Jules Janin, in an obituary notice, says of Chopin that “he lived ten years, ten miraculous years, with a breath ready to fly away” (il a vecu dix ans, dix ans de miracle, d’un souffle pret a s’envoler).  Another writer remarks:  “In seeing him [Chopin] so puny, thin, and pale, one thought for a. long time that he was dying, and then one got accustomed to the idea that he could live always so.”  Stephen Heller in chatting to me about Chopin expressed the same idea in different words:  “Chopin was often reported to have died, so often, indeed, that people would not believe the news when he was really dead.”  There was in Chopin for many years, especially since 1837, a constant flux and reflux of life.  To repeat another remark of Heller’s:  “Now he was ill, and then again one saw him walking on the boulevards in a thin coat.”  A married sister of Gutmann’s remembers that Chopin had already, in 1843-4, to be carried upstairs, when he visited her mother, who in that year was staying with her children in Paris; to walk upstairs, even with assistance, would have been impossible to him.

For a long time [writes M. Charles Gavard] Chopin had been, moving about with difficulty, and only went out to have himself carried to a few faithful friends.  He visited them by no means in order that they might share his misery, on the contrary, he seemed even to forget his troubles, and at sight of the family life, and in the midst of the demonstrations of love which he called forth from everyone, he found new impulse and new strength to live.

[Footnote:  In a manuscript now before me, containing reminiscences of the last months of Chopin’s life.  Karasowski, at whose disposal the author placed his manuscript, copies LITERALY, in the twelfth chapter of his Chopin biography, page after page, without the customary quotation marks.]

Edouard Wolff told me that, in the latter part of Chopin’s life, he did not leave the carriage when he had any business at Schlesinger’s music-shop; a shopman came out to the composer, who kept himself closely wrapped in his blue mantle.  The following reminiscence is, like some of the preceding ones, somewhat vague with regard to time.  Stephen Heller met Chopin shortly before the latter fell ill.  On being asked where he was going, Chopin replied that he was on his way to buy a new carpet, his old one having got worn, and then he complained of his legs beginning to swell.  And Stephen Heller saw indeed that there were lumps of swelling.  M. Mathias, describing to me his master as he saw him in 1847, wrote:  “It was a painful spectacle to see Chopin at that time; he was the picture of exhaustion—­the back bent, the head bowed forward—­but always amiable and full of distinction.”  That Chopin was no longer in a condition to compose (he published nothing after October, 1847), and that playing in public was torture to him and an effort beyond his strength, we have already seen.  But this