Then in 1868, his father got after him to marry.  As long before as 1859, when he was nineteen, he had suffered from an unrequited love.  Now at the age of twenty-eight he cared nothing for petticoats.  He had written his sister a year ago that he was tired of life, and marriage did not tempt him; he was, said he, “too lazy to woo, too lazy to support a family, too lazy to endure the responsibility of a wife and children.”  But upon this ennui fell an electric spark—­from the old storage-batteries, woman’s eyes.

There had come to the Moscow opera a Belgian singer, Desiree Artot, who was then thirty-three years old, a woman whose pictures make her nearly beautiful, and who is recorded as a queen of grace and a queen of dramatic and lyric song.  She was witty and magnetic, and Peter Iljitsch, five years her junior, like another Chopin and another Mary’s lamb, followed her about.

One day he wrote:  “She is a charmer; we are friends.”  Then tempo accelerate; he copied music for her benefit performance; later he apologised for not writing his brother—­he was all monopolised by the singer.  So he went swirling into the current.  He tried to keep away; they met by accident; she reproached him; he promised to call; then his inveterate timidity palsied him, till Anton Rubinstein had to drag him to her rooms by force.

Eventually they became engaged.  Just as in Weber’s case, the composer demanded that the singer give up her career for his, and she and her mother objected.  She did not want to be merely the wife of her husband; nor he, merely the husband of his wife.  He appealed to his father, who wrote a nobly generous letter, pleading the woman’s right to her own career:  a very gospel of artistic equality.

“You love her:  she loves you:  and that should settle it, if—­Oh, this wretched if!  The beloved Desiree must be altogether noble, since my son Peter has loved her.  He has taste and talent, and would choose a wife of his own nature.  The few years difference in age are of no moment.  If your love is real and substantial, all else is nonsense.  She would not want you to play the servant, and you could compose even if you travelled with her.

“I lived with your mother for twenty-one years and all that time loved with the passion of youth, and respected and adored her as a saint.  If your desired one has the character of your mother, whom you so resemble, there should be no talk of future coolness and doubt.  You know well that artists have no home; they belong to the whole world.  Why worry whether you live at Moscow or St. Petersburg?  She should not leave the stage, nor should you abandon your career.  True, our future is known only to God, but why should you foresee that you will be robbed of your career?  Be her servant, but an independent servant.  Do you truly love her and for all time?  I know your character, my dear son, but alas, I do not know you, dear sweetheart; I know your beautiful soul and good heart through him.  It might be well for you both to test your love; not by jealousy—­God forbid!—­but by time.  Wait and ask each other, ’Do I really love him?  Do I truly love her?  Will he (or she) share with me the joys and sorrows of life unto the grave?’”