, to whom the letter is addressed.

You have understood, Desirez and you, you whose soul is
delicate because it is ardent, that I passed through the
gravest and most painful phase of my life. I nearly succumbed,
although I had foreseen it for a long time. But you know one
is not always under the pressure of a sinister foresight,
however evident it may be. There are days, weeks, entire
months even, when one lives on illusions, and when one
flatters one's self one is turning aside the blow which
threatens one. At last, the most probable misfortune always
surprises us disarmed and unprepared. In addition to this
development of the unhappy germ, which was going on unnoticed,
there have arisen several very bitter and altogether
unexpected accessory circumstances. The result is that I am
broken in soul and body with chagrin. I believe that this
chagrin is incurable; for the better I succeed in freeing
myself from it for some hours, the more sombre and poignant
does it re-enter into me in the following hours...I have
undertaken a lengthy work [un ouvrage de longue haleine]
entitled Histoire de ma Vie...However, I shall not reveal the
whole of my life...It will be, moreover, a pretty good piece
of business, which will put me on my feet again, and will
relieve me of a part of my anxieties with regard to the future
of Solange, which is rather compromised.

We have, then, the choice of two explanations of the rupture: George
Sand's, that it was caused by the disagreement of Chopin and her son;
and Franchomme's, that it was brought about by Chopin's disregard of
George Sand's injunction not to receive her daughter and son-in-law.
I prefer the latter version, which is reconcilable with George Sand's
letters, confirmed by the testimony of several of Chopin's friends, and
given by an honest, simple-minded man who may be trusted to have told a
plain unvarnished tale.

[FOOTNOTE: The contradictions are merely apparent, and disappear if we
consider that George Sand cannot have had any inclination to give to
Gutmann and Poncy an explanation of the real state of matters. Moreover,
when she wrote to the former the rupture had, according to Franchomme,
not yet taken place.]

But whatever reason may have been alleged to justify, whatever
circumstance may have been the ostensible cause of the rupture, in
reality it was only a pretext. On this point all agree--Franchomme,
Gutmann, Kwiatkowski