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Updated: June 29, 2025
"Whoever you are, my old boy," said Tchartkóff to himself, "I'll put you under glass, and give you a splendid frame for this." At this moment his hand happened to touch the heap of gold, and the contact made his heart beat as violently as ever. "What shall I do with it?" he thought, fixing his eyes upon the money.
Tchartkóff, when convinced of the futility of his efforts, became possessed by the demon of envy, who soon monopolised and made him all his own. His complexion assumed a bilious yellow tint; he could not bear to hear an artist praised, or look with patience at any work of art that bore the impress of genius.
Tchartkóff entered his ante-room, which felt very chilly, as artists' ante-rooms usually are, and, without taking off his cloak, walked on into his studio a square apartment, tolerably spacious, but low in the ceiling, and with windows dimmed by the frost.
And so he brought away from his school the grand conception of creation, the mighty beauty of thought, the high charm of that heavenly brush. When Tchartkoff entered the room, he found a crowd of visitors already collected before the picture. The most profound silence, such as rarely settles upon a throng of critics, reigned over all.
"I don't know what will come of it: he said, 'If he won't pay, why, let him leave the rooms. They are both coming again to-morrow." "Let them come," said Tchartkoff, with indifference; and a gloomy mood took full possession of him.
All were absorbed in contemplation of the masterpiece; and in the eyes of the more enthusiastic tears of delight were seen to glisten. Tchartkóff himself stood open-mouthed and motionless before the wonderful painting, whose merits and beauties the spectators at last began to discuss. He was roused from abstraction by being appealed to for his opinion.
An unconquerable desire to take the bull by the horns, and show himself to the world at once, had arisen in his mind. He already heard the shouts, "Tchartkoff! Tchartkoff! Tchartkoff paints! What talent Tchartkoff has!" He paced the room in a state of rapture. The next day he took ten ducats, and went to the editor of a popular journal asking his charitable assistance.
Involuntary tears stood ready to fall in the eyes of those who surrounded the picture. It seemed as though all joined in a silent hymn to the divine work. Motionless, with open mouth, Tchartkoff stood before the picture.
But the lady appeared to be not at all inclined to yield to his artistic demands on this occasion; she promised, however, to sit longer the next time. "It is vexatious, all the same," thought Tchartkoff to himself: "I had just got my hand in;" and he remembered no one had interrupted him or stopped him when he was at work in his studio on Vasilievsky Ostroff. Nikita sat motionless in one place.
A number of persons answering to the above description were assembled before the picture-shop, when they were joined by a young man in a threadbare cloak and shabby garments. He was a painter, named Tchartkóff, as enthusiastic in his art as he was needy in his circumstances and careless of his dress. Pausing before the booth, he smiled as he glanced at the wretched pictures there displayed.
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