They were silent, and, continuing, I addressed my speech to the portrait: 

“Where are you looking so intently and so strangely, my unknown friend and roommate?  In your eyes I see mystery and reproach.  Is it possible that you dare reproach Him?  Answer!”

And, pretending that the portrait answered, I continued in a different voice with an expression of extreme sternness and boundless grief: 

“Yes, I do reproach Him.  Jesus, Jesus!  Why is Your face so pure, so blissful?  You have passed only over the brink of human sufferings, as over the brink of an abyss, and only the foam of the bloody and miry waves have touched You.  Do You command me, a human being, to sink into the dark depth?  Great is Your Golgotha, Jesus, but too reverent and joyous, and one small but interesting stroke is missing—­the horror of aimlessness!”

Here I interrupted the speech of the Portrait, with an expression of anger.

“How dare you,” I exclaimed; “how dare you speak of aimlessness in our prison?”

They were silent; and suddenly Jesus, without opening His eyes—­He even seemed to close them more tightly—­answered: 

“Who knows the mysteries of the heart of Jesus?”

I burst into laughter, and my esteemed reader will easily understand this laughter.  It turned out that I, a cool and sober mathematician, possessed a poetic talent and could compose very interesting comedies.

I do not know how all this would have ended, for I had already prepared a thundering answer for my roommate when the appearance of the keeper, who brought me food, suddenly interrupted me.  But apparently my face bore traces of excitement, for the man asked me with stern sympathy: 

“Were you praying?”

I do not remember what I answered.

CHAPTER VIII

Last Sunday a great misfortune occurred in our prison:  The artist K., whom the reader knows already, ended his life in suicide by flinging himself from the table with his head against the stone floor.  The fall and the force of the blow had been so skilfully calculated by the unfortunate young man that his skull was split in two.  The grief of the Warden was indescribable.  Having called me to the office, the Warden, without shaking hands with me, reproached me in angry and harsh terms for having deceived him, and he regained his calm, only after my hearty apologies and promises that such accidents would not happen again.  I promised to prepare a project for watching the criminals which would render suicide impossible.  The esteemed wife of the Warden, whose portrait remained unfinished, was also grieved by the death of the artist.

Of course, I had not expected this outcome, either, although a few days before committing suicide, K. had provoked in me a feeling of uneasiness.  Upon entering his cell one morning, and greeting him, I noticed with amazement that he was sitting before his slate once more drawing human figures.