m that he had not confessed for many
years, he would do so now. When the confession was over and the last
word of the absolution spoken, Chopin embraced his confessor with both
arms a la polonaise, and exclaimed: "Thanks! Thanks! Thanks to you I
shall not die like a pig." That is what Liszt tells us he had from Abbe
Jelowicki's own lips. In the account which the latter has himself given
of how Chopin was induced by him to receive the sacrament, induced only
after much hesitation, he writes:--

Then I experienced an inexpressible joy mixed with an
indescribable anguish. How should I receive this precious soul
so as to give it to God? I fell on my knees, and cried to God
with all the energy of my faith: "You alone receive it, O my
God!" And I held out to Chopin the image of the crucified
Saviour, pressing it firmly in his two hands without saying a
word. Then fell from his eyes big tears. "Do you believe?" I
asked him.--"I believe."--"Do you believe as your mother
taught you?"--"As my mother taught me." And, his eyes fixed on
the image of his Saviour, he confessed while shedding torrents
of tears. Then he received the viaticum and the extreme
unction which he asked for himself. After a moment he desired
that 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