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Updated: June 20, 2025
Ugly-faced, big-hearted Balakirev shook his convict head melancholy-wise. Even Nicholas and Kashkine could only hope, halfheartedly, that, despite his wealth, Ivan would stick to his work out of the inward necessity: the divine driving of the great artist. Autumn justified the faithful.
It is the great reward of him who has made complete sacrifice of all things else: the act without which genius comes not into its own. In the last week of August, the three artists left Vevey together: Kashkine on his way to Germany, for a concert tour; Balakirev to Kiev, the holy city of the Slavs, for inspiration; Ivan back to Moscow and the Conservatoire.
But when he had reached a half-way point, he as suddenly halted; and, Piotr a moment later announcing that the carriage waited to drive him to his train, Ivan bade his friend a hurried farewell. Kashkine only learned the end of the tale that interested him so deeply, some fourteen months later.
As the days went on and his fears were fulfilled, Kashkine brought himself a dozen times to the verge of remonstrance, of pleading, of explanation; but, each time he opened his lips to speak on that subject, his courage failed, and he retreated hurriedly to safer topics.
During July and August Kashkine, staying, in a condition of enraged resignation, in Berne, daily awaited a telegram announcing Ivan's mortal illness or death. Instead, however, he merely received frequent epistles from the subject of his fears, written in increasing ecstasy; till finally, in the first week of September, came the climax.
When this was over, and nine-tenths of the company had gone, a chosen few made their way to Nicholas' apartment, where they sat down to a convivial little supper, at which, before them all Kashkine, Balakirev, Laroche, Serov, Siloti, Darjomizky, and, lastly, Monsieur Gounod, who had not been present at the earlier festivities, Anton Rubinstein lifted his glass on high and proposed the health of his young friend Gregoriev, in terms before which Ivan would gladly have fled, had it not been for the shouts of approbation and affection that held him immovable, red-faced, choking, quite unable to reply.
Ivan took his oddly enough. His intimate friends the only people to whom hitherto he had showed common civility, became first amazed, then chagrined, finally infuriated, by his sudden change of front. By swift degrees he ceased his intimacy with them all: Laroche, Kashkine, Balakirev, nay, Nicholas himself. And by mid-April he found himself scarcely on speaking terms with one of them.
After their first visit to him five of his old friends, Laroche, Balakirev, Ostrovsky, Kashkine, and, inevitably, Nicholas, met together by common impulse to discuss their brilliant contemporary and the question of their relations with him. The five of them secretly admired, openly liked him, still. Two of them loved him, one confessedly.
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