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Updated: June 20, 2025
Even Kashkine, already Ivan's Boswell, a man unselfishly eager that his friend should leave behind him a trail of golden admiration, dared not make the suggestion that it were better to move on, merely because he so dreaded the inevitable quiet glance and the direct, unequivocal: "Why?" Happily, however, Constantine's secret anxiety was soon ended.
Ivan was in his blackest mood. When, three hours before the departure of the Klin train, Piotr, taking his life in his hands, did admit Kashkine, it was half an hour before that rarest of diplomatists could bring the gleam of one faint smile across his old friend's face.
It was really Russia's capitulation to her greatest musician, in whose universal acclaim there was to be not one dissentient voice. On the first day of the month Ivan received a letter from Kashkine, explaining these things, giving a minute plan of the arrangements, and eagerly congratulating Ivan on his assured triumph.
He carried in his pocket a plentiful sum of royalties; and in his brain a hundred floating ideas. Moreover, the pretty town held two good friends of his: Kashkine and Balakirev, each one hard at his own work; but delighted at the opportunity of drawing Ivan a little out of his melancholy. In time, indeed, they came to think it banished, and the young man at peace.
No blunt comment or criticism here! All was smoothly, exquisitely polished: urbanely, beautifully French. But within a week or two Kashkine noted that Ivan was turning inward again towards himself and his habitual solitude.
In the left-hand stage-box were gathered a little group of his own, old circle, about the empty chair which had been reserved, in case faintly possible the erratic one should suddenly appear. Kashkine, Laroche, Ostrovsky, and Ivan's passionate young admirer Rimsky-Korsakow, sat there in silence, all of them thinking the same half-bitter, half-resentful thoughts.
For, well as he knew his friend's instability, Constantine never for an instant doubted that Ivan would consent to appear at a reunion for which, as Kashkine knew, he had been longing, bitterly, ever since the sudden accession to his father's wealth and title had barred him from the old-time fellowship.
How to explain such behavior on the part of one who was, from the crown of his head to his toes, thoroughly a musician, a lover of all things musical, even Kashkine, intimate and blind adorer of Gregoriev as his biography of Ivan shows him to be, never discovered.
Ivan, very still and pale, troubled and apprehensive, sat in one of the stalls near the front, between Balakirev and Laroche, with Kashkine just behind: both of his Vevey companions having journeyed a thousand miles to hear their joint tone-poem. Never afterwards, however, could Ivan remember a single incident of the early afternoon.
Nicholas Rubinstein fought his losing battles somewhat daunted by the constant cries of "hypocrite" and "toad-eater." Kashkine filled foreign journals with his praises. Useless!
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