de I'illustre defunt."

EPILOGUE.

We have followed Chopin from his birthplace, Zelazowa Wola, to Warsaw,
where he passed his childhood and youth, and received his musical as
well as his general education; we have followed him in his holiday
sojourns in the country, and on his more distant journeys to Reinerz,
Berlin, and Vienna; we have followed him when he left his native
country and, for further improvement, settled for a time in the Austrian
capital; we have followed him subsequently to Paris, which thenceforth
became his home; and we have followed him to his various lodgings there
and on the journeys and in the sojourns elsewhere--to 27, Boulevard
Poissonniere, to 5 and 38, Chaussee d'Antin, to Aix-la-Chapelle,
Carlsbad, Leipzig, Heidelberg, Marienbad, and London, to Majorca, to
Nohant, to 5, Rue Tronchet, 16, Rue Pigalle, and 9, Square d'Orleans,
to England and Scotland, to 9, Square d'Orleans once more, Rue Chaillot,
and 12, Place Vendome; and, lastly, to the Pere-Lachaise cemetery. We
have considered him as a pupil at the Warsaw Lyceum and as a student of
music under the tuition of Zywny and Elsner; we have considered him as a
son and as a brother, as a lover and as a friend, as a man of the world
and as a man of business; and we have considered him as a virtuoso, as a
teacher, and as a composer. Having done all this, there remains only one
thing for me to do--namely, to summarise the thousands of details of the
foregoing account, and to point out what this artist was to his and is
to our time. But before doing this I ought perhaps to answer a question
which the reader may have asked himself. Why have I not expressed an
opinion on the moral aspect of Chopin's connection with George Sand?
My explanation shall be brief. I abstained from pronouncing judgment
because the incomplete evidence did not seem to me to warrant my doing
so. A full knowledge of all the conditions and circumstances. I hold
to be indispensable if justice is to be done; the rash and ruthless
application of precepts drawn from the social conventions of the day are
not likely to attain that end. Having done my duty in placing before the
reader the ascertainable evidence, I leave him at liberty to decide on
it according to his wisdom and charity.

Henri Blaze de Bury describes (in Etudes et Souvenirs) the portrait
which Ary Scheffer painted of Chopin in these words:--

It represents him about this epoch [when "neither physical nor