w
in no position to leave the Rubinstein apartment, where his expenses
were very light. Moreover, Wieniawski the pianist had rented the rooms
on the fourth floor; and both he nor Shradik could be counted on to
maintain a duet scales and exercises during the entire day. Wherefore
poor Laroche began to seek the sympathetic stillness of the "Cucumber";
and Ivan, after two days in a temporary closet of six feet by eight, set
out in search of an abode to fit his income.

This proved a matter less difficult than he had feared. In fact, within
a week he was joyously settled, in a suite of two rooms, with an
antechamber and a cubby for his servant, who was, indeed, none other
than old Sosha, a Gregoriev serf, who, on the day of the proclamation of
freedom, more than five years before, had hurried forth from Konnaia
Square as from the bottomless pit. For years he had led a wandering
life, missing his former companions and comparatively easy existence,
but too stubborn to return to a certain beating, and the plentiful
curses of the Prince. When, then, he one day encountered Ivan issuing
from a second contemplation of his new quarters, the old man rushed to
him as towards a preserver Heaven-sent; and Ivan was but too glad to
accept the charge.

Sosha, always, like his generation, a slave at heart, would gladly have
served his young master without wages and to the death. But Ivan,
recently amazed by the announcement of a further increase in his
salary, which now amounted to the princely sum of eighteen hundred
roubles a year, offered his whilom servant wages so good that the fellow
thenceforth actually refrained from any commission on the marketing and
those other household purchases which Ivan was glad to leave to him.

Thus it came about that Monsieur Gregoriev was installed in a home of
his own, in which to maintain his longed-for gods. Their ghosts
appeared, in the company of Nicholas Rubinstein, on the night when this
stanch friend came to tell Ivan that, instead of the brief _passacaglia_
which he had modestly offered as his first piece on the concert
programme, it had been decided--on a hearing entirely arranged by
Nicholas, to make Monsieur Gregoriev the chief figure of the evening, by
playing his first symphony--"Youth," as the _piece de resistance_ of the
first half! Furthermore, he should still be represented in the second by
the little "Sea Picture" already arranged for. Lastly,--and here, at
last, Nicholas spoke wit