M. Gavard probably exaggerates the services of the Princess Czartoryska, but certainly forgets those of the composer’s sister.  Liszt, no doubt, comes nearer the truth when he says that among those who assembled in the salon adjoining Chopin’s bedroom, and in turn came to him and watched his gestures and looks when he had lost his speech, the Princess Marcelline Czartoryska was the most assiduous.

She passed every day a couple of hours with the dying man.  She left him at the last only after having prayed for a long time beside him who had just then fled from this world of illusions and sorrows....

After a bad night Chopin felt somewhat better on the morning of the 16th.  By several authorities we are informed that on this day, the day after the Potocka episode, the artist received the sacrament which a Polish priest gave him in the presence of many friends.  Chopin got worse again in the evening.  While the priest was reading the prayers for the dying, he rested silently and with his eyes closed upon Gutmann’s shoulder; but at the end of the prayers he opened his eyes wide and said with a loud voice:  “Amen.”

The Polish priest above mentioned was the Abbe Alexander Jelowicki.  Liszt relates that in the absence of the Polish priest who was formerly Chopin’s confessor, the Abbe called on his countryman when he heard of his condition, although they had not been on good terms for years.  Three times he was sent away by those about Chopin without seeing him.  But when he had succeeded in informing Chopin of his wish to see him, the artist received him without delay.  After that the Abbe became a daily visitor.  One day Chopin told him that he had not confessed for many years, he would do so now.  When the confession was over and the last word of the absolution spoken, Chopin embraced his confessor with both arms a la polonaise, and exclaimed:  “Thanks!  Thanks!  Thanks to you I shall not die like a pig.”  That is what Liszt tells us he had from Abbe Jelowicki’s own lips.  In the account which the latter has himself given of how Chopin was induced by him to receive the sacrament, induced only after much hesitation, he writes:—­

Then I experienced an inexpressible joy mixed with an indescribable anguish.  How should I receive this precious soul so as to give it to God?  I fell on my knees, and cried to God with all the energy of my faith:  “You alone receive it, O my God!” And I held out to Chopin the image of the crucified Saviour, pressing it firmly in his two hands without saying a word.  Then fell from his eyes big tears.  “Do you believe?” I asked him.—­“I believe.”—­“Do you believe as your mother taught you?”—­“As my mother taught me.”  And, his eyes fixed on the image of his Saviour, he confessed while shedding torrents of tears.  Then he received the viaticum and the extreme unction which he asked for himself.  After a moment he desired that