Books › Blue Book v043 n03 [1926-07], 1926 › scan 124
Scan 124
Blue Book v043 n03 [1926-07], 1926
14 lines. Read by computer on 17 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Free Lances in Diplomacy
3ture of noble blood—bar-sinister, of course—which gave the young fellow the ambition which spurred him on to get that technical study—to make of himself a good chemist, a very excellent metallurgist, and a violin-player with some knowledge of the best composers. Back in his wife's family there had been Tartar and Hunnish mixtures in which none of the parties concerned was of sufficient mental capacity to understand the bar-sinister if he or she ever heard the words. Eastern Europe and Central Asia always have been like that—so it is quite understood that no reflections are being cast upon Mrs. Dimitrivitch or her estimable family.
5IT was perhaps ten years before it occurred to the metallurgist that there might be room for little improvements in his marital companion, here and there—the boy would have been then something over nine. Perhaps the need for some one close to him who could set down certain formulae at his dictation, and then forget entirely what had been written, suggested the idea. Anyhow—he taught her to read and write, very laboriously, and to calculate in figures up to the limits of primary arithmetic. It proved so exacting a job, requiring more patience and perseverance than ever he had devoted to his own studies, that he stopped "improving" his wife after that initial attempt was reasonably successful—recognizing what he was up against.
7So much for background. You now have in a general way some idea of the ingredients from which the boy was gradually formed. He was of medium height, but with the build of an athlete. Rather handsome—if you like the Slavic type with occasional suggestions of Tartar and Hun—and up to a certain point, ambitious. For all of which he could have thanked that strain of aristocratic blood. His taste for music would be, concededly, handed down from both sides—but the slant in his earlier years toward good music, from the paternal, only. His utter savagery, lack of restraint in quarrels with other boys, might have come partly from the aristocratic side as well,—the nobility all over that neck of woods never having been celebrated for angelic temperament,—but it came straighter and more viciously from the distaff branch. (Funny, how that sort of thing will skip a generation! Until she was thirty-five, Ekaterina had shown nothing but a phlegmatic, good-tempered disposition.)
9Constantin—the boy—followed his father's course until he was a very fair chemist and had the makings of a most unusual metallurgist. But at that point the general flabbiness of mind on the maternal side made him vacillating, undecided whether to go on with his father's work or give it up for a musical career which seemed easier and far more attractive. His father was disappointed, but enough of the musician himself to understand the pull and drag of the thing in the boy's mind. Ekaterina was all for the musical career. So Constantin went up to Berlin, where he had the best teachers for both the violin and piano until he played each instrument better than the average student. Then to Paris, where he studied harmony and composition under Farneuil—who saw enough talent in the boy to spend a good many extra hours in trying to break him of the obstinate slant toward radicalism in everything he did. Farneuil frequently became enraged enough to cuff the young fellow's ears—and finally told him he must either eradicate that propensity for assembling horrible tonic combinations or study under some other master if he could find any willing to put up with him.
11This threat produced in Constantin Dimitrivitch a brief reform and attention to harmonic construction which marked the highest point ever reached in his music studies. Under Farneuil's patient, exacting supervision, he produced a little sonata which he played at a matinée of the Paris Philharmonic, and won favorable comment from the critics and reasonable notice in the newspapers. After that he returned to Striev-gorod where it was understood he would remain until he had finished a "Symphonie Uralien" that he had been working on for some time. And that brings us to the night when—after such good-natured preliminary comment as the Paris press accorded to him—an orchestra of his own assembling was to give the first public rendering of his symphony at the Conservatoire.
13THE usual Conservatoire audience of music-lovers with a scattering of famous personages in the loges was in its seats before the conductor mounted his stand—a buzz of speculation filling the auditorium concerning this new composer and the nature of his work, which he had
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