“ ... First I must tell you that I am sitting at the open window (at four a.m.) and breathing the lovely air of a spring morning. It is remarkable that in my present amiable mood I am suddenly seized with a desire to talk to you--to you of all people, you ungrateful creature! I want to tell you that life is still good, and that it is worth living on a May morning; and so, at four o’clock in the morning, I am pouring out my heart to you, while you, O empoisoned and lifeless being, will only laugh at me. Well, laugh away; all the same, I assert that life is beautiful in spite of everything! This ‘everything’ includes the following items: 1. Illness; I am getting much too stout, and my nerves are all to pieces. 2. The Conservatoire oppresses me to extinction; I am more and more convinced that I am absolutely unfitted to teach the theory of music. 3. My pecuniary situation is very bad. 4. I am very doubtful if _Undine_ will be performed. I have heard that they are likely to throw me over. In a word, there are many thorns, but the roses are there too.... “As regards ambition, I must tell you that I have certainly not been flattered of late. My songs were praised by Laroche, although Cui has ‘slated’ them, and Balakirev thinks them so bad that he persuaded Khvostova--who wanted to sing the one I had dedicated to her--not to ruin with its presence a programme graced by the names of Moussorgsky & Co. “My overture, _Romeo and Juliet_, had hardly any success here, and has remained quite unnoticed. I thought a great deal about you that night. After the concert we supped, a large party, at Gourin’s (a famous restaurant). No one said a single word about the overture during the evening. And yet I yearned so for appreciation and kindness! Yes, I thought a great deal about you, and of your encouraging sympathy. I do not know whether the slow progress of my opera, _The Oprichnik_ is due to the fact that no one takes any interest in what I write; I am very doubtful if I shall get it finished for at least two years.” Tchaikovsky spent only a few days in St. Petersburg before going abroad. There he heard the final verdict upon his opera _Undine_. The conference of the Capellmeisters of the Imperial Opera, with Constantine Liadov at their head, did not consider the work worthy of production. How the composer took this decision, what he felt and thought of it, we can only guess from our knowledge of his susceptible artistic _amour propre_. At the time, he never referred to the matter, either in letters or in conversation. Eight years afterwards he wrote as follows:--