“Is this I?” I exclaimed, laughing, when from the canvas this terrible face, full of wild contradictions, stared at me.  “My friend, I do not congratulate you on this portrait.  I do not think it is successful.”

“It is you, old man, you!  It is well drawn.  You criticise it wrongly.  Where will you hang it?”

He grew talkative again like a magpie, that amiable young man, and all because his wretched painting was to be preserved for some time.  O impetuous, O happy youth!  Here I could not restrain myself from a little jest for the purpose of teaching a lesson to the self-confident youngster, so I asked him, with a smile: 

“Well, Mr. Artist, what do you think?  Am I murderer or not?”

The artist, closing one eye, examined me and the portrait critically.  Then whistling a polka, he answered recklessly:  “The devil knows you, old man!”

I smiled.  K. understood my jest at last, burst out laughing and then said with sudden seriousness: 

“You are speaking of the human face but do you know that there is nothing worse in the world than the human face?  Even when it tells the truth, when it shouts about the truth, it lies, it lies, old man, for it speaks its own language.  Do you know, old man, a terrible incident happened to me?  It was in one of the picture galleries in Spain.  I was examining a portrait of Christ, when suddenly—­Christ, you understand, Christ—­great eyes, dark, terrible suffering, sorrow, grief, love—­well, in a word—­Christ.  Suddenly I was struck with something; suddenly it seemed to me that it was the face of the greatest wrongdoer, tormented by the greatest unheard-of woes of repentance—­ Old man, why do you look at me so!  Old man!”

Nearing my eyes to the very face of the artist, I asked him in a cautious whisper, as the occasion required, dividing each word from the other: 

“Don’t you think that when the devil tempted Him in the desert He did not renounce him, as He said later, but consented, sold Himself—­that He did not renounce the devil, but sold Himself.  Do you understand?  Does not that passage in the Gospels seem doubtful to you?”

Extreme fright was expressed on the face of my young friend.  Forcing the palms of his hands against my chest, as if to push me away, he ejaculated in a voice so low that I could hardly hear his indistinct words: 

“What?  You say Jesus sold Himself?  What for?”

I explained softly: 

“That the people, my child, that the people should believe Him.”

“Well?”

I smiled.  K.’s eyes became round, as if a noose was strangling him.  Suddenly, with that lack of respect for old age which was one of his characteristics, he threw me down on the bed with a sharp thrust and jumped away into a corner.  When I was slowly getting up from the awkward position into which the unrestraint of that young man had forced me—­I fell backward, with my head between the pillow and the back of the bed—­he cried to me loudly: