also at the sea- side?  Do not forget to remember me to her, as well as to M. de Lauvergeat.  Embrace your little ones.  Write me a line.  Yours ever.  My sister embraces Madame Franchomme.

After a stay of less than six weeks Chopin removed from the Rue Chaillot to the apartments in No. 12, Place Vendome, which M. Albrecht and Dr. O’Meara had succeeded in finding for him.  About this time Moscheles came to Paris.  Of course he did not fail to inquire after his brother-artist and call at his house.  What Moscheles heard and thought may be gathered from the following entry in his diary:-"Unfortunately, we heard of Chopin’s critical condition, made ourselves inquiries, and found all the sad news confirmed.  Since he has been laid up thus, his sister has been with him.  Now the days of the poor fellow are numbered, his sufferings great.  Sad lot!” Yes, Chopin’s condition had become so hopeless that his relations had been communicated with, and his sister, Louisa Jedrzejewicz, [footnote:  The same sister who visited him in 1844, passed on that occasion also some time at Nohant, and subsequently is mentioned in a letter of Chopin’s to Franchomme.] accompanied by her husband and daughter, had lost no time in coming from Poland to Paris.  For the comfort of her presence he was, no doubt, thankful.  But he missed and deplored very much during his last illness the absence of his old, trusted physician, Dr. Molin, who had died shortly after the composer’s return from England.

The accounts of Chopin’s last days—­even if we confine ourselves to those given by eye-witnesses—­are a mesh of contradictions which it is impossible to wholly disentangle.  I shall do my best, but perhaps the most I can hope for is to avoid making confusion worse confounded.

In the first days of October Chopin was already in such a condition that unsupported he could not sit upright.  His sister and Gutmann did not leave him for a minute, Chopin holding a hand of the latter almost constantly in one of his.  By the 15th of October the voice of the patient had lost its sonority.  It was on this day that took place the episode which has so often and variously been described.  The Countess Delphine Potocka, between whom and Chopin existed a warm friendship, and who then happened to be at Nice, was no sooner informed of her friend’s fatal illness than she hastened to Paris.

When the coming of this dear friend was announced to Chopin [relates M. Gavard], he exclaimed:  “Therefore, then, has God delayed so long to call me to Him; He wished to vouchsafe me yet the pleasure of seeing you.”  Scarcely had she stepped up to him when he expressed the wish that she should let him hear once more the voice which he loved so much.  When the priest who prayed beside the bed had granted the request of the dying man, the piano was moved from the adjoining room, and the unhappy Countess, mastering her sorrow and suppressing tier sobs, had to force herself