded in vain from the powers of magic:  “forgetfulness!” Forgetfulness—­granted neither by the gayety of amusement, nor the lethargy of torpor!  On the contrary, with venomous guile, they always compensate in the renewed intensity of woe, for the time they may have succeeded in benumbing it.  In the daily labor which “charms the storms of the soul,” (Der SEELE Sturm BESCHWORT,) he sought without doubt forgetfulness, which occupation, by rendering the memory torpid, may sometimes procure, though it cannot destroy the sense of pain.  At the close of that fine elegy which he names “The Ideal,” a poet, who was also the victim of an inconsolable melancholy, appeals to labor as a consolation when a prey to bitter regret; while expecting an early death, he invokes occupation as the last resource against the incessant anguish of life: 

“And thou, so pleated, with her uniting,
To charm the soul-storm into peace,
Sweet toil, in toil itself delighting,
That more it labored, less could cease,
Though but by grains thou aidest the pile
The vast eternity uprears,
At least thou strikest from time the while
Life’s debt—­the minutes—­days—­and years.”