Rupture of the sand-Chopin connection.—­Her own, Liszt’s, and Karasowski’s accounts.-The Lucrezia Floriani incident.—­Further investigation of the causes of the rupture by the light of letters and the information of Gutmann, Franchomme, and Madame Rubio.—­Summing-up of the evidence.—­Chopin’s compositions in 1847.—­Gives A concert, his last in Paris (1848):  What and how he played; the character of the audience.—­George sand and Chopin meet once more.—­The February revolution; Chopin makes up his mind to visit England and Scotland.

We now come to the catastrophe of Chopin’s life, the rupture of his connection with George Sand.  Although there is no lack of narratives in which the causes, circumstances, and time of this rupture are set forth with absolute positiveness, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact that we are not at the present moment, nor, all things well considered, shall be even in the most distant future, in a position to speak on this subject otherwise than conjecturally.

[Footnote:  Except the letter of George Sand given on p. 75, and the note of Chopin to George Sand which will be given a little farther on, nothing, I think, of their correspondence has become public.  But even if their letters were forth-coming, it is more likely than not that they would fail to clear up the mystery.  Here I ought, perhaps, to reproduce the somewhat improbable story told in the World of December 14, 1887, by the Paris correspondent who signs himself “Theoc.”  He writes as follows:  “I have heard that it was by saving her letters to Chopin that M. Alexandre Dumas won the friendship of George Sand.  The anecdote runs thus:  When Chopin died, his sister found amongst his papers some two hundred letters of Madame Sand, which she took with her to Poland.  By chance this lady had some difficulties at the frontier with the Russian custom-house officials; her trunks were seized, and the box containing the letters was mislaid and lost.  A few years afterwards, one of the custom-house officials found the letters and kept them, not knowing the name and the address of the Polish lady who had lost them.  M. Dumas discovered this fact, and during a journey in Russia he explained to this official how painful it would be if by some indiscretion these letters of the illustrious novelist ever got into print.  ’Let me restore them to Madame Sand,’ said M. Dumas.  ‘And my duty?’ asked the customs official.  ‘If anybody ever claims the letters,’ replied M. Dumas, ‘I authorise you to say that I stole them.’  On this condition M. Dumas, then a young man, obtained the letters, brought them back to Paris, and restored them to Madame Sand, whose acquaintance he thus made.  Madame Sand burnt all her letters to Chopin, but she never forgot the service that M. Dumas had rendered her.”]