set by him to music.  Lavretsky admired it, made him repeat some passages, and at parting, invited him to stay a few days with him.  Lemm, as he accompanied him as far as the street, agreed at once, and warmly pressed his hand; but when he was left standing alone in the fresh, damp air, in the just dawning sunrise, he looked round him, shuddered, shrank into himself, and crept up to his little room, with a guilty air.  “Ich bin wohl nicht klug” (I must be out of my senses), he muttered, as he lay down in his hard short bed.  He tried to say that he was ill, a few days later, when Lavretsky drove over to fetch him in an open carriage; but Fedor Ivanitch went up into his room and managed to persuade him.  What produced the most powerful effect upon Lemm was the circumstance that Lavretsky had ordered a piano from town to be sent into the country expressly for him.

They set off together to the Kalitins’ and spent the evening with them, but not so pleasantly as on the last occasion.  Panshin was there, he talked a great deal about his expedition, and very amusingly mimicked and described the country gentry he had seen; Lavretsky laughed, but Lemm would not come out of his corner, and sat silent, slightly tremulous all over like a spider, looking dull and sullen, and he only revived when Lavretsky began to take leave.  Even when he was sitting in the carriage, the old man was still shy and constrained; but the warm soft air, the light breeze, and the light shadows, the scent of the grass and the birch-buds, the peaceful light of the starlit, moonless night, the pleasant tramp and snort of the horses—­all the witchery of the roadside, the spring and the night, sank into the poor German’s soul, and he was himself the first to begin a conversation with Lavretsky.

Chapter XXII

He began talking about music, about Lisa, then of music again.  He seemed to enunciate his words more slowly when he spoke of Lisa.  Lavretsky turned the conversation on his compositions, and half in jest, offered to write him a libretto.

“H’m, a libretto!” replied Lemm; “no, that is not in my line; I have not now the liveliness, the play of the imagination, which is needed for an opera; I have lost too much of my power . . .  But if I were still able to do something,—­I should be content with a song; of course, I should like to have beautiful words . . .”

He ceased speaking, and sat a long while motionless, his eyes lifted to the heavens.

“For instance,” he said at last, “something in this way:  ’Ye stars, ye pure stars!’”

Lavretsky turned his face slightly towards him and began to look at him.

“‘Ye stars, pure stars,’” repeated Lemm . . . “’You look down upon the righteous and guilty alike . . but only the pure in heart,’—­or something of that kind—­’comprehend you’—­that is, no—­’love you.’  But I am not a poet.  I’m not equal to it!  Something for that kind, though, something lofty.”