Christoph Theodor Gottlieb Lemm was born in 1786, in the kingdom of Saxony, in the town of Chemnitz.  His parents, who were very poor, were both of them musicians, his father playing the hautboy, his mother the harp.  He himself, by the time he was five years old, was already practicing on three different instruments.  At the age of eight, he was left an orphan, and at ten, he began to earn a living by his art.  For a long time he led a wandering life, playing in all sorts of places—­in taverns, at fairs, at peasants’ marriages, and at balls.  At last he gained access to an orchestra, and there, steadily rising higher and higher, he attained to the position of conductor.  As a performer he had no great merit, but he understood music thoroughly.  In his twenty-eighth year, he migrated to Russia.  He was invited there by a great seigneur, who, although he could not abide music himself, maintained an orchestra from a love of display.  In his house Lemm spent seven years as a musical director, and then left him with empty hands.  The seigneur, who had squandered all his means, first offered Lemm a bill of exchange for the amount due to him; then refused to give him even that; and ultimately never paid him a single farthing.  Lemm was advised to leave the country, but he did not like to go home penniless from Russia—­from the great Russia, that golden land of artists.  So be determined to remain and seek his fortune there.

During the course of ten years, the poor German continued to seek his fortune.  He found various employers, he lived in Moscow, and in several county towns, he patiently suffered much, he made acquaintance with poverty, he struggled hard.[A] All this time, amidst all the troubles to which he was exposed, the idea of ultimately returning home never quitted him.  It was the only thing that supported him.  But fate did not choose to bless him with this supreme and final piece of good fortune.

[Footnote A:  Literally, “like a fish out of ice:”  as a fish, taken out of a river which has been frozen over, struggles on the ice.]

At fifty years of age, in bad health and prematurely decrepid, he happened to come to the town of O., and there he took up his permanent abode, managing somehow to obtain a poor livelihood by giving lessons.  He had by this time entirely lost all hope of quilting the hated soil of Russia.

Lemm’s outward appearance was not in his favor.  He was short and high-shouldered, his shoulder-blades stuck out awry, his feet were large and flat, and his red hands, marked by swollen veins, had hard, stiff fingers, tipped with nails of a pale blue color.  His face was covered with wrinkles, his cheeks were hollow, and he had pursed-up lips which he was always moving with a kind of chewing action—­one which, joined with his habitual silence, gave him an almost malignant expression.  His grey hair hung in tufts over a low forehead.  His very small and immobile eyes glowed dully, like coals in which