Текст книги "The Collected tales of Nikolai Gogol"

Автор книги: Николай Гоголь

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

The general, the colonel, and even the major had their uniforms completely unbuttoned, so that their noble silk suspenders showed slightly, while the gentlemen officers, observing due respect, remained buttoned up except for the bottom three buttons.

"We can have a look at her now," said the general. "Please, my good fellow," he added, turning to his aide-de-camp, a rather adroit young man of pleasant appearance, "tell them to bring the bay mare here! You'll see for yourselves." Here the general drew on his pipe and let the smoke out. "She still hasn't been well cared for-cursed little town, not a decent stable in it. The horse, puff, puff, is quite a decent one!"

"And have you, puff, puff, had her long, Your Excellency?" said Chertokutsky.

"Puff, puff, puff, well… puff, not so long. It's only two years since I brought her from the stud farm!"

"And was she broken when you got her, or did they break her here?"

"Puff, puff, pu, pu, pu… u… u… ff, here." Having said which, the general vanished completely in smoke.

Meanwhile, a soldier sprang out of the stable, the sound of hooves was heard, another finally appeared in a white coverall, with an enormous black mustache, leading by the bridle the twitching and shying horse, which, suddenly raising its head, all but raised the crouching soldier into the air along with his mustache. "Now, now, Agrafena Ivanovna!" he said as he led her to the porch.

The mare's name was Agrafena Ivanovna; strong and wild as a southern beauty, she drummed her hooves on the wooden porch and suddenly stood still.

The general, lowering his pipe, began looking at Agrafena Ivanovna with a contented air. The colonel himself stepped down from the porch and took Agrafena Ivanovna by the muzzle. The major himself patted Agrafena Ivanovna on the leg. The rest clucked their tongues.

Chertokutsky got down from the porch and went behind her.

The soldier, standing at attention and holding the bridle, stared straight into the visitor's eyes, as if he wished to jump into them.

"Very, very good," said Chertokutsky, "a shapely horse! How's her gait, Your Excellency, if I may ask?"

"Her gait is good, only… devil knows… that fool of a vet gave her some sort of pills, and she's been sneezing for two days now."

"Very, very nice. And do you have a corresponding equipage, Your Excellency?"

"Equipage?… But this is a saddle horse."

"I know that. But I asked Your Excellency about it so as to learn whether you have corresponding equipages for your other horses."

"Well, as for equipages, I don't have quite enough. I must confess to tell you, I've long wanted to own a modern carriage. I wrote about it to my brother, who is now in Petersburg, but I don't know whether he'll send me one or not."

"It seems to me, Your Excellency," the colonel observed, "that there's no better carriage than a Viennese one."

"You think rightly, puff, puff, puff!"

"I have a surpassing carriage, Your Excellency, real Viennese workmanship."

"Which? The one you came in?"

"Oh, no. This one's just for driving around, for my own use, but that one… it's astonishing, light as a feather; and when you get in, it's simply as if-with Your Excellency's permission-as if a nurse were rocking you in a cradle!"

"So it's comfortable?"

"Very, very comfortable; cushions, springs-all just like a pic-ture.

"That's good."

"And so roomy! I mean, Your Excellency, I've never yet seen the like of it. When I was in the service, I used to put ten bottles of rum and twenty pounds of tobacco in the trunk; and besides that I'd take with me some six changes of uniform, linens, and two chibouks, Your Excellency, as long-if you'll permit the expression-as tapeworms, and you could put a whole ox in the pouches."

"That's good."

"I paid four thousand for it, Your Excellency."

"Judging by the price, it must be good. And you bought it yourself?"

"No, Your Excellency, it happened to come to me. It was bought by a friend of mine, a rare person, a childhood friend, you'd get along perfectly with him. Between us there was no yours or mine, it was all the same. I won it from him at cards. Perhaps you'd care to do me the honor, Your Excellency, of coming to dine with me tomorrow and of having a look at the carriage at the same time?"

"I don't know what to say to you. Myself alone, it's somehow… Or, if you please, perhaps the gentlemen officers can come along?"

"I humbly invite the gentlemen officers as well. Gentlemen, I would consider myself greatly honored to have the pleasure of seeing you in my house!"

The colonel, the major, and the other officers thanked him with a courteous bow.

"I personally am of the opinion, Your Excellency, that if one buys something, it ought to be good, and if it's bad, there's no point in acquiring it. At my place, when you honor me with your visit tomorrow, I'll show you a thing or two that I've acquired for the management of my estate."

The general looked and let the smoke out of his mouth.

Chertokutsky was extremely pleased to have invited the gentlemen officers; in anticipation, he ordered pates and sauces in his head, kept glancing very gaily at the gentlemen officers, who, for their part, also doubled their benevolence toward him, as could be noticed by their eyes and little gestures of a half-bowing sort. Chertokutsky's step grew somehow more casual, his voice more languid: it sounded like a voice heavy with pleasure.

"There, Your Excellency, you will make the acquaintance of the mistress of the house."

"I shall be very pleased," said the general, stroking his mustache.

After which Chertokutsky wanted to go home at once, so as to make all the preparations for receiving his guests at the next day's dinner in good time; he had already picked up his hat, but it hap– pened somehow strangely that he stayed a little longer. Meanwhile the card tables were set up in the room. Soon the whole company broke up into foursomes for whist and settled in different corners of the general's rooms.

Candles were brought. For a long time, Chertokutsky did not know whether to sit down to whist or not. But since the gentlemen officers had begun to invite him, he thought it quite against social rules to decline. He sat down. Imperceptibly, a glass of punch turned up before him, which he, forgetting himself, drank straight off that same minute. Having played two rubbers, Chertokutsky again found a glass of punch under his hand, which he, forgetting himself, again drank off, after first saying, "It's time, gentlemen, really, it's time I went home." But he sat down again for a second game. Meanwhile the conversation took it's own particular turn in different corners of the room. Those playing whist were rather silent; but the nonplayers sitting to the side on sofas conducted their own conversation. In one corner a cavalry staff captain, putting a pillow under his side and a pipe in his mouth, spoke quite freely and fluently of his amorous adventures and held the full attention of the circle around him. One extremely fat landowner with short arms, somewhat resembling two potatoes growing on him, listened with an extraordinarily sweet look and only tried now and then to send his short arm behind his broad back to get out his snuffbox. In another corner, a rather heated argument sprang up about squadron exercises, and Chertokutsky, who by then had twice played a jack instead of a queen, would suddenly interfere in other people's conversation and cry out from his corner: "What year was that?" or "What regiment?"-not noticing that the question was sometimes completely beside the point. Finally, a few minutes before suppertime, the whist came to an end, though it still went on in words and everyone's head seemed filled with whist. Chertokutsky remembered very well that he had won a lot, but he had nothing in his hands, and, getting up from the table, he stood for a long time in the position of a man who finds no handkerchief in his pocket. Meanwhile supper was served. It goes without saying that there was no shortage of wines and that Chertokutsky almost inadvertently had sometimes to fill his glass because there were bottles standing to right and left of him.

A most lengthy conversation went on at the table, yet it was conducted somehow strangely. One landowner who had served back in the campaign of 1812 2 told about a battle such as never took place, and then, for completely unknown reasons, removed the stopper from a decanter and stuck it into a pastry. In short, when they began to leave, it was already three o'clock in the morning, and the coachmen had to gather up some persons in their arms like shopping parcels, and Chertokutsky, for all his aris-tocratism, bowed so low and swung his head so much as he sat in his carriage that he brought two burrs home with him on his mustache.

In the house all was completely asleep; the coachman had great difficulty finding the valet, who brought his master through the drawing room and handed him over to the chambermaid, following whom Chertokutsky somehow reached his bedroom and lay down next to his young and pretty wife, who was lying there looking lovely in her white-as-snow nightgown. The movement produced by her husband falling into bed woke her up. She stretched herself, raised her eyelashes, and, quickly squinting three times, opened her eyes with a half-angry smile; but seeing that he was decidedly unwilling to show her any tenderness just then, she vexedly turned on her other side and, putting her fresh cheek on her hand, fell asleep soon after he did.

It was already that time which on country estates is not called early, when the young mistress woke up beside her snoring husband. Recalling that he had come home past three o'clock last night, she was sorry to rouse him, and having put on her slippers, which her husband had ordered from Petersburg, with a white jacket draping her like flowing water, she went out to her dressing room, washed with water fresh as her own self, and approached the mirror. Glancing at herself a couple of times, she saw that she was not at all bad looking that day. This apparently insignificant circumstance made her sit for precisely two extra hours before the mirror. At last she dressed herself very prettily and went to take some fresh air in the garden. As if by design, the weather was beautiful then, such as only a southern summer day can boast of. The sun, getting toward noon, blazed down with all the force of its rays, but it was cool strolling in the dense shade of the alleys, and the flowers, warmed by the sun, tripled their fragrance. The pretty mistress quite forgot that it was already twelve and her husband was still asleep. There already came to her ears the after-dinner snoring of the two coachmen and one postilion, who slept in the stables beyond the garden. But she went on sitting in the dense alley, from which a view opened onto the high road, and gazing absentmindedly at its unpeopled emptiness, when dust suddenly rising in the distance caught her attention. Looking closer, she soon made out several carriages. At their head drove a light, open two-seater; in it sat the general, his thick epaulettes gleaming in the sun, with the colonel beside him. It was followed by another, a four-seater; in it sat the major, with the general's aide-de-camp and two officers on the facing seats; following that carriage came the regimental droshky known to all the world, owned this time by the corpulent major; after the droshky came a four-place bon-voyage in which four officers sat holding a fifth on their lap… behind the bonvoyage three officers pranced on handsome dapple-bay horses.

"Can they be coming here?" the mistress of the house thought. "Ah, my God! they've actually turned onto the bridge!" She cried out, clasped her hands, and ran across flower beds and flowers straight to her husband's bedroom. He lay in a dead sleep.

"Get up, get up! Get up quickly!" she cried, pulling him by the arm.

"Ah?" said Chertokutsky, stretching without opening his eyes.

"Get up, poopsy! Do you hear? Guests!"

"Guests? What guests?" Having said which, he uttered a little moo, like a calf feeling for its mother's teats with its muzzle. "Mm…" he grunted, "give me your little neck, moomsy! I'll kiss you."

"Sweetie, get up quickly, for God's sake. The general and the officers! Ah, my God, you've got a burr on your mustache!"

"The general? Ah, so he's coming already? But why the devil didn't anybody wake me up? And the dinner, what about the dinner-is everything properly prepared?"

"What dinner?" "Didn't I order it?"

"You? You came home at four o'clock in the morning and never told me anything, no matter how I asked. I didn't wake you up, poopsy, because I felt sorry for you-you hadn't had any sleep…" These last words she pronounced in an extremely languid and pleading voice.

Chertokutsky, his eyes popping out, lay in bed for a moment as if thunderstruck. Finally he jumped up in nothing but his shirt, forgetting that it was quite indecent.

"Ah, what a horse I am!" he said, slapping himself on the forehead. "I invited them for dinner. What can we do? Are they far off?"

"I don't know… they must be here by now."

"Sweetie… hide somewhere!… Hey, who's there? Go, my girl-what, fool, are you afraid? The officers will come any minute. Tell them the master isn't here, tell them he won't be home today, that he left in the morning, do you hear? And tell all the servants. Go quickly!"

Having said that, he hastily grabbed his dressing gown and ran to hide in the carriage shed, supposing he would be completely safe there. But, after installing himself in a corner of the shed, he saw that even there he might somehow be visible. "Now, this will be better," flashed in his head, and he instantly folded down the steps of a nearby carriage, jumped in, closed the doors, covered himself with the apron and the rug for greater safety, and became perfectly still, crouched there in his dressing gown.

Meanwhile the carriages drove up to the porch.

The general stepped out and shook himself, followed by the colonel, straightening the plumes on his hat. Then the fat major jumped down from the droshky, holding his saber under his arm. Then the slim lieutenants who had been holding the sublieutenant on their laps leaped down from the bonvoyage, and finally the horse-prancing officers dismounted.

"The master's not at home," said a lackey, coming out to the porch.

"How, not at home? But, in any case, he'll be home by dinnertime?"

"No, sir, he's gone for the whole day. He may be back around this time tomorrow."

"Well, look at that!" said the general. "How can it be?…"

"Some stunt, I must say!" the colonel said, laughing.

"Ah, no, it isn't done," the general went on with displeasure. "Pah… the devil… If you can't receive, why go inviting?"

"I don't understand how anyone could do it, Your Excellency," said one young officer.

"What?" said the general, who was in the habit of always uttering this interrogative word when speaking with his officers.

"I said, Your Excellency, how can anyone act in such a way?"

"Naturally… Well, if something's happened, let people know, at least, or don't invite them."

"So, Your Excellency, there's no help for it, let's go back!" said the colonel.

"Certainly, nothing else to be done. However, we can have a look at the carriage even without him. He surely hasn't taken it with him. Hey, you there, come here, brother!"

"What's your pleasure?"

"You're a stable boy?"

"I am, Your Excellency."

"Show us the new carriage your master acquired recently."

"It's here in the shed, sir."

The general went into the shed together with the officers.

"If you wish, I'll move it out a little, it's a bit dark in here."

"Enough, enough, that's good!"

The general and the officers walked around the carriage, thoroughly examining the wheels and springs.

"Well, nothing special," said the general, "a most ordinary carriage."

"Most ungainly," said the colonel, "absolutely nothing good about it."

"It seems to me, Your Excellency, that it's hardly worth four thousand," said one of the young officers.

"What?"

"I said, Your Excellency, that it seems to me it's not worth four thousand."

"Four thousand, hah! It's not even worth two. There's simply nothing to it. Unless there's something special inside… Be so kind, my good fellow, as to undo the cover…"

And before the officers' eyes Chertokutsky appeared, sitting in his dressing gown and crouched in an extraordinary fashion.

"Ah, you're here!…" said the amazed general.

Having said which, the general at once slammed the doors, covered Chertokutsky with the apron again, and drove off with the other gendemen officers.

The Portrait

PART I Nowhere did so many people stop as in front of the art shop in the Shchukin market. This shop, indeed, presented the most heterogeneous collection of marvels: the pictures were for the most part painted in oils and covered with a dark green varnish, in gaudy, dark-yellow frames. Winter with white trees, a completely red evening like the glow of a fire, a Flemish peasant with a pipe and a dislocated arm, looking more like a turkey with cuffs than a human being-these were their usual subjects. To them should be added a few engraved prints: the portrait of Khozrev-Mirza 1 in a lambskin hat, the portraits of some generals in three-cornered hats, with crooked noses. Moreover, the doors of such a shop are usually hung with sheaves of popular prints on large sheets, which witness to the innate giftedness of the Russian man. On one was the tsarevna Miliktrisa Kirbitievna, 2 on another the city of Jerusalem, whose houses and churches were unceremoniously rolled over with red paint, which invaded part of the ground and two praying Russian peasants in mittens. These works usually have few purchasers, but a heap of viewers. Some bibulous lackey is sure to be there gaping at them, holding covered dishes from the restaurant for his master, who without doubt will sup a none-too-hot soup. In front of them there is sure to be standing a soldier in an overcoat, that cavalier of the flea market, with a couple of penknives to sell, and an Okhta 3 market woman with a box full of shoes. Each admires in his own way: the peasants usually poke their fingers; gentlemen study seriously; lackey boys and boy artisans laugh and tease each other with caricatures; old lackeys in frieze overcoats look on only so as to stand somewhere and gape; and young Russian market women hasten there by instinct, to hear what people are gabbing about and look at what they are looking at.

Just then the young artist Chartkov, passing by, stopped involuntarily in front of the shop. His old overcoat and unstylish clothes showed him to be a man who was selflessly devoted to his work and had no time to concern himself with his attire, which always has some mysterious attraction for the young. He stopped in front of the shop and at first laughed to himself at these ugly pictures. In the end, an involuntary pondering came over him: he began thinking about who might have need of these works. That the Russian populace should stare at Yeruslan Lazarevich, at the big eaters and big drinkers, at Foma and Yerema, 4 did not seem surprising to him: the subjects portrayed were easily accessible and understandable for the people; but where were the purchasers for these motley, dirty daubings in oil? Who needed these Flemish peasants, these red and blue landscapes, which displayed some pretense to a slightly higher step of art, while showing all the depths of its humiliation? They seemed not altogether the works of a self-taught child. Otherwise, for all the insensitive caricature of the whole, some sharp impulse would have burst through in them. But here one could only see dull-witted, impotent, decrepit giftlessness arbitrarily placing itself among the arts, when it belonged among the lowest crafts-a giftlessness which was faithful to its calling, however, and introduced its craft into art itself. The same colors, the same manner, the same practiced, habituated hand, belonging rather to a crudely made automaton than to a man!… He stood for a long time before these grimy paintings, finally not thinking about them at all, and meanwhile the owner of the shop, a gray little man in a frieze overcoat, with a chin unshaved since Sunday, had long been talking to him, bargaining and setting a price, before even finding out what he liked and wanted.

"For these peasants here and this little landscape, I'm asking twenty-five roubles. What painterliness! It simply hits you in the eye. We just got them from the exchange; the varnish is still wet. Or there's this winter, take this winter! Fifteen roubles! The frame is worth a lot by itself. Look, what a winter!" Here the shop owner gave the canvas a light flick, probably to show how good a winter it was. "Shall I have them tied up together and taken along with you? Where do you live? Hey, lad, fetch me the string!"

"Wait, brother, not so fast," the artist said, coming to his senses and seeing that the nimble shop owner had seriously started tying them up together. He felt a bit ashamed not to take anything after standing in the shop for so long, and he said:

"Wait, now, I'll see if there's anything here for me," and, bending down, he started going through some shabby, dusty old daub-ings piled on the floor and evidently not held in any respect. There were old family portraits, whose descendants were perhaps not even to be found in this world, pictures of total strangers on torn canvases, frames that had lost their gilding-in short, all sorts of decrepit trash. But the artist began to examine them, thinking secretly, "Maybe something will turn up." More than once he had heard stories of great master paintings occasionally being found among the trash sold by cheap print dealers.

The owner, seeing where he was getting to, abandoned his bustling and, assuming his usual position and proper dignity, placed himself by the door again, calling to passers-by and pointing with one hand to the shop: "Here, my friends, see what pictures! Come in, come in! Fresh from the exchange!" He had already shouted his fill, for the most part fruitlessly, and talked to his heart's content with the rag seller who stood across the street by the door of his own shop, and, remembering at last that he had a customer in his shop, he turned his back to the people and went inside. "Well, my friend, have you chosen something?" But the artist had already been standing motionless for some time before a portrait in a big, once magnificent frame, on which traces of gilding now barely gleamed.

It was an old man with a face the color of bronze, gaunt, high-cheekboned; the features seemed to have been caught at a moment of convulsive movement and bespoke an un-northern force. Fiery noon was stamped on them. He was draped in a loose Asiatic costume. Damaged and dusty though the portrait was, when he managed to clean the dust off the face, he could see the marks of a lofty artist's work. The portrait, it seemed, was unfinished; but the force of the brush was striking. Most extraordinary of all were the eyes: in them the artist seemed to have employed all the force of his brush and all his painstaking effort. They simply stared, stared even out of the portrait itself, as if destroying its harmony by their strange aliveness. When he brought the portrait to the door, the eyes stared still more strongly. They produced almost the same impression among the people. A woman who stopped behind him exclaimed, "It's staring, it's staring!" and backed away. He felt some unpleasant feeling, unaccountable to himself, and put the portrait down.

"So, take the portrait!" said the owner.

"How much?" said the artist.

"Why make it expensive? Give me seventy-five kopecks!" "No."

"Well, then, what will you give me?"

"Twenty kopecks," said the artist, preparing to leave.

"Eh, what kind of price is that? Twenty kopecks won't even pay for the frame. I see, you think you'll buy it tomorrow? Mister, mister, come back! Tack on ten kopecks at least. Take it, then, take it, give me the twenty kopecks. Really, it's just for openers, since you're my first customer."

At which he made a gesture as if to say, "So be it, and perish the picture!"

Thus Chartkov quite unexpectedly bought the old portrait and at the same time thought: "Why did I buy it? What do I need it for?" But there was nothing to be done. He took a twenty-kopeck piece from his pocket, gave it to the owner, took the portrait under his arm, and dragged it home. On the way, he recalled that the twenty kopecks he had paid out were his last. His thoughts suddenly darkened; vexation and an indifferent emptiness came over him in the same moment. "Devil take it! it's vile in this world!" he said, with the feeling of a Russian for whom things are going badly. And he walked on almost mechanically, with hurried steps, insensible to everything. The red light of the evening sun still lingered over half the sky; the houses turned toward it still glowed faintly with its warm light; and meanwhile the cold, bluish radiance of the moon grew stronger. Light, half-transparent shadows fell tail-like on the ground, cast by houses and the legs of passers-by. The artist was beginning gradually to admire the sky, aglow with some transparent, thin, uncertain light, and almost simultaneously the words "What a light tone!" and "It's irksome, devil take it!" flew out of his mouth. And, straightening the portrait, which kept slipping from under his arm, he quickened his pace.

Weary and all in a sweat, he dragged himself to the Fifteenth Line on Vasilievsky Island. 5 Straining and panting, he climbed the stairs, slopped with swill and adorned with the traces of cats and dogs. His knocking at the door brought no response: his man was not at home. He leaned against the window and set himself to waiting patiently, until he finally heard behind him the steps of the lad in the blue shirt, his companion, his model, his paint grinder and floor sweeper, who dirtied it straight away with his boots. The lad was called Nikita, and he spent all his time outside the gates when his master was not at home. Nikita was a long time trying to get the key into the keyhole, which was completely invisible on account of the darkness. At last the door opened. Chartkov went into his front room, which was insufferably cold, as is always the case with artists, something they, however, do not notice. Not handing Nikita his overcoat, he went in it to his studio, a square room, large but low, with frost-covered windows, set about with all sorts of artistic litter: pieces of plaster arms, stretched canvases, sketches begun and abandoned, lengths of fabric draped over chairs. He was very weary, threw off his overcoat, absentmindedly stood the portrait he had bought between two small canvases, and threw himself down on a narrow couch, of which one could not say that it was covered in leather, because the row of brass tacks formerly attaching it had long since existed on its own, and the leather over it also existed on its own, so that Nikita could shove black stockings, shirts, and all the dirty linen under it. Sitting there, sprawling as much as one could on this narrow couch, he finally asked for a candle.

"We have no candles," said Nikita.

"No?"

"And we had none yesterday either," said Nikita.

The artist remembered that in fact they had not had any candles yesterday, so he calmed down and fell silent. He allowed himself to be undressed and put on his well– and much-worn dressing gown.

"And the landlord also came," said Nikita.

"Well, so he came for money? I know," the artist said, waving his hand.

"He didn't come alone," said Nikita.

"With whom, then?"

"I don't know… some policeman."

"Why a policeman?"

"I don't know why. He says the rent isn't paid."

"Well, so what will come of it?"

"I don't know. He said, 'If he doesn't want to pay, he can move out.' They're both coming back tomorrow."

"Let them," Chartkov said with sad indifference. And a dreary state of mind came over him completely.

Young Chartkov was an artist with a talent that promised much: in flashes and moments his brush bespoke power of observation, understanding, a strong impulse to get closer to nature. "Watch out, brother," his professor had told him more than once, "you have talent; it would be a sin to ruin it. But you're impatient. Some one thing entices you, some one thing takes your fancy-and you occupy yourself with it, and the rest can rot, you don't care about it, you don't even want to look at it. Watch out you don't turn into a fashionable painter. Even now your colors are beginning to cry a bit too loudly. Your drawing is imprecise, and sometimes quite weak, the line doesn't show; you go for fashionable lighting, which strikes the eye at once. Watch out or you'll fall right into the English type. Beware. You already feel drawn to the world: every so often I see a showy scarf on your neck, a glossy hat… It's enticing, you can start painting fashionable pictures, little portraits for money. But that doesn't develop talent, it ruins it. Be patient.

Ponder over every work, drop showiness-let the others make money. You won't come out the loser."

The professor was partly right. Sometimes, indeed, our artist liked to carouse or play the dandy-in short, to show off his youth here and there. Yet, for all that, he was able to keep himself under control. At times he was able to forget everything and take up his brush, and had to tear himself away again as if from a beautiful, interrupted dream. His taste was developing noticeably. He still did not understand all the depth of Raphael, but was already carried away by the quick, broad stroke of Guido, paused before Titian's portraits, admired the Flemish school. 6 The dark surface obscuring the old paintings had not yet been entirely removed for him; yet he already perceived something in them, though inwardly he did not agree with his professor that the old masters surpassed us beyond reach; it even seemed to him that the nineteenth century was significantly ahead of them in certain things, that the imitation of nature as it was done now had become somehow brighter, livelier, closer; in short, he thought in this case as a young man thinks who already understands something and feels it in his proud inner consciousness. At times he became vexed when he saw how some foreign painter, a Frenchman or a German, sometimes not even a painter by vocation, with nothing but an accustomed hand, a quick brush, and bright colors, would produce a general stir and instandy amass a fortune. This would come to his mind not when, all immersed in his work, he forgot drinking and eating and the whole world, but when he would finally come hard up against necessity, when he had no money to buy brushes and paints, when the importunate landlord came ten times a day to demand the rent. Then his hungry imagination enviously pictured the lot of the rich painter; then a thought glimmered that often passes through a Russian head: to drop everything and go on a spree out of grief and to spite it all. And now he was almost in such a situation.