“Why not, don’t you believe in firm intentions?”
“How should I do otherwise, since they say the way to Hell is paved with them. No, you will do little more than you have accomplished already—that is very little. We, and many like us, simply rot and die. The only wonder is that you don’t drink. That is how our artists, half men, usually end their careers.”
Smiling he thrust a glass towards his host, but emptied it himself. Raisky concluded that he was cold, malicious and heartless. But the last remark had disturbed him. Was he really only half a man? Had he not a firm determination to reach the goal he had set before himself? He was only making fun of him.
“You see that I don’t drink away my talents,” he remarked.
“Yes, that is an improvement, a step forward. You haven’t succumbed to society, to perfumes, gloves and dancing. Drinking is a different thing. It goes to one man’s head, another is susceptible to passion. Tell me, do you easily take fire? Ah! I have touched the spot,” he went on as Raisky coloured. “That belongs to the artistic temperament, to which nothing is foreign—Nihil humanum, etc. One loves wine, another women, a third cards. The artists have usurped all these things for themselves. Now kindly explain what I am.”
“What you are. Why, an artist, without doubt, who on a first acquaintance will drink, storm public houses, shoot, borrow money—”
“And not repay it. Bravo! an admirable description. To justify your last remark and prove its truth beyond doubt, lend me a hundred roubles. I will never pay them back unless you and I should have exchanged our respective situations in life.”
“You say that in jest?”
“Not at all. The market gardener, with whom I live, feeds me. He has no money, nor have I.”
Raisky shrugged his shoulders, felt in his pockets, produced his pocket book and laid some notes on the table.