George Sand went to Nohant without Chopin, ceased to write to him, and thus the connection came to an end.  Of course, Chopin ought to have left her before she had recourse to the “heroic means” of kicking him, metaphorically speaking, out of doors.  But the strength of his passion for this woman made him weak.  If a tithe of what is rumoured about George Sand’s amorous escapades is true, a lover who stayed with her for eight years must have found his capacity of overlooking and forgiving severely tested.  We hear on all sides of the infidelities she permitted herself.  A Polish friend of Chopin’s informed me that one day when he was about to enter the composer’s, room to pay him a visit, the married Berrichon female servant of George Sand came out of it; and Chopin, who was lying ill in bed, told him afterwards that she had been complaining of her mistress and husband.  Gutmann, who said that Chopin knew of George Sand’s occasional infidelities, pretended to have heard him say when she had left him behind in Paris:  “I would overlook all if only she would allow me to stay with her at Nohant.”  I regard these and such like stories, especially the last one, with suspicion (is it probable that the reticent artist was communicative on so delicate a subject, and with Gutmann, his pupil and a much younger man?), but they cannot be ignored, as they are characteristic of how Chopin’s friends viewed his position.  And yet, tormented as he must have been in the days of possession, crushed as he was by the loss, tempted as he subsequently often felt to curse her and her deceitfulness, he loved and missed George Sand to the very end—­even the day before his death he said to Franchomme that she had told him he would die in no other arms but hers (que je ne mourrais que dans ses bras).

If George Sand had represented her separation from Chopin as a matter of convenience, she would have got more sympathy and been able to make out a better case.

The friendship of Chopin [she writes in Ma Vie] has never been for me a refuge in sadness.  He had quite enough troubles of his own to bear.  Mine would have overwhelmed him; moreover, he knew them only vaguely and did not understand them at all.  He would have appreciated them from a point of view very different from mine.

Besides Chopin’s illnesses became more frequent, his strength diminished from day to day, and care and attendance were consequently more than ever needful.  That he was a “detestable patient” has already been said.  The world takes it for granted that the wife or paramour of a man of genius is in duty bound to sacrifice herself for him.  But how does the matter stand when there is genius on both sides, and self-sacrifice of either party entails loss to the world?  By the way, is it not very selfish and hypocritical of this world which generally does so little for men of genius to demand that women shall entirely, self-denyingly devote themselves to their gifted lovers?  Well, both George Sand and Chopin had to do work worth doing, and if one of them was hampered by the other in doing it, the dissolution of the union was justified.  But perhaps this was not the reason of the separation.  At any rate, George Sand does not advance such a plea.  Still, it would have been unfair not to discuss this possible point of view.