“Brothers! Forgive me for not having written before. The journey was safely accomplished. The news of the attempt upon the Emperor’s life reached us at the station where we stopped for tea, but only in a very vague form.[15] We pictured to ourselves that he was actually dead, and one lady wept bitterly, while another began to extol all the virtues of the new sovereign. Only at Moscow I learnt the true account. The rejoicings here were beyond belief; yesterday at the Opera, where I went to hear _A Life for the Tsar_, when the Poles appeared on the stage the entire public began to shout, ‘Down with the Poles!’ In the last scene of the fourth act, in which the Poles put Sousanin to death, the singer who was taking this part resisted with such realistic violence that he knocked down several of the ‘Polish’ chorus-singers. When the rest of the ‘Poles’ saw that this outrage to art and to the truth delighted the public, they promptly fell down of their own accord, and the triumphant Sousanin walked away, shaking his fists at them, amid the vociferous applause of the Muscovites. At the end of the opera the Emperor’s portrait was brought on the stage, and an indescribable tumult followed.” _To Alexandra Davidov._ “_April_ 18_th_ (20_th_). “I am going to act as advocate for two mortals who are just crazy about Kamenka. You write that Toly and Modi might be left in Petersburg, but I am determined not to tell them your point of view. They would utterly lose heart--especially Toly. One of my chief reasons for caring to spend the summer at Kamenka is to be with them, and your house is the only place where we can be together for a time. If you only knew how these little fellows cling to me (and I return their love a hundredfold), you would not find it in your heart to separate us. Arrange, my dear, for this visit to come off. Very likely I shall be able to take part of the expense off your hands.” Before the summer holidays came, Tchaikovsky’s health was in an unsatisfactory condition. He complains in his letters of insomnia, nervousness, and the throbbing sensations in his head, to which he often refers as “my apoplectic symptoms.” At the end of April his depression became very apparent, and he wrote to his brother Anatol:--