d, not cured.

My attachment [writes George Sand in "Ma Vie"] could work this
miracle of making him a little calm and happy, only because
God had approved of it by preserving a little of his health.
He declined, however, visibly, and I knew no longer what
remedies to employ in order to combat the growing irritation
of his nerves. The death of his friend Dr. Matuszynski, then
that of his own father, [FOOTNOTE: Nicholas Chopin died on May
3, 1844. About Matuszynski's death see page 158.] were to him
two terrible blows. The Catholic dogma throws on death
horrible terrors. Chopin, instead of dreaming for these pure
souls a better world, had only dreadful visions, and I was
obliged to pass very many nights in a room adjoining his,
always ready to rise a hundred times from my work in order to
drive away the spectres of his sleep and wakefulness. The idea
of his own death appeared to him accompanied with all the
superstitious imaginings of Slavonic poetry. As a Pole he
lived under the nightmare of legends. The phantoms called him,
clasped him, and, instead of seeing his father and his friend
smile at him in the ray of faith, he repelled their fleshless
faces from his own and struggled under the grasp of their icy
hands.

But a far more terrible blow than the deaths of his friend and his
father was his desertion by George Sand, and we may be sure that it
aggravated his disease a hundredfold. To be convinced of this we have
only to remember his curse on Lucrezia (see the letter to Grzymala of
November 17-18, 1848).

Jules Janin, in an obituary notice, says of Chopin that "he lived ten
years, ten miraculous years, with a breath ready to fly away" (il a vecu
dix ans, dix ans de miracle, d'un souffle pret a s'envoler). Another
writer remarks: "In seeing him [Chopin] so puny, thin, and pale, one
thought for a. long time that he was dying, and then one got accustomed
to the idea that he could live always so." Stephen Heller in chatting to
me about Chopin expressed the same idea in different words: "Chopin was
often reported to have died, so often, indeed, that people would not
believe the news when he was really dead." There was in Chopin for many
years, especially since 1837, a constant flux and reflux of life. To
repeat another remark of Heller's: "Now he was ill, and then again one
saw him walking on the boulevards in a thin coat." A married sister of
Gutmann's remembers that Chopin h