Happily, however, there proved to be no reason for Ivan's hesitancy over the invitation of Wagner's remarkable wife. His visit, of which many hours were spent in the opera-house, where rehearsals for the summer's festival were going busily forward, proved far too interesting to require any polite pretence. Ivan took his leave of the widow, (who has done so much to augment the fame of her husband), with expressions of sincere regard and regret, adding, involuntarily, his satisfaction that this stay was to form his final impression of musical Germany.—For, three days later, Monsieur Gregoriev and his suite arrived in Paris: home of a very different musical cult.
Here a new group—one no less distinguished than that of their German brethren,—awaited the Russian star. Aged Gounod, Messrs. Saint-Saëns, Massenet, and Bizet, with Bemberg, Vidal and Duparc the song-writers, together with a little group of the younger school, d'Indy, Charpentier and their set, were gathered together to prepare a festival for Prince Gregoriev, showering on him attentions of every kind; and laboring tirelessly to convince him of their admiration and their "sympathetic appreciation." No blunt comment or criticism here! All was smoothly, exquisitely polished: urbanely, beautifully French. But within a week or two Kashkine noted that Ivan was turning inward again towards himself and his habitual solitude. And he knew that presently these complacent fellows would be sticking themselves on the spikes of a chestnut-burr of moroseness, brusquerie, and blunt refusals to have anything to do with music and musicians.
What to do? 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. It was odd that this gentle-natured man, so easily assailable in general, should prove so unapproachable on the subject of personal expediency. Even Kashkine, already Ivan's Boswell, a man unselfishly eager that his friend should leave behind him a trail of golden admiration, dared not make the suggestion that it were better to move on, merely because he so dreaded the inevitable quiet glance and the direct, unequivocal: "Why?"
Happily, however, Constantine's secret anxiety was soon ended. One afternoon, as the two friends sat together in the salon of Ivan's suite, the Prince called Piotr to him, ordered him to arrange a farewell dinner for his friends on the following evening, and to be ready to leave, on the succeeding morning, for Nice, where they would spend the carnival: Lent falling very late this year.
The events of the ensuing months contain no musical history of any note. Italy, still arrogant over her florid successes of the fifties, had nothing but ridicule for the robust northern style which, to the ears accustomed to simple melody, accompanied by the tum-ti-tum of guitar-notes, that lightest dessert of the musical feast, was as the howling of demons drowning the songs of an angel-choir. Ivan, progressing slowly southward towards the Eternal City, found his name everywhere unknown; so that he was obliged to depend for comfortable rooms and ready service solely on his title. In Rome, to be sure, the score of "Boris Teleken" was to be seen in a window or two, side by side with those of "Lohengrin" or "Tannhäuser." And there the society of which Leoncavallo was president, gave him a dinner, at which the conversation turned principally on the beauties of the Italian climate and the glories of her historic past.
These things did not, however, wound that professional vanity of which Ivan possessed so infinitesimal an amount. Never was man more thoroughly inoculated by amor Italiæ than Gregoriev. During the first weeks of his stay in Rome, guide-books and histories of the city were never out of his hands; and he took up his pen only to write the promised weekly letter to his cousin. Nor, as the spring advanced, and the tides of the Roman populace, driven before the hot blast of the sirocco, began to roll towards Frascati and the hills, would Ivan follow them. On the contrary, he seemed to glory in the increasing heat of the unclouded sun; and, when he had sent from him, one by one, every member of his party save Piotr and Piotr's son, young Ivan, he began to prepare for a more reckless journey, southward. While his anxious but obedient retinue proceeded to Florence to prepare for him a winter abode, this madman, attended by a courier and his two servants, whom neither expostulation nor threat could drive from his side, set out for Naples, en route—horror incredibilis, for Sicily!
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. In a note dated from Heaven (a place called, by the vulgar, Taormina), there came, at the end of the exclamation points, one or two rational sentences of information. It seemed that, upon the completion of his "Sicilian Fantasia," Ivan intended returning, by degrees, to the north, reaching Florence about November 1st. But he did not forget to add that it would be a voluntary plunge from the skies to purgatory.—For well indeed was Sicily named the "Smile of God!" And as for Russia—Moscow—Petersburg—well! popular mistake had incredibly conceived the infernal regions hot instead of cold; for who on the beautiful earth could ever be unhappy while the sun, visible presentment of the Deity, moved unobstructed through the turquoise vault of Italy?—Italy!—melody embodied: harmony made visible: Mozart paraphrased: Kingdom into which all artists must seek entrance; fairy-land come true!
Kashkine read his letter with relief, with resentment, finally, with laughter. But Ivan's earnest invitation to him to spend the winter in Florence could not be accepted. He had already been absent far too long. Russia claimed him. And thus, when, at last, in the first days of the melancholy month, Ivan arrived at the gray capital of Tuscany where he was to make his temporary home, no friendly faces save those of his servants were at hand to welcome him.
Probably no city in all the world possesses so powerful an attraction for so many people of so many nations as does this grim stronghold of Medici and Borgia. Its society, like that of most Italian cities, is largely cosmopolitan. Its different "colonies" intermingle, however, with the greatest friendliness; and among these "Prince" Gregoriev was effusively received. It was less than a month before he was given to understand that, though a fine dilettantism in any of the arts is a charming fad, a professional career for a Prince with a fortune like his was not to be seriously considered for one moment. To the surprise even of Piotr, this attitude amused rather than angered Ivan; and, his summer's work polished and sent away, he smiled in his sleeve and urbanely donned his new garb, determined to play the part assigned him till ennui should tear away domino and mask.
By the time he arrived the "season" was already in a vigorous infancy. Daily, in the late afternoon, the Cascine became an international mêlée of magnificent equipages and Parisian toilettes. Then, the drive over, those Florentine leaders who owned palaces, and their foreign imitators who contented themselves with a "Mezzanine," seated themselves at well-provided tea-tables and entertained a regularly flowing throng of tea-drinking, scandal-mongering women, accompanied by a circle of men of some interest and distinction. In the evening, Florence did still more. By this time, the salons were suffocating and airless. Yet there were few nights in the week when, somewhere, the sober reception was not heightened to a ball, sometimes impromptu, more often formally prearranged. Morning found the indefatigable leisure world scattered through one or another of the great galleries, where, before the masterpieces of a by-gone Italy, they recounted all the questionable incidents of the preceding day. And never a woman but could tell the length of time that Countess X—— had remained in the conservatory; or the variety of rouge used by that preposterous Mademoiselle C——, whose mother should really adopt spectacles.