"And is it true that this Mihailov is in such poverty?" asked
Vronsky, thinking that, as a Russian Maecenas, it was his duty to
assist the artist regardless of whether the picture were good or
bad.
"I should say not. He's a remarkable portrait-painter. Have you
ever seen his portrait of Madame Vassiltchikova? But I believe he
doesn't care about painting any more portraits, and so very
likely he is in want. I maintain that..."
"Couldn't we ask him to paint a portrait of Anna Arkadyevna?"
said Vronsky.
"Why mine?" said Anna. "After yours I don't want another
portrait. Better have one of Annie" (so she called her baby
girl). "Here she is," she added, looking out of the window at
the handsome Italian nurse, who was carrying the child out into
the garden, and immediately glancing unnoticed at Vronsky. The
handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was painting a head for his
picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna's life. He painted
with her as his model, admired her beauty and mediaevalism, and
Anna dared not confess to herself that she was afraid of becoming
jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly
gracious and condescending both to her and her little son.
Vronsky, too, glanced out of the window and into Anna's eyes,
and, turning at once to Golenishtchev, he said: "Do you know this Mihailov?"
"I have met him. But he's a queer fish, and quite without
breeding. You know, one of those uncouth new people one's so
often coming across nowadays, one of those free-thinkers you
know, who are reared _d'emblée_ in theories of atheism, scepticism,
and materialism. In former days," said Golenishtchev, not
observing, or not willing to observe, that both Anna and Vronsky
wanted to speak, "in former days the free-thinker was a man who
had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and
only through conflict and struggle came to free-thought; but now
there has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers who grow up
without even having heard of principles of morality or of
religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up directly
in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages.
Well, he's of that class. He's the son, it appears, of some
Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When
he got into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he's
no fool, to educate himself. And he turned to what seemed to him
the very source of culture--the magazines. In old times, you
see, a man who wanted to educate himself--a Frenchman, for
instance--would have set to work to study all the classics and
theologians and tragedians and historiaris and philosophers, and,
you know, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in
our day he goes straight for the literature of negation, very
quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation,
and he's ready. And that's not all--twenty years ago he would
have found in that literature traces of conflict with
authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived
from this conflict that there was something else; but now he
comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not
even furnish matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that
there is nothing else--evolution, natural selection, struggle for
existence--and that's all. In my article I've..."