The decanter was brought on to the scene.

Towards evening Kostyliov, also a promising beginner, an historical painter, came in to see Yegor Savvitch.  He was a friend staying at the next villa, and was a man of five-and-thirty.  He had long hair, and wore a blouse with a Shakespeare collar, and had a dignified manner.  Seeing the vodka, he frowned, complained of his chest, but yielding to his friends’ entreaties, drank a glass.

“I’ve thought of a subject, my friends,” he began, getting drunk.  “I want to paint some new . . .  Herod or Clepentian, or some blackguard of that description, you understand, and to contrast with him the idea of Christianity.  On the one side Rome, you understand, and on the other Christianity. . . .  I want to represent the spirit, you understand?  The spirit!”

And the widow downstairs shouted continually: 

“Katya, give me the cucumbers!  Go to Sidorov’s and get some kvass, you jade!”

Like wolves in a cage, the three friends kept pacing to and fro from one end of the room to the other.  They talked without ceasing, talked, hotly and genuinely; all three were excited, carried away.  To listen to them it would seem they had the future, fame, money, in their hands.  And it never occurred to either of them that time was passing, that every day life was nearing its close, that they had lived at other people’s expense a great deal and nothing yet was accomplished; that they were all bound by the inexorable law by which of a hundred promising beginners only two or three rise to any position and all the others draw blanks in the lottery, perish playing the part of flesh for the cannon. . . .  They were gay and happy, and looked the future boldly in the face!

At one o’clock in the morning Kostyliov said good-bye, and smoothing out his Shakespeare collar, went home.  The landscape painter remained to sleep at Yegor Savvitch’s.  Before going to bed, Yegor Savvitch took a candle and made his way into the kitchen to get a drink of water.  In the dark, narrow passage Katya was sitting, on a box, and, with her hands clasped on her knees, was looking upwards.  A blissful smile was straying on her pale, exhausted face, and her eyes were beaming.

“Is that you?  What are you thinking about?” Yegor Savvitch asked her.

“I am thinking of how you’ll be famous,” she said in a half-whisper.  “I keep fancying how you’ll become a famous man. . . .  I overheard all your talk. . . .  I keep dreaming and dreaming. . . .”

Katya went off into a happy laugh, cried, and laid her hands reverently on her idol’s shoulders.

AN ARTIST’S STORY

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