Could he really relinquish
it to the other?

No necessity for this, fortunately. Balakirev, bigger, perhaps, in
generosity than any other musician of any time, known purveyor of ideas
for men even smaller than he in accomplishment, forced Gregoriev's eyes
to meet his. All was said in that look, though presently, with a slow
smile, these words were added:

"I call you to witness, Kashkine, that our Ivan herewith weds the Lady
Ophelia for the space of one month; the condition being that we listen
to the manuscript on the night of its completion.--Nay, you shall not
refuse me, Gregoriev. I tell you no subjects but those connected with
Russia can fire me. You are bigger--universal. Take this tragedy, then,
and write it again for us in music."

It was thus that the young man gained the most congenial of the subjects
that were to fill his summer months. The second, something bigger,
though hardly more complex, was another opera--already bespoken by
several _impresarii_, and founded on a translation of Keats's
"Isabella." Into this subject he grew, slowly, but strongly and with
full interest, till by August the tone-poem was nearly done, and the
opera well under way: he having worked his six hours a day assiduously.
And these hours of occupation gave him courage to bear the other
eighteen, in which he was constantly forced to face--himself.

Ivan had, indeed, been badly bitten by the snake of the world. The
poison, entering his system long since, had spread, slowly, till his
present weariness brought him wholly under its malign spell.
Disillusion, disappointment, distrust--they worked in him till he was in
a fever of pessimism, denying the good of the world. The newest maggot
in his brain was a bitter over-appreciation of the fact that, while,
after long years of scoffing and revilement, his work had finally come
to some little success, that success was only popular, hardly in any way
professional. This fact every critic in great Russia had taken pains to
impress upon the public and upon him; so that, while solvency was now
his, the butterfly of lasting power seemed farther away than ever. Ay,
truly, the bad blood that ran in his veins was his only inheritance!
Family had he none. This appalling solitude must, plainly, be henceforth
his portion: neither man nor woman should he trust again.

So ran the black reveries; for he was in the throes of his second severe
attack of "Tosca"--the _Herzeleide_ of the Russians: that n