did not express such a wish; and Franchomme made to me the same statement. must, [I must, however, not omit to mention here that M. Charles Gavard says that Chopin drew up the programme of his funeral, and asked that on that occasion Mozart’s Requiem should be performed.] Also the story about Chopin’s wish to be buried beside Bellini is, according to the latter authority, a baseless invention.  This is also the place to dispose of the question:  What was done with Chopin’s MSS.?  The reader may know that the composer is said to have caused all his MSS. to be burnt.  Now, this is not true.  From Franchomme I learned that what actually took place was this.  Pleyel asked Chopin what was to be done with the MSS.  Chopin replied that they were to be distributed among his friends, that none were to be published, and that fragments were to be destroyed.  Of the pianoforte school which Chopin is said to have had the intention to write, nothing but scraps, if anything, can have been found.

M. Gavard pere made the arrangements for the funeral, which, owing to the extensiveness of the preparations, did not take place till the 3Oth of October.  Ready assistance was given by M. Daguerry, the curate of the Madeleine, where the funeral service was to be held; and thanks to him permission was received for the introduction of female singers into the church, without whom the performance of Mozart’s Requiem would have been an impossibility.

Numerous equipages [says Eugene Guinot in the Feuilleton du Siecle of November 4] encumbered last Tuesday the large avenues of the Madeleine church, and the crowd besieged the doors of the Temple where one was admitted only on presenting a letter of invitation.  Mourning draperies announced a funeral ceremony, and in seeing this external pomp, this concourse of carriages and liveried servants, and this privilege which permitted only the elect to enter the church, the curious congregated on the square asked:  “Who is the great lord [grand seigneur] whom they are burying?” As if there were still grands seigneurs!  Within, the gathering was brilliant; the elite of Parisian society, all the strangers of distinction which Paris possesses at this moment, were to be found there...

Many writers complain of the exclusiveness which seems to have presided at the sending out of invitations.  M. Guinot remarks in reference to this point: 

His testamentary executors [executrices] organised this solemnity magnificently.  But, be it from premeditation or from forgetfulness, they completely neglected to invite to the ceremony most of the representatives of the musical world.  Members of the Institute, celebrated artists, notable writers, tried in vain to elude the watch-word [consigne] and penetrate into the church, where the women were in a very great majority.  Some had come from London, Vienna, and Berlin.

In continuation of my account of the funeral service I shall quote from a report in the Daily News of November 2, 1849:—­