minutely my character, the irritability, the unevenness of my
temperament, my diffidence--finally my financial condition. Then I
asked her if she wished to be my wife. Naturally her answer was 'yes.'
The fearful agonies which I have experienced since that night are not
to be expressed in words. This is only natural. To live for
thirty-seven years in congenital antipathy to marriage, and then
suddenly to be made a bridegroom through the sheer force of
circumstances, without being in the least charmed by the bride--that is
something horrible! In order to get back my senses and accustom myself
to the thought of the future, I decided to go to the country for a
month. This I did. I console myself with the thought that no one can
escape his fate, and my meeting with that girl was fatality. My
conscience is clear. If I marry without loving, it is because
circumstances have forced this upon me. I cannot do otherwise.
Carelessly I surrendered at her first confession of love. I should not
have answered her at all."

Under such auspices, the marriage took place. It is hard to say whom we
should pity the more, husband or wife; and which we should count the
more insane. That which is technically called a honeymoon lasted a week
in this case. In ten days the husband is writing his fellow-Platonist,
Frau von Meck, that he is uncertain about his happiness, but positive
that he cannot compose. He and his wife pay a little visit to her
mother; then they return "home," only to part. The unwilling bridegroom
must be alone to recuperate. He writes Frau von Meck:

"I leave in an hour. A few days more of this, and I swear I should have
gone mad."

In ten days he is strong enough to think of his wife again; in his
solitude he begins work on what he mentions to Frau von Meck as "our
symphony."

He goes hunting in the woods, while the lonely bride hunts furniture
for their home. By the middle of September, Tschaikovski is brave
enough to return; he is pleased to find a home of his own, with all
clean and neat. For a few days, even a robbery by servants, and the
necessity his wife is under to go to the police-court, do not disturb
him, or, at least, so he writes. But hardly more than a week can he
stand his wife's society. He determines to kill himself, and stands up
to his chin in the ice-cold river, afraid to drown himself, and yet
hoping to catch a fatal pneumonia.

His old frenzy seized him; insanity beckoned to him again. Alleging
th