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Updated: June 20, 2025
After a time his dull eyes travelled slowly round the room. Kashkine was near, and Rubinstein, and two strange men. On every face was an expression of relief, of joy. Ivan marvelled at the reason. Then his eye encountered the table, and he thought he knew.
When, twenty minutes after the hour on the night named, the curtain rose, disclosing to the chorus a house packed to the doors, the composer's box reserved for him contained only the two Rubinsteins, Balakirev, Kashkine, and Laroche.
Nathalie's departure, however, seemed to break the spell of his dreariness. During the following six weeks he was frequently seen in Moscow and seemed to cling to the companionship of Kashkine; who, in a measure, began to replace Rubinstein with him.
Those who knew him well surmised his mental condition; but even Kashkine could not fathom the depth to which his thoughts had sunk. Certainly none but a Russian could, or can, comprehend the terrible reality of what must, to the inhabitants of the sunshine lands, seem the mere wilful depression of a hypochondriac.
Nathalie's letters, which grew more frequent as the days went by, and to which he faithfully replied; two visits from Kashkine, one from Mily Balakirev, and half a dozen from Nicholas, who was to be daunted by no amount of taciturnity, were the only incidents of the period.
It was now many years since his cousin and true companion first began to make her deeply affectionate study of Ivan's moods. In May, according to a former custom, Nathalie came down to Maidonovo, unaccompanied by her daughters. And Kashkine, after watching her during one day and night, retreated, gallantly leaving the field to her.
It was nearing March, and the German tour was verging on its close, when Kashkine came from Petersburg, at Ivan's earnest request, to make one of the party invited, by Frau Cosima, to spend a week at the home of Wagner in Bayreuth. It was with a little reluctance that Gregoriev entered this sanctum of the great magician's world.
All the works of this time, however, are so peculiar in style that they remained in manuscript long after his death, and the general public are still unfamiliar with that which is probably the greatest, though no doubt the strangest of them all: the "Pagan Fantasia," after the first reading of which Kashkine and Balakirev, who were alone together, looked angrily from each other to the fire, from which nothing but the memory of their friend's dead face saved that composition which afterwards came to exercise so powerful a fascination over both of them.
In many ways, indeed, this period was one of the happiest of Gregoriev's career. It was at this time that he formed those several friendships which stood him, in his after years, in such rich stead. Of the many professional men who frequented Nicholas' society, one of the foremost was Monsieur Kashkine: he who afterwards did so much to make Ivan known to his world.
I have grown narrow, and stern, and stiff, mentally and bodily. I must expand: must seek out men once more: and countries and peoples that are not ours. I long for the contrasts of Africa, of Egypt; of the burning desert, with skies of fiery blue. I bid good-bye to Russia. Time shall lead me whither it will!" Kashkine, gazing at him thoughtfully, felt a sudden chill of doubt creep into his heart.
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