Part Five: Chapter 10

by Leo Tolstoy

　　The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards ofCount Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In themorning he had been working in his studio at his big picture. Ongetting home he flew into a rage with his wife for not havingmanaged 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 explainingthings in Italian you're a fool three times as foolish," he saidafter a long dispute.

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

　　"Leave me in peace, for God's sake!" Mihailov shrieked, withtears in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into hisworking room, the other side of a partition wall, and closed thedoor after him. "Idiotic woman!" he said to himself, sat down tothe table, and, opening a portfolio, he set to work at once withpeculiar fervor at a sketch he had begun.

　　Never did he work with such fervor and success as when thingswent ill with him, and especially when he quarreled with hiswife. "Oh! damn them all!" he thought as he went on working. Hewas making a sketch for the figure of a man in a violent rage. Asketch had been made before, but he was dissatisfied with it."No, that one was better...where is it?" He went back to hiswife, and scowling, and not looking at her, asked his eldestlittle girl, where was that piece of paper he had given them?The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it wasdirty, and spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took thesketch, laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwingup his eyes, he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled andgesticulated gleefully.

　　"That's it! that's it!" he said, and, at once picking up thepencil, he began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had giventhe man a new pose.

　　He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled theface of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorousface with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, thischin on to the figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight.The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living, andsuch that it could never be changed. That figure lived, and wasclearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch might be correctedin accordance with the requirements of the figure, the legs,indeed, could and must be put differently, and the position ofthe left hand must be quite altered; the hair too might be thrownback. But in making these corrections he was not altering thefigure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure. Hewas, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which hindered itfrom being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought outthe whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenlycome to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishingthe 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 andaffectionately at her. "You were to blame. I was to blame.I'll make it all right." And having made peace with his wife heput on an olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat,and went towards his studio. The successful figure he hadalready forgotten. Now he was delighted and excited at the visitof these people of consequence, Russians, who had come in theircarriage.

　　Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had atthe bottom of his heart one conviction--that no one had everpainted a picture like it. He did not believe that his picturewas better than all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew thatwhat he tried to convey in that picture, no one ever hadconveyed. This he knew positively, and had known a long while,ever since he had begun to paint it. But other people'scriticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense consequencein his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his soul.Any remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the criticsaw even the tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitatedhim to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to hiscritics a more profound comprehension than he had himself, andalways expected from them something he did not himself see in thepicture. And often in their criticisms he fancied that he hadfound this.

　　He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of hisexcitement he was struck by the soft light on Anna's figure asshe stood in the shade of the entrance listening toGolenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her something, while sheevidently wanted to look round at the artist. He was himselfunconscious how, as he approached them, he seized on thisimpression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeperwho had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to bebrought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeablyimpressed beforehand by Golenishtchev's account of the artist,were still less so by his personal appearance. Thick-set and ofmiddle height, with nimble movements, with his brown hat,olive-green coat and narrow trousers--though wide trousers hadbeen a long while in fashion,--most of all, with the ordinarinessof his broad face, and the combined expression of timidity andanxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov made an unpleasantimpression.

　　"Please step in," he said, trying to look indifferent, and goinginto the passage he took a key out of his pocket and opened thedoor.