He was, however, one of the pallbearers on the long way from the church to Pere la Chaise.  When the remains were lowered into the grave, some Polish earth, which Chopin had brought with him from Wola nineteen years before and piously guarded, was scattered over the coffin.  There is nothing to show what part, save that of a mourner, Delphine Potocka took in his funeral.  But though it was the famous Viardot-Garcia whose voice rang out in the Madeleine, it was hers that had sung him to his eternal rest.

[Illustration:  The death of Chopin.  From the painting by Barrias.]

How long did Delphine survive Chopin?  In 1853 Liszt met her at Baden, postponing his intended departure for Carlsruhe a day in order to dine with her.  In May, 1861, he met her at dinner at the Rothschilds’.  When Chopin’s pupil, Mikuli, was preparing his edition of the composer’s works, Delphine furnished him copies of several compositions bearing expression marks and other directions in the hand of Chopin himself.  Mikuli dated his edition 1879.  It would seem as if the Countess still were living at or about that time.

Besides the aid she thus gave in the preparation of the Mikuli edition of Chopin’s works, there is other evidence that she treasured the composer’s memory.  In 1857, when he had been dead eight years, there was published a biographical dictionary of Polish and Slavonic musicians, a book now very rare.  Although the Potocka was only an amateur, her name was included in the publication.  Evidently the biographies of living people were furnished by themselves.  Chopin’s fame at that time did not approximate what it is now.  Yet in the second sentence of her biography Delphine records that she was “the intimate friend of the illustrious Chopin.”

Forgetting that the line of the Potockis is a long one, the public for years has associated with Chopin the famous pastel portrait of Countess Potocka in the Royal Berlin Gallery.  The Countess Potocka of that portrait had a career that reads like a romance, but she was Sophie, not Delphine Potocka.  My discovery of a miniature of Countess Sophie Potocka in Philadelphia, painted some fifteen or twenty years later than the Berlin pastel, and of numerous references to her in the diary of an American traveller who was entertained by her in Poland early in the last century, were among the interesting results of my search for information regarding Delphine, but they have no place here.  Probably the public, which clings to romance, still will cling to the pastel portrait of Countess Potocka as that of the woman who sang to the dying Chopin—­and so the portrait is reproduced here.