Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
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.
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.
"Heh!" said he, tapping one canvas, on which was depicted a naked woman, "this subject is lively. But why so much black under her nose? did she take snuff?" "Shadow," answered Tchartkoff gruffly, without looking at him. "But it might have been put in some other place: it is too conspicuous under the nose," observed the officer.
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.
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.
Young Tchartkoff was an artist of talent, which promised great things: his work gave evidence of observation, thought, and a strong inclination to approach nearer to nature.
Like a madman, he sprang to pick it up, grasped the roll, and gripped it convulsively in his hand, which sank with the weight. "Wasn't there a sound of money?" inquired the officer, hearing the noise of something falling on the floor, and not catching sight of it, owing to the rapidity with which Tchartkoff had hastened to pick it up. "What business is it of yours what is in my room?"
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.
Dusty and defaced as the portrait was, Tchartkoff saw, when he had succeeded in removing the dirt from the face, traces of the work of a great artist. The portrait appeared to be unfinished, but the power of the handling was striking. The eyes were the most remarkable picture of all: it seemed as though the full power of the artist's brush had been lavished upon them.
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.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking