After his doomed attempt at marriage, he ran away with his brother Modest, and in the spring of 1878 arrived in Rome, where he wrote to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck: ‘Just imagine, after all the horrors of Parisian winter, I am now under a clear blue sky where sun is shining in all its magnificence... I go out wearing nothing but a suit... I have an impression that a magical shift is finally happening to me.’