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_ 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.
"Coming, coming!"
He went in to his wife.
"Come, Sasha, don't be cross!" he said, smiling timidly and
affectionately at her. "You were to blame. I was to blame. I'll
make it all right." And having made peace with his wife he put on
an olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went
towards his studio. The successful figure he had already
forgotten. Now he was delighted and excited at the visit of these
people of consequence, Russians, who had come in their carriage.
Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at
the bottom of his heart one conviction--that no one had ever
painted a picture like it. He did not believe that his picture
was better than all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that
what he tried to convey in that picture, no one ever had
conveyed. This he knew positively, and had known a long while,
ever since he had begun to paint it. But other people's
criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense consequence
in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his soul. Any
remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the critic saw
even the tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated him
to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his critics a
more profound comprehension than he had himself, and always
expected from them something he did not himself see in the
picture. And often in their criticisms he fancied that he had
found this.
He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his
excitement he was struck by the soft light on Anna's figure as
she stood in the shade of the entrance listening to
Golenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her something, while she
evidently wanted to look round at the artist. He was himself
unconscious how, as he approached them, he seized on this
impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeper
who had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be
brought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably
impressed beforehand by Golenishtchev's account of the artist,
were still less so by his personal appearance. Thick-set and of
middle height, with nimble movements, with his brown hat,
olive-green coat and narrow trousers--though wide trousers had
been a long while in fashion,--most of all, with the ordinariness
of his broad face, and the combined expression of timidity and
anxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov made an unpleasant
impression.
"Please step in," he said, trying to look indifferent, and going
into the passage he took a key out of his pocket and opened the
door. _
Read next: Book Five: Chapter 11
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