Nowhere did so many people pause as
before the little picture-shop in the Shtchukinui
Dvor. This little shop contained, indeed, the
most varied collection of curiosities. The pictures
were chiefly oil-paintings covered with dark varnish,
in frames of dingy yellow. Winter scenes with
white trees; very red sunsets, like raging conflagrations,
a Flemish boor, more like a turkey-cock in cuffs than
a human being, were the prevailing subjects.
To these must be added a few engravings, such as a
portrait of Khozreff-Mirza in a sheepskin cap, and
some generals with three-cornered hats and hooked noses.
Moreover, the doors of such shops are usually festooned
with bundles of those publications, printed on large
sheets of bark, and then coloured by hand, which bear
witness to the native talent of the Russian.
On one was the Tzarevna Miliktrisa
Kirbitievna; on another the city of Jerusalem.
There are usually but few purchasers of these productions,
but gazers are many. Some truant lackey probably
yawns in front of them, holding in his hand the dishes
containing dinner from the cook-shop for his master,
who will not get his soup very hot. Before them,
too, will most likely be standing a soldier wrapped
in his cloak, a dealer from the old-clothes mart,
with a couple of penknives for sale, and a huckstress,
with a basketful of shoes. Each expresses admiration
in his own way. The muzhiks generally touch them
with their fingers; the dealers gaze seriously at
them; serving boys and apprentices laugh, and tease
each other with the coloured caricatures; old lackeys
in frieze cloaks look at them merely for the sake
of yawning away their time somewhere; and the hucksters,
young Russian women, halt by instinct to hear what
people are gossiping about, and to see what they are
looking at.
At the time our story opens, the young
painter, Tchartkoff, paused involuntarily as he passed
the shop. His old cloak and plain attire showed
him to be a man who was devoted to his art with self-denying
zeal, and who had no time to trouble himself about
his clothes. He halted in front of the little
shop, and at first enjoyed an inward laugh over the
monstrosities in the shape of pictures.
At length he sank unconsciously into
a reverie, and began to ponder as to what sort of
people wanted these productions? It did not seem
remarkable to him that the Russian populace should
gaze with rapture upon “Eruslanoff Lazarevitch,”
on “The Glutton” and “The Carouser,”
on “Thoma and Erema.” The delineations
of these subjects were easily intelligible to the
masses. But where were there purchases for those
streaky, dirty oil-paintings? Who needed those
Flemish boors, those red and blue landscapes, which
put forth some claims to a higher stage of art, but
which really expressed the depths of its degradation?
They did not appear the works of a self-taught child.
In that case, in spite of the caricature of drawing,
a sharp distinction would have manifested itself.
But here were visible only simple dullness, steady-going
incapacity, which stood, through self-will, in the
ranks of art, while its true place was among the lowest
trades. The same colours, the same manner, the
same practised hand, belonging rather to a manufacturing
automaton than to a man!
He stood before the dirty pictures
for some time, his thoughts at length wandering to
other matters. Meanwhile the proprietor of the
shop, a little grey man, in a frieze cloak, with a
beard which had not been shaved since Sunday, had
been urging him to buy for some time, naming prices,
without even knowing what pleased him or what he wanted.
“Here, I’ll take a silver piece for these
peasants and this little landscape. What painting!
it fairly dazzles one; only just received from the
factory; the varnish isn’t dry yet. Or here
is a winter scene take the winter scene;
fifteen rubles; the frame alone is worth it. What
a winter scene!” Here the merchant gave a slight
fillip to the canvas, as if to demonstrate all the
merits of the winter scene. “Pray have them
put up and sent to your house. Where do you live?
Here, boy, give me some string!”
“Hold, not so fast!” said
the painter, coming to himself, and perceiving that
the brisk dealer was beginning in earnest to pack some
pictures up. He was rather ashamed not to take
anything after standing so long in front of the shop;
so saying, “Here, stop! I will see if there
is anything I want here!” he stooped and began
to pick up from the floor, where they were thrown
in a heap, some worn, dusty old paintings. There
were old family portraits, whose descendants, probably
could not be found on earth; with torn canvas and
frames minus their gilding; in short, trash.
But the painter began his search, thinking to himself,
“Perhaps I may come across something.”
He had heard stories about pictures of the great masters
having been found among the rubbish in cheap print-sellers’
shops.
The dealer, perceiving what he was
about, ceased his importunities, and took up his post
again at the door, hailing the passers-by with, “Hither,
friends, here are pictures; step in, step in; just
received from the makers!” He shouted his fill,
and generally in vain, had a long talk with a rag-merchant,
standing opposite, at the door of his shop; and finally,
recollecting that he had a customer in his shop, turned
his back on the public and went inside. “Well,
friend, have you chosen anything?” said he.
But the painter had already been standing motionless
for some time before a portrait in a large and originally
magnificent frame, upon which, however, hardly a trace
of gilding now remained.
It represented an old man, with a
thin, bronzed face and high cheek-bones; the features
seemingly depicted in a moment of convulsive agitation.
He wore a flowing Asiatic costume. Dusty and defaced
as the portrait was, Tchartkoff saw, when he had succeeded
in removing the dirt from the face, traces of the
work of a great artist. The portrait appeared
to be unfinished, but the power of the handling was
striking. The eyes were the most remarkable picture
of all: it seemed as though the full power of
the artist’s brush had been lavished upon them.
They fairly gazed out of the portrait, destroying
its harmony with their strange liveliness. When
he carried the portrait to the door, the eyes gleamed
even more penetratingly. They produced nearly
the same impression on the public. A woman standing
behind him exclaimed, “He is looking, he is
looking!” and jumped back. Tchartkoff experienced
an unpleasant feeling, inexplicable even to himself,
and placed the portrait on the floor.
“Well, will you take the portrait?” said
the dealer.
“How much is it?” said the painter.
“Why chaffer over it? give me seventy-five kopeks.”
“No.”
“Well, how much will you give?”
“Twenty kopeks,” said the painter, preparing
to go.
“What a price! Why, you
couldn’t buy the frame for that! Perhaps
you will decide to purchase to-morrow. Sir, sir,
turn back! Add ten kopeks. Take it, take
it! give me twenty kopeks. To tell the truth,
you are my only customer to-day, and that’s
the only reason.”
Thus Tchartkoff quite unexpectedly
became the purchaser of the old portrait, and at the
same time reflected, “Why have I bought it?
What is it to me?” But there was nothing to
be done. He pulled a twenty-kopek piece from
his pocket, gave it to the merchant, took the portrait
under his arm, and carried it home. On the way
thither, he remembered that the twenty-kopek piece
he had given for it was his last. His thoughts
at once became gloomy. Vexation and careless
indifference took possession of him at one and the
same moment. The red light of sunset still lingered
in one half the sky; the houses facing that way still
gleamed with its warm light; and meanwhile the cold
blue light of the moon grew brighter. Light,
half-transparent shadows fell in bands upon the ground.
The painter began by degrees to glance up at the sky,
flushed with a transparent light; and at the same
moment from his mouth fell the words, “What
a delicate tone! What a nuisance! Deuce take
it!” Re-adjusting the portrait, which kept slipping
from under his arm, he quickened his pace.
Weary and bathed in perspiration,
he dragged himself to Vasilievsky Ostroff. With
difficulty and much panting he made his way up the
stairs flooded with soap-suds, and adorned with the
tracks of dogs and cats. To his knock there was
no answer: there was no one at home. He leaned
against the window, and disposed himself to wait patiently,
until at last there resounded behind him the footsteps
of a boy in a blue blouse, his servant, model, and
colour-grinder. This boy was called Nikita, and
spent all his time in the streets when his master was
not at home. Nikita tried for a long time to
get the key into the lock, which was quite invisible,
by reason of the darkness.
Finally the door was opened.
Tchartkoff entered his ante-room, which was intolerably
cold, as painters’ rooms always are, which fact,
however, they do not notice. Without giving Nikita
his coat, he went on into his studio, a large room,
but low, fitted up with all sorts of artistic rubbish plaster
hands, canvases, sketches begun and discarded, and
draperies thrown over chairs. Feeling very tired,
he took off his cloak, placed the portrait abstractedly
between two small canvasses, and threw himself on
the narrow divan. Having stretched himself out,
he finally called for a light.
“There are no candles,” said Nikita.
“What, none?”
“And there were none last night,”
said Nikita. The artist recollected that, in
fact, there had been no candles the previous evening,
and became silent. He let Nikita take his coat
off, and put on his old worn dressing-gown.
“There has been a gentleman here,” said
Nikita.
“Yes, he came for money, I know,” said
the painter, waving his hand.
“He was not alone,” said Nikita.
“Who else was with him?”
“I don’t know, some police officer or
other.”
“But why a police officer?”
“I don’t know why, but he says because
your rent is not paid.”
“Well, what will come of it?”
“I don’t know what will
come of it: he said, ’If he won’t
pay, why, let him leave the rooms.’ They
are both coming again to-morrow.”
“Let them come,” said
Tchartkoff, with indifference; and a gloomy mood took
full possession of him.
Young Tchartkoff was an artist of
talent, which promised great things: his work
gave evidence of observation, thought, and a strong
inclination to approach nearer to nature.
“Look here, my friend,”
his professor said to him more than once, “you
have talent; it will be a shame if you waste it:
but you are impatient; you have but to be attracted
by anything, to fall in love with it, you become engrossed
with it, and all else goes for nothing, and you won’t
even look at it. See to it that you do not become
a fashionable artist. At present your colouring
begins to assert itself too loudly; and your drawing
is at times quite weak; you are already striving after
the fashionable style, because it strikes the eye
at once. Have a care! society already begins
to have its attraction for you: I have seen you
with a shiny hat, a foppish neckerchief.... It
is seductive to paint fashionable little pictures
and portraits for money; but talent is ruined, not
developed, by that means. Be patient; think out
every piece of work, discard your foppishness; let
others amass money, your own will not fail you.”
The professor was partly right.
Our artist sometimes wanted to enjoy himself, to play
the fop, in short, to give vent to his youthful impulses
in some way or other; but he could control himself
withal. At times he would forget everything,
when he had once taken his brush in his hand, and
could not tear himself from it except as from a delightful
dream. His taste perceptibly developed. He
did not as yet understand all the depths of Raphael,
but he was attracted by Guido’s broad and rapid
handling, he paused before Titian’s portraits,
he delighted in the Flemish masters. The dark
veil enshrouding the ancient pictures had not yet
wholly passed away from before them; but he already
saw something in them, though in private he did not
agree with the professor that the secrets of the old
masters are irremediably lost to us. It seemed
to him that the nineteenth century had improved upon
them considerably, that the delineation of nature
was more clear, more vivid, more close. It sometimes
vexed him when he saw how a strange artist, French
or German, sometimes not even a painter by profession,
but only a skilful dauber, produced, by the celerity
of his brush and the vividness of his colouring, a
universal commotion, and amassed in a twinkling a funded
capital. This did not occur to him when fully
occupied with his own work, for then he forgot food
and drink and all the world. But when dire want
arrived, when he had no money wherewith to buy brushes
and colours, when his implacable landlord came ten
times a day to demand the rent for his rooms, then
did the luck of the wealthy artists recur to his hungry
imagination; then did the thought which so often traverses
Russian minds, to give up altogether, and go down
hill, utterly to the bad, traverse his. And now
he was almost in this frame of mind.
“Yes, it is all very well, to
be patient, be patient!” he exclaimed, with
vexation; “but there is an end to patience at
last. Be patient! but what money have I to buy
a dinner with to-morrow? No one will lend me
any. If I did bring myself to sell all my pictures
and sketches, they would not give me twenty kopeks
for the whole of them. They are useful; I feel
that not one of them has been undertaken in vain; I
have learned something from each one. Yes, but
of what use is it? Studies, sketches, all will
be studies, trial-sketches to the end. And who
will buy, not even knowing me by name? Who wants
drawings from the antique, or the life class, or my
unfinished love of a Psyche, or the interior of my
room, or the portrait of Nikita, though it is better,
to tell the truth, than the portraits by any of the
fashionable artists? Why do I worry, and toil
like a learner over the alphabet, when I might shine
as brightly as the rest, and have money, too, like
them?”
Thus speaking, the artist suddenly
shuddered, and turned pale. A convulsively distorted
face gazed at him, peeping forth from the surrounding
canvas; two terrible eyes were fixed straight upon
him; on the mouth was written a menacing command of
silence. Alarmed, he tried to scream and summon
Nikita, who already was snoring in the ante-room;
but he suddenly paused and laughed. The sensation
of fear died away in a moment; it was the portrait
he had bought, and which he had quite forgotten.
The light of the moon illuminating the chamber had
fallen upon it, and lent it a strange likeness to
life.
He began to examine it. He moistened
a sponge with water, passed it over the picture several
times, washed off nearly all the accumulated and incrusted
dust and dirt, hung it on the wall before him, wondering
yet more at the remarkable workmanship. The whole
face had gained new life, and the eyes gazed at him
so that he shuddered; and, springing back, he exclaimed
in a voice of surprise: “It looks with human
eyes!” Then suddenly there occurred to him a
story he had heard long before from his professor,
of a certain portrait by the renowned Leonardo
da Vinci, upon which the great master laboured
several years, and still regarded as incomplete, but
which, according to Vasari, was nevertheless deemed
by all the most complete and finished product of his
art. The most finished thing about it was the
eyes, which amazed his contemporaries; the very smallest,
barely visible veins in them being reproduced on the
canvas.
But in the portrait now before him
there was something singular. It was no longer
art; it even destroyed the harmony of the portrait;
they were living, human eyes! It seemed as though
they had been cut from a living man and inserted.
Here was none of that high enjoyment which takes possession
of the soul at the sight of an artist’s production,
no matter how terrible the subject he may have chosen.
Again he approached the portrait,
in order to observe those wondrous eyes, and perceived,
with terror, that they were gazing at him. This
was no copy from Nature; it was life, the strange life
which might have lighted up the face of a dead man,
risen from the grave. Whether it was the effect
of the moonlight, which brought with it fantastic thoughts,
and transformed things into strange likenesses, opposed
to those of matter-of-fact day, or from some other
cause, but it suddenly became terrible to him, he
knew not why, to sit alone in the room. He draw
back from the portrait, turned aside, and tried not
to look at it; but his eye involuntarily, of its own
accord, kept glancing sideways towards it. Finally,
he became afraid to walk about the room. It seemed
as though some one were on the point of stepping up
behind him; and every time he turned, he glanced timidly
back. He had never been a coward; but his imagination
and nerves were sensitive, and that evening he could
not explain his involuntary fear. He seated himself
in one corner, but even then it seemed to him that
some one was peeping over his shoulder into his face.
Even Nikita’s snores, resounding from the ante-room,
did not chase away his fear. At length he rose
from the seat, without raising his eyes, went behind
a screen, and lay down on his bed. Through the
cracks of the screen he saw his room lit up by the
moon, and the portrait hanging stiffly on the wall.
The eyes were fixed upon him in a yet more terrible
and significant manner, and it seemed as if they would
not look at anything but himself. Overpowered
with a feeling of oppression, he decided to rise from
his bed, seized a sheet, and, approaching the portrait,
covered it up completely.
Having done this, he lay done more
at ease on his bed, and began to meditate upon the
poverty and pitiful lot of the artist, and the thorny
path lying before him in the world. But meanwhile
his eye glanced involuntarily through the joint of
the screen at the portrait muffled in the sheet.
The light of the moon heightened the whiteness of the
sheet, and it seemed to him as though those terrible
eyes shone through the cloth. With terror he
fixed his eyes more steadfastly on the spot, as if
wishing to convince himself that it was all nonsense.
But at length he saw saw clearly; there
was no longer a sheet the portrait was quite
uncovered, and was gazing beyond everything around
it, straight at him; gazing as it seemed fairly into
his heart. His heart grew cold. He watched
anxiously; the old man moved, and suddenly, supporting
himself on the frame with both arms, raised himself
by his hands, and, putting forth both feet, leapt
out of the frame. Through the crack of the screen,
the empty frame alone was now visible. Footsteps
resounded through the room, and approached nearer
and nearer to the screen. The poor artist’s
heart began beating fast. He expected every moment,
his breath failing for fear, that the old man would
look round the screen at him. And lo! he did
look from behind the screen, with the very same bronzed
face, and with his big eyes roving about.
Tchartkoff tried to scream, and felt
that his voice was gone; he tried to move; his limbs
refused their office. With open mouth, and failing
breath, he gazed at the tall phantom, draped in some
kind of a flowing Asiatic robe, and waited for what
it would do. The old man sat down almost on his
very feet, and then pulled out something from among
the folds of his wide garment. It was a purse.
The old man untied it, took it by the end, and shook
it. Heavy rolls of coin fell out with a dull
thud upon the floor. Each was wrapped in blue
paper, and on each was marked, “1000 ducats.”
The old man protruded his long, bony hand from his
wide sleeves, and began to undo the rolls. The
gold glittered. Great as was the artist’s
unreasoning fear, he concentrated all his attention
upon the gold, gazing motionless, as it made its appearance
in the bony hands, gleamed, rang lightly or dully,
and was wrapped up again. Then he perceived one
packet which had rolled farther than the rest, to the
very leg of his bedstead, near his pillow. He
grasped it almost convulsively, and glanced in fear
at the old man to see whether he noticed it.
But the old man appeared very much
occupied: he collected all his rolls, replaced
them in the purse, and went outside the screen without
looking at him. Tchartkoff’s heart beat
wildly as he heard the rustle of the retreating footsteps
sounding through the room. He clasped the roll
of coin more closely in his hand, quivering in every
limb. Suddenly he heard the footsteps approaching
the screen again. Apparently the old man had
recollected that one roll was missing. Lo! again
he looked round the screen at him. The artist
in despair grasped the roll with all his strength,
tried with all his power to make a movement, shrieked and
awoke.
He was bathed in a cold perspiration;
his heart beat as hard as it was possible for it to
beat; his chest was oppressed, as though his last
breath was about to issue from it. “Was
it a dream?” he said, seizing his head with
both hands. But the terrible reality of the apparition
did not resemble a dream. As he woke, he saw the
old man step into the frame: the skirts of the
flowing garment even fluttered, and his hand felt
plainly that a moment before it had held something
heavy. The moonlight lit up the room, bringing
out from the dark corners here a canvas, there the
model of a hand: a drapery thrown over a chair;
trousers and dirty boots. Then he perceived that
he was not lying in his bed, but standing upright
in front of the portrait. How he had come there,
he could not in the least comprehend. Still more
surprised was he to find the portrait uncovered, and
with actually no sheet over it. Motionless with
terror, he gazed at it, and perceived that the living,
human eyes were fastened upon him. A cold perspiration
broke out upon his forehead. He wanted to move
away, but felt that his feet had in some way become
rooted to the earth. And he felt that this was
not a dream. The old man’s features moved,
and his lips began to project towards him, as though
he wanted to suck him in. With a yell of despair
he jumped back and awoke.
“Was it a dream?” With
his heart throbbing to bursting, he felt about him
with both hands. Yes, he was lying in bed, and
in precisely the position in which he had fallen asleep.
Before him stood the screen. The moonlight flooded
the room. Through the crack of the screen, the
portrait was visible, covered with the sheet, as it
should be, just as he had covered it. And so
that, too, was a dream? But his clenched fist
still felt as though something had been held in it.
The throbbing of his heart was violent, almost terrible;
the weight upon his breast intolerable. He fixed
his eyes upon the crack, and stared steadfastly at
the sheet. And lo! he saw plainly the sheet begin
to open, as though hands were pushing from underneath,
and trying to throw it off. “Lord God,
what is it!” he shrieked, crossing himself in
despair and awoke.
And was this, too, a dream? He
sprang from his bed, half-mad, and could not comprehend
what had happened to him. Was it the oppression
of a nightmare, the raving of fever, or an actual
apparition? Striving to calm, as far as possible,
his mental tumult, and stay the wildly rushing blood,
which beat with straining pulses in every vein, he
went to the window and opened it. The cool breeze
revived him. The moonlight lay on the roofs and
the white walls of the houses, though small clouds
passed frequently across the sky. All was still:
from time to time there struck the ear the distant
rumble of a carriage. He put his head out of the
window, and gazed for some time. Already the signs
of approaching dawn were spreading over the sky.
At last he felt drowsy, shut to the window, stepped
back, lay down in bed, and quickly fell, like one exhausted,
into a deep sleep.
He awoke late, and with the disagreeable
feeling of a man who has been half-suffocated with
coal-gas: his head ached painfully. The room
was dim: an unpleasant moisture pervaded the
air, and penetrated the cracks of his windows.
Dissatisfied and depressed as a wet cock, he seated
himself on his dilapidated divan, not knowing what
to do, what to set about, and at length remembered
the whole of his dream. As he recalled it, the
dream presented itself to his mind as so oppressively
real that he even began to wonder whether it were
a dream, whether there were not something more here,
whether it were not really an apparition. Removing
the sheet, he looked at the terrible portrait by the
light of day. The eyes were really striking in
their liveliness, but he found nothing particularly
terrible about them, though an indescribably unpleasant
feeling lingered in his mind. Nevertheless, he
could not quite convince himself that it was a dream.
It struck him that there must have been some terrible
fragment of reality in the vision. It seemed as
though there were something in the old man’s
very glance and expression which said that he had
been with him that night: his hand still felt
the weight which had so recently lain in it as if
some one had but just snatched it from him. It
seemed to him that, if he had only grasped the roll
more firmly, it would have remained in his hand, even
after his awakening.
“My God, if I only had a portion
of that money!” he said, breathing heavily;
and in his fancy, all the rolls of coin, with their
fascinating inscription, “1000 ducats,”
began to pour out of the purse. The rolls opened,
the gold glittered, and was wrapped up again; and he
sat motionless, with his eyes fixed on the empty air,
as if he were incapable of tearing himself from such
a sight, like a child who sits before a plate of sweets,
and beholds, with watering mouth, other people devouring
them.
At last there came a knock on the
door, which recalled him unpleasantly to himself.
The landlord entered with the constable of the district,
whose presence is even more disagreeable to poor people
than is the presence of a beggar to the rich.
The landlord of the little house in which Tchartkoff
lived resembled the other individuals who own houses
anywhere in the Vasilievsky Ostroff, on the St. Petersburg
side, or in the distant regions of Kolomna individuals
whose character is as difficult to define as the colour
of a threadbare surtout. In his youth he had
been a captain and a braggart, a master in the art
of flogging, skilful, foppish, and stupid; but in
his old age he combined all these various qualities
into a kind of dim indefiniteness. He was a widower,
already on the retired list, no longer boasted, nor
was dandified, nor quarrelled, but only cared to drink
tea and talk all sorts of nonsense over it. He
walked about his room, and arranged the ends of the
tallow candles; called punctually at the end of each
month upon his lodgers for money; went out into the
street, with the key in his hand, to look at the roof
of his house, and sometimes chased the porter out of
his den, where he had hidden himself to sleep.
In short, he was a man on the retired list, who, after
the turmoils and wildness of his life, had only his
old-fashioned habits left.
“Please to see for yourself,
Varukh Kusmitch,” said the landlord, turning
to the officer, and throwing out his hands, “this
man does not pay his rent, he does not pay.”
“How can I when I have no money? Wait,
and I will pay.”
“I can’t wait, my good
fellow,” said the landlord angrily, making a
gesture with the key which he held in his hand.
“Lieutenant-Colonel Potogonkin has lived with
me seven years, seven years already; Anna Petrovna
Buchmisteroff rents the coach-house and stable, with
the exception of two stalls, and has three household
servants: that is the kind of lodgers I have.
I say to you frankly, that this is not an establishment
where people do not pay their rent. Pay your money
at once, please, or else clear out.”
“Yes, if you rented the rooms,
please to pay,” said the constable, with a slight
shake of the head, as he laid his finger on one of
the buttons of his uniform.
“Well, what am I to pay with?
that’s the question. I haven’t a groschen
just at present.”
“In that case, satisfy the claims
of Ivan Ivanovitch with the fruits of your profession,”
said the officer: “perhaps he will consent
to take pictures.”
“No, thank you, my good fellow,
no pictures. Pictures of holy subjects, such
as one could hang upon the walls, would be well enough;
or some general with a star, or Prince Kutusoff’s
portrait. But this fellow has painted that muzhik,
that muzhik in his blouse, his servant who grinds
his colours! The idea of painting his portrait,
the hog! I’ll thrash him well: he
took all the nails out of my bolts, the scoundrel!
Just see what subjects! Here he has drawn his
room. It would have been well enough had he taken
a clean, well-furnished room; but he has gone and
drawn this one, with all the dirt and rubbish he has
collected. Just see how he has defaced my room!
Look for yourself. Yes, and my lodgers have been
with me seven years, the lieutenant-colonel, Anna Petrovna
Buchmisteroff. No, I tell you, there is no worse
lodger than a painter: he lives like a pig God
have mercy!”
The poor artist had to listen patiently
to all this. Meanwhile the officer had occupied
himself with examining the pictures and studies, and
showed that his mind was more advanced than the landlord’s,
and that he was not insensible to artistic impressions.
“Heh!” said he, tapping
one canvas, on which was depicted a naked woman, “this
subject is lively. But why so much
black under her nose? did she take snuff?”
“Shadow,” answered Tchartkoff
gruffly, without looking at him.
“But it might have been put
in some other place: it is too conspicuous under
the nose,” observed the officer. “And
whose likeness is this?” he continued, approaching
the old man’s portrait. “It is too
terrible. Was he really so dreadful? Ah!
why, he actually looks at one! What a thunder-cloud!
From whom did you paint it?”
“Ah! it is from a ”
said Tchartkoff, but did not finish his sentence:
he heard a crack. It seems that the officer had
pressed too hard on the frame of the portrait, thanks
to the weight of his constable’s hands.
The small boards at the side caved in, one fell on
the floor, and with it fell, with a heavy crash, a
roll of blue paper. The inscription caught Tchartkoff’s
eye “1000 ducats.”
Like a madman, he sprang to pick it up, grasped the
roll, and gripped it convulsively in his hand, which
sank with the weight.
“Wasn’t there a sound
of money?” inquired the officer, hearing the
noise of something falling on the floor, and not catching
sight of it, owing to the rapidity with which Tchartkoff
had hastened to pick it up.
“What business is it of yours what is in my
room?”
“It’s my business because
you ought to pay your rent to the landlord at once;
because you have money, and won’t pay, that’s
why it’s my business.”
“Well, I will pay him to-day.”
“Well, and why wouldn’t
you pay before, instead of giving trouble to your
landlord, and bothering the police to boot?”
“Because I did not want to touch
this money. I will pay him in full this evening,
and leave the rooms to-morrow. I will not stay
with such a landlord.”
“Well, Ivan Ivanovitch, he will
pay you,” said the constable, turning to the
landlord. “But in case you are not satisfied
in every respect this evening, then you must excuse
me, Mr. Painter.” So saying, he put on
his three-cornered hat, and went into the ante-room,
followed by the landlord hanging his head, and apparently
engaged in meditation.
“Thank God, Satan has carried
them off!” said Tchartkoff, as he heard the
outer door of the ante-room close. He looked out
into the ante-room, sent Nikita off on some errand,
in order to be quite alone, fastened the door behind
him, and, returning to his room, began with wildly
beating heart to undo the roll.
In it were ducats, all new, and
bright as fire. Almost beside himself, he sat
down beside the pile of gold, still asking himself,
“Is not this all a dream?” There were
just a thousand in the roll, the exterior of which
was precisely like what he had seen in his dream.
He turned them over, and looked at them for some minutes.
His imagination recalled up all the tales he had heard
of hidden hoards, cabinets with secret drawers, left
by ancestors for their spendthrift descendants, with
firm belief in the extravagance of their life.
He pondered this: “Did not some grandfather,
in the present instance, leave a gift for his grandchild,
shut up in the frame of a family portrait?” Filled
with romantic fancies, he began to think whether this
had not some secret connection with his fate? whether
the existence of the portrait was not bound up with
his own, and whether his acquisition of it was not
due to a kind of predestination?
He began to examine the frame with
curiosity. On one side a cavity was hollowed
out, but concealed so skilfully and neatly by a little
board, that, if the massive hand of the constable
had not effected a breach, the ducats might have
remained hidden to the end of time. On examining
the portrait, he marvelled again at the exquisite workmanship,
the extraordinary treatment of the eyes. They
no longer appeared terrible to him; but, nevertheless,
each time he looked at them a disagreeable feeling
involuntarily lingered in his mind.
“No,” he said to himself,
“no matter whose grandfather you were, I’ll
put a glass over you, and get you a gilt frame.”
Then he laid his hand on the golden pile before him,
and his heart beat faster at the touch. “What
shall I do with them?” he said, fixing his eyes
on them. “Now I am independent for at least
three years: I can shut myself up in my room
and work. I have money for colours now; for food
and lodging no one will annoy and disturb
me now. I will buy myself a first-class lay figure,
I will order a plaster torso, and some model feet,
I will have a Venus. I will buy engravings of
the best pictures. And if I work three years
to satisfy myself, without haste or with the idea of
selling, I shall surpass all, and may become a distinguished
artist.”
Thus he spoke in solitude, with his
good judgment prompting him; but louder and more distinct
sounded another voice within him. As he glanced
once more at the gold, it was not thus that his twenty-two
years and fiery youth reasoned. Now everything
was within his power on which he had hitherto gazed
with envious eyes, had viewed from afar with longing.
How his heart beat when he thought of it! To wear
a fashionable coat, to feast after long abstinence,
to hire handsome apartments, to go at once to the
theatre, to the confectioner’s, to... other places;
and seizing his money, he was in the street in a moment.
First of all he went to the tailor,
was clothed anew from head to foot, and began to look
at himself like a child. He purchased perfumes
and pomades; hired the first elegant suite of apartments
with mirrors and plateglass windows which he came
across in the Nevsky Prospect, without haggling about
the price; bought, on the impulse of the moment, a
costly eye-glass; bought, also on the impulse, a number
of neckties of every description, many more than he
needed; had his hair curled at the hairdresser’s;
rode through the city twice without any object whatever;
ate an immense quantity of sweetmeats at the confectioner’s;
and went to the French Restaurant, of which he had
heard rumours as indistinct as though they had concerned
the Empire of China. There he dined, casting
proud glances at the other visitors, and continually
arranging his curls in the glass. There he drank
a bottle of champagne, which had been known to him
hitherto only by hearsay. The wine rather affected
his head; and he emerged into the street, lively,
pugnacious, and ready to raise the Devil, according
to the Russian expression. He strutted along the
pavement, levelling his eye-glass at everybody.
On the bridge he caught sight of his former professor,
and slipped past him neatly, as if he did not see
him, so that the astounded professor stood stock-still
on the bridge for a long time, with a face suggestive
of a note of interrogation.
All his goods and chattels, everything
he owned, easels, canvas, pictures, were transported
that same evening to his elegant quarters. He
arranged the best of them in conspicuous places, threw
the worst into a corner, and promenaded up and down
the handsome rooms, glancing constantly in the mirrors.
An unconquerable desire to take the bull by the horns,
and show himself to the world at once, had arisen in
his mind. He already heard the shouts, “Tchartkoff!
Tchartkoff! Tchartkoff paints! What talent
Tchartkoff has!” He paced the room in a state
of rapture.
The next day he took ten ducats,
and went to the editor of a popular journal asking
his charitable assistance. He was joyfully received
by the journalist, who called him on the spot, “Most
respected sir,” squeezed both his hands, and
made minute inquiries as to his name, birthplace,
residence. The next day there appeared in the
journal, below a notice of some newly invented tallow
candles, an article with the following heading:
“Tchartkoff’s immense talent
“We hasten to delight the cultivated
inhabitants of the capital with a discovery which
we may call splendid in every respect. All are
agreed that there are among us many very handsome
faces, but hitherto there has been no means of committing
them to canvas for transmission to posterity.
This want has now been supplied: an artist has
been found who unites in himself all desirable qualities.
The beauty can now feel assured that she will be depicted
with all the grace of her charms, airy, fascinating,
butterfly-like, flitting among the flowers of spring.
The stately father of a family can see himself surrounded
by his family. Merchant, warrior, citizen, statesman hasten
one and all, wherever you may be. The artist’s
magnificent establishment (Nevsky Prospect, such and
such a number) is hung with portraits from his brush,
worthy of Van Dyck or Titian. We do not know
which to admire most, their truth and likeness to
the originals, or the wonderful brilliancy and freshness
of the colouring. Hail to you, artist! you have
drawn a lucky number in the lottery. Long live
Andrei Petrovitch!” (The journalist evidently
liked familiarity.) “Glorify yourself and us.
We know how to prize you. Universal popularity,
and with it wealth, will be your meed, though some
of our brother journalists may rise against you.”
The artist read this article with
secret satisfaction; his face beamed. He was
mentioned in print; it was a novelty to him: he
read the lines over several times. The comparison
with Van Dyck and Titian flattered him extremely.
The praise, “Long live Andrei Petrovitch,”
also pleased him greatly: to be spoken of by
his Christian name and patronymic in print was an
honour hitherto totally unknown to him. He began
to pace the chamber briskly, now he sat down in an
armchair, now he sprang up, and seated himself on
the sofa, planning each moment how he would receive
visitors, male and female; he went to his canvas and
made a rapid sweep of the brush, endeavouring to impart
a graceful movement to his hand.
The next day, the bell at his door
rang. He hastened to open it. A lady entered,
accompanied by a girl of eighteen, her daughter, and
followed by a lackey in a furred livery-coat.
“You are the painter Tchartkoff?”
The artist bowed.
“A great deal is written about
you: your portraits, it is said, are the height
of perfection.” So saying, the lady raised
her glass to her eyes and glanced rapidly over the
walls, upon which nothing was hanging. “But
where are your portraits?”
“They have been taken away”
replied the artist, somewhat confusedly: “I
have but just moved into these apartments; so they
are still on the road, they have not arrived.”
“You have been in Italy?”
asked the lady, levelling her glass at him, as she
found nothing else to point it at.
“No, I have not been there;
but I wish to go, and I have deferred it for a while.
Here is an arm-chair, madame: you are fatigued?”
“Thank you: I have been
sitting a long time in the carriage. Ah, at last
I behold your work!” said the lady, running to
the opposite wall, and bringing her glass to bear
upon his studies, sketches, views and portraits which
were standing there on the floor. “It is
charming. Lise! Lise, come here. Rooms
in the style of Teniers. Do you see? Disorder,
disorder, a table with a bust upon it, a hand, a palette;
dust, see how the dust is painted! It is charming.
And here on this canvas is a woman washing her face.
What a pretty face! Ah! a little muzhik!
So you do not devote yourself exclusively to portraits?”
“Oh! that is mere rubbish.
I was trying experiments, studies.”
“Tell me your opinion of the
portrait painters of the present day. Is it not
true that there are none now like Titian? There
is not that strength of colour, that that What
a pity that I cannot express myself in Russian.”
The lady was fond of paintings, and had gone through
all the galleries in Italy with her eye-glass.
“But Monsieur Nohl ah, how well he
paints! what remarkable work! I think his faces
have been more expression than Titian’s.
You do not know Monsieur Nohl?”
“Who is Nohl?” inquired the artist.
“Monsieur Nohl. Ah, what
talent! He painted her portrait when she was
only twelve years old. You must certainly come
to see us. Lise, you shall show him your album.
You know, we came expressly that you might begin her
portrait immediately.”
“What? I am ready this
very moment.” And in a trice he pulled forward
an easel with a canvas already prepared, grasped his
palette, and fixed his eyes on the daughter’s
pretty little face. If he had been acquainted
with human nature, he might have read in it the dawning
of a childish passion for balls, the dawning of sorrow
and misery at the length of time before dinner and
after dinner, the heavy traces of uninterested application
to various arts, insisted upon by her mother for the
elevation of her mind. But the artist saw only
the tender little face, a seductive subject for his
brush, the body almost as transparent as porcelain,
the delicate white neck, and the aristocratically slender
form. And he prepared beforehand to triumph, to
display the delicacy of his brush, which had hitherto
had to deal only with the harsh features of coarse
models, and severe antiques and copies of classic masters.
He already saw in fancy how this delicate little face
would turn out.
“Do you know,” said the
lady with a positively touching expression of countenance,
“I should like her to be painted simply attired,
and seated among green shadows, like meadows, with
a flock or a grove in the distance, so that it could
not be seen that she goes to balls or fashionable
entertainments. Our balls, I must confess, murder
the intellect, deaden all remnants of feeling.
Simplicity! would there were more simplicity!”
Alas, it was stamped on the faces of mother and daughter
that they had so overdanced themselves at balls that
they had become almost wax figures.
Tchartkoff set to work, posed his
model, reflected a bit, fixed upon the idea, waved
his brush in the air, settling the points mentally,
and then began and finished the sketching in within
an hour. Satisfied with it, he began to paint.
The task fascinated him; he forgot everything, forgot
the very existence of the aristocratic ladies, began
even to display some artistic tricks, uttering various
odd sounds and humming to himself now and then as
artists do when immersed heart and soul in their work.
Without the slightest ceremony, he made the sitter
lift her head, which finally began to express utter
weariness.
“Enough for the first time,” said the
lady.
“A little more,” said the artist, forgetting
himself.
“No, it is time to stop.
Lise, three o’clock!” said the lady, taking
out a tiny watch which hung by a gold chain from her
girdle. “How late it is!”
“Only a minute,” said
Tchartkoff innocently, with the pleading voice of
a child.
But the lady appeared to be not at
all inclined to yield to his artistic demands on this
occasion; she promised, however, to sit longer the
next time.
“It is vexatious, all the same,”
thought Tchartkoff to himself: “I had just
got my hand in;” and he remembered no one had
interrupted him or stopped him when he was at work
in his studio on Vasilievsky Ostroff. Nikita
sat motionless in one place. You might even paint
him as long as you pleased; he even went to sleep
in the attitude prescribed him. Feeling dissatisfied,
he laid his brush and palette on a chair, and paused
in irritation before the picture.
The woman of the world’s compliments
awoke him from his reverie. He flew to the door
to show them out: on the stairs he received an
invitation to dine with them the following week, and
returned with a cheerful face to his apartments.
The aristocratic lady had completely charmed him.
Up to that time he had looked upon such beings as
unapproachable, born solely to ride in magnificent
carriages, with liveried footmen and stylish coachmen,
and to cast indifferent glances on the poor man travelling
on foot in a cheap cloak. And now, all of a sudden,
one of these very beings had entered his room; he
was painting her portrait, was invited to dinner at
an aristocratic house. An unusual feeling of pleasure
took possession of him: he was completely intoxicated,
and rewarded himself with a splendid dinner, an evening
at the theatre, and a drive through the city in a
carriage, without any necessity whatever.
But meanwhile his ordinary work did
not fall in with his mood at all. He did nothing
but wait for the moment when the bell should ring.
At last the aristocratic lady arrived with her pale
daughter. He seated them, drew forward the canvas
with skill, and some efforts of fashionable airs,
and began to paint. The sunny day and bright light
aided him not a little: he saw in his dainty
sitter much which, caught and committed to canvas,
would give great value to the portrait. He perceived
that he might accomplish something good if he could
reproduce, with accuracy, all that nature then offered
to his eyes. His heart began to beat faster as
he felt that he was expressing something which others
had not even seen as yet. His work engrossed
him completely: he was wholly taken up with it,
and again forgot the aristocratic origin of the sitter.
With heaving breast he saw the delicate features and
the almost transparent body of the fair maiden grow
beneath his hand. He had caught every shade,
the slight sallowness, the almost imperceptible blue
tinge under the eyes and was already preparing
to put in the tiny mole on the brow, when he suddenly
heard the mother’s voice behind him.
“Ah! why do you paint that?
it is not necessary: and you have made it here,
in several places, rather yellow; and here, quite so,
like dark spots.”
The artist undertook to explain that
the spots and yellow tinge would turn out well, that
they brought out the delicate and pleasing tones of
the face. He was informed that they did not bring
out tones, and would not turn out well at all.
It was explained to him that just to-day Lise did
not feel quite well; that she never was sallow, and
that her face was distinguished for its fresh colouring.
Sadly he began to erase what his brush
had put upon the canvas. Many a nearly imperceptible
feature disappeared, and with it vanished too a portion
of the resemblance. He began indifferently to
impart to the picture that commonplace colouring which
can be painted mechanically, and which lends to a
face, even when taken from nature, the sort of cold
ideality observable on school programmes. But
the lady was satisfied when the objectionable tone
was quite banished. She merely expressed surprise
that the work lasted so long, and added that she had
heard that he finished a portrait completely in two
sittings. The artist could not think of any answer
to this. The ladies rose, and prepared to depart.
He laid aside his brush, escorted them to the door,
and then stood disconsolate for a long while in one
spot before the portrait.
He gazed stupidly at it; and meanwhile
there floated before his mind’s eye those delicate
features, those shades, and airy tints which he had
copied, and which his brush had annihilated. Engrossed
with them, he put the portrait on one side and hunted
up a head of Psyche which he had some time before
thrown on canvas in a sketchy manner. It was a
pretty little face, well painted, but entirely ideal,
and having cold, regular features not lit up by life.
For lack of occupation, he now began to tone it up,
imparting to it all he had taken note of in his aristocratic
sitter. Those features, shadows, tints, which
he had noted, made their appearance here in the purified
form in which they appear when the painter, after
closely observing nature, subordinates himself to her,
and produces a creation equal to her own.
Psyche began to live: and the
scarcely dawning thought began, little by little,
to clothe itself in a visible form. The type of
face of the fashionable young lady was unconsciously
transferred to Psyche, yet nevertheless she had an
expression of her own which gave the picture claims
to be considered in truth an original creation.
Tchartkoff gave himself up entirely to his work.
For several days he was engrossed by it alone, and
the ladies surprised him at it on their arrival.
He had not time to remove the picture from the easel.
Both ladies uttered a cry of amazement, and clasped
their hands.
“Lise, Lise! Ah, how like!
Superb, superb! What a happy thought, too, to
drape her in a Greek costume! Ah, what a surprise!”
The artist could not see his way to
disabuse the ladies of their error. Shamefacedly,
with drooping head, he murmured, “This is Psyche.”
“In the character of Psyche?
Charming!” said the mother, smiling, upon which
the daughter smiled too. “Confess, Lise,
it pleases you to be painted in the character of Psyche
better than any other way? What a sweet idea!
But what treatment! It is Correggio himself.
I must say that, although I had read and heard about
you, I did not know you had so much talent. You
positively must paint me too.” Evidently
the lady wanted to be portrayed as some kind of Psyche
too.
“What am I to do with them?”
thought the artist. “If they will have it
so, why, let Psyche pass for what they choose:”
and added aloud, “Pray sit a little: I
will touch it up here and there.”
“Ah! I am afraid you will...
it is such a capital likeness now!”
But the artist understood that the
difficulty was with respect to the sallowness, and
so he reassured them by saying that he only wished
to give more brilliancy and expression to the eyes.
In truth, he was ashamed, and wanted to impart a little
more likeness to the original, lest any one should
accuse him of actual barefaced flattery. And the
features of the pale young girl at length appeared
more closely in Psyche’s countenance.
“Enough,” said the mother,
beginning to fear that the likeness might become too
decided. The artist was remunerated in every way,
with smiles, money, compliments, cordial pressures
of the hand, invitations to dinner: in short,
he received a thousand flattering rewards.
The portrait created a furore in the
city. The lady exhibited it to her friends, and
all admired the skill with which the artist had preserved
the likeness, and at the same time conferred more beauty
on the original. The last remark, of course,
was prompted by a slight tinge of envy. The artist
was suddenly overwhelmed with work. It seemed
as if the whole city wanted to be painted by him.
The door-bell rang incessantly. From one point
of view, this might be considered advantageous, as
presenting to him endless practice in variety and number
of faces. But, unfortunately, they were all people
who were hard to get along with, either busy, hurried
people, or else belonging to the fashionable world,
and consequently more occupied than any one else, and
therefore impatient to the last degree. In all
quarters, the demand was merely that the likeness
should be good and quickly executed. The artist
perceived that it was a simple impossibility to finish
his work; that it was necessary to exchange power
of treatment for lightness and rapidity, to catch
only the general expression, and not waste labour on
delicate details.
Moreover, nearly all of his sitters
made stipulations on various points. The ladies
required that mind and character should be represented
in their portraits; that all angles should be rounded,
all unevenness smoothed away, and even removed entirely
if possible; in short, that their faces should be
such as to cause every one to stare at them with admiration,
if not fall in love with them outright. When they
sat to him, they sometimes assumed expressions which
greatly amazed the artist; one tried to express melancholy;
another, meditation; a third wanted to make her mouth
appear small on any terms, and puckered it up to such
an extent that it finally looked like a spot about
as big as a pinhead. And in spite of all this,
they demanded of him good likenesses and unconstrained
naturalness. The men were no better: one
insisted on being painted with an energetic, muscular
turn to his head; another, with upturned, inspired
eyes; a lieutenant of the guard demanded that Mars
should be visible in his eyes; an official in the civil
service drew himself up to his full height in order
to have his uprightness expressed in his face, and
that his hand might rest on a book bearing the words
in plain characters, “He always stood up for
the right.”
At first such demands threw the artist
into a cold perspiration. Finally he acquired
the knack of it, and never troubled himself at all
about it. He understood at a word how each wanted
himself portrayed. If a man wanted Mars in his
face, he put in Mars: he gave a Byronic turn
and attitude to those who aimed at Byron. If the
ladies wanted to be Corinne, Undine, or Aspasia, he
agreed with great readiness, and threw in a sufficient
measure of good looks from his own imagination, which
does no harm, and for the sake of which an artist is
even forgiven a lack of resemblance. He soon
began to wonder himself at the rapidity and dash of
his brush. And of course those who sat to him
were in ecstasies, and proclaimed him a genius.
Tchartkoff became a fashionable artist
in every sense of the word. He began to dine
out, to escort ladies to picture galleries, to dress
foppishly, and to assert audibly that an artist should
belong to society, that he must uphold his profession,
that artists mostly dress like showmakers, do not
know how to behave themselves, do not maintain the
highest tone, and are lacking in all polish. At
home, in his studio, he carried cleanliness and spotlessness
to the last extreme, set up two superb footmen, took
fashionable pupils, dressed several times a day, curled
his hair, practised various manners of receiving his
callers, and busied himself in adorning his person
in every conceivable way, in order to produce a pleasing
impression on the ladies. In short, it would soon
have been impossible for any one to have recognised
in him the modest artist who had formerly toiled unknown
in his miserable quarters in the Vasilievsky Ostroff.
He now expressed himself decidedly
concerning artists and art; declared that too much
credit had been given to the old masters; that even
Raphael did not always paint well, and that fame attached
to many of his works simply by force of tradition:
that Michael Angelo was a braggart because he could
boast only a knowledge of anatomy; that there was no
grace about him, and that real brilliancy and power
of treatment and colouring were to be looked for in
the present century. And there, naturally, the
question touched him personally. “I do not
understand,” said he, “how others toil
and work with difficulty: a man who labours for
months over a picture is a dauber, and no artist in
my opinion; I don’t believe he has any talent:
genius works boldly, rapidly. Here is this portrait
which I painted in two days, this head in one day,
this in a few hours, this in little more than an hour.
No, I confess I do not recognise as art that which
adds line to line; that is a handicraft, not art.”
In this manner did he lecture his visitors; and the
visitors admired the strength and boldness of his
works, uttered exclamations on hearing how fast they
had been produced, and said to each other, “This
is talent, real talent! see how he speaks, how his
eyes gleam! There is something really extraordinary
in his face!”
It flattered the artist to hear such
reports about himself. When printed praise appeared
in the papers, he rejoiced like a child, although this
praise was purchased with his money. He carried
the printed slips about with him everywhere, and showed
them to friends and acquaintances as if by accident.
His fame increased, his works and orders multiplied.
Already the same portraits over and over again wearied
him, by the same attitudes and turns, which he had
learned by heart. He painted them now without
any great interest in his work, brushing in some sort
of a head, and giving them to his pupil’s to
finish. At first he had sought to devise a new
attitude each time. Now this had grown wearisome
to him. His brain was tired with planning and
thinking. It was out of his power; his fashionable
life bore him far away from labour and thought.
His work grew cold and colourless; and he betook himself
with indifference to the reproduction of monotonous,
well-worn forms. The eternally spick-and-span
uniforms, and the so-to-speak buttoned-up faces of
the government officials, soldiers, and statesmen,
did not offer a wide field for his brush: it
forgot how to render superb draperies and powerful
emotion and passion. Of grouping, dramatic effect
and its lofty connections, there was nothing.
In face of him was only a uniform, a corsage, a dress-coat,
and before which the artist feels cold and all imagination
vanishes. Even his own peculiar merits were no
longer visible in his works, yet they continued to
enjoy renown; although genuine connoisseurs and artists
merely shrugged their shoulders when they saw his
latest productions. But some who had known Tchartkoff
in his earlier days could not understand how the talent
of which he had given such clear indications in the
outset could so have vanished; and strove in vain
to divine by what means genius could be extinguished
in a man just when he had attained to the full development
of his powers.
But the intoxicated artist did not
hear these criticisms. He began to attain to
the age of dignity, both in mind and years: to
grow stout, and increase visibly in flesh. He
often read in the papers such phrases as, “Our
most respected Andrei Petrovitch; our worthy Andrei
Petrovitch.” He began to receive offers
of distinguished posts in the service, invitations
to examinations and committees. He began, as is
usually the case in maturer years, to advocate Raphael
and the old masters, not because he had become thoroughly
convinced of their transcendent merits, but in order
to snub the younger artists. His life was already
approaching the period when everything which suggests
impulse contracts within a man; when a powerful chord
appeals more feebly to the spirit; when the touch
of beauty no longer converts virgin strength into fire
and flame, but when all the burnt-out sentiments become
more vulnerable to the sound of gold, hearken more
attentively to its seductive music, and little by
little permit themselves to be completely lulled to
sleep by it. Fame can give no pleasure to him
who has stolen it, not won it; so all his feelings
and impulses turned towards wealth. Gold was his
passion, his ideal, his fear, his delight, his aim.
The bundles of bank-notes increased in his coffers;
and, like all to whose lot falls this fearful gift,
he began to grow inaccessible to every sentiment except
the love of gold. But something occurred which
gave him a powerful shock, and disturbed the whole
tenor of his life.
One day he found upon his table a
note, in which the Academy of Painting begged him,
as a worthy member of its body, to come and give his
opinion upon a new work which had been sent from Italy
by a Russian artist who was perfecting himself there.
The painter was one of his former comrades, who had
been possessed with a passion for art from his earliest
years, had given himself up to it with his whole soul,
estranged himself from his friends and relatives, and
had hastened to that wonderful Rome, at whose very
name the artist’s heart beats wildly and hotly.
There he buried himself in his work from which he permitted
nothing to entice him. He visited the galleries
unweariedly, he stood for hours at a time before the
works of the great masters, seizing and studying their
marvellous methods. He never finished anything
without revising his impressions several times before
these great teachers, and reading in their works silent
but eloquent counsels. He gave each impartially
his due, appropriating from all only that which was
most beautiful, and finally became the pupil of the
divine Raphael alone, as a great poet, after reading
many works, at last made Homer’s “Iliad”
his only breviary, having discovered that it contains
all one wants, and that there is nothing which is
not expressed in it in perfection. And so he
brought away from his school the grand conception of
creation, the mighty beauty of thought, the high charm
of that heavenly brush.
When Tchartkoff entered the room,
he found a crowd of visitors already collected before
the picture. The most profound silence, such as
rarely settles upon a throng of critics, reigned over
all. He hastened to assume the significant expression
of a connoisseur, and approached the picture; but,
O God! what did he behold!
Pure, faultless, beautiful as a bride,
stood the picture before him. The critics regarded
this new hitherto unknown work with a feeling of involuntary
wonder. All seemed united in it: the art
of Raphael, reflected in the lofty grace of the grouping;
the art of Correggio, breathing from the finished
perfection of the workmanship. But more striking
than all else was the evident creative power in the
artist’s mind. The very minutest object
in the picture revealed it; he had caught that melting
roundness of outline which is visible in nature only
to the artist creator, and which comes out as angles
with a copyist. It was plainly visible how the
artist, having imbibed it all from the external world,
had first stored it in his mind, and then drawn it
thence, as from a spiritual source, into one harmonious,
triumphant song. And it was evident, even to
the uninitiated, how vast a gulf there was fixed between
creation and a mere copy from nature. Involuntary
tears stood ready to fall in the eyes of those who
surrounded the picture. It seemed as though all
joined in a silent hymn to the divine work.
Motionless, with open mouth, Tchartkoff
stood before the picture. At length, when by
degrees the visitors and critics began to murmur and
comment upon the merits of the work, and turning to
him, begged him to express an opinion, he came to
himself once more. He tried to assume an indifferent,
everyday expression; strove to utter some such commonplace
remark as; “Yes, to tell the truth, it is impossible
to deny the artist’s talent; there is something
in it;” but the speech died upon his lips, tears
and sobs burst forth uncontrollably, and he rushed
from the room like one beside himself.
In a moment he stood in his magnificent
studio. All his being, all his life, had been
aroused in one instant, as if youth had returned to
him, as if the dying sparks of his talent had blazed
forth afresh. The bandage suddenly fell from
his eyes. Heavens! to think of having mercilessly
wasted the best years of his youth, of having extinguished,
trodden out perhaps, that spark of fire which, cherished
in his breast, might perhaps have been developed into
magnificence and beauty, and have extorted too, its
meed of tears and admiration! It seemed as though
those impulses which he had known in other days re-awoke
suddenly in his soul.
He seized a brush and approached his
canvas. One thought possessed him wholly, one
desire consumed him; he strove to depict a fallen angel.
This idea was most in harmony with his frame of mind.
The perspiration started out upon his face with his
efforts; but, alas! his figures, attitudes, groups,
thoughts, arranged themselves stiffly, disconnectedly.
His hand and his imagination had been too long confined
to one groove; and the fruitless effort to escape from
the bonds and fetters which he had imposed upon himself,
showed itself in irregularities and errors. He
had despised the long, wearisome ladder to knowledge,
and the first fundamental law of the future great man,
hard work. He gave vent to his vexation.
He ordered all his later productions to be taken out
of his studio, all the fashionable, lifeless pictures,
all the portraits of hussars, ladies, and councillors
of state.
He shut himself up alone in his room,
would order no food, and devoted himself entirely
to his work. He sat toiling like a scholar.
But how pitifully wretched was all which proceeded
from his hand! He was stopped at every step by
his ignorance of the very first principles: simple
ignorance of the mechanical part of his art chilled
all inspiration and formed an impassable barrier to
his imagination. His brush returned involuntarily
to hackneyed forms: hands folded themselves in
a set attitude; heads dared not make any unusual turn;
the very garments turned out commonplace, and would
not drape themselves to any unaccustomed posture of
the body. And he felt and saw this all himself.
“But had I really any talent?”
he said at length: “did not I deceive myself?”
Uttering these words, he turned to the early works
which he had painted so purely, so unselfishly, in
former days, in his wretched cabin yonder in lonely
Vasilievsky Ostroff. He began attentively to examine
them all; and all the misery of his former life came
back to him. “Yes,” he cried despairingly,
“I had talent: the signs and traces of it
are everywhere visible ”
He paused suddenly, and shivered all
over. His eyes encountered other eyes fixed immovably
upon him. It was that remarkable portrait which
he had bought in the Shtchukinui Dvor. All this
time it had been covered up, concealed by other pictures,
and had utterly gone out of his mind. Now, as
if by design, when all the fashionable portraits and
paintings had been removed from the studio, it looked
forth, together with the productions of his early
youth. As he recalled all the strange events
connected with it; as he remembered that this singular
portrait had been, in a manner, the cause of his errors;
that the hoard of money which he had obtained in such
peculiar fashion had given birth in his mind to all
the wild caprices which had destroyed his talent madness
was on the point of taking possession of him.
At once he ordered the hateful portrait to be removed.
But his mental excitement was not
thereby diminished. His whole being was shaken
to its foundation; and he suffered that fearful torture
which is sometimes exhibited when a feeble talent
strives to display itself on a scale too great for
it and cannot do so. A horrible envy took possession
of him an envy which bordered on madness.
The gall flew to his heart when he beheld a work which
bore the stamp of talent. He gnashed his teeth,
and devoured it with the glare of a basilisk.
He conceived the most devilish plan which ever entered
into the mind of man, and he hastened with the strength
of madness to carry it into execution. He began
to purchase the best that art produced of every kind.
Having bought a picture at a great price, he transported
it to his room, flung himself upon it with the ferocity
of a tiger, cut it, tore it, chopped it into bits,
and stamped upon it with a grin of delight.
The vast wealth he had amassed enabled
him to gratify this devilish desire. He opened
his bags of gold and unlocked his coffers. No
monster of ignorance ever destroyed so many superb
productions of art as did this raging avenger.
At any auction where he made his appearance, every
one despaired at once of obtaining any work of art.
It seemed as if an angry heaven had sent this fearful
scourge into the world expressly to destroy all harmony.
Scorn of the world was expressed in his countenance.
His tongue uttered nothing save biting and censorious
words. He swooped down like a harpy into the street:
and his acquaintances, catching sight of him in the
distance, sought to turn aside and avoid a meeting
with him, saying that it poisoned all the rest of
the day.
Fortunately for the world and art,
such a life could not last long: his passions
were too overpowering for his feeble strength.
Attacks of madness began to recur more frequently,
and ended at last in the most frightful illness.
A violent fever, combined with galloping consumption,
seized upon him with such violence, that in three days
there remained only a shadow of his former self.
To this was added indications of hopeless insanity.
Sometimes several men were unable to hold him.
The long-forgotten, living eyes of the portrait began
to torment him, and then his madness became dreadful.
All the people who surrounded his bed seemed to him
horrible portraits. The portrait doubled and quadrupled
itself; all the walls seemed hung with portraits, which
fastened their living eyes upon him; portraits glared
at him from the ceiling, from the floor; the room
widened and lengthened endlessly, in order to make
room for more of the motionless eyes. The doctor
who had undertaken to attend him, having learned something
of his strange history, strove with all his might
to fathom the secret connection between the visions
of his fancy and the occurrences of his life, but
without the slightest success. The sick man understood
nothing, felt nothing, save his own tortures, and
gave utterance only to frightful yells and unintelligible
gibberish. At last his life ended in a final attack
of unutterable suffering. Nothing could be found
of all his great wealth; but when they beheld the
mutilated fragments of grand works of art, the value
of which exceeded a million, they understood the terrible
use which had been made of it.
Part II. A throng
of carriages and other vehicles stood at the entrance
of a house in which an auction was going on of the
effects of one of those wealthy art-lovers who have
innocently passed for Maecenases, and in a simple-minded
fashion expended, to that end, the millions amassed
by their thrifty fathers, and frequently even by their
own early labours. The long saloon was filled
with the most motley throng of visitors, collected
like birds of prey swooping down upon an unburied corpse.
There was a whole squadron of Russian shop-keepers
from the Gostinnui Dvor, and from the old-clothes
mart, in blue coats of foreign make. Their faces
and expressions were a little more natural here, and
did not display that fictitious desire to be subservient
which is so marked in the Russian shop-keeper when
he stands before a customer in his shop. Here
they stood upon no ceremony, although the saloons were
full of those very aristocrats before whom, in any
other place, they would have been ready to sweep,
with reverence, the dust brought in by their feet.
They were quite at their ease, handling pictures and
books without ceremony, when desirous of ascertaining
the value of the goods, and boldly upsetting bargains
mentally secured in advance by noble connoisseurs.
There were many of those infallible attendants of auctions
who make it a point to go to one every day as regularly
as to take their breakfast; aristocratic connoisseurs
who look upon it as their duty not to miss any opportunity
of adding to their collections, and who have no other
occupation between twelve o’clock and one; and
noble gentlemen, with garments very threadbare, who
make their daily appearance without any selfish object
in view, but merely to see how it all goes off.
A quantity of pictures were lying
about in disorder: with them were mingled furniture,
and books with the cipher of the former owner, who
never was moved by any laudable desire to glance into
them. Chinese vases, marble slabs for tables,
old and new furniture with curving lines, with griffins,
sphinxes, and lions’ paws, gilded and ungilded,
chandeliers, sconces, all were heaped together in a
perfect chaos of art.
The auction appeared to be at its height.
The surging throng was competing for
a portrait which could not but arrest the attention
of all who possessed any knowledge of art. The
skilled hand of an artist was plainly visible in it.
The portrait, which had apparently been several times
restored and renovated, represented the dark features
of an Asiatic in flowing garments, and with a strange
and remarkable expression of countenance; but what
struck the buyers more than anything else was the
peculiar liveliness of the eyes. The more they
were looked at, the more did they seem to penetrate
into the gazer’s heart. This peculiarity,
this strange illusion achieved by the artist, attracted
the attention of nearly all. Many who had been
bidding gradually withdrew, for the price offered
had risen to an incredible sum. There remained
only two well-known aristocrats, amateurs of painting,
who were unwilling to forego such an acquisition.
They grew warm, and would probably have run the bidding
up to an impossible sum, had not one of the onlookers
suddenly exclaimed, “Permit me to interrupt
your competition for a while: I, perhaps, more
than any other, have a right to this portrait.”
These words at once drew the attention
of all to him. He was a tall man of thirty-five,
with long black curls. His pleasant face, full
of a certain bright nonchalance, indicated a mind
free from all wearisome, worldly excitement; his garments
had no pretence to fashion: all about him indicated
the artist. He was, in fact, B. the painter, a
man personally well known to many of those present.
“However strange my words may
seem to you,” he continued, perceiving that
the general attention was directed to him, “if
you will listen to a short story, you may possibly
see that I was right in uttering them. Everything
assures me that this is the portrait which I am looking
for.”
A natural curiosity illuminated the
faces of nearly all present; and even the auctioneer
paused as he was opening his mouth, and with hammer
uplifted in the air, prepared to listen. At the
beginning of the story, many glanced involuntarily
towards the portrait; but later on, all bent their
attention solely on the narrator, as his tale grew
gradually more absorbing.
“You know that portion of the
city which is called Kolomna,” he began.
“There everything is unlike anything else in
St. Petersburg. Retired officials remove thither
to live; widows; people not very well off, who have
acquaintances in the senate, and therefore condemn
themselves to this for nearly the whole of their lives;
and, in short, that whole list of people who can be
described by the words ash-coloured people
whose garments, faces, hair, eyes, have a sort of
ashy surface, like a day when there is in the sky
neither cloud nor sun. Among them may be retired
actors, retired titular councillors, retired sons of
Mars, with ruined eyes and swollen lips.
“Life in Kolomna is terribly
dull: rarely does a carriage appear, except,
perhaps, one containing an actor, which disturbs the
universal stillness by its rumble, noise, and jingling.
You can get lodgings for five rubles a month, coffee
in the morning included. Widows with pensions
are the most aristocratic families there; they conduct
themselves well, sweep their rooms often, chatter with
their friends about the dearness of beef and cabbage,
and frequently have a young daughter, a taciturn,
quiet, sometimes pretty creature; an ugly dog, and
wall-clocks which strike in a melancholy fashion.
Then come the actors whose salaries do not permit
them to desert Kolomna, an independent folk, living,
like all artists, for pleasure. They sit in their
dressing-gowns, cleaning their pistols, gluing together
all sorts of things out of cardboard, playing draughts
and cards with any friend who chances to drop in,
and so pass away the morning, doing pretty nearly
the same in the evening, with the addition of punch
now and then. After these great people and aristocracy
of Kolomna, come the rank and file. It is as
difficult to put a name to them as to remember the
multitude of insects which breed in stale vinegar.
There are old women who get drunk, who make a living
by incomprehensible means, like ants, dragging old
clothes and rags from the Kalinkin Bridge to the old
clothes-mart, in order to sell them for fifteen kopeks in
short, the very dregs of mankind, whose conditions
no beneficent, political economist has devised any
means of ameliorating.
“I have mentioned them in order
to point out how often such people find themselves
under the necessity of seeking immediate temporary
assistance and having recourse to borrowing.
Hence there settles among them a peculiar race of
money-lenders who lend small sums on security at an
enormous percentage. Among these usurers was a
certain... but I must not omit to mention that the
occurrence which I have undertaken to relate occurred
the last century, in the reign of our late Empress
Catherine the Second. So, among the usurers,
at that epoch, was a certain person an
extraordinary being in every respect, who had settled
in that quarter of the city long before. He went
about in flowing Asiatic garb; his dark complexion
indicated a Southern origin, but to what particular
nation he belonged, India, Greece, or Persia, no one
could say with certainty. Of tall, almost colossal
stature, with dark, thin, ardent face, heavy overhanging
brows, and an indescribably strange colour in his
large eyes of unwonted fire, he differed sharply and
strongly from all the ash-coloured denizens of the
capital.
“His very dwelling was unlike
the other little wooden houses. It was of stone,
in the style of those formerly much affected by Genoese
merchants, with irregular windows of various sizes,
secured with iron shutters and bars. This usurer
differed from other usurers also in that he could
furnish any required sum, from that desired by the
poor old beggar-woman to that demanded by the extravagant
grandee of the court. The most gorgeous équipages
often halted in front of his house, and from their
windows sometimes peeped forth the head of an elegant
high-born lady. Rumour, as usual, reported that
his iron coffers were full of untold gold, treasures,
diamonds, and all sorts of pledges, but that, nevertheless,
he was not the slave of that avarice which is characteristic
of other usurers. He lent money willingly, and
on very favourable terms of payment apparently, but,
by some curious method of reckoning, made them mount
to an incredible percentage. So said rumour,
at any rate. But what was strangest of all was
the peculiar fate of those who received money from
him: they all ended their lives in some unhappy
way. Whether this was simply the popular superstition,
or the result of reports circulated with an object,
is not known. But several instances which happened
within a brief space of time before the eyes of every
one were vivid and striking.
“Among the aristocracy of that
day, one who speedily drew attention to himself was
a young man of one of the best families who had made
a figure in his early years in court circles, a warm
admirer of everything true and noble, zealous in his
love for art, and giving promise of becoming a Maecenas.
He was soon deservedly distinguished by the Empress,
who conferred upon him an important post, fully proportioned
to his deserts a post in which he could
accomplish much for science and the general welfare.
The youthful dignitary surrounded himself with artists,
poets, and learned men. He wished to give work
to all, to encourage all. He undertook, at his
own expense, a number of useful publications; gave
numerous orders to artists; offered prizes for the
encouragement of different arts; spent a great deal
of money, and finally ruined himself. But, full
of noble impulses, he did not wish to relinquish his
work, sought to raise a loan, and finally betook himself
to the well-known usurer. Having borrowed a considerable
sum from him, the man in a short time changed completely.
He became a persecutor and oppressor of budding talent
and intellect. He saw the bad side in everything
produced, and every word he uttered was false.
“Then, unfortunately, came the
French Revolution. This furnished him with an
excuse for every kind of suspicion. He began to
discover a revolutionary tendency in everything; to
concoct terrible and unjust accusations, which made
scores of people unhappy. Of course, such conduct
could not fail in time to reach the throne. The
kind-hearted Empress was shocked; and, full of the
noble spirit which adorns crowned heads, she uttered
words still engraven on many hearts. The Empress
remarked that not under a monarchical government were
high and noble impulses persecuted; not there were
the creations of intellect, poetry, and art contemned
and oppressed. On the other hand, monarchs alone
were their protectors. Shakespeare and Moliere
flourished under their magnanimous protection, while
Dante could not find a corner in his republican birthplace.
She said that true geniuses arise at the epoch of
brilliancy and power in emperors and empires, but not
in the time of monstrous political apparitions and
republican terrorism, which, up to that time, had
never given to the world a single poet; that poet-artists
should be marked out for favour, since peace and divine
quiet alone compose their minds, not excitement and
tumult; that learned men, poets, and all producers
of art are the pearls and diamonds in the imperial
crown: by them is the epoch of the great ruler
adorned, and from them it receives yet greater brilliancy.
“As the Empress uttered these
words she was divinely beautiful for the moment, and
I remember old men who could not speak of the occurrence
without tears. All were interested in the affair.
It must be remarked, to the honour of our national
pride, that in the Russian’s heart there always
beats a fine feeling that he must adopt the part of
the persecuted. The dignitary who had betrayed
his trust was punished in an exemplary manner and
degraded from his post. But he read a more dreadful
punishment in the faces of his fellow-countrymen:
universal scorn. It is impossible to describe
what he suffered, and he died in a terrible attack
of raving madness.
“Another striking example also
occurred. Among the beautiful women in which
our northern capital assuredly is not poor, one decidedly
surpassed the rest. Her loveliness was a combination
of our Northern charms with those of the South, a
gem such as rarely makes its appearance on earth.
My father said that he had never beheld anything like
it in the whole course of his life. Everything
seemed to be united in her, wealth, intellect, and
wit. She had throngs of admirers, the most distinguished
of them being Prince R., the most noble-minded of
all young men, the finest in face, and an ideal of
romance in his magnanimous and knightly sentiments.
Prince R. was passionately in love, and was requited
by a like ardent passion.
“But the match seemed unequal
to the parents. The prince’s family estates
had not been in his possession for a long time, his
family was out of favour, and the sad state of his
affairs was well known to all. Of a sudden the
prince quitted the capital, as if for the purpose of
arranging his affairs, and after a short interval reappeared,
surrounded with luxury and splendour. Brilliant
balls and parties made him known at court. The
lady’s father began to relent, and the wedding
took place. Whence this change in circumstances,
this unheard-of-wealth, came, no one could fully explain;
but it was whispered that he had entered into a compact
with the mysterious usurer, and had borrowed money
of him. However that may have been, the wedding
was a source of interest to the whole city, and the
bride and bridegroom were objects of general envy.
Every one knew of their warm and faithful love, the
long persecution they had had to endure from every
quarter, the great personal worth of both. Ardent
women at once sketched out the heavenly bliss which
the young couple would enjoy. But it turned out
very differently.
“In the course of a year a frightful
change came over the husband. His character,
up to that time so noble, became poisoned with jealous
suspicions, irritability, and inexhaustible caprices.
He became a tyrant to his wife, a thing which no one
could have foreseen, and indulged in the most inhuman
deeds, and even in blows. In a year’s time
no one would have recognised the woman who, such a
little while before, had dazzled and drawn about her
throngs of submissive adorers. Finally, no longer
able to endure her lot, she proposed a divorce.
Her husband flew into a rage at the very suggestion.
In the first outburst of passion, he chased her about
the room with a knife, and would doubtless have murdered
her then and there, if they had not seized him and
prevented him. In a fit of madness and despair
he turned the knife against himself, and ended his
life amid the most horrible sufferings.
“Besides these two instances
which occurred before the eyes of all the world, stories
circulated of many more among the lower classes, nearly
all of which had tragic endings. Here an honest
sober man became a drunkard; there a shopkeeper’s
clerk robbed his master; again, a driver who had conducted
himself properly for a number of years cut his passenger’s
throat for a groschen. It was impossible that
such occurrences, related, not without embellishments,
should not inspire a sort of involuntary horror amongst
the sedate inhabitants of Kolomna. No one entertained
any doubt as to the presence of an evil power in the
usurer. They said that he imposed conditions which
made the hair rise on one’s head, and which
the miserable wretch never afterward dared reveal
to any other being; that his money possessed a strange
power of attraction; that it grew hot of itself, and
that it bore strange marks. And it is worthy
of remark, that all the colony of Kolomna, all these
poor old women, small officials, petty artists, and
insignificant people whom we have just recapitulated,
agreed that it was better to endure anything, and
to suffer the extreme of misery, rather than to have
recourse to the terrible usurer. Old women were
even found dying of hunger, who preferred to kill
their bodies rather than lose their soul. Those
who met him in the street experienced an involuntary
sense of fear. Pedestrians took care to turn
aside from his path, and gazed long after his tall,
receding figure. In his face alone there was sufficient
that was uncommon to cause any one to ascribe to him
a supernatural nature. The strong features, so
deeply chiselled; the glowing bronze of his complexion;
the incredible thickness of his brows; the intolerable,
terrible eyes everything seemed to indicate
that the passions of other men were pale compared
to those raging within him. My father stopped
short every time he met him, and could not refrain
each time from saying, ‘A devil, a perfect devil!’
But I must introduce you as speedily as possible to
my father, the chief character of this story.
“My father was a remarkable
man in many respects. He was an artist of rare
ability, a self-taught artist, without teachers or
schools, principles and rules, carried away only by
the thirst for perfection, and treading a path indicated
by his own instincts, for reasons unknown, perchance,
even to himself. Through some lofty and secret
instinct he perceived the presence of a soul in every
object. And this secret instinct and personal
conviction turned his brush to Christian subjects,
grand and lofty to the last degree. His was a
strong character: he was an honourable, upright,
even rough man, covered with a sort of hard rind without,
not entirely lacking in pride, and given to expressing
himself both sharply and scornfully about people.
He worked for very small results; that is to say,
for just enough to support his family and obtain the
materials he needed; he never, under any circumstances,
refused to aid any one, or to lend a helping hand to
a poor artist; and he believed with the simple, reverent
faith of his ancestors. At length, by his unintermitting
labour and perseverance in the path he had marked
out for himself, he began to win the approbation of
those who honoured his self-taught talent. They
gave him constant orders for churches, and he never
lacked employment.
“One of his paintings possessed
a strong interest for him. I no longer recollect
the exact subject: I only know that he needed
to represent the Spirit of Darkness in it. He
pondered long what form to give him: he wished
to concentrate in his face all that weighs down and
oppresses a man. In the midst of his meditations
there suddenly occurred to his mind the image of the
mysterious usurer; and he thought involuntarily, ‘That’s
how I ought to paint the Devil!’ Imagine his
amazement when one day, as he was at work in his studio,
he heard a knock at the door, and directly after there
entered that same terrible usurer.
“‘You are an artist?’ he said to
my father abruptly.
“‘I am,’ answered
my father in surprise, waiting for what should come
next.
“’Good! Paint my
portrait. I may possibly die soon. I have
no children; but I do not wish to die completely,
I wish to live. Can you paint a portrait that
shall appear as though it were alive?’
“My father reflected, ’What
could be better! he offers himself for the Devil in
my picture.’ He promised. They agreed
upon a time and price; and the next day my father
took palette and brushes and went to the usurer’s
house. The lofty court-yard, dogs, iron doors
and locks, arched windows, coffers, draped with strange
covers, and, last of all, the remarkable owner himself,
seated motionless before him, all produced a strange
impression on him. The windows seemed intentionally
so encumbered below that they admitted the light only
from the top. ’Devil take him, how well
his face is lighted!’ he said to himself, and
began to paint assiduously, as though afraid that
the favourable light would disappear. ‘What
power!’ he repeated to himself. ’If
I only accomplish half a likeness of him, as he is
now, it will surpass all my other works: he will
simply start from the canvas if I am only partly true
to nature. What remarkable features!’ He
redoubled his energy; and began himself to notice
how some of his sitter’s traits were making their
appearance on the canvas.
“But the more closely he approached
resemblance, the more conscious he became of an aggressive,
uneasy feeling which he could not explain to himself.
Notwithstanding this, he set himself to copy with literal
accuracy every trait and expression. First of
all, however, he busied himself with the eyes.
There was so much force in those eyes, that it seemed
impossible to reproduce them exactly as they were in
nature. But he resolved, at any price, to seek
in them the most minute characteristics and shades,
to penetrate their secret. As soon, however,
as he approached them in resemblance, and began to
redouble his exertions, there sprang up in his mind
such a terrible feeling of repulsion, of inexplicable
expression, that he was forced to lay aside his brush
for a while and begin anew. At last he could bear
it no longer: he felt as if these eyes were piercing
into his soul, and causing intolerable emotion.
On the second and third days this grew still stronger.
It became horrible to him. He threw down his brush,
and declared abruptly that he could paint the stranger
no longer. You should have seen how the terrible
usurer changed countenance at these words. He
threw himself at his feet, and besought him to finish
the portrait, saying that his fate and his existence
depended on it; that he had already caught his prominent
features; that if he could reproduce them accurately,
his life would be preserved in his portrait in a supernatural
manner; that by that means he would not die completely;
that it was necessary for him to continue to exist
in the world.
“My father was frightened by
these words: they seemed to him strange and terrible
to such a degree, that he threw down his brushes and
palette and rushed headlong from the room.
“The thought of it troubled
him all day and all night; but the next morning he
received the portrait from the usurer, by a woman who
was the only creature in his service, and who announced
that her master did not want the portrait, and would
pay nothing for it, and had sent it back. On
the evening of the same day he learned that the usurer
was dead, and that preparations were in progress to
bury him according to the rites of his religion.
All this seemed to him inexplicably strange. But
from that day a marked change showed itself in his
character. He was possessed by a troubled, uneasy
feeling, of which he was unable to explain the cause;
and he soon committed a deed which no one could have
expected of him. For some time the works of one
of his pupils had been attracting the attention of
a small circle of connoisseurs and amateurs. My
father had perceived his talent, and manifested a
particular liking for him in consequence. Suddenly
the general interest in him and talk about him became
unendurable to my father who grew envious of him.
Finally, to complete his vexation, he learned that
his pupil had been asked to paint a picture for a
recently built and wealthy church. This enraged
him. ‘No, I will not permit that fledgling
to triumph!’ said he: ’it is early,
friend, to think of consigning old men to the gutters.
I still have powers, God be praised! We’ll
soon see which will put down the other.’
“And this straightforward, honourable
man employed intrigues which he had hitherto abhorred.
He finally contrived that there should be a competition
for the picture which other artists were permitted
to enter into. Then he shut himself up in his
room, and grasped his brush with zeal. It seemed
as if he were striving to summon all his strength up
for this occasion. And, in fact, the result turned
out to be one of his best works. No one doubted
that he would bear off the palm. The pictures
were placed on exhibition, and all the others seemed
to his as night to day. But of a sudden, one
of the members present, an ecclesiastical personage
if I mistake not, made a remark which surprised every
one. ’There is certainly much talent in
this artist’s picture,’ said he, ’but
no holiness in the faces: there is even, on the
contrary, a demoniacal look in the eyes, as though
some evil feeling had guided the artist’s hand.’
All looked, and could not but acknowledge the truth
of these words. My father rushed forward to his
picture, as though to verify for himself this offensive
remark, and perceived with horror that he had bestowed
the usurer’s eyes upon nearly all the figures.
They had such a diabolical gaze that he involuntarily
shuddered. The picture was rejected; and he was
forced to hear, to his indescribable vexation, that
the palm was awarded to his pupil.
“It is impossible to describe
the state of rage in which he returned home.
He almost killed my mother, he drove the children away,
broke his brushes and easels, tore down the usurer’s
portrait from the wall, demanded a knife, and ordered
a fire to be built in the chimney, intending to cut
it in pieces and burn it. A friend, an artist,
caught him in the act as he entered the room a
jolly fellow, always satisfied with himself, inflated
by unattainable wishes, doing daily anything that
came to hand, and taking still more gaily to his dinner
and little carouses.
“‘What are you doing?
What are you preparing to burn?’ he asked, and
stepped up to the portrait. ’Why, this is
one of your very best works. It is the usurer
who died a short time ago: yes, it is a most perfect
likeness. You did not stop until you had got into
his very eyes. Never did eyes look as these do
now.’
“‘Well, I’ll see
how they look in the fire!’ said my father, making
a movement to fling the portrait into the grate.
“‘Stop, for Heaven’s
sake!’ exclaimed his friend, restraining him:
’give it to me, rather, if it offends your eyes
to such a degree.’ My father resisted,
but yielded at length; and the jolly fellow, well pleased
with his acquisition, carried the portrait home with
him.
“When he was gone, my father
felt more calm. The burden seemed to have disappeared
from his soul in company with the portrait. He
was surprised himself at his evil feelings, his envy,
and the evident change in his character. Reviewing
his acts, he became sad at heart; and not without
inward sorrow did he exclaim, ’No, it was God
who punished me! my picture, in fact, was meant to
ruin my brother-man. A devilish feeling of envy
guided my brush, and that devilish feeling must have
made itself visible in it.’
“He set out at once to seek
his former pupil, embraced him warmly, begged his
forgiveness, and endeavoured as far as possible to
excuse his own fault. His labours continued as
before; but his face was more frequently thoughtful.
He prayed more, grew more taciturn, and expressed
himself less sharply about people: even the rough
exterior of his character was modified to some extent.
But a certain occurrence soon disturbed him more than
ever. He had seen nothing for a long time of the
comrade who had begged the portrait of him. He
had already decided to hunt him up, when the latter
suddenly made his appearance in his room. After
a few words and questions on both sides, he said, ’Well,
brother, it was not without cause that you wished
to burn that portrait. Devil take it, there’s
something horrible about it! I don’t believe
in sorcerers; but, begging your pardon, there’s
an unclean spirit in it.’
“‘How so?’ asked my father.
“’Well, from the very
moment I hung it up in my room I felt such depression just
as if I wanted to murder some one. I never knew
in my life what sleeplessness was; but I suffered
not from sleeplessness alone, but from such dreams! I
cannot tell whether they were dreams, or what; it
was as if a demon were strangling one: and the
old man appeared to me in my sleep. In short,
I can’t describe my state of mind. I had
a sensation of fear, as if expecting something unpleasant.
I felt as if I could not speak a cheerful or sincere
word to any one: it was just as if a spy were
sitting over me. But from the very hour that I
gave that portrait to my nephew, who asked for it,
I felt as if a stone had been rolled from my shoulders,
and became cheerful, as you see me now. Well,
brother, you painted the very Devil!’
“During this recital my father
listened with unswerving attention, and finally inquired,
‘And your nephew now has the portrait?’
“‘My nephew, indeed! he
could not stand it!’ said the jolly fellow:
’do you know, the soul of that usurer has migrated
into it; he jumps out of the frame, walks about the
room; and what my nephew tells of him is simply incomprehensible.
I should take him for a lunatic, if I had not undergone
a part of it myself. He sold it to some collector
of pictures; and he could not stand it either, and
got rid of it to some one else.’
“This story produced a deep
impression on my father. He grew seriously pensive,
fell into hypochondria, and finally became fully convinced
that his brush had served as a tool of the Devil;
and that a portion of the usurer’s vitality
had actually passed into the portrait, and was now
troubling people, inspiring diabolical excitement,
beguiling painters from the true path, producing the
fearful torments of envy, and so forth. Three
catastrophes which occurred afterwards, three sudden
deaths of wife, daughter, and infant son, he regarded
as a divine punishment on him, and firmly resolved
to withdraw from the world.
“As soon as I was nine years
old, he placed me in an academy of painting, and,
paying all his debts, retired to a lonely cloister,
where he soon afterwards took the vows. There
he amazed every one by the strictness of his life,
and his untiring observance of all the monastic rules.
The prior of the monastery, hearing of his skill in
painting, ordered him to paint the principal picture
in the church. But the humble brother said plainly
that he was unworthy to touch a brush, that his was
contaminated, that with toil and great sacrifice must
he first purify his spirit in order to render himself
fit to undertake such a task. He increased the
rigours of monastic life for himself as much as possible.
At last, even they became insufficient, and he retired,
with the approval of the prior, into the desert, in
order to be quite alone. There he constructed
himself a cell from branches of trees, ate only uncooked
roots, dragged about a stone from place to place, stood
in one spot with his hands lifted to heaven, from
the rising until the going down of the sun, reciting
prayers without cessation. In this manner did
he for several years exhaust his body, invigorating
it, at the same time, with the strength of fervent
prayer.
“At length, one day he returned
to the cloister, and said firmly to the prior, ‘Now
I am ready. If God wills, I will finish my task.’
The subject he selected was the Birth of Christ.
A whole year he sat over it, without leaving his cell,
barely sustaining himself with coarse food, and praying
incessantly. At the end of the year the picture
was ready. It was a really wonderful work.
Neither prior nor brethren knew much about painting;
but all were struck with the marvellous holiness of
the figures. The expression of reverent humility
and gentleness in the face of the Holy Mother, as
she bent over the Child; the deep intelligence in
the eyes of the Holy Child, as though he saw something
afar; the triumphant silence of the Magi, amazed by
the Divine Miracle, as they bowed at his feet:
and finally, the indescribable peace which emanated
from the whole picture all this was presented
with such strength and beauty, that the impression
it made was magical. All the brethren threw themselves
on their knees before it; and the prior, deeply affected,
exclaimed, ’No, it is impossible for any artist,
with the assistance only of earthly art, to produce
such a picture: a holy, divine power has guided
thy brush, and the blessing of Heaven rested upon
thy labour!’
“By that time I had completed
my education at the academy, received the gold medal,
and with it the joyful hope of a journey to Italy the
fairest dream of a twenty-year-old artist. It
only remained for me to take leave of my father, from
whom I had been separated for twelve years. I
confess that even his image had long faded from my
memory. I had heard somewhat of his grim saintliness,
and rather expected to meet a hermit of rough exterior,
a stranger to everything in the world, except his
cell and his prayers, worn out, tried up, by eternal
fasting and penance. But how great was my surprise
when a handsome old man stood before me! No traces
of exhaustion were visible on his countenance:
it beamed with the light of a heavenly joy. His
beard, white as snow, and his thin, almost transparent
hair of the same silvery hue, fell picturesquely upon
his breast, and upon the folds of his black gown,
even to the rope with which his poor monastic garb
was girded. But most surprising to me of all
was to hear from his mouth such words and thoughts
about art as, I confess, I long shall bear in mind,
and I sincerely wish that all my comrades would do
the same.
“‘I expected you, my son,’
he said, when I approached for his blessing.
’The path awaits you in which your life is henceforth
to flow. Your path is pure desert
it not. You have talent: talent is the most
priceless of God’s gifts destroy
it not. Search out, subject all things to your
brush; but in all see that you find the hidden soul,
and most of all, strive to attain to the grand secret
of creation. Blessed is the elect one who masters
that! There is for him no mean object in nature.
In lowly themes the artist creator is as great as
in great ones: in the despicable there is nothing
for him to despise, for it passes through the purifying
fire of his mind. An intimation of God’s
heavenly paradise is contained for the artist in art,
and by that alone is it higher than all else.
But by as much as triumphant rest is grander than every
earthly emotion, by so much is the lofty creation of
art higher than everything else on earth. Sacrifice
everything to it, and love it with passion not
with the passion breathing with earthly desire, but
a peaceful, heavenly passion. It cannot plant
discord in the spirit, but ascends, like a resounding
prayer, eternally to God. But there are moments,
dark moments ’ He paused, and I observed
that his bright face darkened, as though some cloud
crossed it for a moment. ’There is one
incident of my life,’ he said. ’Up
to this moment, I cannot understand what that terrible
being was of whom I painted a likeness. It was
certainly some diabolical apparition. I know that
the world denies the existence of the Devil, and therefore
I will not speak of him. I will only say that
I painted him with repugnance: I felt no liking
for my work, even at the time. I tried to force
myself, and, stifling every emotion in a hard-hearted
way, to be true to nature. I have been informed
that this portrait is passing from hand to hand, and
sowing unpleasant impressions, inspiring artists with
feelings of envy, of dark hatred towards their brethren,
with malicious thirst for persecution and oppression.
May the Almighty preserve you from such passions!
There is nothing more terrible.’
“He blessed and embraced me.
Never in my life was I so grandly moved. Reverently,
rather than with the feeling of a son, I leaned upon
his breast, and kissed his scattered silver locks.
“Tears shone in his eyes.
‘Fulfil my one request, my son,’ said he,
at the moment of parting. ’You may chance
to see the portrait I have mentioned somewhere.
You will know it at once by the strange eyes, and
their peculiar expression. Destroy it at any cost.’
“Judge for yourselves whether
I could refuse to promise, with an oath, to fulfil
this request. In the space of fifteen years I
had never succeeded in meeting with anything which
in any way corresponded to the description given me
by my father, until now, all of a sudden, at an auction ”
The artist did not finish his sentence,
but turned his eyes to the wall in order to glance
once more at the portrait. The entire throng
of auditors made the same movement, seeking the wonderful
portrait with their eyes. But, to their extreme
amazement, it was no longer on the wall. An indistinct
murmur and exclamation ran through the crowd, and
then was heard distinctly the word, “stolen.”
Some one had succeeded in carrying it off, taking
advantage of the fact that the attention of the spectators
was distracted by the story. And those present
long remained in a state of surprise, not knowing
whether they had really seen those remarkable eyes,
or whether it was simply a dream which had floated
for an instant before their eyesight, strained with
long gazing at old pictures.