"For it seemed as if this fragile being was absorbed and consumed by his affection. . . . Others seek happiness in their attachments; when they no longer find it, the attachment gently vanishes. But he loved for the sake of loving. No amount of suffering was sufficient to discourage him. He could enter upon a new phase, that of woe; but the phase of coldness he could never arrive at. It would have been indeed a phase of physical agony,—for his love was his life, and, delicious or bitter, he had not the power of withdrawing himself a single moment from its domination."
Chopin, suffering from severe sickness, was ordered to a warmer climate; and in the fall of 1837 Madame Sand accompanied him to the Island of Majorca, where she nursed him back to life, although his friends at the time of his departure never thought to see him again, and although he was dangerously ill for a long time after their arrival. This solitude, surrounded by the blue waves of the Mediterranean, and shaded by groves of orange, seemed fitted by its exceeding loveliness for the ardent vows of youthful lovers, still believing in their naïve and sweet illusions, sighing for happiness in some desert isle. In this case it was the refuge of those who had grown weary and disenchanted with life, but who hoped in deep devotion to each other to find some solace for their sadness. The memory of those days, like the remembrance of an entrancing ecstasy which Fate grants but once in a lifetime to her most favored children, always remained dear to the heart of Chopin. When he was restored to health they returned to Paris, where their friendship was continued for about eight years. She then severed her connection with him. Liszt asks in regard to this, in his life of Chopin:—
"Has genius ever attained that utter self-abnegation, that sublime humility of heart which gives the power to make those strange sacrifices of the entire Past, of the whole Future; those immolations as courageous as mysterious; those mystic and utter holocausts of self, not temporary and changing, but monotonous and constant,—through whose might alone tenderness may justly claim the higher word devotion? Has not the force of genius its own exclusive and legitimate exactions, and does not the force of woman consist in the abdication of all exactions? Can the purple and burning flames of genius ever float over the immaculate azure of a woman's destiny?"
Liszt also tells us that—
"Chopin spoke frequently and almost by preference of Madame Sand, without bitterness or recrimination. Tears always filled his eyes when he named her; but with a kind of bitter sweetness he gave himself up to the memories of past days, alas, now stripped of their manifold significance. . . . All attempts to fix his attention upon other objects were made in vain; he refused to be comforted, and would constantly speak of the one engrossing subject. . . . He was another great and illustrious victim to the transitory attachments occurring between persons of different character, who, experiencing a surprise full of delight in their first sudden meeting, mistake it for a durable feeling, and build hopes and illusions upon it which can never be realized. It is always the nature the most deeply moved, the most absolute in its hopes and attachments, for which all transplantation is impossible, which is destroyed and ruined in the painful awakening from the absorbing dream. . . . Chopin felt, and often repeated, that the sundering of this long friendship, the rupture of this strong tie, broke all the cords which bound him to life."
Her friends say, upon her part, that he was a morbid, dreary invalid, jealous beyond endurance, and that she suffered much at his hands, and separated from him only when she could endure his exactions no longer. He did not long survive the sundering of their relations, and died in Paris in 1849, very deeply deplored by all admirers of his genius. Chopin was a wonderfully gifted and very remarkable man, exceedingly reserved, and with little of the egotism of genius. His eyes were blue and dreamy, his smile very sweet, his complexion very fair and delicate, his hair light in color, soft and silky, his nose slightly aquiline. His bearing was so distinguished, and his manners stamped with so much high breeding, that involuntarily he was always treated en prince. His gestures were many and graceful, yet he was on the whole serene in his bearing, and generally gay in company, though subject to moods of deep melancholy. He was passionately devoted to Poland all his life, and when he was dying requested the Countess Potocka to sing to him the melodies of his country. He was deeply religious in nature, a devout Catholic.
It was during the years of which we have been speaking that George Sand produced her most famous works. "Indiana" was followed by "Valentine," "Lelia," and "Lettres d'un Voyageur." Others followed in quick succession, many of them dealing with the subject of marriage in such a manner as to raise a most violent storm about her head. People who had never read these books described them as being of revolting indecency; and that impression prevails in many quarters even yet. In point of fact, she is no more open to the charge of indelicacy than any prominent English novelist of the day. The opinions are bad enough many times, but the style is always pure and perfect. This is the answer she herself made to her critics:—
"I was astounded when a few Saint Simonians, conscientious and sincere philanthropists, estimable and sincere seekers of truth, asked me what I would put in the place of husbands. I answered them naïvely that it was marriage; in the same way as in the place of priests who have so much compromised religion, I believe it is religion which ought to be put. . . . That love which I erect and crown over the ruins of the infamous, is my Utopia, my dream, my poetry. That love is grand, noble, beautiful, voluntary, eternal; but that love is marriage such as Jesus made it, such as Saint Paul explained it. This I ask of society as an innovation, as an institution lost in the night of ages, which it would be opportune to revive, to draw from the dust of æons, and the shrine of habits, if it wishes to see real conjugal fidelity, real repose, and the real sanctity of the family, replace the species of shameful contract and stupid despotism bred by the infamous decrepitude of the world."
It must always be remembered that she wrote of French marriages, in which there is no pretence of having love to start with; and if we remember this, her language can scarcely be considered too strong. The system is utterly vile, and her hatred of it an honor to her in every sense. Had she done nothing worse than to protest against this form of marriage few would condemn her; her condemnation comes rather from the life she felt it consistent with her theories to live for many years.