r's clerk robbed his master; again, a
driver who had conducted himself properly for a number of years cut
his passenger's throat for a groschen. It was impossible that such
occurrences, related, not without embellishments, should not inspire a
sort of involuntary horror amongst the sedate inhabitants of Kolomna.
No one entertained any doubt as to the presence of an evil power in the
usurer. They said that he imposed conditions which made the hair rise on
one's head, and which the miserable wretch never afterward dared
reveal to any other being; that his money possessed a strange power of
attraction; that it grew hot of itself, and that it bore strange marks.
And it is worthy of remark, that all the colony of Kolomna, all these
poor old women, small officials, petty artists, and insignificant people
whom we have just recapitulated, agreed that it was better to endure
anything, and to suffer the extreme of misery, rather than to have
recourse to the terrible usurer. Old women were even found dying of
hunger, who preferred to kill their bodies rather than lose their soul.
Those who met him in the street experienced an involuntary sense of
fear. Pedestrians took care to turn aside from his path, and gazed long
after his tall, receding figure. In his face alone there was sufficient
that was uncommon to cause any one to ascribe to him a supernatural
nature. The strong features, so deeply chiselled; the glowing bronze of
his complexion; the incredible thickness of his brows; the intolerable,
terrible eyes--everything seemed to indicate that the passions of other
men were pale compared to those raging within him. My father stopped
short every time he met him, and could not refrain each time from
saying, 'A devil, a perfect devil!' But I must introduce you as speedily
as possible to my father, the chief character of this story.

"My father was a remarkable man in many respects. He was an artist
of rare ability, a self-taught artist, without teachers or schools,
principles and rules, carried away only by the thirst for perfection,
and treading a path indicated by his own instincts, for reasons unknown,
perchance, even to himself. Through some lofty and secret instinct
he perceived the presence of a soul in every object. And this secret
instinct and personal conviction turned his brush to Christian subjects,
grand and lofty to the last degree. His was a strong character: he was
an honourable, upright, even rough man, covered with a