At eight o'clock on the evening of April 7th Anton Rubinstein, in the living-room of his luxurious Petersburg suite, was sitting at his piano, where, spread out before him, were some sixty sheets of finely-written manuscript music:—a piano score. The master was playing from it, contemplatively, a swinging, swaying minor melody, interwoven with an intricate and rich accompaniment. He had reached a pause, betokening some change of tempo or key, when the portières were pushed noiselessly aside, and a servitor in livery appeared, announcing:
"The Herr Direktor!"
At once Zaremba, tall, angular, round-shouldered, his fluffy reddish hair and side whiskers looking thinner and fluffier than ever, entered, throwing the garments which he had refused the footman down upon one end of a long, Turkish divan.
Then the new-comer advanced, deliberately, to the piano, halted in the side angle of the instrument, and returned the long, white-faced stare with which Rubinstein greeted him. Finally the head of the Conservatoire uttered a dry:
The virtuoso shook the long hair back from his face, cleared his throat, and murmured, hesitating, peculiarly, after each word: "The thing—has—several—good points."
"Points!" Zaremba croaked, scornfully. "Points!—It's a masterpiece!"
Anton Rubinstein sprang to his feet, oversetting the piano-chair in which he had been sitting. "Well—what if it is?"—pacing rapidly up and down.—"What if, by accident, it happens to be—remarkable? The fellow's a boy—a mere child—in his trustfulness!—And he's never done anything like this—before.—It'll turn his head, completely—if he learns the—this opinion, of yours. Besides, he'll believe exactly what we tell him. And—and—"
"And he might suddenly turn virtuoso; in which case Monsieur Rubinstein—the gr-r-reat Monsieur Rubinstein—would, at all points, be rivalled!" finished Zaremba, with a dry, malicious grin.