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Chapter 10.
The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of
Count Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the morn-
ing he had been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting
home he flew into a rage with his wife for not having managed 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 explaining things in Italian
you’re a fool three times as foolish,” he said after a long dispute.
“Don’t let it run so long; it’s not my fault. If I had the money...”
“Leave me in peace, for God’s sake!” Mihailov shrieked, with tears
in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room,
the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him. “Idiotic
woman!” he said to himself, sat down to the table, and, opening a
portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a sketch he had
begun.
Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things
went ill with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife.
“Oh! damn them all!” he thought as he went on working. He was
making a sketch for the figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had
been made before, but he was dissatisfied with it. “No, that one was
better...where is it?” He went back to his wife, and scowling, and not
looking at her, asked his eldest little girl, where was that piece of paper
he had given them? The paper with the discarded sketch on it was
found, but it was dirty, and spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took
the sketch, laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his
eyes, he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and gesticulated
gleefully.
“That’s it! that’s it!” he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he
began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given the man a new
pose.
He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the
face of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face
with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to
the figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from
a lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could
never be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably
defined. The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the re-
quirements of the figure, the legs, indeed, could and must be put dif-
ferently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered; the
hair too might be thrown back. But in making these corrections he was
not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the
figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which hindered
it from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought out the
whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly come to him
from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the 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 and affec-
tionately at her. “You were to blame. I was to blame. I’ll make it all