led a wandering life, playing in all sorts of
places--in taverns, at fairs, at peasants' marriages, and at balls.
At last he gained access to an orchestra, and there, steadily rising
higher and higher, he attained to the position of conductor. As a
performer he had no great merit, but he understood music thoroughly.
In his twenty-eighth year, he migrated to Russia. He was invited there
by a great seigneur, who, although he could not abide music himself,
maintained an orchestra from a love of display. In his house Lemm
spent seven years as a musical director, and then left him with empty
hands. The seigneur, who had squandered all his means, first offered
Lemm a bill of exchange for the amount due to him; then refused to
give him even that; and ultimately never paid him a single farthing.
Lemm was advised to leave the country, but he did not like to go home
penniless from Russia--from the great Russia, that golden land of
artists. So be determined to remain and seek his fortune there.

During the course of ten years, the poor German continued to seek
his fortune. He found various employers, he lived in Moscow, and in
several county towns, he patiently suffered much, he made acquaintance
with poverty, he struggled hard.[A] All this time, amidst all the
troubles to which he was exposed, the idea of ultimately returning
home never quitted him. It was the only thing that supported him. But
fate did not choose to bless him with this supreme and final piece of
good fortune.

[Footnote A: Literally, "like a fish out of ice:" as a fish, taken out
of a river which has been frozen over, struggles on the ice.]

At fifty years of age, in bad health and prematurely decrepid, he
happened to come to the town of O., and there he took up his permanent
abode, managing somehow to obtain a poor livelihood by giving lessons.
He had by this time entirely lost all hope of quilting the hated soil
of Russia.

Lemm's outward appearance was not in his favor. He was short and
high-shouldered, his shoulder-blades stuck out awry, his feet were
large and flat, and his red hands, marked by swollen veins, had hard,
stiff fingers, tipped with nails of a pale blue color. His face was
covered with wrinkles, his cheeks were hollow, and he had pursed-up
lips which he was always moving with a kind of chewing action--one
which, joined with his habitual silence, gave him an almost malignant
expression. His grey hair hung in tufts over a low forehead. His v