In 1877, however, there was some sort of tragic happening. That it was somehow connected with an unhappy marriage, that it resulted in a complete nervous breakdown, these things we know.[E] It is unnecessary to probe for more specific details; it is enough to note that for a long time he was broken and despairing, that through all the rest of his life his mental temper, never bright, was shadowed with a pathological gloom. He left the Conservatory suddenly, and was abroad a year. He wrote one of his friends, «On the whole, I am robust; but as regards my soul, there is a wound there that will never heal. I think I am _homme fini_.... Something is broken in me; my wings are cut and I shall never fly very high again.» He says that had he remained a day longer in Moscow he should have drowned himself, and it is said that he did go so far, in his terrible depression, as to stand up to his chest in the river one frosty September night, «in the hope of literally catching his death of cold, and getting rid of his troubles without scandal.» But he took the better way; indeed, the best years, the quietest and most fruitful years, of his life were yet before him. As robust in character as he was sensitive and impetuous in temperament, he pulled himself together, and wrote in the next year his masterly Fourth Symphony, his best opera, «Eugene Oniegin,» said to be the second most popular opera in Russia, and many other strong works. He returned also, in the fall of 1878, to his post at the Conservatory, but, by the generosity of an anonymous lady,[F] was soon enabled to give up teaching and devote himself entirely to composition. From this time on, except for a conducting tour through western Europe in 1888, and one to America a few years later, he stayed chiefly in the country, in studious solitude. His mode of life at Maidanova, a little village where in 1885 he took a house, has been described by M. Kashkin, who often visited him. After working all the morning, and taking a simple but well-cooked dinner, Tschaïkowsky always went for a long walk, no matter what the weather. «Many of his works were planned and his themes invented,» we are told, «in these long rambles across country.» After tea he worked again until supper-time, and after supper the two friends, ordering a bottle of wine and dismissing the servant, would devote themselves to playing four-hand music. M. Kashkin tells one or two interesting stories of Tschaïkowsky at this period. His impulsiveness, it seems, took the form in money matters of a fairly reckless generosity. So lavishly did he shower coppers on all the peasant children in the neighborhood, that he could not go for his walk without being surrounded by them. In one afternoon he is said to have dispensed fourteen shillings of his own and all of M. Kashkin's small change. A friend once asked him where he «invested his capital.» Convulsed with laughter, he answered that his last investment of