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 the flame
has just been extinguished by water. He walked heavily, jerking his