Morning, with its usual mood of depressed calm, brought with it, for Ivan, a pessimistic disbelief in the reality of the recent midnight scene. Nevertheless he had curiosity enough remaining to cause him to hurry through his dressing and then run out to buy all the papers of the day. The result was that by the time SÓsha appeared with the early samovar, Ivan was in the clouds again. Buoyancy had set every nerve to tingling; and the elation of the knowledge that success had actually come, quivered from him like a rosy aura.

Beyond doubt, "The Boyar" had at last opened to Ivan the long-locked door of recognition. No Russian opera, it seemed, "Russlan and Ludmilla" possibly excepted, had gone home to the hearts of the Russian people as had this piece of youthful work, which, though its merit was perfectly genuine, was by no means free from faults. At the opera-house itself, every one, from the Menschikov to Merelli and the chorus, was in a state of beaming delight. Already Madame Pervana and the august Limpadello himself had gone quietly to the Signor Impresario with the suggestion that possibly, after all, the parts of Marie Vassilievna and the Boyar were suited to their respective talents; and that it was a pity to allow Russian musical progress to be intrusted to such well-meaning but incompetent persons as the second soprano and tenor.

To the indignation of the prima-donna, however, the Menschikov, who, in the end, had risen to no small heights in her interpretation of the hapless Marie, was allowed to retain the rÔle. But Ivan had the relief of seeing Finocchi of the hopeless ear replaced by Limpadello, through whom the quartet was now firmly united and became the sensation of the whole, sensational piece.

In the eight weeks of January and February, the opera was given eleven times. During the latter month the St. Petersburg company began to rehearse it; and at the end of March, on the Monday after Easter—one of the great nights of the year—Ivan and Ostrovsky sat together in a stage-box, watching the delight of one of the most magnificent audiences ever assembled in the Grand Theatre. The performance was as faultless as a performance can be made; and, as a final compliment to the composer, his own "nature ballet" was performed, with Mademoiselle Ellsler, who had come from Vienna for the purpose, in her already famous pas seul of the Butterfly. Before the last curtain descended, Ivan had been forced upon the stage beside his companion, to respond to the frantic plaudits of the men and women who, a few years before, had turned from Ivan Gregoriev as from one accursed.

After the opera there was still a long and hilarious supper, given by Merelli, to be endured; and when, an hour or two before dawn, Ivan finally reached his rooms, he found upon his table a sealed envelope, unaddressed. Opening it, there fell to the floor a packet of notes for two thousand roubles, together with a little slip of paper containing, in his father's writing, the words:

"You have deserved this; but I do not wish to see you."

The wish was obeyed. But the money, after some hesitation, Ivan spent.

Final success after long and bitter waiting is apt to prey curiously on the human character. Ivan took his oddly enough. His intimate friends—the only people to whom hitherto he had showed common civility, became first amazed, then chagrined, finally infuriated, by his sudden change of front. By swift degrees he ceased his intimacy with them all: Laroche, Kashkine, Balakirev, nay, Nicholas himself. And by mid-April he found himself scarcely on speaking terms with one of them.

Angered, hurt as these men were, they naturally put Ivan's behavior down to a sudden turning of the head. One only of them all, and he, had they but known it, the most deeply hurt, failed to censure, and guessed at something like the truth: that the young man, suddenly weary of his long term of unceasing labor at his profession, was seeking temporary playmates from another sphere.

In this spring of 1868, Ivan was nearly eight-and-twenty years of age. In knowledge of the gray and ugly sides of life, he was twice as old. Only in experience of the frivolities of existence was he deficient, his education there having been cut off in its heyday. It was towards this, then, towards young companionship and youthful pleasures, that his heart turned with irresistible longing. His former associates and their dry discussions and pursuits, the round of petty rivalries, the continual life of the shop, tortured his nerves. Music itself, his great goddess, became unworshipful, wearying to his very soul. Thus, repudiating her in a night, he set forth in all the glory of a cleansed record and a full pocket, to hunt for pleasure. His Conservatoire classes he changed from afternoon to morning; and, though he taught abominably, Nicholas kept the dire red notice from him by doing much of his work over after him, that he might be free for once to laugh with the spring.

The quarter to which Ivan turned for his recreation would have surprised his comrades not a little; and young Laroche would curtly have denied the truth that he had been responsible for his colleague's type of amusement. Nevertheless it was he who had been responsible for bringing Irina Petrovna and her brother to Ivan's rooms on the night of the opera, inspired, rather maliciously, by some faint memory of the old court-martial proceedings, and the long intrigue deduced by every one between Ivan and the girl. That night, after Ivan's recovery from his fainting-fit, Irina's brother, Sergius, had, on request of the young composer, given Ivan the address in the student quarter where he and his sister were living. Old Petrov was dead. Irina had freed herself long ago from her Petersburg connections; and now she was keeping up two rooms on ten roubles a month, while her brother finished his medical course at the university.

On the morning after the opera, brother and sister discussed the vague possibility of Ivan's visiting them. Irina had no difficulty in hiding from Sergius just how much the hope meant to her; but there was no idea of concealing the same thing from herself. As the days passed and Ivan did not come, she grew almost frightened at her own disappointment, discovering only now, perhaps, that there could never be any other man in her life who could make her feel the extremes of emotion. In two weeks she had gone through every stage from eager expectation to apathy; and then, suddenly, during the last, vague flicker of dying hope—he came; and her life grew red again. She was even content that he should evince most interest in men—her brother and the fellow-students that thronged their rooms at all hours. Of these, one and all regarded the visitor as a great and wealthy personage; and yet none could long remain unfriendly before the gay simplicity which speedily made Ivan as one of them. By rapid degrees their intercourse became intimate; and Ivan believed that their minds, their dreams, their trials, were as open to him as his to them. If they were not, if their secret hopes and the all-powerful reason for their community spirit remained sedulously concealed, this was, in truth, still greater proof of their friendship for him; for there were few of the hated upper class that they would have scrupled to use in their own way for their own purposes.

It was odd, perhaps, that Ivan never perceived how often his entrance into their rooms stopped or turned the conversation; though perhaps much personal sacrifice had been made for that meeting. They had all come to be proud of the young composer's fondness for them; and they held a tacit agreement that he should never, through them, be placed in danger. For, though Ivan saw it not, the shadow of the rope, or of the distant, frozen, Siberian mines, hung over this little band of youths by day and by night, sleeping and waking. He had fallen upon the very centre of the first students' brotherhood: an alliance formed a few years before, during that unique revolution of Russian youth which resulted in the birth of Nihilism.

It was about the year 1860, when the question of abolition was shaking the Bear from head to tail, that this unique movement began. By some obscure trait of national heritage, there sprang up, almost at the same hour, through the mediÆval gloom that still enveloped Peter's Empire, a thousand points of unwonted light. They were to be found burning at once in the twilight of isolated manors and the midnight of the serf's hut: in the city palace, and its neighboring tenement. Yet they sprang up among one class only—the young men and the young women of the race. The light was the light of intellectual desire for education, for science; and by it all Russia was presently set ablaze. In the history of mankind there is to be found no such tale of bloodless civil war as here. Young men and delicately nurtured girls were casting off every tradition of class, of custom, of convention, assuming the right to go forth freely to the universities, to study: willing, nay, glad, to renounce not only the luxuries but the comforts, almost the bare necessities of existence, they assumed the burden of dogged labor under almost unbearable poverty. Finally, bitterest of all, came the breaking of love-forged chains; the piteous, fruitless struggle of children to explain their position to their parents, members of that older generation who could not understand, who would not yield, who capped defeat by disinheritance.—Such were the battles of this war; such the sudden marvellous development of higher education in Russia.

Many were the virtues of this little army of youths and maidens. They worked together in perfect harmony of theory and practice. There was honor among the men; there was faith among the women. The wonderful history of Sonya Kovalevsky, delicate daughter of a noble house, who became the first woman to occupy a university professorship in Europe, was repeated a thousand times with humbler results. Nor have there failed to linger innumerable stories of those mariages de facilitÉ—levers used simply to force the freedom of some too well-guarded aspirant for knowledge. And all of the young men married, in an hour, to girls whom they had never before seen, not ten, perhaps, failed in giving chivalrous protection, or ever took the possible, cruel advantage of this last, desperate ruse to escape the fettering guardianship of parentage.

But unhappily, though scandal scarcely raised its head among the sincere members of the youthful army, other ills as far-reaching and even more dangerous began soon to sow seeds of evil and of suffering among them. For out of the fermentation arising among these isolated bands, came the bitterest drink that Russia has had to swallow. Poverty, alienation, the common cause against a common enemy—how should it not breed socialism? That established, where find a lack of bolder spirits to take the short step into downright anarchy? Whether it was Turgeniev or Lermontoff who first interpreted this infant Credo, what matters it? As in a night, lo! on every lip was the dread word that was destined to be blazoned in bloody letters at the head of the next and grimmest chapter of all Russian history: Nihilism.

Indeed, indeed, had these young men and women found their little knowledge a deeply dangerous thing! Too quickly they perceived the imperfections of their government, the corruption rife among the officials of every class. And bitter was their reproach. The question to them seemed simple. To correct this, at once and forever, dig up the very soil in which the corruptive roots expanded—here was the way, the only way. And immediately there followed pamphlets and articles. Secret meetings, propagandist organizations, flooded the land. And the red flag was everywhere raised and acknowledged as the student symbol.

It was down upon the southern bank of the Moskva that the three or four thousand students of the Moscow University formed their colony, taking, as it were, communal possession of that narrow neighborhood. There Sergius and Irina dwelt, in circumstances a little better than those of their friends. They kept the rent of their rooms paid; and, moreover, it was a rare thing for a starving youth to drop in on them and find their samovar cold, or their welcome unready. Sergius was himself, indeed, the heart and soul of his branch of the brotherhood; and from him had emanated none knew how many screeds and pamphlets upon his favorite theme. Irina, relying on him as the last protector of her family, questioned none of his plans, but found in his manner of life much that delighted her Bohemian soul.

Now, into their unstable existence, came Ivan; and over him brother and sister had their first dispute: Irina her first victory. True, Sergius knew, and was to know, nothing of his sister's past acquaintance with the composer, or what a debt he, as a brother, owed Ivan. In his eyes Gregoriev was simply a man of the world, unknown to the police, and, therefore, a valuable tool. After that first visit to their rooms, Sergius unfolded to Irina his purpose for the use of her evident admirer, which, to his utter amazement, the girl vehemently opposed. By what tortuous way she managed in the end to reach his deeply hidden scruples, who can say? Suffice it that, shortly, word went round to the effect that this one guest of the Quarter, though he was to be accorded privileges of comradeship, must remain a stranger to the inner significance of the prevalent red flag. Whereupon Irina, breathing freely, entered, for a few weeks, into the Kingdom.

The brief chapter of Ivan's life in the student quarter proceeded merrily to its dramatic close; and, until that close, Ivan remained utterly oblivious of his or the others' danger.

It was in the first week of the queen of months—the May-time, that Gregoriev took it into his head to return the oft-repeated, meagre hospitality of the Akheskaia, by giving a birthday supper to Sergius, on the night of the 10th. The idea had been born in him through some mention of the date by Irina, and a casual regret that their recent contribution towards Burevsky's new chemical outfit must preclude any hope of even the simplest celebration. Whether her speech had been ingenuous or not, it did not occur to Ivan to inquire, so pleased was he at thought of an opportunity of doing something for his new friends at last. Certainly Irina's finished suggestion accomplished its purpose to perfection; for, within three days, the affair was under way and the invitations accepted to a man—and one damsel.

It came as a surprise and an unpleasant one that news of this modest festivity should have gone abroad; but that the fact should be objected to, and that by persons unknown as well as known, was as annoying as it was preposterous. Four days before the affair, Ivan went through a highly unpleasant scene with old Nicholas Rubinstein, who came to beg him to give up his acquaintance in the Akheskaia, and remained to beseech, with an earnestness a trifle startling, that he would, at least, put off this supper. When finally his defeated friend had gone, though he had preserved towards him a courtesy that was as admirable as it had been cutting to old Nicholas, Ivan sat down to his piano feeling troubled at heart, uneasy in mind. Nor were either of these feelings lessened when, a quarter of an hour later, old SÓsha, after some unintelligible parley at the door with a being unknown, came limping in to his master bearing two notes—notes that bore no post-mark, but were both tightly sealed. The first was clear enough:

As his eyes traversed the last line, Ivan trembled a little, and grew suddenly faint. His mother's name!—How long ago since he had heard it.—His mother!—His mother's name used in a denunciation?—Faugh! It was a trap. Nevertheless he sat rigid, frowning, lost in thought, for many minutes before he lifted the other missive, addressed this time in a hand that seemed vaguely familiar.

Three times did Ivan read this curious note, meditating the while on the reason for the obvious fear in which it was written. Certainly the easiest way to discover her reason, was to talk to her alone. If he went down to the Quarter, could he manage a tÊte-À-tÊte?—If not, could he not take her for a walk—out for tea? Any of a hundred little ruses would serve him. Yes, he would go! And, springing up, he ran to his bedroom to dress.

Ten minutes later he opened the outer door of his apartment. As he stepped out upon the landing, he twisted his foot in a sudden effort to avoid stepping on a white envelope that had been pushed half-way under the door.

So there were more of them!

Laughing, a little sardonically, Ivan picked up the letter and turned back into his living-room again. The envelope of this missive, unlike the others, bore only his name, not the address. Within, it was undated, unsigned, and began abruptly:

"M., Official Government Inspector!"—here, at last, was tangibility.—And yet—the seal? The great, red, double-eagle, so long familiar to him as dangling from the documents that were forever in the hands of his father:—where was it?—Besides, the whole thing was unofficial.—There was neither heading nor arms.—It was a hoax—a trick—possibly of Laroche, or Ostrovsky, or some other of that formal, jealous lot. They thought to drive him from his friendships by malicious, anonymous calumny, then? calumny of a body of poverty-stricken, half-starved men, working disinterestedly for the sake of science,—ah! That was a generous thing to do!—As for Irina's letter, well, she had all a woman's inconsistencies and whims. She had got some silly notion of pride in her now. By Heaven! He would not even go to see her. He would merely write a formal little note reminding her of the date and the hour of his supper—six o'clock on Thursday evening. And then, though all Russia, though the Czar himself forbade, he should give Sergius his festival, or go to prison before the day.

Punctually, then, at the hour named, on Thursday, May 10th, there sat down to the flower-strewn table in Ivan's rooms seven persons—six men and one woman, they being all but one of the company asked. The chair between Sergius and FÉodor Lemsky was to have been occupied by Yevgeny Burevsky, the young man who had been the recipient of those "scientific instruments" for which the whole Quarter was still out of ready money. It was Sergius himself who explained to their host that, ever since he had received his outfit, Burevsky had been tirelessly working at his chemistry. Thus, that afternoon, when his friends called for him on their way to Ivan, they had found him just nearing the end of a long and difficult experiment which could not be left. It should, he said, be finished between half-past six and seven, upon which he would hasten into his clothes and take a droschky at once for the house of his host. If anything went wrong, however, he sent his sincere regrets and apologies to Ivan, begging him to excuse an unpolished workman for his seeming rudeness, and sending a thousand thanks for the kindness of the invitation.

Sergius gave the excuse so pleasantly, in a manner so engagingly frank, that Ivan readily accepted it, nor noticed how fixedly Irina was staring down into her plate, while the four other young men sat in moody silence, their faces—this their host did perceive—looking singularly pallid and drawn.

Calling out for more candles and champagne—which were brought by two footmen, hired, for the occasion, to serve the dishes which old SÓsha and the neighboring pastry-shop between them had concocted,—Ivan, seconded by Sergius, who was in high spirits, set himself to bring life to his party. He found this unexpectedly easy. In fact, after a minute or two, one might almost have said that the hilarity became a little too boisterous, that the laughter almost bordered on the hysterical, that the humor seemed rather blurred for this stage of the evening. Then, presto! the room was in a nervous hush, while Irina lifted a quivering glass to the candle-light, and, in a voice not her own, proposed a toast:—The complete success of Yevgeny Burevsky's experiment, and—and his speedy appearance among his waiting friends.

Ivan heard a breath, indrawn, run round the table like a hiss, and he turned his eyes rather sharply on the girl as Sergius cried out:

"Come, are you all asleep?—Bottoms up—to Yevgeny's—success! May it fulfil his highest hopes—and—ours!"

"Thank you, your wish is answered," came a voice from the doorway.

Irina gave a hoarse scream, and her glass, with its untouched contents, dropped upon the table. Every man had started from his seat; but only Ivan went forward, hands out-stretched, to greet the young fellow who now came into the circle of light. He was carefully dressed, his blue coat buttoned tightly below a well-laundered shirt, a crush hat held in his hand, one lock of jet-black hair fallen over a forehead no more bloodless than his lips, while out of his ghastly face gleamed a pair of gray-green eyes that shone with a fixed brilliancy. One look at him, and Ivan was exclaiming, anxiously:

"Yevgeny Alexandrovitch,—you're ill! My God, man, you should be in bed!—come, sit down!"

But Burevsky laughed—hoarsely. "No, no. You will give me the best medicine: a meal—company—a glass of wine. I've—I've been working!—Sergius told you—?"

He broke off, waving a listless hand towards his friend. Ivan, touched with pity, asked no more questions but led him to the table and seated him; nor heeded, as he sent a servant for vodka, Burevsky's quick glance round the board, and his low-voiced "All well."

A moment later, and the room was echoing to the rattle of knives and forks and a conversation which, though lighter than before, was still fitful and rather feverish in its rapid change of topic. It was the talk of men keyed to an unbearable state of anticipation. Sergius presently called Irina to sing Marie's song of the stirrup-cup from "The Boyar"; and fourteen hands applauded wildly as she smilingly climbed upon her chair, and, holding the replenished glass in her right hand, began one of the most successful solos in Ivan's opera.

She sang unaccompanied; but accompaniment was not missed. Save for her voice, the room was absolutely still. Even Yevgeny, who had finished his zakouski and liqueur, pushed his broth away to listen undisturbed; and the footmen, with a change of plates, stole about the room on tiptoe. Irina's voice, nearing the climax of the solo, soared higher and fuller; while Ivan, with sparkling eyes, awaited the moment when he should lead the others into the rousing chorus that terminated the song. At that moment there came a sudden trampling of heavy feet on the stairs without, followed by a loud knock at the door, which, speedily thrown open by SÓsha, disclosed an officer and three gendarmes who, following the sound of the singing, presently halted on the dining-room threshold, evidently surprised at the scene before them.

Irina's voice broke off on an upper note, but she remained on her chair, petrified by some powerful emotion that singularly resembled terror. Her brother and his friends were, less conspicuously, in the same state. But Ivan proved himself admirable. Rising, quietly, he went forward, and asked, in a voice of mingled surprise and dignity:

"Who are you, may I ask? and what can your errand be with me or with my guests?"

The sergeant, after another long look around the room, consulted a paper in his hand and asked, slowly:

"You are Monsieur Ivan Gregoriev?"

"I am."

"There are others here?"

"You see them."

"These are all, then?"

"I have two hired waiters and my own old servant in the kitchen."

"It's not them we want.—What are the names of these persons?"

"What right have you to ask? This house—"

"I am an officer in the service of the Czar. If you refuse to answer me I must take you forcibly before the court.—Give me the names of these men."

Ivan turned a piteous face towards his friends, and, in an instant, Sergius said, quietly: "Certainly give our names, Ivan. There is no reason for withholding them." Nor did either Ivan or the officer perceive that this young man was holding Irina, now lying back in her seat, from unconsciousness simply by the power of his eyes, or that he had grasped Burevsky's hand under the cloth and was keeping him from self-betrayal by the pure force of contact.

Meantime the officer was writing the names, occupations, and domiciles, of every one present, at Ivan's dictation; and, as each was given, he looked it out from a list in his small, black note-book, and checked it off. This over, he resumed his general questions:

"At what hour did these students arrive in your rooms?"

"I am not certain.—A few minutes—perhaps fifteen—before six."

"Before the hour?"

"Oh yes. We had to wait for Ivan Veliki to stop striking as I was calling out an order to my servant."

"Are you sure that they were all here then?"

Only now, for the first time, a thought that was like a dagger-thrust shot through Ivan. He wondered if the officer saw the color leave his face. Nevertheless his hesitation had been imperceptible when he said, quietly: "They all came in together."

The sergeant turned to his men and shook his head slightly. A few muttered words passed between them, the men seeming to agree with their superior. Then the officer once more faced Ivan, who stood waiting: "Thank you, sir. You have saved your friends from suspicion. Nevertheless I was forced to ask, because the entire Quarter is being searched for the man who, at twelve minutes past six to-night, shot and instantly killed Major Ternoff, assistant secretary of police, as he was driving, in his open droschky, through the Pretchishlensky Boulevard, from the public offices of justice towards his home." And, with a stiff salute, the sergeant, followed by his three men, turned and left the room and the apartment.

Mechanically Ivan closed the door upon them, and then stood staring from the white-faced Sergius to Irina, now supported by a neighbor, who was wetting her face with water from a goblet.

Presently, as if his thoughts had broken unconsciously into words, Ivan muttered, in a low, expressionless voice: "Anarchy!—Murder!—Good God—why didn't they make it my father?"

Then Burevsky rose slowly to his feet. "We all rejoice, Ivan, for and with you, that it was not your father.—And you have saved me—from—from a serious difficulty. If you had told them that I—that I did not come with the others—"

Ivan gave the spectre of a laugh. "Your chemistry should have served you, Yevgeny Alexandrovitch. Still—the lie—probably prevented—annoyance—to you all. Ah, these Nihilists! What remarkable fellows they—"

"Ivan, we will go now. Irina is recovering," interrupted Sergius, gravely. To Ivan's dull surprise, the young fellow's eyes met his full and honestly. Involuntarily Ivan shuddered; but a little of the convulsive bitterness in his heart faded away. Nevertheless, he took a curious advantage of the situation. Far from permitting the now restlessly eager students to leave his rooms, he kept them there, and, with them, the miserable Irina, till past midnight. Uncomfortable, shame-stricken, afraid, as they were, they continued to sit at the table of the man they had used, and to eat his food and drink his wine. Only once Sergius ventured to turn to him, saying; "You do not eat.—This vol-au-vent is perfect."

But Ivan, turning his grave, black eyes on those of the speaker, made answer:

"Pietr Ternoff was my mother's second cousin. He has dandled me on his knee when I was a baby. Till I was too old for it, I drank my milk out of the gold mug he sent me at my birth.—And Pietr Ternoff has been murdered.—Am I to break bread—with you—to-night?"