ery
small and immobile eyes glowed dully, like coals in which the flame
has just been extinguished by water. He walked heavily, jerking his
clumsy frame at every step. Some of his movements called to mind the
awkward shuffling of an owl in a cage, when it feels that it is being
stared at, but can scarcely see anything itself out of its large
yellow eyes, blinking between sleep and fear. An ancient and
inexorable misery had fixed its ineffaceable stamp on the poor
musician, and had wrenched and distorted his figure--one which, even
without that, would have had but little to recommend it; but in spite
of all that, something good and honest, something out of the common
run, revealed itself in that half-ruined being, to any one who was
able to get over his first impressions.

A devoted admirer of Bach and Handel, thoroughly well up to his work,
gifted with a lively imagination, and that audacity of idea which
belongs only to the Teutonic race, Lemm might in time--who can
tell?--have been reckoned among the great composers of his country,
if only his life had been of a different nature. But he was not born
under a lucky star. He had written much in his time, and yet he had
never been fortunate enough to see any of his compositions published.
He did not know how to set to work, how to cringe at the right moment,
how to proffer a request at the fitting time. Once, it is true, a very
long time ago, one of his friends and admirers, also a German, and
also poor, published at his own expense two of Lemm's sonatas. But
they remained untouched on the shelves of the music shops; silently
they disappeared and left no trace behind, just as if they had been
dropped into a river by night.

At last Lemm bade farewell to every thing Old age gained upon him, and
he hardened, he grew stiff in mind, just as his fingers had stiffened.
He had never married, and now he lived alone in O., in a little
house not far from that of the Kalitines, looked after by an old
woman-servant whom he had taken out of an alms-house. He walked a
great deal, and he read the Bible, also a collection of Protestant
hymns, and Shakspeare in Schlegel's translation. For a long time he
had composed nothing; but apparently Liza, his best pupil, had been
able to arouse him. It was for her that he had written the cantata to
which Panshine alluded. The words of this cantata were borrowed by him
from his collection of hymns, with the exception of a few verses which
he comp