Part Five: Chapter 12

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regrettingtheir friend's flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, withoutwaiting for the artist, walked away to another small picture.

　　"Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! Howexquisite!" they cried with one voice.

　　"What is it they're so pleased with?" thought Mihailov. He hadpositively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago.He had forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had livedthrough with that picture when for several months it had been theone thought haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as healways forgot, the pictures he had finished. He did not evenlike to look at it, and had only brought it out because he wasexpecting an Englishman who wanted to buy it.

　　"Oh, that's only an old study," he said.

　　"How fine!" said Golenishtchev, he too, with unmistakablesincerity, falling under the spell of the picture.

　　Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree. The elderhad just dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the floatfrom behind a bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. Theother, a little younger, was lying in the grass leaning on hiselbows, with his tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring atthe water with his dreamy blue eyes. What was he thinking of?

　　The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feelingfor it in Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste offeeling for things past, and so, even though this praise wasgrateful to him, he tried to draw his visitors away to a thirdpicture.

　　But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale. To Mihailovat that moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distastefulto speak of money matters.

　　"It is put up there to be sold," he answered, scowling gloomily.

　　When the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite thepicture of Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what hadbeen said, and what, though not said, had been implied by thosevisitors. And, strange to say, what had had such weight withhim, while they were there and while he mentally put himself attheir point of view, suddenly lost all importance for him. Hebegan to look at his picture with all his own full artist vision,and was soon in that mood of conviction of the perfectibility,and so of the significance, of his picture--a convictionessential to the most intense fervor, excluding all otherinterests--in which alone he could work.

　　Christ's foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took hispalette and began to work. As he corrected the leg he lookedcontinually at the figure of John in the background, which hisvisitors had not even noticed, but which he knew was beyondperfection. When he had finished the leg he wanted to touch thatfigure, but he felt too much excited for it. He was equallyunable to work when he was cold and when he was too much affectedand saw everything too much. There was only one stage in thetransition from coldness to inspiration, at which work waspossible. Today he was too much agitated. He would have coveredthe picture, but he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and,smiling blissfully, gazed a long while at the figure of John. Atlast, as it were regretfully tearing himself away, he dropped thecloth, and, exhausted but happy, went home.

　　Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishtchev, on their way home, wereparticularly lively and cheerful. They talked of Mihailov andhis pictures. The word talent, by which they meant an inborn,almost physical, aptitude apart from brain and heart, and inwhich they tried to find an expression for all the artist hadgained from life, recurred particularly often in their talk, asthough it were necessary for them to sum up what they had noconception of, though they wanted to talk of it. They said thatthere was no denying his talent, but that his talent could notdevelop for want of education--the common defect of our Russianartists. But the picture of the boys had imprinted itself ontheir memories, and they were continually coming back to it."What an exquisite thing! How he has succeeded in it, and howsimply! He doesn't even comprehend how good it is. Yes, Imustn't let it slip; I must buy it," said Vronsky.