This is the Chopin of the last years, ailing, broken by suffering; the physiognomy already marked by the last seal [le sceau supreme], the look dreamy, melancholy, floating between heaven and earth, in the limbos of dream and agony.  The attenuated and lengthened features are strongly accentuated:  the relief stands out boldly, but the lines of the countenance remain beautiful; the oval of the face, the aquiline nose and its harmonious curve, give to this sickly physiognomy the stamp of poetic distinction peculiar to Chopin.

Poetic distinction, exquisite refinement, and a noble bearing are the characteristics which strike one in all portraits of Chopin, [footnote:  See Appendix iv.] and which struck the beholder still more strongly in the real Chopin, where they were reinforced by the gracefulness of his movements, and by manners that made people involuntarily treat him as a prince...[Footnote:  See my description of Chopin, based on the most reliable information, in Chapter XX.] And pervading and tincturing every part of the harmonious whole of Chopin’s presence there was delicacy, which was indeed the cardinal factor in the shaping not only of his outward conformation, but also of his character, life, and art-practice.  Physical delicacy brought with it psychical delicacy, inducing a delicacy of tastes, habits, and manners, which early and continued intercourse with the highest aristocracy confirmed and developed.  Many of the charming qualities of the man and artist derive from this delicacy.  But it is likewise the source of some of the deficiencies and weaknesses in the man and artist.  His exclusiveness, for instance, is, no doubt, chargeable to the superlative sensitiveness which shrank from everything that failed to satisfy his fastidious, exacting nature, and became more and more morbid as delicacy, of which it was a concomitant, degenerated into disease.  Yet, notwithstanding the lack of robustness and all it entails, Chopin might have been moderately happy, perhaps even have continued to enjoy moderately good health, if body and soul had been well matched.  This, however, was not the case.  His thoughts were too big, his passions too violent, for the frail frame that held them; and the former grew bigger and more violent as the latter grew frailer and frailer.  He could not realise his aspirations, could not compass his desires, in short, could not fully assert himself.  Here, indeed, we have lit upon the tragic motive of Chopin’s life-drama, and the key to much that otherwise would be enigmatical, certainly not explicable by delicacy and disease alone.  His salon acquaintances, who saw only the polished outside of the man, knew nothing of this disparity and discrepancy; and even the select few of his most intimate friends, from whom he was not always able to conceal the irritation that gnawed at his heart, hardly more than guessed the true state of matters.  In fact, had not Chopin been an artist, the tale of his life would have for ever remained a tale untold.  But in his art, as an executant and a composer, he revealed all his strength and weakness, all his excellences and insufficiencies, all his aspirations and failures, all his successes and disappointments, all his dreams and realities.