egistered parcel left Moscow for the
north, addressed to the Director of the Petersburg Conservatoire:--who
was at present in a condition of nervous irritability that kept his
every pupil in a state of petrified wretchedness throughout the working
day.

Miserable Ivan! Zaremba too--even Zaremba, was in the throes of
composition! He was attempting a work as far beyond his creative powers
as are the harmonies of Wagner beyond the quaint simplicities of
olden-time Scarlatti. Wretched Ivan! Relentless circumstance!--To this
monster of vanity, vain ambition, malicious jealousy, went the
masterpiece of an offending _pupil_.

However, happily, Ivan was not clairvoyant. The satisfactory close of
his long period of labor brought with it a state of passive languor. A
quiet numbness replaced the acute sensitiveness of his nerves, and made
him for the nonce impervious to his devils, though it could not prevent
his inner sense of loss. For the creator who has lived for many months
in daily communion with the living creature of his imagination, cannot,
if he work as artists must, but come into a state of great and secret
love for his dream-images. The feeling is sacred, indeed; for what
dweller in Philistia but would scoff at such a sentimentality as love
for work, and unhappiness at its conclusion? Nevertheless it is true
that, when the hour of triumph, the finishing of a long, successful
creation is accomplished, and eager Philistia waits clamoring to enjoy
it, its master knows well that his hour is over: that his good-bye must
be said. His child, stared at, listened to, conned by ten thousand eyes,
ears, or tongues, is his no more; cannot return to him; for it is of the
world, and the dream between them is dissolved.

This had come to Ivan. His two friends were gone from him to other men.
His whole being cried out for rest; but his heart was empty.

A week's desultory waiting, however, suddenly brought an episode that
turned his mind in another direction. Nicholas Rubinstein sent him a
troubled missive, asking his presence at the next rehearsal of Ophelia.
Anxiety stared from every line of the brief note; and, after some
hesitation, and a very bad half-day, Ivan presented himself at the Grand
Theatre; where he instantly found himself the centre of an uproar. The
new tone-poem was impossible. Concertmeister, head of second violins,
all the heads of the other bodies, swarmed to him, each pointing out the
various passages deemed