each bearing at its end the
spluttering signature of the _impresario_, he spread out on Ivan's knee.

As the young man, with changing, wondering, finally uplifted,
expression, ran slowly through the document, Nicholas prevented any
possible expression of obligation by a running fire of comment and
explanation.

"Won your spurs, you see, Ivan!--Royalties not great; but there'll
certainly be a thousand or two for you.--Give you a great push, now that
you've done what we all have to go through before we get there.--I did
it, you know, years ago, in Hamburg!--Simply stopped at the second
movement of the Italian symphony and walked off the stage.--Knees
shaking so I couldn't stand up.--Even Anton lost himself in the Leipsic
Toenhalle, once, in the middle of his own _cadenza_ to a Beethoven
sonata:--had played it a hundred times, I suppose; tried it twice, and
then fairly ran out of the room.--Laroche there, can't expect any real
luck till he's done it too.--What form'll you take it in,
Grigory?--Hey?--Finished, Ivan?--Well, I'm convinced that it is as well
as we can do for you the first time. So you'd better sign it now--using
us for witnesses--and I'll carry 'em back to Merelli myself, to-morrow."

So Ivan, lips twitching, hands trembling very much, put a shaky
signature in each space indicated below Merelli's sprawling Italian
dashes, while Nicholas and little Laroche looked on with shining eyes.

Thereupon began the era of a new and difficult experience. Healthy as
was the occupation, Ivan wished a hundred times in those ensuing weeks
that he had been seized with an apoplexy before ever he had put his name
to the contract that gave him into Merelli's hands.--As a matter of
fact, the ordeal was one trying enough for nerveless men. But to Ivan it
was simply a process of refined torture, in the course of which every
one of his petted peculiarities of style, the most cherished of his
situations, the choicest of his originalities, were ruthlessly cut,
altered, or swept calmly away:--a perfectly correct and artistic
proceeding, and agreeable to every one except the author.

No cutting of rehearsals now! In fact, for his reputation and the life
of his suffering opera, Ivan dared not be away from the opera-house
during a single hour of that hurried preparation. For, in those days, no
composers had so little right in Russia as Russians: no music was so
neglected, so criticised, so under-estimated in the land of snows as
that