“I see that Kondratiev has been giving you an over-coloured account of my hypochondriacal state. I have suffered all the winter, but my physical health is not in the least impaired.... Probably I wrote to Kondratiev in a fit of depression, and should find my account very much exaggerated if I were to read the letter now. You seem inclined to reproach me for being more frank with Kondratiev than with you. That is because I love you and Anatol ten times more than I love him; not that he does not like me, but only in so far as I do not interfere with his comfort, which is the most precious thing in the world to him. If I had confided my state to you, or Anatol, you would have taken my troubles too much to heart; whereas Kondratiev would certainly not let them cause him any anxiety. As to what you say about my antipathy towards you, I pass it by as a joke. Upon what do you found your supposition? It makes me angry to see that you are not free from any of my own faults--that much is certainly true. I wish I could find any of my idiosyncrasies missing in you--but I cannot. You are too like me: when I am vexed with you, I am vexed with myself, for you are my mirror, in which I see reflected the true image of all my own weaknesses. From this you can conclude that if you are antipathetic to me, this antipathy proceeds fundamentally from myself. Ergo--you are a fool, which no one ever doubted. Anatol wrote me a letter very like yours. Both letters were like a healing ointment to my suffering spirit.... The death of Laub has been a terrible grief to me....” Following upon these letters, it becomes necessary to give some account of the mental and moral disorder which attacked Tchaikovsky during the course of this season, and gradually took firmer hold upon him, until in 1877 it reached a terrible crisis which nearly proved fatal to his existence.