A TALE: ABRIDGED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF GÓGOL. BY THOMAS B. SHAW.

CHAPTER I.

By none of the numerous objects of interest in the busy city of St Petersburg are the steps of the sauntering pedestrian more frequently arrested than by the picture-shop in the StchÚkin Dvor.[24] True it is that the specimens of art there displayed are distinguished rather by eccentricity of design, and rudeness of execution, than by striking evidences of genius. The paintings are for the most part in oil, coated with green varnish, and fitted into frames of dark yellow tinsel. A winter-piece with white trees, a ferociously red sunset, like the glow of a conflagration, a Flemish boor with a pipe and dislocated-looking arm—resembling a turkey-cock in ruffles, rather than a human being,—such are the ordinary subjects. Beside them hang a few engravings: portraits of Khosrev-Mirza in his sheepskin bonnet, and of truculent generals with cocked hats and crooked noses. Bundles of coarse prints, on large paper broadsides, are suspended on either side the door. Here we have the Princess Miliktris Kirbitierna;[25] yonder the city of Jerusalem, its houses and churches smeared with vermilion, which gaudy colour has also invaded a part of the ground and a brace of Russian pilgrims in huge fur gloves. If these works of art find few purchasers, they at least attract a throng of starers; drunken ragamuffin lacqueys on their way from the cook's shop, bearing piles of plates with their masters' dinners, which grow cold whilst they gape at the pictures; great-coated Russian soldiers with penknives for sale; Okhta pedlar-women with boxes of shoes. Each spectator expresses his admiration in his own peculiar way: peasants point with their fingers; soldiers gaze with stolid gravity; dirty foot-boys and blackguard apprentices laugh and apply the caricatures to each other; old serving men in frieze cloaks stand listless and agape, indulging their propensity to utter idleness.

A number of persons answering to the above description were assembled before the picture-shop, when they were joined by a young man in a threadbare cloak and shabby garments. He was a painter, named TchartkÓff, as enthusiastic in his art as he was needy in his circumstances and careless of his dress. Pausing before the booth, he smiled as he glanced at the wretched pictures there displayed. The next moment the expression of mirthful contempt faded from his thin, ardent features, and he fell a-thinking. The question had occurred to him, amongst what class of people could those tawdry, worthless productions find purchasers? That Russian mujÍks should gaze delightedly upon the YeruslÁn LazarÉvitches, on pictures of PhomÁ and Yerema, of the heroes of their tales and legends, was quite natural; the objects represented were adapted to popular taste and comprehension; but who would buy those tawdry oil-paintings, those Flemish boors, those crimson and azure landscapes, which, whilst pretending to a higher grade of art, served but to prove its deep degradation? Not one redeeming touch could be traced in the senseless caricatures, to whose authors' clumsy hands the mason's trowel would assuredly have been better adapted than the painter's pencil. It was the very dotage of incapacity. The colouring, the treatment, the coarse obtrusive mechanical touch, seemed those of a clumsily constructed automaton, rather than of a human painter. Thus musing, our artist stood for some time before the vile daubs that excited his disgust, gazing at them long after the train of his reflections had led him far from them; whilst the master of the shop, a little, gray, ill-shaven fellow in a frieze cloak, chattered and chaffered and bargained as indefatigably as if the young man had announced himself a purchaser.

"Well now," said he, "for these mujÍks and the landscape, I'll take a white note.[26] There's painting! It hurts your eye, it's so bright; just received from the Exchange; varnish hardly dry. Take the winter-piece. Fifteen rubles! Frame worth the money. There's a winter, there's snow for you!"

Here the eager trader gave a slight fillip to the canvass, as if he expected the snow to fall off.

"Take the three. I'll send them home at once. Where does your honour live? Boy, a cord!"

"Not so fast, my friend," cried the artist, startled from his reverie, and perceiving the brisk dealer about to tie up the three daubs. His first impulse was to walk away, but he felt ashamed to purchase nothing after standing so long before the shop, and causing the hungry-looking old salesman so large an expenditure of breath. "Wait a little," he said. "I will see if you have any thing to suit me." And, stooping down, he turned over a number of battered dusty old pictures heaped like lumber upon the ground. They were chiefly old-fashioned family portraits, likenesses of unknown and insignificant faces, with torn canvass, and frames that had lost their gilding. Nevertheless TchartkÓff carefully examined them, thinking it possible he might pick up something good. He had more than once heard stories of pictures of the great masters being met with amongst the dust and trash of such shops as this. The dealer, perceiving he had probably nailed a customer, ceased his bustling importunity, resumed his station at the door, and recommenced his appeals to the passengers. He shouted, chattered, and pointed to his wares, but without success; then he had a long chat with an old-clothesman, whose establishment was on the opposite side of the alley; and at last, recollecting that, all this time there was a customer in his shop, he turned his back upon the public and walked in.

"Have you chosen anything, sir?"

The artist stood immoveable before a large portrait, whose frame had once been richly gilt, although it now scarcely retained a few tarnished vestiges of its former splendour. The subject was an old man, his face swarthy and bronzed, with furrowed brow and hollow temples, and sharp high cheekbones; a physiognomy on which the ravages of time, and climate, and suffering were plainly legible. The figure was draped in a flowing Asiatic costume. Defaced and injured and grimed with dirt though the portrait was, yet, when TchartkÓff had wiped the dust from the countenance, he perceived evident traces of the touch of a great artist. The picture seemed to have been scarcely finished, but the force of treatment was immense. Its most extraordinary part was the eyes; in them the artist had concentrated all the power of his pencil. There was vitality in those dark and lustrous orbs, they looked out of the portrait, and in some measure destroyed its harmony by their strange and life-like expression. When TchartkÓff took the picture to the door, he fancied the pupils dilated. The peculiarity of the painting at once attracted the attention of the idlers without. Some uttered exclamations of surprise, others fell back a pace as if in terror. A pale, sickly-looking woman of the lower classes, who suddenly found herself face to face with this singular portrait, screamed with alarm. "It's looking at me!" she cried, and hurried away, casting nervous glances over her shoulder. TchartkÓff himself experienced—he could not tell why—a sort of disagreeable sensation, and he put the portrait on the ground.

"D'ye buy?" said the picture-dealer.

"How much?" replied the artist.

"At a word—three tchetvertÁks."[27]

TchartkÓff shook his head. "Too much. I will give you a dougrÍvennoi," he added, moving towards the door.

"A dougrÍvennoi for that picture! You are pleased to joke, sir. The frame is worth twice the money. Bid me something more, if it be only another grivennik. Come back, sir," he shouted, running after the painter, and detaining him by his cloak-skirt; "come back, sir. You are my first customer to-day, and I will take your offer, for luck's sake. But the picture is given away."

On finding his offer thus unexpectedly accepted, TchartkÓff heartily repented his temerity in making it. The dougrÍvennoi he paid the dealer was his last in the world, and he was encumbered with a lumbering old portrait for which he had no earthly use. Cursing his own imprudence, he took up his purchase, and trudged away with it. Its weight and size caused it to slip perpetually from under his arm, and rendered it a most troublesome burthen. At last, tired to death and bathed in perspiration, he reached the house, in the fifteenth line of the VasÍlievskÜ Ostrow, in which he occupied a modest lodging, ascended the uncleanly staircase, and knocked impatiently at the door of his apartment. It was opened by a slatternly lad in a blue shirt—his cook, model, colour-grinder and floor-sweeper, who had to thank his godfathers for the harmonious name of NikÍta, and who united in his person the dirt incidental to three out of his four occupations. TchartkÓff entered his ante-room, which felt very chilly, as artists' ante-rooms usually are, and, without taking off his cloak, walked on into his studio a square apartment, tolerably spacious, but low in the ceiling, and with windows dimmed by the frost. This room was littered with all kinds of artistical rubbish: fragments of plaster of Paris, casts of hands, frames, stretched canvasses, sketches begun and thrown aside, and drapery cast carelessly over the chairs. Completely knocked up, TchartkÓff let his cloak fall, placed his new purchase against the wall, and threw himself on a narrow meagre little sofa, whose leathern cover, torn upon one side from the row of brass nails that had formerly confined it, afforded NikÍta a convenient receptacle for dish-cloths, old clothes, dirty linen, and any other miscellaneous matters he thought fit to cram under. The sun had set, and the night grew each moment darker. Our artist ordered NikÍta to bring a candle.

"There are no candles," was NikÍta's reply.

"How!—no candles?"

"There were none yesterday," said NikÍta.

TchartkÓff remembered that there had been none the night before, and that his credit with the tallow-chandler was not such as to render it probable a supply had been sent in that morning. So he held his tongue, allowed NikÍta to take off his coat, waistcoat, and cravat, and wrapped himself up as warmly as he could in a dressing gown with tattered elbows.

"I forgot to tell you," said NikÍta, "the landlord has been here."

"For money, I suppose," said the artist, shrugging his shoulders.

"He had somebody with him. A KvartÀlnÜ, I think.[28] He said something about the rent not being paid."

"Well, what can they do?"

"Don't know," replied the imperturbable NikÍta. "He said you must leave the lodgings or pay. Will come again to-morrow."

"Let them come," said TchartkÓff gloomily. And he turned himself upon the comfortless sofa with a feeling akin to desperation.

TchartkÓff was a young artist of considerable promise, and whose pencil was at times remarked for its accuracy, and near approach to the truthfulness of nature. But he had faults which procured him frequent admonitions from the professor under whom he studied. "You have talent," he would say to him; "it will be a sin to ruin it by carelessness and by pursuing erroneous ideas and principles. You are too impatient; too apt to be fascinated by novelty, and to neglect rules hallowed by time and experience, laws immutable as those of the Medes. Beware, lest you become a mere fashionable painter. Your colours, I observe, are not unfrequently selected in defiance of good taste; your drawing is often feeble, sometimes positively incorrect; your outlines want clearness. You run after a flashy kind of chiaro-scuro, the lighting up of your picture is meant only to strike the eye at the first glance. And you have a passion for the introduction of finery; a taste for dandified costume. All this is dangerous, and may lead you into the fatal habit of painting mere fashionable pictures, pretty portraits and the like, which yield money, but can never give fame. Do that, and your talent is lost and thrown away. Be patient, wait, reflect, chasten your taste by study, and wean yourself from that hankering after prettiness and dandyism. Leave such tricks to those who care but for gold, and propose yourself a higher aim, the never-dying laurels of a Titian or an Angelo."

The professor meant well, and was right in the main. TchartkÓff was apt to indulge in the flashy and the superficial. But he had sufficient strength of mind to control this dangerous tendency, and a purer taste was gradually but perceptibly developing itself in him. As yet he could not quite appreciate all the depth of Raphael, but he was strongly fascinated by the broad and rapid touch of Guido; he would stand enchanted before Titian's portraits, and had a high appreciation of the Flemish school. Yet the darkened and sober tone characterising old pictures did not quite please or satisfy him; nor did he, in his innermost mind, altogether agree with the professor, when the latter expatiated to him on that mysterious power which places the old masters at such immeasurable distance above the moderns. In some respects he almost fancied them surpassed by the nineteenth century; that the imitation of nature had somehow become, in modern times, more vivid, and lively, and faithful: in a word, his mind was in that fluctuating unsettled state in which the minds of young people are apt to be when they have reached a particular point of proficiency in their art, and feel a proud internal conviction of talent. Often was he filled with rage when he saw some travelling French or German painter, by the mere effect of trick and habit, by readiness of pencil and flashy colouring, catching the multitude, and making a fortune. These impressions made their way into his mind, not in moments when he was buried, body and soul, in his work, and forgot food and drink and all outward things; but when, as was often the case, necessity stared him in the face, and he found himself without the means of buying brushes and colours, or even bread, whilst the greedy and implacable landlord came ten times a-day to dun him for his rent. Then his hunger-sharpened imagination would revert to the different lot of the rich and fashionable painter; then darted through his brain the thought that so often flits through the Russian head, the idea of sending his art and all to the devil, and going to the devil himself.

"Yes, wait! wait!" he exclaimed passionately; "but patience and waiting must have an end. Wait, indeed! and where am I to seek to-morrow's dinner? Borrowing is out of the question; and if I sell my pictures and drawings, they will give me, perhaps, a dougrÍvennoi for the whole lot. They are useful to me; not one of them but was undertaken with an object,—from each I have learned something. But what would be their value to any body else? They are studies,—exercises; and studies and exercises they will remain to the end of the chapter. And, besides, who would buy them? I am unknown as an artist, and who wants studies from the antique and sketches from the living model, or my unfinished Love and Psyche, or the perspective sketch of my room, or my portrait of NikÍta, though it is really better than the portraits painted by any of your fashionable fellows? And, after all, what do I gain by this? Why should I work myself to death, and keep plodding like a schoolboy over his A, B, C, when I might be as famous as any of them, and have as much money in my pockets?" As he pronounced these words, the artist involuntarily shuddered and turned pale. He saw, looking fixedly at him, peeping out from the shadow of a tall canvass that stood against the wall, a face seemingly torn by some convulsive agony. Two dreadful eyes glared upon the young man, with a strange inexplicable expression; the lips were curled with mingled scorn and suffering; the features were haggard and distorted. Startled, almost terrified, TchartkÓff was on the point of calling NikÍta, who by this time sent forth from his ante-room a Titanic snore, when he checked himself and burst into a laugh. The object of alarm was the portrait he had bought, and which he had completely forgotten. The bright moonbeams, streaming into the room, partially illuminated the picture, and gave it a strange air of reality. By the clear cold light TchartkÓff set to work to examine and clean his purchase. When the coat of dust and filth that incrusted it was removed, he hung the picture upon the wall, and, retiring to look at it, was more than ever astounded at its extraordinary character and power. The countenance seemed lighted up by the fierce and glittering eyes, which looked out of the picture so wonderfully, and assumed, as it seemed to him, such strange and varied and terrible expression, that he at last involuntarily turned away his own, unable to support the gaze of the old Asiatic. Then came into his mind a story he had once heard from his professor, of a certain portrait of the famous Leonardo da Vinci, at which the great master worked for many years, still counting it unfinished, and which, nevertheless, according to Vasari, was universally considered the most perfect and finished production of art. But the most exquisitely finished part of it were the eyes, which excited the wonder of all contemporaries; even the minute and almost invisible veins were exactly rendered and put upon the canvass. But here, on the other hand, in the portrait before him, there was something strange and horrid. This was not art: the eyes absolutely destroyed the harmony of the portrait. They were living, they were human eyes! They seemed to have been cut out of a living man's face and stuck in the picture. Instead of admiration, the portrait inspired a painful feeling of oppression; the beholder was seized with a sort of waking nightmare, weighing upon and overwhelming him like a moral and mysterious incubus.

Shaking off this feeling, TchartkÓff again approached the portrait, and forced himself to gaze steadily upon its eyes. They were still fixed upon him. He changed his place; the eyes followed him. To whatever part of the room he removed, he met their deep malignant glance. They seemed animated with the unnatural sort of life one might expect to find in the eyes of a corpse, newly recalled to existence by the spell of some potent sorcerer. In spite of his better reason, which reproached him for his weakness, TchartkÓff felt an inexplicable impression, which made him unwilling to remain alone in the room. He retired softly from the portrait, turned his eyes in a different direction, and endeavoured to forget its presence; yet, in spite of all his efforts, his eye, as though of its own accord, kept glancing sideways at it. At last he became even fearful to walk about; his excited imagination made him fancy that as soon as he moved somebody was walking behind him,—at each step he glanced timidly over his shoulder. He was naturally no coward; but his nerves and imagination were painfully on the stretch, and he could not control his absurd and involuntary fears. He sat down in the corner; somebody, he thought, peeped stealthily over his shoulder into his face. Even the loud snoring of NikÍta, which resounded from the ante-room, could not dispel his uneasiness and chase away the unreal visions haunting him. At last he rose from his seat, timidly, without lifting his eyes, went behind the screen and lay down on his bed. Through the crevices in the screen he saw his room brightly illuminated by the moon, and he beheld the portrait hanging on the wall. The eyes were fixed upon him even more horribly and meaningly than before, and seemed as if they would not look at any thing but him. Making a strong effort, he got out of bed, took a sheet and hung it over the portrait. This done, he again lay down, feeling more tranquil, and began to muse upon his melancholy lot,—upon the thorns and difficulties that beset the path of the friendless and aspiring artist. At intervals he involuntarily glanced through the crevices of the screen at the shrouded portrait. The bright moonlight increased the whiteness of the sheet, and he at last fancied that he saw the horrible eyes shining through the linen. He strained his sight to convince himself he was mistaken. The contrary effect was produced. The old man's face became more and more distinct;—there could no longer be any doubt: the sheet had disappeared,—the grim portrait was completely uncovered, and the infernal eyes stared straight at him, peering into his very soul. An icy chill came over his heart. He looked again;—the old man had moved, and stood with both hands leaning on the frame. In a few seconds he rose upon his arms, put forth both legs and leaped out of the frame, which was now seen empty through the crevice in the screen. A heavy footstep was heard in the room. The poor artist's heart beat hard and fast. Swallowing his breath for very fear, he awaited the sight of the old man, who evidently approached his bed. And in another moment there he was, peeping round the screen, with the same bronze-like countenance and fixed glittering eyes. TchartkÓff made a violent effort to cry out, but his voice was gone. He strove to stir his limbs,—they refused to obey him. With open mouth and arrested breath he gazed upon the apparition. It was that of a tall man in a wide Asiatic robe. The painter watched its movements. Presently it sat down almost at his very feet, and drew something from between the folds of its flowing dress. This was a bag. The old man untied it, and, seizing it by the two ends, shook it: with a dull heavy sound there fell on the floor a number of heavy packets, of a long cylindrical shape. Their envelope was of dark blue paper, and on each was inscribed, 1000 DUCATS. Extending his long lean hands from his wide sleeves, the old man began unrolling the packets. There was a gleam of gold. Great as TchartkÓff's terror was, he could not help staring covetously at the coin, and looked on with profound attention as it streamed rapidly through the spectre's bony hands, glittering and clinking with a dull thin metallic sound, and was then rolled up anew. Suddenly he remarked one packet which had rolled a little farther than the rest, and stopped at the leg of the bedstead, near the head. By a rapid and furtive motion he seized this packet, gazing the while at the old man to see whether he remarked it. But he was too busy. He collected the remaining packets, replaced them in the bag, and, without looking at the artist, retired behind the screen. TchartkÓff's heart beat vehemently when he heard his departing footsteps echoing through the room. Congratulating himself on impunity, he joyfully grasped the packet, and had almost ceased to tremble for its safety, when suddenly the footsteps again approached the screen; the old man had evidently discovered that one of his packets was wanting. Nearer he came, and nearer, until once more his grim visage was seen peeping round the screen. In an agony of terror the young man dropped the rouleau, made a desperate effort to stir his limbs, uttered a great cry—and awoke. A cold sweet streamed from every pore; his heart beat so violently that it seemed about to burst; his breast felt as tight as if the last breath were in the act of leaving it. Was it a dream? he said, pressing his head between both hands; the vividness of the apparition made him doubt it. Now, at any rate, he was unquestionably awake, yet he thought he saw the old man moving as he settled himself in his frame, his hand sinking by his side, and the border of his wide robe waving. His own hand retained the sensation of having, but a moment before, held a weighty substance. The moon still shone into the room, bringing out from its dark corners here a canvass, there a lay figure, there again the drapery thrown over a chair, or a plaster cast on its bracket on the wall. TchartkÓff now perceived that he was not in bed, but on his feet, opposite the portrait. How he got there—was a thing he could in no way comprehend. What astounded him still more was the fact that the portrait was completely uncovered. No vestige of a sheet was there, but the living eyes staring fixedly at him. A cold sweat stood upon his brow; he would fain have fled, but his feet were rooted to the ground. And then he saw (of a certainty this was no dream) the old man's features move, and his lips protruded as if about to utter words. With a shrill cry of horror, and a despairing effort, TchartkÓff tore himself from the spot—and awoke. It was still a dream. His heart beat as though it would burst his bosom, but there was no cause for such agitation. He was in bed, in the same attitude as when he fell asleep. Before him was the screen: the chamber was filled with the watery moonbeams. Through the crack in the screen, the portrait was visible, covered with the sheet he had himself laid over it. Although thus convinced of the groundlessness of his alarm, the palpitation of his heart increased in violence, until it became painful and alarming; the oppression on his breast grew more and more severe. He could not detach his eyes from the sheet, and presently he distinctly saw it move, at first gently, then quickly and violently, as though hands were struggling and groping behind it, pulling and tearing, and striving, but in vain, to throw it aside. There was something mysteriously awful in this struggle of an invisible power against so flimsy an obstacle, which it yet was unable to overcome. TchartkÓff felt his very soul chilled with fear. "Great God! what is this?" he cried, crossing himself in an agony of terror. And once more he awoke. For the third time he had dreamed a dream! He sprang from his bed in utter bewilderment, his brain whirling and burning, and at first could not make up his mind whether he had been favoured by a visit from the domovÓi,[29] or by that of a real apparition.

Approaching the window, he opened the fÓrtotchka.[30] A sharp frosty breeze brought refreshment to his heated frame. The moon's radiance still lay broadly on the roofs and white walls of the houses, and small floating clouds chased each other across the sky. All was still, save when, from time to time, there fell faintly upon the ear the distant jarring rattle of a lingering drÓjki, prowling in search of a belated fare. For some time our young painter remained with his his head out of the fÓrtotchka, and it was not until signs of approaching dawn were visible in the heavens that he closed the pane, threw himself upon his bed, and fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.

It was very late when he awoke with a violent headache. The room felt close; a disagreeable dampness saturated the air, and made its way through the crevices of the windows. Low-spirited, uncomfortable, and cheerless as a drenched cock, he sat down on his dilapidated sofa, and began to recall his dream of the previous night. So vivid was the impression it had made, that he could hardly persuade himself it had been a mere dream. Removing the sheet, he minutely examined the portrait by the light of day. He was still struck with the extraordinary power and expression of the eyes, but he found in them nothing peculiarly terrific. Still an unpleasant impression remained upon his mind. He could not divest himself of the conviction that a fragment of horrible reality had mingled with his dream. In defiance of reason, he imagined something peculiarly significant in the expression of the old man's face; a something of the cautious stealthy look it had worn when he crept round the screen, and counted his gold under the very nose of the needy painter. And TchartkÓff still felt the print of the rouleau upon his palm, as though it had but that instant left his grasp. Had he held it but a little tighter, he thought, it must have remained in his hand even after his awakening.

"Heavens!" he exclaimed, heaving a sorrowful sigh, "had I but the moiety of that wealth!" And again in his mind's eye he saw the rouleaus streaming from the sack. Again he read the attractive inscription,—1000 DUCATS; again they were unrolled, he heard the chink of metal, saw it shine, burned to clutch it. But once more the blue paper was rolled around it; and there he sat, motionless and entranced, straining his eyes upon vacancy, powerless to divert their gaze from the imaginary treasure—like a child gazing with watering mouth at a dish of unattainable sweetmeats.

A knock at the door at last roused him from his reverie. It was promptly followed by the entrance of his landlord, accompanied by the NadzirÁtel, or police-inspector of the quarter—a gentleman whose appearance is, if possible, more disagreeable to the poor than the face of a petitioner is to the rich. The landlord of the small house in which TchartkÓff lodged, was no bad type of the class of house-owners in such quarters as the fifteenth line of the VasÍlievskÜ Ostrov. In his youth, he had been a captain in the army, where he was noted as a noisy quarrelsome fellow; transferred thence to the civil service, he proved himself a thorough master of the art of petty tyranny, a bustling coxcomb and a blockhead. Age had done little to improve his character. He had been some time a widower, had long retired from the service, was less given to quarrels and coxcombry, but more trivial and teasing. His chief happiness consisted in drinking tea, propagating scandal, and in sauntering about his apartment, with hands behind his back. These intellectual occupations were varied by an occasional inspection of the roof of his house, by ferreting his dvÒrnik, or porter, fifty times a-day out of the kennel in which he oftener slept than watched, and by a monthly attack upon his lodgers for their rent.

"Do me the favour to see about it yourself, VarÙkh KusmÌtch," said the landlord, to the KvartÀlnÜ: "he won't pay his rent—he won't pay, sir."

"How can I, without money? Give me time, and I will pay."

"Time, my good sir! impossible! I can't hear of such a thing," said the landlord in a rage, flourishing the key he held in his hand. "Perhaps you don't know that Colonel PotogÒnkin lodges in my house—a colonel, sir, and has lived here these seven years; and Anna PetrÒvna BuchmÌsteroff—a lady of fortune, sir, who rents a coach-house, and a two-stall stable, sir, and keeps three out-door servants: these are the sort of lodgers I have. My house, I tell you plainly, is not one of those establishments where people live who don't pay their rent. So I will thank you to pay yours directly, and be off bag and baggage."

"You had better pay," said the KvartÀlnÜ NadzirÁtel, with a slight but significant shake of the head, sticking his forefinger through a button-hole of his uniform.

"It's very easy to say pay, but where is the money? I have not a sous."

"In that case, you can satisfy IvÀn IvÀnovitch with goods, with the produce of your profession," said the KvartÀlnÜ; "he will probably agree to take pictures."

"Not I, indeed! no pictures for me! It would be all very well to take pictures with respectable subjects, such as a gentleman could hang on his wall; a general with a star, or the likeness of Prince KutÚzoff; but, here I see nothing but paintings of mujÍks in their shirt-sleeves, servants, and such like cattle—a mere waste of time and colours. He has taken the likeness of that blackguard of his, whose bones I shall assuredly break, for the thief has pulled the nails out of all my locks and window-hasps—a scoundrel! Just look; there's a subject for you! a picture of the room! It would have been all very well if he had drawn it clean, neat, and orderly; but there he has got it full of filth and rubbish, just as it is. Only see how he has bedevilled and dirtied my room; pretty work, indeed, when I have had colonels for lodgers seven years together, and Anna PetrÒvna BuchmÌsteroff! Truly there are no worse lodgers than artists; they turn a drawing-room into a pigstye."

To all this, and much more, the poor painter was forced to listen patiently. Meanwhile the KvartÀlnÜ NadzirÁtel amused himself by looking at the pictures and sketches, occasionally uttering a comment or question.

"Not bad!" said he, pausing before a female figure: "pretty woman, really! But what's the meaning of that black, there, under her nose? is it snuff, or what?"

"That's the shadow," replied TchartkÓff surlily, without turning towards him.

"You would have done better to have put it somewhere else. It is too remarkable just under the nose," said the critical Argus. "But, whose portrait is this?" continued he, approaching the picture that had occasioned TchartkÓff so restless a night. "What an ugly old heathen! And what eyes! They might belong to Belzebub himself. I must have a look at this."

And without asking permission, or thinking it necessary to use much ceremony with a poor devil of a painter who could not pay his rent, the agent of the law lifted the portrait from the nails on which it hung, to carry it to the window, and examine it at his leisure. But his hands were stiff and clumsy, and he had miscalculated the weight of the picture. It slipped through his fingers, and fell to the ground with a heavy thump and slight crashing noise, upsetting some lumber that stood against the wall, and raising a cloud of dust, which caused the man of manacles to step back and rub his eyes. With a muttered curse on the meddlesome official, TchartkÓff sprang forward to raise the picture. As he did so, a small board, forming one of the sides of the frame, and which had been cracked by the fall, gave way altogether under the pressure of his hand, and part of it fell out. The fragment was followed by a rouleau of dark blue paper, which emitted a dull chink as it struck the ground. TchartkÓff's eye glanced upon an inscription; it was—1000 DUCATS. To snatch up the packet, and thrust it into his pocket, was the work of an instant.

"Surely, I heard the sound of coin," said the KvartÀlnÜ, who, owing to the dust, and to the rapidity of the painter's movement, had not caught sight of the rouleau.

"And what business of yours is it, to know what I have in my room?"

"It's my business to tell you, that you must pay the landlord his rent; it's my business to tell you, that I know you have money, and yet you won't pay—that's my business, my fine fellow!"

"Well, I will pay him to-day."

"And, why did you not pay at once, without giving trouble to the landlord, and disturbing the police?"

"Because I didn't intend to touch this money. But I will pay him this evening, and leave his lodgings at once. I will live no longer in his paltry garret."

"He will pay you, IvÀn IvÀnovitch," said the KvartÀlnÜ to the landlord. "If you neglect to do so by this evening, why then you must excuse me, Mr Painter, if we use severer means." And resuming his cocked hat, he departed, followed by the landlord, who hung his head, and looked exceedingly small.

"The devil go with them!" said TchartkÓff, as he heard the outer door shut. He looked into the ante-room, sent NikÍta out, in order to be quite alone, locked himself in, and, with a violent palpitation of the heart, opened his packet. It contained exactly a thousand ducats, almost all of them quite new, and sparkling like the sun. Its appearance was precisely the same as those he had seen in his dream. Almost frantic with delight, he sat with the pile of gold before him, asking himself whether he did not still dream. Long did he handle and tell the gold before he could believe that it was real, and that he himself was awake and in his right mind.

He then curiously and carefully examined the frame. In one side of it a kind of cavity had been hollowed out, and afterwards closed with a board, so neatly that if the loutish hand of the KvartÀlnÜ NadzirÁtel had not let the frame drop, the ducats might have remained for centuries undisturbed. It was with gratitude and complacency, rather than aversion, that the painter now contemplated the peculiar features and remarkable eyes of the old Asiatic.

"Whoever you are, my old boy," said TchartkÓff to himself, "I'll put you under glass, and give you a splendid frame for this."

At this moment his hand happened to touch the heap of gold, and the contact made his heart beat as violently as ever. "What shall I do with it?" he thought, fixing his eyes upon the money. "Now I am at my ease for three years at least, I can shut myself in my studio, and work. I can buy colours, pay for a comfortable lodging and good food. I have enough for every thing; nobody can tease or badger me now. I'll get a first-rate lay-figure, order a plaster torso, model feet, buy a Venus, have engravings of all the great masters. And if I work steadily for three years, quietly, without hurry, without being obliged to sell my pictures for my daily bread, I shall astonish the world and achieve fame."

Such was the artist's soliloquy, prompted by conscious talent and honourable ambition. A far different counsel was given by his twenty-two summers and heat of youth. He now had at his command all that he had hitherto gazed at from afar with envying eyes. How his heart bounded and swelled within him, as he thought of the luxuries he could now command! how he longed to exchange rags for purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously after his long fast, to dwell in a splendid lodging, to visit the theatre, the cafÉ, the ball!

Seizing his money, the young man was in the street in a moment. His first visit was to a tailor's shop, where he dressed himself from top to toe, and walked down the street looking at himself in every window. He bought a huge quantity of trinkets and perfumes, an opera-glass, and a mountain of brilliant cravats; took, without a word of bargaining, the first lodging that he saw, a magnificent set of rooms in the Nevsku perspective, with immense mirrors, and each window glazed with a single pane; had his hair curled at a coiffeur's, hired a carriage, and drove twice, without the slightest object, from one end of the town to the other, crammed himself with bon-bons at a confectioner's, and went to a French restaurant, about which he had hitherto heard only vague and uncertain rumours, such as one hears of the Chinese empire. There he dined, assuming the while a haughty and supercilious air, and incessantly arranging his well-curled locks. There, too, he drank a bottle of champagne; a liquid he had hitherto known only by reputation. His head full of wine, he went out into the street, gay, bold, ready for any thing—able to face the devil, as the Russians say. On the bridge he met his former professor, and pushed coolly past him, as if he did not observe him, leaving the poor man motionless with astonishment, a mark of interrogation visibly printed in his countenance. All that he possessed in the world, easels, canvasses, pictures, TchartkÓff transported that very evening to his new and splendid lodgings. He arranged his best pictures in the most visible situations, cast those he thought less of into corners, and perambulated his splendid rooms, looking at himself each minute in the mirrors. Then there arose in his mind a restless desire to take fame by storm, instantly, without delay, and to compel, by whatever means, the applause of the multitude. Already the cry rang in his ears, "TchartkÓff, TchartkÓff! haven't you seen TchartkÓff's picture? What a rapid pencil TchartkÓff has! TchartkÓff has immense talent!" Musing, and castle-building, he paced his apartment till a late hour of the night, and when in bed, could not sleep for ruminating his ambitious projects.

The next morning he took a dozen ducats, and drove to the editor of a fashionable newspaper. The introduction was efficacious. The journalist praised his genius, professed the most ardent desire to serve him, loaded him with compliments, shook him fervently by both hands, and accompanied him obsequiously to the door, making minute inquiries as to his name, his style of painting, his place of residence.

The very next day there appeared in the newspaper, immediately after an advertisement of newly discovered candles, warranted to burn without wicks, an article headed,

EXTRAORDINARY TALENT OF TCHARTKÓFF.

"We hasten to congratulate the inhabitants of this polite metropolis on what may be styled a discovery of the most splendid and useful nature. We refer to the sudden appearance of an artist of consummate skill, possessing all the qualifications that can render a painter worthy to transfer to the magic canvass the faces of the many beautiful women and handsome men who adorn the cultivated circles of St Petersburg. Ladies may now confidently rely on being transmitted to posterity without diminution of their graces, with all their delicate loveliness, enchanting symmetry of form, and exquisite expression of feature—graces ephemeral, alas! as the existence of the butterfly that hovers over the vernal flowers. Parents, ere they leave this vale of tears, may bequeath to their sorrowing children their exact resemblance. The warrior, the statesman, the poet, all classes of men, in short, will pursue their career with fresh zeal and ardour, now that the brilliant pencil of a TchartkÓff enables them to transmit to posterity their visible features, as well as their imperishable renown. Let all hasten, then, abandoning promenade, and party, opera, ball, and theatre, to the splendid and luxurious studio of our artist, (Nevsku Perspective, No.—). It is hung with portraits, the produce of his pencil, worthy a Vandyke or a Titian. The happy connoisseur knows not what to admire most in these exquisite works, their exact resemblance to the original, or the extraordinary brilliancy and freshness of their handling. They must be seen to be even imperfectly appreciated; the artist has truly drawn a prize in the lottery of genius. Success to you, AndrÉi PetrÓvitch! (the journalist was evidently fond of the familiar style). Macte nov virtute, and immortalise yourself and us. Glory, fortune, crowds of sitters, in spite of the feeble and envious efforts of certain contemporary prints, will be your speedy and unfailing reward!"

His face beaming with contentment, our artist perused this puff. He saw his name in print,—a thing which was to him a complete novelty; and he could not help reading the lines at least a dozen times. He was particularly tickled with the comparison of his works to Vandyke and Titian. The use of his baptismal name, AndrÉi PetrÓvitch, also gratified him not a little. To be mentioned in this delightfully familiar way in print, was to him an honour as gratifying as it was new. He could not remain quiet a moment. Now he sat down in a chair, then threw himself picturesquely on a sofa, rehearsing the way he would receive his sitters; then he went to his easel, and gave a bold dashing stroke of the brush, studying at the same time a graceful mode of wielding it. Thus he got through the day.

The next morning, soon after breakfast, his bell rang. He hurried to the door; a lady entered, preceded by a footman in a furred livery cloak, and accompanied by a young girl of eighteen, her daughter.

"Monsieur TchartkÓff, I believe?" said the lady. The painter bowed.

"I have seen your name in the papers; your portraits, they say, are incomparable." With these words the lady put her glass to her eye, and glanced round the walls, which were bare. "But where are all your portraits?"

"They are not arrived," said the artist, a little confused; "I have just removed into these rooms, the pictures are still on the road—they will soon be here."

"You have been in Italy?" said the lady, turning her eye-glass on the painter in the absence of the paintings.

"No, I have not been there exactly—I intend to go—I have been compelled to put it off; but pray do me the honour to sit down; you must be tired."

"You are very kind, but I have been sitting—in my carriage. Ah, at last, I see some of your works!" said the lady, running up to the opposite side of the room, and levelling her glass at some canvasses placed on the floor, studies, sketches, interiors, and portraits. "C'est charmant! Lise, Lise! venez ici: there's an interior in the manner of Teniers, see: all is in disorder, higgledy-piggledy, a table with a bust upon it, a hand, a palette; and the dust, look how well the dust is painted! c'est charmant! And there is another canvass, a woman washing her face—quelle jolie figure! Oh, and there's a mujÍk! Lise, Lise! a mujÍk in a Russian shirt! look, do look—a mujÍk! So you don't paint portraits only?"

"These are mere trifles—done for amusement, in an idle moment—mere studies——"

"But do tell me your opinion of the portrait-painters of the present day? Isn't it true, that we have none at present like Titian? There's not that force of colouring, not that,——really, what a pity it is that I cannot express what I mean in Russian." The lady was passionately fond of painting, and had run, eye-glass in hand, over all the galleries in Italy. "Only, I must say, that Monsieur Dauberelli—ah, how he paints! What an extraordinary touch! I find more expression in his faces than even in Titian's. You know Monsieur Dauberelli?"

"Dauberelli! who is he?" asked the artist.

"Such talent! He painted my daughter when she was only twelve years old. You must come and see it, really you must. Lise, you shall show him your album. But I want another portrait of my daughter, and that is the motive of my visit. Can you begin at once?"

"Directly, madam, if you please." And in a moment he wheeled up his easel, with a canvass on it, ready stretched, took his palette in his hand and fixed his eyes on the pale childish features of the daughter. Young as she was, they already bore traces of late hours and dissipation. Expression they had little or none. But the artist saw in the complexion an almost china-like transparence, exquisitely adapted to his pencil; the neck was white and slender, the form elegant and aristocratic. And he prepared for a triumph; he intended to show the lightness and brilliancy of his touch, for the display of which he had hitherto lacked opportunities. He already began to fancy to himself how the pale but graceful little lady would come out upon the canvass.

"Do you know," said the mother, with a sentimental expression of face "I should like—you see she has a frock on now—well, I confess I should not like you to paint her in a frock, it's so commonplace; I should like her to be painted simply dressed, sitting in the shade of a thicket, with fields in the distance, and sheep or a forest in the back-ground—simplicity, the greatest simplicity, is what I should like."

TchartkÓff set to work, arranged the sitter in the attitude he required, endeavoured to fix the whole subject in his mind; waved his brush in the air before him, as if establishing the principal points; half-closed his eyes several times, retired back a step or two, examined his sitter from a distance, and in about an hour he finished drawing in the face. Satisfied with the effect, he now commenced painting, and his labour rapidly grew lighter. By this time he had forgotten he was in the presence of two ladies of high fashion, and began to fall into a few tricks of the painting-room, uttering half-aloud various inarticulate sounds, and at intervals humming a tune between his teeth. Without the slightest ceremony he from time to time signed, by a movement of his brush, to his sitter to raise her head. At last the young lady grew weary and restless.

"That's quite enough for the first sitting," said her mother.

"Another minute," cried the painter in an absent tone.

"Impossible! Lise, three o'clock!" said the lady, looking at her diminutive watch. "Oh, how late!"

"Only half a second," said TchartkÓff, in the wistful and beseeching voice of a child.

But the lady was disinclined to comply. She promised him a longer sitting another time.

"Horridly annoying!" said TchartkÓff to himself; "just as my hand was getting in." And he remembered that no one had ever interrupted him, when he worked in his painting-room in the VasÍlievskÜ Ostrov. NikÍta would sit hour after hour without moving a muscle: you might paint him as much as you liked; he would go to sleep in the attitude he was fixed in. And the artist discontentedly laid his pencil and palette on a chair, and stood pensively before the canvass. He was aroused from his reverie by a compliment addressed to him by the fashionable lady. He darted towards the door to show out his visitors: on the stairs he received an invitation to dine with them the following week, and with a cheerful air he re-entered his rooms. The aristocratic style of his visitors had quite fascinated him. Up to this time he had held such beings unapproachable, born only to glide about in a splendid carriage with liveried footmen and a laced and bearded coachman, throwing a calm indifferent glance on the humble foot-passenger as he plodded by in a shabby cloak. And yet, here was one of these exquisite beings calling upon him: he was painting her portrait, and had received an invitation to dine with her. Intoxicated with vanity and delight, he treated himself to a splendid dinner, went to the theatre in the evening, and again, without the slightest occasion, drove about the town in a carriage.

For some days he did nothing but arrange his rooms and listen for the sound of his bell. At last the lady arrived, with her pale daughter. He made them sit down, wheeled up his easel with a strong affectation of fashionable manner, and began to paint. He saw in his delicate sitter much that, being cleverly caught, would give high value to the portrait: he perceived that he might produce something quite peculiar and characteristic, if he could render it with the same accuracy and completeness with which nature herself had placed it before him. His heart even felt a slight tremor when he found himself expressing what no one else perhaps had ever remarked. His attention became riveted on his canvass, and he again forgot the aristocratic descent of his sitter. Holding his breath from eagerness, he gradually saw the delicate features and transparent skin come out upon his canvass. He had caught every half-tint, even the slight ivory-like yellowness, the nearly imperceptible blueish tone under the eyes, and was just in the act of seizing a little mole upon the forehead, when he suddenly heard behind him the voice of the mother, crying—"Oh, never mind that! that is not necessary! I see, too, you have got a—here, for instance, and here, see!—a kind of yellowish—and here and there you have, as it were, little dark places." The artist explained that the dark and yellow tones relieved the face, and gave a delicacy to the flesh-tints. But the notion was scouted. He was informed that Lise had not slept well, that there was usually no yellowness at all in her face, which struck every body by its freshness of complexion. Sadly and reluctantly TchartkÓff began to efface what he had taken such pains to produce. With it there vanished of course much of the resemblance. He now began, with a feeling of indifference, to throw over the whole a more commonplace and hackneyed colouring, the red and white, devoid of vigour, which each daubster has at his command. The obnoxious tint was effaced, and the mamma was delighted. She only expressed her surprise that the work went on so slowly. She had heard, she said, that he could completely finish a portrait in two sittings. The ladies rose and prepared to go away. TchartkÓff laid down his pencil, conducted them to the door, and then, returning, stood for a while before his portrait, regretting the delicate lines, the half-tints and airy tones, so happily caught and pitilessly effaced. With these recollections vivid in his mind, he put aside the portrait, and looked for a study, which had been long abandoned, of a head of Psyche, an idea he had some time before thrown sketchily on the canvass. It was a pretty little countenance, cleverly and rapidly painted, but quite ideal, cold and hard, devoid of life and reality. Scarcely knowing why, he began to work at this, endeavouring to communicate to it all he could remember of the countenance of his aristocratic sitter. Psyche grew more and more animated; the type of the young fashionable lady's countenance was by degrees mingled with hers, at the same time acquiring an expression which gave it originality and character. TchartkÓff was able to avail himself, both in the details and in the general effect, of all that he had obtained from his sitter, and to incorporate it with his work. During several days he laboured hard at his Psyche. He was still busy with it when he was interrupted by the arrival of his former visitors. The picture was on the easel. Both ladies uttered a cry of admiration, and clapped their hands.

"Lise! Lise! Oh, how like! Superbe! Superbe! What an exquisite idea, to dress her in the Grecian costume! What a truly delicious surprise!"

The artist hardly knew how to undeceive the ladies in their agreeable mistake. He hung his head, and, with an apologetic air, said, in a low voice, "This is Psyche."

"Painted as Psyche! C'est charmant!" said the mother, with a smile, faithfully repeated by the daughter. "Don't you think so, Lise? it's just the thing for you. Painted as Pysche! Quelle idÉe dÉlicieuse! But what a picture! Quite a Correggio! I have heard and read much about you, but I had not the least idea of your talent."

"What the deuce am I to do with them?" thought the artist. "Well, if they will have it so, Psyche shall go;" and he said aloud—"I must trouble you to give me a few minutes more—I should like to add a few touches."

"You cannot improve it. Pray leave it as it is."

The painter guessed that they apprehended some more yellow tones, and he hastened to remove their fears, saying that he was only going to increase the brilliancy and expression of the eyes. In reality he desired to give his picture a closer resemblance with the original—fearing, if he did not, that he should be taxed with unblushing flattery. In spite of the lady's reluctance, the pallid damsel's features began to come out more clearly amid the outlines of the Psyche.

"That will do," said the mother, less pleased by the picture as the resemblance grew closer. The artist was rewarded for his labour with smiles, money, compliments, a most affectionate squeeze of the hand, and a pressing invitation to dinner; in a word, he was overwhelmed with recompenses. The portrait made much noise in the town. The lady showed it to all her acquaintance. Every body admired the skill with which the painter had succeeded in preserving the resemblance, and at the same time in giving beauty to the original. The last remark, of course, was not made without a slight tinge of malice. TchartkÓff was besieged with commissions. The whole town was mad to be painted by him. His door-bell rang incessantly. Unfortunately his sitters were of the class most difficult to manage; either persons very much occupied, or fashionable people, who having in reality nothing to do, were, of course, far busier than anybody else, and hurried and impatient in the highest degree. Every body expected a good picture in less time than was necessary to do a slovenly one. The artist saw that high finish was quite out of the question, and that all he could do was to dazzle by the facility, rapidity, and smartness of his execution. He had to content himself with catching the general expression, neglecting the more delicate details, and not attempting to attain the individuality and reality of nature. Besides this, every sitter had some fresh fancy. The ladies required that only their sentiment and character should be represented in their portraits; that all the rest should be smoothed and softened; sharp angles rounded off; defects mitigated, and even, if possible, altogether concealed. They required, in short, to be made attractive in their portraits, whether nature had made them so or not. Consequently many, when they seated themselves in the painting chair, put on such looks and expressions as absolutely astounded the artist. One struggled to give her features an air of melancholy; another of sentimental abstraction; a third tried desperately to make her mouth small, and pursed it up till it resembled a round dot. And in spite of all this they expected striking resemblance, ease, and grace. Nor were the gentlemen more reasonable. One required to be painted with a strong energetic turn of the head; another with uplifted eyes, full of poetic inspiration; an ensign of the Guards declared that he should not be satisfied unless Mars was made visible in his countenance: a civilian delicately suggested that his face should be made as much as possible to express incorruptible probity, mingled with imposing dignity, and that he should be painted leaning his arm on a book, inscribed in legible characters, "I stand for right." At first all these requests frightened and annoyed our painter; there was so much to be harmonised, considered, and arranged, and all in a few hours. At last he began to understand the secret, and went on without troubling his head in the least. From the first two or three words spoken, he perceived how the sitter wished to be painted. The gentleman who wanted Mars was made a Mars of; he who aped Byron received a Byronic attitude. As to the ladies, whether they wished to be Corinnas, or Undines, or Aspasias, he was quite ready to accommodate them, and even added, from his own imagination, a universal air of distinction, which never does any harm, and which sometimes makes people excuse even want of resemblance. He soon began to be astonished at the wonderful rapidity and success of his execution. As to the sitters, they were in ecstasies, and proclaimed him every where a genius of the first water.

TchartkÓff became all the fashion. He drove out every day to dinner parties, escorted ladies to exhibitions and promenades, was a consummate puppy in his dress, and openly declared that an artist ought to be a man of the world; that it was his duty to maintain his dignity; that painters in general dressed like shoemakers; that their manners were excruciatingly vulgar, and that they were people of no education. His studio was a pattern of elegance; he kept a couple of magnificent footmen; took a number of dandified pupils; had his hair curled; dressed half-a-dozen times a-day in various fantastical costumes. He was perpetually rehearsing improvements in his way of receiving visitors; meditating on all possible means of beautifying his person, and of producing an agreeable impression on the ladies. In short, it soon became impossible to recognise in him the modest student who once laboured so fervently in his garret in the VasÍlievskÜ Ostrov. Concerning art and artists he now rarely spoke; he asserted that the merit of the old masters had been outrageously overrated; that, before Raphael, their figures were rather like herrings than human beings; that it was the imagination of the spectator only that could find in their works that air of grandeur and dignity generally attributed to them. Raphael himself, he said, was very unequal, and many of his productions owed their glory only to tradition. Michael Angelo was a boaster, weakly vain of his knowledge of anatomy, and without a particle of grace. Real force of outline, grace of touch, and magic of colouring we must look for, he said, in the present age. Thence the conversation easily glided to his own pictures.

"I cannot conceive," he would say, "the obstinacy of people who drudge at their pictures. A fellow who hangs month after month over one piece of canvass is, in my opinion, an artisan, not an artist. Such a one has no genius, for genius creates boldly, rapidly. Now this portrait, for instance," he would say, "I painted in two days, this head in one day, this in a few hours, and that other in rather more than an hour. I don't call it art to go crawling on, line after line."

Thus he would chatter to his visitors, and the visitors would admire his dashing rapidity, and utter exclamations of wonder when they heard how quickly he worked; and then they would whisper to each other—"This is genius—real genius! How well he talks! What an extraordinary talent!"

Such praise as this the painter greedily drank in, and was as delighted as a child by the encomiums of the press, even when bought and paid for with his own money. His fame continued to spread, and his occupation to increase, till he grew weary of painting portraits and faces with the same tricks and attitudes that he knew by heart. Gradually he worked with less and less good-will, contenting himself with carelessly sketching in the head, and leaving all the rest to be finished by his pupils. Formerly he had taken trouble to seek new attitudes; to strike by novelty—by effect. Now he began to grow weary even of this labour. He entirely left off reflecting; he had neither power nor leisure for it. His dissipated mode of life, and the society in which he played the part of a man of fashion, severed him more and more from labour and from thought. His touch grew cold and dull, and he insensibly confined himself to stale, commonplace, worn-out forms. The stiff, monotonous countenances of officers and civilians, in their graceless modern costumes, were not very attractive subjects for the pencil. He forgot all—his graceful draping, his easy attitudes, his power of representing the passions. As to skilful grouping or dramatic effect in painting, all that was quite out of the question. He had nothing before his eyes but the eternal uniform, corset, or dress-coat—objects chilling to the artist, and affording little scope to imagination. By and by even the most ordinary merits disappeared, one by one, from his productions; and they still enjoyed the highest reputation, though real judges and artists only shrugged their shoulders as they looked at the work of his hand.

These mute but significant criticisms of the discerning few never reached the ears of the artist, intoxicated as he was with vanity and false fame. He already too approached the period of maturity in age and intellect, and was rapidly acquiring a respectable corpulence. He now met in the journals with such expressions as these:—"Our respectable AndrÉi PetrÓvitch—our veteran of the pencil, AndrÉi PetrÓvitch." He now received many honorary appointments in public institutions; was frequently invited to examinations and to committees. He began, as people infallibly do on reaching a certain age, to stand up sturdily for the old masters, not from any profound conviction of their wonderful merits, but in order to throw their names in the teeth of young artists. He did not hesitate to fly in the face of the doctrines he had advocated some years previously. According to him, labour was every thing, inspiration a mere name; and he affirmed that, in art, all things should be subjected to the severest rules.

Fame can give no satisfaction to one who has not earned, but stolen it. It produces a constant thrill only in the heart conscious of having deserved it. TchartkÓff no longer valued fame. All his feelings and desires were turned towards gold. Gold became his passion, his delight, the object of his being. Bank-notes filled his portfolios, piles of gold his coffers; but, like all avaricious men, he grew sour, selfish, inaccessible to every thing but money—cold-hearted and penurious. He was gradually sinking into an unhappy miser, when an event came to pass which gave his whole moral being a terrible and awakening shock.

Returning home one day, TchartkÓff found lying on his table a letter, in which the Academy of Arts invited him, as one of its most distinguished members, to give his opinion of a new picture just arrived from Italy, the work of a Russian artist who had long studied there. The painter, who had been a schoolfellow of TchartkÓff's, imbued, even as a boy, with a fervent passion for art, had early torn himself from home and friends, from all the pleasures and habits of his age and country, to toil and study in the renowned Italian city, whose very name thrills the painter's heart. There he condemned himself to solitude and uninterrupted labour. Men spoke of his eccentricity, of his ignorance of the world, of his neglect of all the customs of society, of the disgrace he cast on the artist's profession by his dress, which was beneath his station, and by his frugality, which was almost penury. He cared nothing for scoff and reproach. Regardless of the world's comments, he gave himself up to his art. Unweariedly did he haunt the galleries; hour after hour, day after day, he stood before the works of the great masters, striving to penetrate their secrets. He never finished a picture without comparing it many times with the productions of those mighty teachers, and reading in their creations silent but eloquent counsel. He engaged in no arguments or disputes, but accorded to every school the honour it deserved; and after aiming at acquiring what was most meritorious in each, at length addicted himself to the study of the immortal Raphael; like a student of letters, who, after reading and rereading the works of a multitude of authors, at last confines himself to the writings of one whom he conceives to unite the chief beauties of all the others, superadding graces none of them possess. After many years of persevering application and gradual progress, the artist left the schools, possessing pure and elevated ideas of composition, great powers of conception, and an execution that charmed alike by its delicacy and force. But, with the modesty of true genius, he still allowed a considerable time to elapse before he ventured to submit a picture to the verdict of his countrymen.

On entering the exhibition-room, TchartkÓff found it thronged with visitors, grouped before the painting. Silence, such as is rarely met with amongst a numerous collection of amateurs, reigned throughout the crowd. Assuming the knowing and supercilious look of an acknowledged connoisseur, he approached the picture, prepared to cavil and find fault, or, at best, to damn with faint praise. But the canting phrase of conventional criticism died away upon his lips at the sight he there beheld. Faultless, pure, gracious, and beautiful as some fair and virgin bride was the noble production of genius that met his astonished gaze. With wonder and admiration he recognised the work of a pencil that revived the glories of ancient art. A profound study of Raphael was manifest in the noble elevation of the attitudes; there was a something Correggian in the skilful handling and careful finish. But there was no servile imitation of any painter; the artist had sought and found in his own soul the divine spark that gave life to his creation. Not an object in the picture, however trifling, but had been the subject of a profound study; the law of its constitution had been analysed, and its internal organism investigated. And the painter had caught that flowing roundness of line which pervades all nature, but which no eye ever sees save that of the creator-artist—that roundness which the mere copyist degrades into points and angles. He had poetised, whilst faithfully representing, the commonest objects of external nature. A feeling of awe mingled with the admiration that kept the crowd profoundly silent. Not a whisper was heard, not a rustle or a sound, for some time after the arrival of TchartkÓff. All were absorbed in contemplation of the masterpiece; and in the eyes of the more enthusiastic tears of delight were seen to glisten. TchartkÓff himself stood open-mouthed and motionless before the wonderful painting, whose merits and beauties the spectators at last began to discuss. He was roused from abstraction by being appealed to for his opinion. In vain did he strive to resume his dignified air, and to give utterance to the musty commonplace of criticism. The contemptuous smile was chased from his features by the workings of emotion; his breast heaved with a convulsive sob, and after a moment's violent but ineffectual struggle, he burst into tears and rushed wildly from the hall.

A few minutes later he stood motionless, almost paralysed, in his own magnificent studio. The bandage had fallen from his eyes. He saw how he had squandered the best years of his youth; how he had trampled and stifled the spark of that fire once burning within him, which might have been fanned till it blazed up into grandeur and glory, and extorted tears of gratitude and admiration from a wondering world. All this he had sacrificed and thrown away, heedlessly, madly, brutally. There suddenly revived in his soul those enthusiastic aspirations he once had known. He caught up a pencil and approached a canvass. The sweat of eagerness stood upon his brow; his soul was filled with one passionate desire—one solitary thought burned in his brain. The zeal for art, the thirst for fame he once so strongly felt, had suddenly returned, evoked from their lurking-place by the mute voice of another's genius. And why, TchartkÓff thought, should not he also excel? His hand trembled with feverish impatience till he could scarcely hold the pencil. He took for his subject a fallen angel. The idea was in accordance with his frame of mind. But, alas! how soon he was convinced of the vanity of his efforts! His hand and imagination had been too long confined to one line and limit, and his fierce but impotent endeavour to overleap the barrier, to break his self-imposed fetters, had no result. He had despised and neglected the fundamental condition of future greatness—the long and fatiguing ladder of study and reflection. Maddened by disappointment, furious at the conviction of impotency, he ignominiously dismissed from his studio all his later and most esteemed productions, to which places of honour had been accorded—all his lifeless, senseless, fashionable portraits of hussars, ladies of fashion, and privy councillors. He then shut himself up, denied himself to all visitors, and sat down to work, patient and eager as a young student. For a while he laboured day and night. But how unsatisfactory, how cruelly ungrateful was all that grew under his pencil! Each moment he found himself checked and repulsed in the new path he fain would have trodden by the wretched mechanical tricks to which he had so long habituated himself. They stood on his road, an impassable barrier. In spite of himself he recurred to the old commonplace forms; the arms would arrange themselves in one graceless position; the head assume the old hackneyed attitude; the folds of dress refused to drape themselves otherwise than they had so long been wont to do in his hands. All this the unhappy artist plainly felt and saw. His eyes were opened to his heinous faults, but he lacked the power to correct them.

"Surely I had ability!" said he to himself; "or was it mere delusion? Could I not, under any circumstances, have done better than I have? Did the whispers of youthful vanity mislead me?" And, to settle this doubt, he hunted out some of his early pictures, which lay neglected in a corner of his painting-room—pictures he had laboured at long ago, when his heart was pure from avarice, and he dwelt in his poor garret in the lonely VasÍlievskÜ Ostrov, far from the world, from luxury and covetousness. He examined them attentively, and the conviction forced itself upon him with irresistible strength, that he had sacrificed genius at the altar of Mammon. "I had it in me!" was his agonised exclamation. "Every where, in all of these, I behold traces and proofs of the power I have recklessly frittered away."

Covering his face with his hands, TchartkÓff stood silent, full of bitter thoughts, rapidly but minutely reviewing the whole of his past life. When he removed his hands he started, and a thrill passed over him, for he suddenly encountered the gaze of two piercing eyes glittering with a sombre lustre, and seeming to watch and enjoy his despair. A second glance showed him they belonged to the strange portrait which he had bought, many years before, in the StchÚkin Dvor. It had remained forgotten and concealed amidst a mass of old pictures, and he had long since forgotten its existence. Now that the gaudy, fashionable pictures and portraits had been removed from the studio, there it was, peering grimly out from amongst his early productions. TchartkÓff remembered that, in a certain sense, this hideous portrait had been the origin of the useless life he had so long led and now so deeply deplored; that the hoard of gold discovered in its frame had developed and fostered in him those worldly passions, that sensuality and love of luxury, which had been the bane of his genius. Calling his servants, he ordered the hateful picture to be taken from the room, and bestowed where he should never again behold it. Its departure, however, was insufficient to calm his agitation and quell the storm that raged within him. He was a prey to that rare moral torture sometimes witnessed when a feeble talent wrestles unsuccessfully to attain a development above its capacity—a furious endeavour which often conducts young and vigorous minds to great achievements, but whose result to old and enervated ones is more frequently despair and insanity. TchartkÓff, when convinced of the futility of his efforts, became possessed by the demon of envy, who soon monopolised and made him all his own. His complexion assumed a bilious yellow tint; he could not bear to hear an artist praised, or look with patience at any work of art that bore the impress of genius. On beholding such he would grind his teeth with fury, and the expression of his face became that of a maniac.

At last he conceived one of the most execrable projects the human mind ever engendered; and with an eagerness approaching to frenzy, he hastened to put it into execution. He bought up all the best pictures he could find in St Petersburg, and whose owners could be induced to part with them. The prices he gave to tempt sellers were often most extravagant. As soon as he had purchased a picture, and got it safely home, he would set upon it with demoniac fury, tearing, scratching, even biting it; and, when it was utterly defaced and rent into the smallest possible fragments, he would dance and trample on it, laughing like a fiend. The enormous fortune he had accumulated during his long and successful career as a fashionable portrait-painter, enabled him largely to indulge this infernal monomania. To this abominable end he, TchartkÓff, but a short time before so avaricious, became reckless in his expenditure. For this he untied the strings of his bags of gold, and scattered his rubles with lavish hand. All were surprised at the change, and at the rapidity with which he squandered his fortune, in his zeal, as it was supposed, to form a gallery of the noblest works of art. In the auction room, none cared to oppose him, for all were certain to be outbid. He was held to be mad, and certainly his conduct and appearance justified the presumption. His countenance, of a jaundiced hue, grew haggard and wrinkled; misanthropy and hatred of the world were plainly legible upon it. He resembled that horrid demon whom Pushkin has so ably conceived and portrayed. Save all occasional sarcasm, venomous and bitter, no word ever passed his lips, and at last he became universally avoided. His acquaintances, and even his oldest friends, shunned his presence, and would go a mile round to escape meeting him in the street. The mere sight of him, they said, was enough to cloud their whole day.

Fortunately for society and for art, such an unnatural and agitated existence as this could not long endure. TchartkÓff's mental excitement was too violent for his physical strength. A burning fever and furious delirium ravaged his frame, and in a few days he was but the ghost of his former self. The delirium augmented, and became a permanent and incurable mania, in some of whose paroxysms it was necessary to bind him to his couch. He fancied he saw continually before him the singular old portrait from the StchÚkin Dvor! This was the more strange, because since the day he had turned it out of his studio, it had never once met his sight. But now he raved of its terrible living eyes, which haunted him unceasingly, and when this fancy came over him, his madness was something terrific. All the persons who approached his bed he imagined to be horrible portraits; copies, repeated again and again, of the old man with the fiendish eyes. The image multiplied itself perpetually; the ceiling, the walls, the floor, were all covered with portraits, staring sternly and fixedly at him with living eyes. The room extended and stretched out to a vast and interminable gallery, to afford room for millions of repetitions of the ghastly picture. In vain did numerous physicians seek to discover, with a view to the alleviation of the poor wretch's sufferings, some secret connexion between the incidents of his past life and the strange phantom that thus eternally haunted him. No explanation or clue could be obtained from the patient, who continued to apostrophise the portrait in disconnected phrase, and to utter howls of agony and lamentation. At last his existence terminated in one last horrible paroxysm. His corpse was frightful to behold; of his once comely form, a yellow shrivelled skeleton was all that remained. A few thousand rubles were the sole residue of his wealth; and his disappointed heirs, beholding numerous drawers and closets full of torn fragments that had once composed noble pictures, understood and cursed the odious use to which their relative had applied his princely fortune.

CHAPTER II

A number of carriages, caleches, and drÓjkis were drawn up in the vicinity of a handsome mansion in one of the best quarters of St Petersburg. It had been the residence of a rich virtuoso, lately deceased, and whose pictures, furniture, and curiosities, were now selling by auction. The large drawing-room was filled with the most distinguished amateurs of art in St Petersburg, mingled with brokers and dealers on the look-out for bargains, and with a large sprinkling of those idlers who, without intending to purchase, frequent auctions to kill a morning. The sale was in full activity, and there was eager competition for the lot then up. The biddings succeeded each other so rapidly, that the auctioneer was scarcely able to repeat them. The object so many were eager to possess, was a portrait, which could hardly fail to attract the attention even of persons who know nothing of pictures. This painting, which possessed a very considerable amount of artistical merit, and had apparently been more than once restored, repaired, and cleaned, represented the tawny features of an Oriental, attired in a loose costume. The expression of the face was singular, and by no means pleasant. Its most striking feature was the extraordinary and unaccountable look of the eyes, which, by some trick of the artist, seemed to follow the spectator wherever he went. Every one of the persons there assembled was ready to swear that the eyes looked straight at him; and, what was yet more unaccountable, the effect was the same whether the beholder stood on the right, or on the left, or in front of the picture. This peculiarity it was that had made so many anxious to possess a portrait whose subject and painter were alike unknown. Gradually, however, many of the amateurs ceased their biddings, for the price had become extravagant, and at last only two continued to compete—two rich noblemen, both enthusiastic lovers of the eccentric in art. These still continued the contest, grew heated with their rivalry, and were in a fair way to raise the price to something positively absurd, when a by-stander stepped forward and addressed them. "Before this contest goes farther," he said, "permit me to say a few words. Of all here present, it is I, I believe, who have the best right to the portrait in dispute."

All eyes were turned towards the speaker. He was a tall, handsome man, of about thirty-five, with a pleasant, cheerful countenance, a careless style of dress, and long black curls flowing down his neck. He was personally known to many present, and the name of B——, the artist, was circulated through the room.

"Extraordinary as my words may appear to you," he resumed, perceiving he had fixed the general attention, "I can explain them if you are disposed to give me five minutes' audience. I have every reason to believe that this portrait is one I have long sought in vain."

Curiosity was expressed on every countenance; the auctioneer stood open-mouthed and with uplifted hammer; all entreated B—— to tell his tale. The artist at once complied.

"You are all acquainted," he said, "with the quarter of St Petersburg known as the KolÓmna, and aware that it is chiefly occupied by persons either in poverty, or whose resources are exceedingly limited, many of whom, compelled by unforeseen circumstances to outstrip their limited income, frequently find themselves in want of immediate and temporary assistance; compelled, in short, to apply to money-lenders. In consequence of this, there has settled amongst them a particular class of usurers, who supply petty sums on satisfactory pledges, and at enormous interest. These pawnbrokers on a small scale are generally far more pitiless than the aristocratic usurer, whose customers drive to his door in their carriages. Compunction, humanity, a feeling of pity for the unfortunates upon whose need they fatten, never by any chance enter their breast. Amongst these callous extortioners there was one who, at a certain period of the last century, under the reign of the Empress Catherine II., had been settled for some years in the KolÓmna. He was an extraordinary and enigmatical personage, of whom none knew any thing; he wore a flowing Asiatic dress, his complexion was swarthy as an Arab; but to what nation he really belonged, whether Hindoo, or Greek, or Persian, none could decide. His tall stature, his tawny, withered, wiry face, with its tint of greenish bronze, his large eyes full of sullen fire, shadowed by thick and overhanging brows; every point in his appearance, in short, made a strong and marked distinction between him and the other inhabitants of the quarter. His very dwelling was quite unlike the little wooden houses which surrounded it. It was a large brick building, in the style of those often constructed by the Genoese merchants, with windows of different sizes disposed at irregular distances, with iron shutters and hasps. This usurer was distinguished from all others by the circumstance that he could always supply any sum of money required, and would accommodate alike the needy groom and the extravagant noble. At his door were often to be seen brilliant equipages, through whose windows might sometimes be discerned the head of a luxurious and fashionable lady. Rumour said that his iron chests teemed with countless heaps of money, plate, diamonds, and all kinds of valuable pledges, but nevertheless he was reported less greedy than the other money-lenders. He made no difficulty, people said, to lend, and was apparently far from oppressive in fixing the terms of payment. But on the day of reckoning, it was observed, that by some extraordinary arithmetical calculation, he made the interest mount up to an enormous sum: such, at least, was the popular report. The strangest thing about him, however, and which struck every body, was the fatality that seemed to attach to his loans; all who borrowed of him finished their lives in an unhappy manner. Whether this was a mere popular notion, a stupid superstitious gossip, or a rumour intentionally disseminated, has ever remained a mystery. But it is a fact that many things occurred to give it validity, and that within a comparatively short period of time. Amongst the aristocracy of the day, there was one young man who particularly attracted the attention of society. He was of ancient descent and noble blood; had very early distinguished himself in the service of the empire, as a warm protector of every thing honourable and elevated, and as a passionate lover of art and genius. He was soon distinguished by the personal notice of the Empress, who confided to him the duties of an office peculiarly adapted to his tastes and talents—an office which gave him power to be of the greatest service not only to science, but to humanity itself. The young noble surrounded himself with artists, poets, scholars, and men of learning. To all of them he promised employment, patronage, protection. He undertook, at his own expense, a number of important publications, gave a multitude of orders to artists, founded prizes for excellence, spent enormous sums in this unselfish manner, and at length got into difficulties. Full, however, of generous enthusiasm, and unwilling to leave his work half finished, he borrowed money in all directions, and at length found his way to the famous usurer in the KolÓmna. Having obtained from this man a very extensive loan, the young noble all at once underwent a complete transformation. He became, as by enchantment, the enemy of rising intellect and talent, the persecutor of all he had previously protected. It was just then that the French Revolution broke out. This event gave him a handle for suspicion. In every thing he detected some revolutionary tendency; in every word, in every expressed opinion, he saw a dangerous hint or perfidious insinuation. The disease gained on him till he almost began to suspect himself. He laid false informations, fabricated the foulest charges, and caused the ruin of numbers of innocent people. At first, his guilty manoeuvres were undetected, and, when found out, they were thought to proceed from insanity. Report was made to the Empress, who deprived him of his office. But his severest sentence was the contempt he read in the faces of his countrymen. I need not describe the sufferings of this vain and insolent spirit, the tortures he endured from crushed pride, defeated ambition, ruined expectations. At last his monomania—for such it must surely have been—aggravated by regret and chagrin, became insanity, and in a frightful paroxysm the unhappy maniac committed suicide.

"Not less remarkable than the fate of this wretched young man was that of a lady who passed at that time for the most beautiful woman in St Petersburg. My father has often assured me, that he never beheld any thing to be compared to her. Possessing, besides her beauty, the not less fascinating charms of wit, intellect, wealth, and high rank, she was of course surrounded by a swarm of admirers. The most remarkable of these was Prince R., the flower of all the young nobles of that day, and to whom the palm was universally conceded, not only for beauty of person, but for high qualities and chivalry of character. He was well qualified for a hero of romance, or a woman's beau-ideal. Deeply and passionately enamoured of the young countess, his affection met with as pure and ardent a return. But her relations disapproved the match. The prince's paternal estates had passed out of his hands,—his family was in disgrace at court, and the derangement of his finances was no secret to any body. Suddenly he left the capital, apparently for the purpose of putting his affairs in order; and, after a brief absence, reappeared and commenced a life of splendid extravagance. His balls and entertainments were so magnificent as to attract the notice of the court, and, it was rumoured, to mollify imperial displeasure. The countess's father became suddenly gracious, and soon nothing was talked of in St Petersburg but the marriage of the two lovers. Of the origin of the enormous fortune of the bridegroom, to which this change in the sentiments of his future father-in-law was unquestionably to be attributed, nobody could give a distinct account, though it was pretty generally whispered that he had entered into a compact with the mysterious money-lender of the KolÓmna, and from him obtained a large loan. Be this as it may, the wedding formed the whole talk of the town. Bride and bridegroom were the object of universal envy. Every body had heard of their beauty and virtues, of their ardent and constant love; and all rejoiced that the obstacles to their union were removed. Numerous were the prophetic pictures drawn of the blissful existence the young couple were certain to enjoy. The event proved very different. In one twelvemonth a total and terrible change took place in the character of the prince. Hitherto noble, generous, and confiding, he became, on a sudden, jealous, suspicious, impatient, and capricious. He was the tyrant and tormentor of his wife; and, to the unbounded astonishment of every body who had known him before his marriage, treated her with inhuman brutality, and was even known to strike her! In one year the beautiful and dazzling girl, who was followed by a crowd of obedient adorers, could not be recognised in the careworn and unhappy wife. At length, unable longer to support the cruel yoke of such a marriage, she sought a separation. At the first notification of this step, the prince gave way to the most uncontrolled fury,—burst into her chamber, and would infallibly have stabbed her, had he not been seized and removed by force. Mad with rage, he turned his weapon upon himself, and lay a corpse at the feet of his horror-stricken friends. Besides these two incidents, which attracted great notice in the higher circles, a number of other instances were cited as having occurred amongst the lower classes, where the loans of the mysterious usurer had brought misfortune in their train. One man, previously a sober and honest artisan, had become a confirmed drunkard, and died in the hospital; a shopman had robbed his master; an izvÓztchik, for years noted for his honesty, had cut the throat of a customer in order to rob him of an insignificant sum. All these persons, and many others, who sank into misery and crime, or perished by violent deaths, had been customers of the mysterious Asiatic, of whom these stories, related, as they often were, with additions and exaggerations, inspired the quiet and peaceable inhabitants of the KolÓmna with an involuntary horror. Nobody doubted the real presence of the evil spirit in this man. They said that he exacted conditions which made one's very hair stand on end, and which none of his unhappy clients dared disclose; that his money had a mysterious property of attraction; that the coins were marked with strange characters, and grew red-hot of their own accord. In short, there were a thousand extravagant reports. But what is most remarkable is, that this population of KolÓmna, made up of pensioners, half-pay officers, petty functionaries, obscure artists, and others equally necessitous, preferred bearing the utmost distress to having recourse to the dreaded money-lender. They all declared they would rather mortify their bodies than destroy their souls. Those who met him in the street hurried by with an uneasy sensation, making way for him with anxious submissiveness, and looking long over their shoulders at the tall lean figure as it lost itself in the distance. His singular frame might well have been the receptacle of a supernatural and unholy spirit. The wild and deeply-cut features had something different from humanity; the extraordinary thickness of the shaggy eyebrows; the bronzed glow of the countenance; the frightful eyes, with their steady unsupportable glare; even the broad folds of the Oriental dress were, each in turn, the subject of uneasy and suspicious comment. My father told me, that when he met him he could not avoid stopping to gaze at him; and it invariably occurred to him that he had never seen, either in painting or life, a face that so completely came up to his notion of a demon. But I must make you, as briefly as possible, acquainted with my father, who is the real hero of my tale. He was a remarkable man, a self-taught painter, seeking principles in his own mind, and elaborating, without master or school, rules and laws of art, led onward by the mere thirst for excellence, and advancing, under the influence of causes which he himself, perhaps, could not have defined, along a path marked out for him only in his own mind. He was one of those children of genius whom contemporaries so often stigmatise as ignorant, because they have struck out a track for themselves, and whose ardour is to be chilled neither by censure nor failures; whence, on the contrary, they derive fresh vigour and courage. Aided only by his own lofty instincts, he attained to the true understanding of what historical painting should be. Scriptural subjects, the last and loftiest step of high art, chiefly occupied his pencil. Free from the feverish irritable vanity and paltry envy so common amongst artists, he was a firm, upright, honourable man, a little rough and unpolished in externals—the husk rather rugged—and with a share of honest pride and independent feeling which sometimes imparted to his manner an air of mingled bluntness and condescension. 'I care nothing for your fine folks,' he would say. 'I don't work for them. I don't paint drawing-room pictures. Those who understand my work best reward me for it. I do not blame fashionable people for not understanding art: how should they? They understand their cards; they are judges of wine and horses. 'Tis enough. When they do pick up a crude notion or two on the subject of painting, they become intolerable by their assumption. I prefer, a thousand times, the man who honestly confesses he knows nothing about art, to your ignoramus who comes in with a solemn affectation of connoisseurship, claiming to be a judge, talking about things he does not understand, and consequently talking nonsense.' By no means a covetous man, my father painted for very modest remuneration, contented to earn sufficient for the support of his family, and for providing the means of exercising his art. Generous in the extreme, his hand was ever open to less successful artists. Imbued with a fervent and profound sense of religion, it was that, perhaps, which enabled him to communicate to the faces he painted an elevation of religious sentiment that the most brilliant pencils often fall to give. In course of time, and aided by obstinate industry and unflinching perseverance, his talent attracted the attention and commanded the respect even of those who had at first sneered at him as a home-made artist. He received numerous orders for altar-pieces and other church pictures, and laboured incessantly. One picture, in particular, engaged his closest attention. The subject I forget, but I know that the great enemy of mankind was to be introduced. Long did my father meditate on this figure; he desired to embody in the countenance the expression of every evil passion that afflicts fallen humanity. Whilst reflecting on the subject, and conjuring up horrible countenances in his imagination, the strange features of the mysterious money-lender frequently recurred to him; and, as often as they did so, he said to himself, 'The usurer would be a fine model for my Devil.' One day, whilst he was busy planning his great work, and making sketches, with which he had difficulty in pleasing himself, there was a knock at his studio door, and the next instant, to his infinite astonishment, the usurer entered the room. My father has since told me that on beholding him he felt an inexplicable chill and shudder come over his whole frame.

"'You are an artist?' said the intruder, abruptly.

"'I am,' replied my father, and wondered what was coming next.

"'I want my portrait painted. I have not long to live. I have no children, and I do not wish to die altogether. Can you paint a portrait of me that shall be exactly like life?"

"My father reflected for a moment. 'Nothing could be more opportune,' thought he to himself; 'he comes of his own accord to sit to me for my Devil.' And he at once agreed to satisfy his singular visitor. Hour and price were stipulated, and the next day, my father, bearing palette and brushes, repaired to the abode of his new sitter. The gloomy court-yard, surrounded by high walls; the watch-dogs; the iron doors and shutters; the arched windows; the huge coffers, covered with strange, outlandish-looking carpets; and, above all, the grim, gloomy visage of the master of the house, seated immoveable before him,—all these conspired to produce a strong impression on his mind. The windows were closed and darkened; a single pane in the upper part of one of them admitted a strong ray of light. My father forgot the strange repute of his sitter in zeal for his art. 'How splendidly the fellow's face is lighted up!' he thought to himself, and set to work with furious eagerness, as though fearful of losing the favourable moment. 'What vigour! what light and shade!' he exclaimed, inaudibly. 'If I can get him in only half as vigorously as he sits there, the portrait will beat every thing I have done: he will walk out of the canvass. What extraordinary features; what depth in the lines and furrows! he repeated to himself, redoubling his fervour at every stroke, as he observed trait after trait rapidly transferring itself to the canvass. But, whilst proceeding with his work, he insensibly became aware of a strange feeling of oppression and uneasiness that crept over him, he knew not how or wherefore. Disregarding it, he persisted in following, with the strictest fidelity and most scrupulous care, every line, and tone, and shade in the extraordinary countenance of his model. To the eyes he gave his chief attention. At first they nearly made him despair. So peculiar and penetrating was their expression, so unlike were they to any eyes he had ever encountered, that it seemed an almost hopeless task to attempt to render them in a picture. Nevertheless he persevered, resolved, at whatever cost of pains and time, to follow them in their minute details, and thus to penetrate, if possible, the mystery and secret of their expression. But whilst engaged in this work, whilst diving, as it were, with his pencil, into the recesses of those mysterious orbs, the uneasiness he had before felt rapidly increased, and there arose in his soul such an inexplicable loathing, such an overpowering sensation of vague horror, that he was several times obliged to suspend his work, and it was only by a violent effort he could bring himself to resume it. At last this unaccountable feeling fairly mastered him; he could no longer bear to look upon those horrible eyes, whose demon-like gaze filled him with dismay. He closed the sitting. But the next day, and the one after that, the same thing occurred; after painting for a short time he invariably became agitated, excited, and unable to proceed. Each day these sensations increased in strength, until they became positive torture, and at last my father threw down his brush, declaring he would paint no more. Extraordinary was the effect produced upon the mysterious usurer by this declaration. By the most touching and humble entreaties, and by promises of munificent reward, he essayed, but in vain, to induce my father to retract his decision and resume his task. He even prostrated himself before him and implored him to terminate the picture, saying that upon its completion hung his fate, and his very existence. And then he threw out dark and confused hints of supernatural agency, by which, if his living features were once faithfully represented, his soul would be in some sort transferred to the portrait, and be saved from complete annihilation, or a yet worse doom. Terror-stricken at these strange and fearful words, my father threw down pencil and palette and rushed from the house. He could not sleep that night for meditating on this occurrence. The next morning he received back the unfinished portrait, brought to his house by an old woman, the only human being who lived with the usurer. She left also a message, that her master returned the portrait, because he did not want and would not pay for it. A few hours afterwards, on going out, my father learned that the usurer of the KolÓmna had died that morning. There was a mystery in all this which my father neither was able nor desired to solve.

"Dating from that day, a perceptible and unfavourable change took place in my father's character. Without apparent cause he became irritable, restless, and unhappy, and a very short time elapsed before he became guilty of an act of which none supposed him capable. About this period, the works of one of his pupils had attracted the attention of a small circle of judges and amateurs of art. My father from the first had perceived and appreciated this young man's talent, and had shown himself particularly well-disposed towards him. Suddenly, as if by a spell, envy and hatred were generated in his mind. The general interest excited by the pupil became intolerable to the master, who could not hear with patience the name of the rising genius. At length, to fill up the measure of his mortification, he learned that the young man had been preferred to paint a picture for a splendid church then just completed. This drove my father frantic. Previously the most upright and honourable of men, he now condescended to the pettiest intrigues and manoeuvres—he who, up to that time, had regarded with horror and contempt all that bore the semblance of intrigue. By dint of caballing, he succeeded in obtaining an open competition for the work in question; whoever chose, was at liberty to send in his picture, and the best would obtain the preference. Having brought this about, he secluded himself in his studio and applied himself to the task with intense ardour, summoning up all his great energy, skill, and experience of art. As was to be expected, the result was one of his very finest pictures. As a work of art, it was unquestionably the best. When my father saw it placed beside those of the other competitors, a smile of triumph curled his lip, and he entertained no doubt that his would be the picture chosen to adorn the altar. The committee appointed to decide arrived, and cast approving glances at my father's painting. Before giving their verdict, however, they proceeded to examine it minutely, and at last, one of the members—an ecclesiastic of high rank, if I remember rightly—waved his hand to secure the attention of his fellow-judges, and spoke thus: 'The picture presented by this artist,' he said, 'has undoubtedly very high merit as a mere work of art; but it is unsuited to the place and purpose for which it was designed. Those countenances have nothing sacred or holy in their expression. On the contrary, you may discern in every one of them, and especially in the eyes, the traces, more or less modified, of some evil passion, a something unhallowed and almost fiendish.' Struck by this observation, all present looked at the picture: it was impossible to deny the justice of the criticism. My father rushed furiously forward eager to deny and disprove the unfavourable judgment. But he saw for the first time, with feelings of intense horror, that he had given to almost all his countenances the eyes of the money-lender. They all looked out of the canvass with such a devilish and abominable stare, that he himself could scarcely help shuddering. The picture was rejected, and, with unspeakable rage and envy, he heard the prize awarded to his former pupil. He returned home in a state of mind worthy of a demon. He abused and even ill-treated my poor mother, who sought to console him for his disappointment, drove his children brutally from him, broke his easel and brushes, tore down from the wall the portrait of the money-lender, called for a knife, and ordered a fire to be instantly lighted, intending to cut up the picture and burn it. In this mood he was found by a friend, a painter like himself, a careless, jovial dog, always in good-humour, untroubled with ambition, working gaily at whatever he could get to do, and loving a good dinner and merry company.

"'What the deuce are you at? what are you about to burn?' said he, going up to the portrait. 'Why, are you mad? This is one of your very best pictures! The old money-lender, I declare. By Jove! an exquisite thing! Admirably hit off! you have caught the old fellow's eyes to perfection. One would almost swear you had transplanted them from the head to the picture. They look out of the canvass.'

"'We'll see how they look in the fire,' said my father surlily, making a movement to thrust the picture into the grate.

"'Stop, stop!' cried his friend, checking his arm. 'Give it me, rather than burn it.' My father was at first unwilling, but at last consented; and the jolly old painter, enchanted with his acquisition, carried off the portrait.

"The picture gone, my father felt himself more tranquil. 'It seemed,' he said, 'as if its departure had taken a load off his heart.' He was astonished at his recent conduct, at the malice and envy that had filled his soul. The more he reflected, the stronger became his sorrow and repentance. 'Yes,' he at last exclaimed, with sincere self-reproach, 'God has punished me for my sins; my picture was really a shameful and abominable thing. It was inspired by the wicked hope of injuring a fellow-man, and a brother artist. Hatred and envy guided my pencil; what better feelings could I expect it to portray?' Without a moment's delay he went in search of his former pupil, embraced him affectionately, entreated his forgiveness, and did all in his power to efface from the young man's mind the remembrance of his offence. Once more his days glided on in peaceful and contented toll, although his face had assumed a pensive and melancholy expression, previously a stranger to it. He prayed more frequently and fervently, was more often silent, and spoke less bluntly and roughly to others; the rugged suffice of his character was smoothed and softened.

"A long time had elapsed without his seeing or hearing any thing of the friend to whom he had given the portrait, and he was one day about to go out and inquire after him, when the man himself entered the room. But his former joviality of manner was gone. He looked worn and melancholy, his checks were hollow, his complexion pale, and his clothes hung loosely upon him. My father was struck with the change, and inquired what ailed him.

"'Nothing now,' was the reply: 'nothing since I got rid of that infernal portrait. I was wrong, my friend, not to let you burn it. The devil fly away with the thing, say I! I am no believer in witchcraft and the like, but I am more than half persuaded some evil spirit is lodged in the portrait of the usurer.'

"'What makes you think so?' said my father.

"'The simple fact, that from the very first day it entered my house, I, formerly so gay and joyous, became the most anxious melancholy dog that ever whined under a gallows. I was irritable, ill-tempered, disposed to cut my own throat, and every body else's. My whole life through, I had never known what it was to sleep badly. Well, my sleep left me, and when I did get any, it was broken by dreams. Good Heavens! such horrible dreams; I could not bring myself to believe they were mere dreams, ordinary nightmares. I was sometimes nearly stifled in my sleep; and eternally, my good sir, the old man, that accursed old man, flitted about me. In short, I was in a pitiable state, lost flesh and appetite, and cursed the hour I was born. I crawled about, as if drunk or stupid, tormented with a vague incessant fear, a dread, and anticipation of something frightful about to happen, of some uncommon danger besetting me at every turn. At last, I bethought me of the portrait, and gave it away to a nephew of mine, who had taken a great fancy to it. Since then I have been much relieved; I feel as if a great stone had been rolled off my heart; I can sleep and eat, and am recovering my former spirits. It was a rare devil you cooked up there, my boy!'

"My father listened to his friend's confession with the closest attention.

"'The portrait, then, is now in your nephew's possession?' he at last inquired.

"'My nephew's! No, no! He tried it, but could stand it no better than your humble servant. Assuredly the spirit of the old usurer has transmigrated into the picture. My nephew declares that he walks out of the frame, glides about the room; in short the things he tells me, pass human understanding and belief. I should have taken him for a madman, if I had not partly experienced the thing myself. He sold the picture to some dealer or other; and the dealer could not stand it either, and got it off his hands.'

"This narrative made a deep impression upon my father. About this time he became subject to long fits of abstraction, and incessant reveries, which gradually turned to hypochondria. At last, he was firmly convinced that his pencil had served as an instrument to the evil spirit; that a portion of the usurer's vitality had actually passed into the picture, which thus continued to torment and persecute its possessors, inspiring them with evil passions, tempting them from the paths of virtue and religion, rousing in their breasts feelings of envy and malice and all uncharitableness. A great misfortune which afflicted him shortly after, the loss, by a contagious disorder, of his wife, daughter, and infant son, he accounted a judgment of heaven upon his sin. He determined to quit the world, and devote himself to religion and prayer. I was then nine years of age. He placed me in the Academy of Arts, wound up his affairs, and retired to a remote convent, where he shortly afterwards assumed the tonsure. There, by the severity of his life, and by the unwearied punctuality with which he fulfilled the rules of his order, he struck the whole brotherhood with surprise and admiration. The superior of the monastery, hearing of his skill as a painter, requested him to execute an altar-piece for the convent chapel. But the devout brother declared that his pencil had been polluted by a great sin, and that he must purify himself by mortification and long penance, before he could dare apply it to a holy purpose. He then, of his own accord, gradually increased the austerity of his monastic life. At last, the utmost privations he could inflict on himself appearing to him insufficient, he retired, with the blessing of the superior, to court solitude in the desert. There he built himself a hermitage out of the branches of trees, lived on uncooked roots, dragged a heavy stone with him wherever he went, and stood from sunrise to sunset with his hands uplifted to heaven, fervently praying. His penances and mortifications were such as we find examples of only in the lives of the saints. For many years he followed this austere manner of life, and his brethren at the convent had given up all hopes of again seeing him, when one day he suddenly appeared amongst them. 'I am ready,' he said, firmly and calmly to the superior: 'with the help of God, I will begin my task.' The subject he selected was the Birth of Christ. For a whole year he laboured incessantly at his picture, without leaving his cell, nourishing himself with the coarsest food, and rigid in the fulfilment of his religious duties. At the end of that time the picture was completed. It was a miracle of art. Neither the brethren nor the superior were profound critics of painting, but they were awe-struck by the extraordinary sublimity of the figures. The sentiment of divine tranquillity and mildness in the Holy Mother, bending over the Infant Jesus—the profound and celestial intelligence in the eyes of the Babe—the solemn silence and dignified humility of the three Wise Men prostrate at His feet—the holy, unspeakable calm breathed over the whole work—the combined impression of all this was magical. The brethren bowed the knee before the picture, and the superior, deeply affected, pronounced a blessing on the artist. 'No mere human art,' he said, 'could have produced a picture like this. A power from on high has guided thy pencil, my son, and the blessing of heaven has descended on the work of thy hands.'

"About this time I finished my education in the Academy; I received the gold medal, and at the same time saw realised the delicious hope of being sent to Italy—the cherished dream of the boy-artist. Before departing, I wished to take leave of my father, whom I had not seen for twelve years. I had heard divers reports of the extreme austerity of his life, and expected to see the withered figure of a hermit, worn-out, exhausted, macerated with fast and vigil. My astonishment was great when I beheld my father. No trace of exhaustion was on his countenance, which beamed with a joy whose source was not of this world. A beard as white as snow, and long thin hair of silvery hue floated picturesquely down his breast and along the folds of his black robe, and descended even to the cord girding his monastic gown. Before we parted, I received from his lips precepts and counsels for the conduct of my life and for my guidance in art—precepts I have religiously remembered, and which will ever remain indelibly engraven on my soul. Three days I abode near him; on the third, I went to ask his blessing before my departure for the artist's home, the distant and much-desired shores of Italy. Already, in the course of our long communings, he had told me the story of his life, especially dwelling on the remarkable passage I have just related. 'My son, these were his last words, 'my conscience, tranquillised in great measure by years of prayer and penitence, has yet its uneasy moments, when I recall the circumstances connected with that portrait. I have been told that it still passes from hand to hand, occasioning misery to many, exciting feelings of envy and hatred, fostering unlawful desires and unholy thoughts. By the memory of thy mother, and by the love thou bearest me, I entreat thee, my son, truly and faithfully to perform my last request. Seek out that portrait; sooner or later you must find it; you cannot fail to recognise it by the strange expression, and by the extraordinary fire and vividness of the eyes. Purchase it, at whatever cost, and commit it to the flames! So shall my blessing prosper thee, and thy days be long in the land.'

"How could I refuse the pledge thus touchingly required by the venerable old man? Throwing myself into his arms, I swore by the silver locks that flowed over his breast, faithfully to do his bidding. We live in a positive age, and believers in any thing bordering on the supernatural grow each day rarer. But my path was plain before me; I had promised, and must perform. For fifteen years I have devoted a certain portion of each, to a search for the mysterious picture, with constant ill-success, until to-day—at this auction."

Here the artist, suspending his sentence, turned towards the wall where the portrait had hung. His movement was imitated by his hearers, who, looked round in search of the wonderful picture, concerning which they had just been told so strange a tale. But the portrait was no longer there. A murmur of surprise, almost of consternation, ran through the throng.

"Stolen!" at last exclaimed a voice. And stolen the picture doubtless had been. Some dexterous thief, profiting by the profound attention with which the eyes of all were fixed upon the narrator, whilst all ears, drank in his singular story, had managed to take down and carry off the portrait. The company remained plunged in perplexity, almost doubting whether they had really seen those extraordinary eyes, or whether the whole thing were not a fantasy, a vision, the phantom of a brain heated and fatigued by the long examination of a gallery of old pictures.

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