The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of

Count Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the

morning he had been working in his studio at his big picture. On

getting home he flew into a rage with his wife for not having

managed to put off the landlady, who had been asking for money.

"I've said it to you twenty times, don't enter into details.

You're fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining

things in Italian you're a fool three times as foolish," he said

after a long dispute.

"Don't let it run so long; it's not my fault. If I had the

money..."

"Leave me in peace, for God's sake!" Mihailov shrieked, with

tears in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his

working room, the other side of a partition wall, and closed the

door after him. "Idiotic woman!" he said to himself, sat down to

the table, and, opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with

peculiar fervor at a sketch he had begun.

Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things

went ill with him, and especially when he quarreled with his

wife. "Oh! damn them all!" he thought as he went on working. He

was making a sketch for the figure of a man in a violent rage. A

sketch had been made before, but he was dissatisfied with it.

"No, that one was better...where is it?" He went back to his

wife, and scowling, and not looking at her, asked his eldest

little girl, where was that piece of paper he had given them?

The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it was

dirty, and spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took the

sketch, laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing

up his eyes, he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and

gesticulated gleefully.

"That's it! that's it!" he said, and, at once picking up the

pencil, he began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given

the man a new pose.

He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the

face of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous

face with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this

chin on to the figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight.

The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living, and

such that it could never be changed. That figure lived, and was

clearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch might be corrected

in accordance with the requirements of the figure, the legs,

indeed, could and must be put differently, and the position of

the left hand must be quite altered; the hair too might be thrown

back. But in making these corrections he was not altering the

figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure. He

was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which hindered it

from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought out

the whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly

come to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing

the figure when the cards were brought him.




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