"But did I ever really have talent?" he said finally "Am I not mistaken?" And as he said these words, he went up to his old works, which had once been painted so purely, so disinterestedly, there in the poor hovel on solitary Vasilievsky Island, far from people, abundance, and all sorts of fancies. He went up to them now and began to study them all attentively, and along with them all his former poor life began to emerge in his memory. "Yes," he said desperately, "I did have talent. Everywhere, on everything, I can see signs and traces of it…"

He stopped and suddenly shook all over: his eyes met with eyes fixed motionlessly on him. It was that extraordinary portrait he had bought in the Shchukin market. All this time it had been covered up, blocked by other paintings, and had left his mind completely. But now, as if by design, when all the fashionable portraits and pictures that had filled the studio were gone, it surfaced together with the old works of his youth. When he remembered all its strange story, remembered that in some sense it, this strange portrait, had been the cause of his transformation, that the hidden treasure he had obtained in such a miraculous way had given birth to all the vain impulses in him which had ruined his talent-rage nearly burst into his soul. That same moment he ordered the hateful portrait taken out. But that did not calm his inner agitation: all his feelings and all his being were shaken to their depths, and he came to know that terrible torment which, by way of a striking exception, sometimes occurs in nature, when a weak talent strains to show itself on too grand a scale and fails; that torment which gives birth to great things in a youth, but, in passing beyond the border of dream, turns into a fruitless yearning; that dreadful torment which makes a man capable of terrible evildoing. A terrible envy possessed him, an envy bordering on rage. The bile rose in him when he saw some work that bore the stamp of talent. He ground his teeth and devoured it with the eyes of a basilisk. 14 A plan was born in his soul, the most infernal a man ever nursed, and with furious force he rushed to carry it out. He began to buy up all the best that art produced. Having bought a painting for a high price, he would take it carefully to his room, fall upon it with the fury of a tiger, tear it, shred it, cut it to pieces, and trample it with his feet, all the while laughing with delight. The inestimable wealth he had acquired provided him with the means of satisfying this infernal desire. He untied all his bags of gold and opened his coffers. No monster of ignorance ever destroyed so many beautiful works as did this fierce avenger. Whenever he appeared at an auction, everyone despaired beforehand of acquiring a work of art. It seemed as if a wrathful heaven had sent this terrible scourge into the world on purpose, wishing to deprive it of all harmony. This terrible passion lent him some frightful coloration: his face was eternally bilious. Denial and blasphemy against the world were expressed in his features. He seemed the incarnation of that terrible demon whom Pushkin had portrayed ideally. 15 His lips uttered nothing but venomous words and eternal despite. Like some sort of harpy, he would appear in the street and even his acquaintances, spotting him from far off, would try to dodge and avoid the encounter, saying it was enough to poison all the rest of the day.

Fortunately for the world and for the arts, such a strained and violent life could not long continue: the scope of its passions was too exaggerated and colossal for its feeble forces. Attacks of rage and madness began to come more often, and finally it all turned into a most terrible illness. A cruel fever combined with galloping consumption came over him with such fierceness that in three days nothing but a shadow of him remained. This was combined with all the signs of hopeless insanity. Sometimes several men could not hold him back. He would begin to imagine the long forgotten, living eyes of the extraordinary portrait, and then his rage was terrible. All the people around his bed seemed to him like terrible portraits. It doubled, quadrupled in his eyes; all the walls seemed hung with portraits, their motionless, living eyes fixed on him. Frightful portraits stared from the ceiling, from the floor; the room expanded and went on endlessly to make space for more of these motionless eyes. The doctor who had assumed the charge of caring for him, having heard something of his strange story, tried his best to find the mysterious relation between the phantoms he imagined and the circumstances of his life, but never succeeded. The sick man neither understood nor felt anything except his own torments, and uttered only terrible screams and incoherent talk. Finally his life broke off in the last, already voiceless strain of suffering. His corpse was frightful. Nothing could be found of his enormous wealth, either; but seeing the slashed remains of lofty works of art whose worth went beyond millions, its terrible use became clear.

PART II

A great many carriages, droshkies, and barouches stood outside the entrance of a house in which an auction was under way of the belongings of one of those wealthy lovers of art who spend their whole life drowsing sweetly, immersed in their zephyrs and cupids, who innocently pass for Maecenases 16 and simple-heartedly spend on it the millions accumulated by their substantial fathers, and often even by their own former labors. Such Maecenases, as we know, exist no longer, and our nineteenth century has long since acquired the dull physiognomy of a banker who delights in his millions only as numbers on paper. The long room was filled with a most motley crowd of visitors, who had come flying like birds of prey to an unburied body. There was a whole fleet of Russian merchants from the Merchants' Arcade, 17 and even from the flea market, in dark blue German frock coats. Their appearance and the expression of their faces was somehow more firm here, more free, and not marked by that cloying subservience so conspicuous in the Russian merchant when he is in his shop with a customer before him. Here they dropped all decorum, even though there were in this same hall a great many of those counts before whom, in some other place, they would be ready with their bowing to sweep away the dust brought in on their own boots. Here they were completely casual, unceremoniously fingered the books and paintings, wishing to see if the wares were good, and boldly upped the bids offered by aristocratic experts. Here there were many of those inevitable auction-goers whose custom it was to attend one every day in place of lunch; aristocratic experts who considered it their duty not to miss a chance of adding to their collections and who found nothing else to do between twelve and one; and, lastly, those noble gentlemen whose clothes and pockets were quite threadbare, who came daily with no mercenary purpose but solely to see how it would end, who would offer more, who less, who would bid up whom, and who would be left with what. A great many paintings were thrown around without any sense at all; they were mixed in with furniture and books bearing the monogram of their former owner, who probably never had the laudable curiosity to look into them. Chinese vases, marble table tops, new and old pieces of furniture with curved lines, gryphons, sphinxes, and lions' paws, gilded and ungilded, chandeliers, Quinquet lamps 18 - it was all lying in heaps, and by no means in the orderly fashion of shops. It all presented some sort of chaos of the arts. Generally, we experience a dreadful feeling at the sight of an auction: it all smacks of something like a funeral procession. The rooms in which they are held are always somehow gloomy; the windows, blocked by furniture and paintings, emit a scant light, silence spreads over the faces, and the funereal voice of the auctioneer, as he taps with his hammer, intones a panikhida 19 over the poor arts so oddly come together there. All this seems to strengthen still more the strange unpleasantness of the impression.