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Updated: June 29, 2025
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.
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.
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. With a shrill cry of horror, and a despairing effort, Tchartkóff tore himself from the spot and awoke. It was still a dream.
But some who had known Tchartkoff in his earlier days could not understand how the talent of which he had given such clear indications in the outset could so have vanished; and strove in vain to divine by what means genius could be extinguished in a man just when he had attained to the full development of his powers. But the intoxicated artist did not hear these criticisms.
"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!
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.
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.
"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.
At the time our story opens, the young painter, Tchartkoff, paused involuntarily as he passed the shop. His old cloak and plain attire showed him to be a man who was devoted to his art with self-denying zeal, and who had no time to trouble himself about his clothes. He halted in front of the little shop, and at first enjoyed an inward laugh over the monstrosities in the shape of pictures.
Tchartkoff experienced an unpleasant feeling, inexplicable even to himself, and placed the portrait on the floor. "Well, will you take the portrait?" said the dealer. "How much is it?" said the painter. "Why chaffer over it? give me seventy-five kopeks." "No." "Well, how much will you give?" "Twenty kopeks," said the painter, preparing to go. "What a price!
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