ERIOUS PORTRAIT

PART I

Nowhere did so many people pause as before the little picture-shop
in the Shtchukinui Dvor. This little shop contained, indeed, the
most varied collection of curiosities. The pictures were chiefly
oil-paintings covered with dark varnish, in frames of dingy yellow.
Winter scenes with white trees; very red sunsets, like raging
conflagrations, a Flemish boor, more like a turkey-cock in cuffs than a
human being, were the prevailing subjects. To these must be added a few
engravings, such as a portrait of Khozreff-Mirza in a sheepskin cap, and
some generals with three-cornered hats and hooked noses. Moreover,
the doors of such shops are usually festooned with bundles of those
publications, printed on large sheets of bark, and then coloured by
hand, which bear witness to the native talent of the Russian.

On one was the Tzarevna Miliktrisa Kirbitievna; on another the city of
Jerusalem. There are usually but few purchasers of these productions,
but gazers are many. Some truant lackey probably yawns in front of them,
holding in his hand the dishes containing dinner from the cook-shop for
his master, who will not get his soup very hot. Before them, too, will
most likely be standing a soldier wrapped in his cloak, a dealer
from the old-clothes mart, with a couple of penknives for sale, and a
huckstress, with a basketful of shoes. Each expresses admiration in
his own way. The muzhiks generally touch them with their fingers; the
dealers gaze seriously at them; serving boys and apprentices laugh, and
tease each other with the coloured caricatures; old lackeys in frieze
cloaks look at them merely for the sake of yawning away their time
somewhere; and the hucksters, young Russian women, halt by instinct to
hear what people are gossiping about, and to see what they are looking
at.

At the time our story opens, the young painter, Tchartkoff, paused
involuntarily as he passed the shop. His old cloak and plain attire
showed him to be a man who was devoted to his art with self-denying
zeal, and who had no time to trouble himself about his clothes. He
halted in front of the little shop, and at first enjoyed an inward laugh
over the monstrosities in the shape of pictures.

At length he sank unconsciously into a reverie, and began to ponder
as to what sort of people wanted these productions? It did not seem
remarkable to him that the Russian populace should gaze with rapture
upon "Eruslanoff Lazarevitch," on