my other
works: he will simply start from the canvas if I am only partly true to
nature. What remarkable features!' He redoubled his energy; and began
himself to notice how some of his sitter's traits were making their
appearance on the canvas.

"But the more closely he approached resemblance, the more conscious he
became of an aggressive, uneasy feeling which he could not explain
to himself. Notwithstanding this, he set himself to copy with literal
accuracy every trait and expression. First of all, however, he busied
himself with the eyes. There was so much force in those eyes, that it
seemed impossible to reproduce them exactly as they were in nature.
But he resolved, at any price, to seek in them the most minute
characteristics and shades, to penetrate their secret. As soon,
however, as he approached them in resemblance, and began to redouble
his exertions, there sprang up in his mind such a terrible feeling of
repulsion, of inexplicable expression, that he was forced to lay aside
his brush for a while and begin anew. At last he could bear it no
longer: he felt as if these eyes were piercing into his soul, and
causing intolerable emotion. On the second and third days this grew
still stronger. It became horrible to him. He threw down his brush, and
declared abruptly that he could paint the stranger no longer. You should
have seen how the terrible usurer changed countenance at these words.
He threw himself at his feet, and besought him to finish the portrait,
saying that his fate and his existence depended on it; that he had
already caught his prominent features; that if he could reproduce
them accurately, his life would be preserved in his portrait in a
supernatural manner; that by that means he would not die completely;
that it was necessary for him to continue to exist in the world.

"My father was frightened by these words: they seemed to him strange and
terrible to such a degree, that he threw down his brushes and palette
and rushed headlong from the room.

"The thought of it troubled him all day and all night; but the next
morning he received the portrait from the usurer, by a woman who was the
only creature in his service, and who announced that her master did not
want the portrait, and would pay nothing for it, and had sent it back.
On the evening of the same day he learned that the usurer was dead, and
that preparations were in progress to bury him according to the rites of
his religion. All this seemed to