red like a fish on the ice; but the idea
of returning to his native land never abandoned him in the midst of all
these calamities to which he was subjected; it alone upheld him. But it
did not suit Fate to render him happy with this last and first joy: at
the age of fifty, ill, prematurely infirm, he got stranded in the town of
O * * * and there remained for good, having finally lost all hope of
quitting the Russia which he detested, and managing, after a fashion, to
support his scanty existence by giving lessons. Lemm's external
appearance did not predispose one in his favour. He was small of stature,
round-shouldered, with shoulder-blades which projected crookedly, and a
hollow chest, with huge, flat feet, with pale-blue nails on the stiff,
unbending fingers of his sinewy, red hands; he had a wrinkled face,
sunken cheeks, and tightly-compressed lips, that he was incessantly
moving as though chewing, which, added to his customary taciturnity,
produced an almost malevolent impression; his grey hair hung in elf-locks
over his low brow; his tiny, motionless eyes smouldered like coals which
had just been extinguished; he walked heavily, swaying his clumsy body
from side to side at every step. Some of his movements were suggestive of
the awkward manner in which an owl in a cage plumes itself when it is
conscious that it is being watched, though it itself hardly sees anything
with its huge, yellow, timorously and dozily blinking eyes. Confirmed,
inexorable grief had laid upon the poor musician its ineffaceable seal,
had distorted and disfigured his already ill-favoured figure; but for any
one who knew enough not to stop at first impressions, something unusual
was visible in this half-wrecked being. A worshipper of Bach and Handel,
an expert in his profession, gifted with a lively imagination, and with
that audacity of thought which is accessible only to the German race,
Lemm, in course of time--who knows?--might have entered the ranks of the
great composers of his native land, if life had led him differently; but
he had not been born under a fortunate star! He had written a great deal
in his day--and he had not succeeded in seeing a single one of his
compositions published; he had not understood how to set about the matter
in the proper way, to cringe opportunely, to bustle at the right moment.
Once, long, long ago, one of his admirers and friends, also a German and
also poor, had published two of his sonatas at his own expense