These letters, written in French, have been translated
and published in the "Allgemeine Musik Zeitung," to which they
were given by the Princess Marie Hohenlohe, the daughter of
Princess Caroline Sayn Wittgenstein, Liszt's universal legatee
and executor, who died in 1887.
For many years [so runs the document] the life of Chopin was
but a breath. His frail, weak body was visibly unfitted for
the strength and force of his genius. It was a wonder how in
such a weak state, he could live at all, and occasionally act
with the greatest energy. His body was almost diaphanous; his
eyes were almost shadowed by a cloud from which, from time to
time, the lightnings of his glance flashed. Gentle, kind,
bubbling with humor, and every way charming, he seemed no
longer to belong to earth, while, unfortunately, he had not
yet thought of heaven. He had good friends, but many bad
friends. These bad friends were his flatterers, that is, his
enemies, men and women without principles, or rather with bad
principles. Even his unrivalled success, so much more subtle
and thus so much more stimulating than that of all other
artists, carried the war into his soul and checked the
expression of faith and of prayer.
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