that, in a certain sense, this hideous portrait
had been the origin of the useless life he had so long led and now so
deeply deplored; that the hoard of gold discovered in its frame had
developed and fostered in him those worldly passions, that sensuality
and love of luxury, which had been the bane of his genius. Calling his
servants, he ordered the hateful picture to be taken from the room, and
bestowed where he should never again behold it. Its departure, however,
was insufficient to calm his agitation and quell the storm that raged
within him. He was a prey to that rare moral torture sometimes witnessed
when a feeble talent wrestles unsuccessfully to attain a development
above its capacity--a furious endeavour which often conducts young and
vigorous minds to great achievements, but whose result to old and
enervated ones is more frequently despair and insanity. Tchartkoff, when
convinced of the futility of his efforts, became possessed by the demon
of envy, who soon monopolised and made him all his own. His complexion
assumed a bilious yellow tint; he could not bear to hear an artist
praised, or look with patience at any work of art that bore the impress
of genius. On beholding such he would grind his teeth with fury, and the
expression of his face became that of a maniac.

At last he conceived one of the most execrable projects the human mind
ever engendered; and with an eagerness approaching to frenzy, he
hastened to put it into execution. He bought up all the best pictures he
could find in St Petersburg, and whose owners could be induced to part
with them. The prices he gave to tempt sellers were often most
extravagant. As soon as he had purchased a picture, and got it safely
home, he would set upon it with demoniac fury, tearing, scratching, even
biting it; and, when it was utterly defaced and rent into the smallest
possible fragments, he would dance and trample on it, laughing like a
fiend. The enormous fortune he had accumulated during his long and
successful career as a fashionable portrait-painter, enabled him largely
to indulge this infernal monomania. To this abominable end he,
Tchartkoff, but a short time before so avaricious, became reckless in
his expenditure. For this he untied the strings of his bags of gold, and
scattered his rubles with lavish hand. All were surprised at the change,
and at the rapidity with which he squandered his fortune, in his zeal,
as it was supposed, to form a gallery of the nobl