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Updated: May 14, 2025
It was three o'clock before he beheld, issuing from the audience-chamber, side by side and chatting together in tones of intimacy, Michael Petrovitch Gregoriev and Nicholas I., Emperor of Russia. Nor was that all. For it was the face not of the official but of his Imperial Majesty, that wore an expression of uneasiness, of disquietude, almost of alarm.
It was his father who brought him back to himself again: his father, who sat slowly rubbing one hand across his brows, and muttering, as one in a daze: "Toi! Toi, Ivan! Dieu! Dieu!" Words, tone, appearance, moved the son intensely; for never before had man beheld Michael Gregoriev show such stress of emotion. Never had any hour so clearly revealed the ravages of mad living and secret unhappiness.
But circumstances always rose to bring it again to his mind; till, at last, recurrent pain had fixed it there forever: that world-theme, which had its birth on this first Sunday of his sixteenth year. It was eleven o'clock when Madame Gregoriev, worn out and trembling with feeling, finally ended her narrative. It was midnight before she and Ivan kissed good-night.
But, in spite of its successful recovery, and the high opinion afterwards expressed concerning it by Ivan's own circle, it was many years before "Day Dreams" had its initial performance: at a time when Russia was alive with the name of Gregoriev. Moreover, at that first performance the composer was not present.
Gregoriev exactly a fool or, at least, weak-brained. Well, he had gone on, and lived with her till four years rolled round, and it was May again the May of 1866; when Ivan, who looked thirty and more, was not yet at his twenty-sixth birthday.
Rising, quietly, he went forward, and asked, in a voice of mingled surprise and dignity: "Who are you, may I ask? and what can your errand be with me or with my guests?" The sergeant, after another long look around the room, consulted a paper in his hand and asked, slowly: "You are Monsieur Ivan Gregoriev?" "I am." "There are others here?" "You see them." "These are all, then?"
First of all, she must try, as never before, to trust the father of her son. Secondly, she must also trust that son. If Ivan found himself, at the promised supper, in moral danger, he would instinctively know it. Then, if he made no effort to escape, of what use protection, or love, or fear, on her part, forevermore? No feminine force could keep him from going, eventually, down the Gregoriev road.
After their long winter's separation, during those few days together in the sorrowing house of Gregoriev, during the April of 1857, mother and daughter came closer together than ever before. Madame Dravikine was softened by grief; and the consolation she found in her daughter's presence was as great as it was unexpected.
Ivan remained standing a little way beyond the threshold till Pavaniev entered and passed him, and the sister looked around. Then, for an instant, the wailing ceased, and was replaced by a high, wavering, querulous voice, that none would have dreamed of as belonging to Michael Gregoriev. "He is come? Ivan? Bring him to me!" Only then did the other doctor turn and perceive the new-comer.
In December came Avélallement, acknowledged envoy from the five greatest German orchestras, begging Monsieur Gregoriev to consent to a tour of the orchestra cities of Germany, where he should conduct programs of his own works. To the amazement of the Moscow circle, Ivan received this proposition with something like enthusiasm.
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