out it! I don't believe in
sorcerers; but, begging your pardon, there's an unclean spirit in it.'

"'How so?' asked my father.

"'Well, from the very moment I hung it up in my room I felt such
depression--just as if I wanted to murder some one. I never knew in
my life what sleeplessness was; but I suffered not from sleeplessness
alone, but from such dreams!--I cannot tell whether they were dreams, or
what; it was as if a demon were strangling one: and the old man appeared
to me in my sleep. In short, I can't describe my state of mind. I had a
sensation of fear, as if expecting something unpleasant. I felt as if I
could not speak a cheerful or sincere word to any one: it was just as
if a spy were sitting over me. But from the very hour that I gave that
portrait to my nephew, who asked for it, I felt as if a stone had been
rolled from my shoulders, and became cheerful, as you see me now. Well,
brother, you painted the very Devil!'

"During this recital my father listened with unswerving attention, and
finally inquired, 'And your nephew now has the portrait?'

"'My nephew, indeed! he could not stand it!' said the jolly fellow: 'do
you know, the soul of that usurer has migrated into it; he jumps out
of the frame, walks about the room; and what my nephew tells of him is
simply incomprehensible. I should take him for a lunatic, if I had not
undergone a part of it myself. He sold it to some collector of pictures;
and he could not stand it either, and got rid of it to some one else.'

"This story produced a deep impression on my father. He grew seriously
pensive, fell into hypochondria, and finally became fully convinced that
his brush had served as a tool of the Devil; and that a portion of the
usurer's vitality had actually passed into the portrait, and was now
troubling people, inspiring diabolical excitement, beguiling painters
from the true path, producing the fearful torments of envy, and so
forth. Three catastrophes which occurred afterwards, three sudden deaths
of wife, daughter, and infant son, he regarded as a divine punishment on
him, and firmly resolved to withdraw from the world.

"As soon as I was nine years old, he placed me in an academy of
painting, and, paying all his debts, retired to a lonely cloister,
where he soon afterwards took the vows. There he amazed every one by the
strictness of his life, and his untiring observance of all the monastic
rules. The prior of the monastery, hearing of his skill in