the sacristan should be given twenty times more than was usually given to him.  When I told him that this would be far too much, he replied:  “No, no, this is not too much, for what I have received is priceless.”  From this moment, by God’s grace, or rather under the hand of God Himself, he became quite another, and one might almost say he became a saint.  On the same day began the death-struggle, which lasted four days and four nights.  His patience and resignation to the will of God did not abandon him up to the last minute....

When Chopin’s last moments approached he took “nervous cramps” (this was Gutmann’s expression in speaking of the matter), and the only thing which seemed to soothe him was Gutmann’s clasping his wrists and ankles firmly.  Quite near the end Chopin was induced to drink some wine or water by Gutmann, who supported him in his arms while holding the glass to his lips.  Chopin drank, and, sinking back, said “Cher ami!” and died.  Gutmann preserved the glass with the marks of Chopin’s lips on it till the end of his life.

[Footnote:  In B. Stavenow’s sketch already more than once alluded to by me, we read that Chopin, after having wetted his lips with the water brought him by Gutmann, raised the latter’s hand, kissed it, and with the words “Cher ami!” breathed his last in the arms of his pupil, whose sorrow was so great that Count Gryzmala was obliged to lead him out of the room.  Liszt’s account is slightly different.  “Who is near me?” asked Chopin, with a scarcely audible voice.  He bent his head to kiss the hand of Gutmann who supported him, giving up his soul in this last proof of friendship and gratitude.  He died as he had lived, loving.]

M. Gavard describes the closing hours of Chopin’s life as follows:—­

The whole evening of the 16th passed in litanies; we gave the responses, but Chopin remained silent.  Only from his difficult breathing could one perceive that he was still alive.  That evening two doctors examined him.  One of them, Dr. Cruveille, took a candle, and, holding it before Chopin’s face, which had become quite black from suffocation, remarked to us that the senses had already ceased to act.  But when he asked Chopin whether he suffered, we heard, still quite distinctly, the answer “No longer” [Plus].  This was the last word I heard from his lips.  He died painlessly between three and four in the morning [of October 17, 1849].  When I saw him some hours afterwards, the calm of death had given again to his countenance the grand character which we find in the mould taken the same day [by Clesinger], and still more in the simple pencil sketch which was drawn by the hand of a friend, M. Kwiatkowski.  This picture of Chopin is the one I like best.

Liszt, too, reports that Chopin’s face resumed an unwonted youth, purity, and calm; that his youthful beauty so long eclipsed by suffering reappeared.  Common as the phenomenon is, there can be nothing