“I have often heard the Komtesse sing. She has had no training at all, but she has a voice such as comes only once in a hundred years, such as I have not heard since Jenny Lind, and it really quite reminds one of Jenny Lind’s. The same meltingness, the same power, that same something,—in short, the Komtesse has millions in her throat, she has a glorious career before her if she wishes—this I had to say.” So, then, it might be that glory and fortune were to be mine—I did not at all distrust the artistic judgment of the music teacher and experienced orchestra conductor. My mother was likewise entranced. Her old predilection for the profession of a great singer, the profession which in youth she had so longed to have as her own, caused her now to grasp with delight the hope that her old-time dreams might be fulfilled in her daughter. And the millions which she had had to let dry up in her throat, the confidently expected millions which the abominable trente-et-quarante table had denied her, should come flowing to our house after all! She immediately arranged with the music teacher to give me lessons every day. Professor Beranek had in fact been a singing-teacher at the conservatory, and had trained several important operatic artists; so the formation of my voice could be intrusted to him. He wanted to instruct me for a year, make me thoroughly musical, give my voice the right position and fluency; after that I should have to study a year or two more with an Italian maestro, and then I might rise above the musical horizon as a star of the first magnitude. I must take up the Italian career, that was settled; my mother herself insisted upon that, for the names of Pasta and Grisi and Malibran still filled her head, and only by traveling from Paris to London, from Milan to Madrid, from St. Petersburg to America, could one win the aforesaid millions and that world-wide reputation which makes artists in song into half-queens. Ah yes, crowns,—that was what my young ambition craved. Nothing had come of the royal crown of Georgia; that had faded into air together with the dream of love; in its place glory should now crown me, and instead of love should be Art! One can burn as passionately for Art as for a beloved. Whoever loves Art and is loved by Art—that is, whoever loves it with the power of achievement—may find life perfectly satisfying.