Bersenyev followed him to his attic. He was surprised to see a number of studies, statuettes, and busts, covered with damp cloths, set about in all the corners of the room.
‘Well I see you have been at work in earnest,’ he observed to Shubin.
‘One must do something,’ he answered. ‘If one thing doesn’t do, one must try another. However, like a true Corsican, I am more concerned with revenge than with pure art. Trema, Bisanzia!’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Bersenyev.
‘Well, wait a minute. Deign to look this way, gracious friend and benefactor, my vengeance number one.’
Shubin uncovered one figure, and Bersenyev saw a capital bust of Insarov, an excellent likeness. The features of the face had been correctly caught by Shubin to the minutest detail, and he had given him a fine expression, honest, generous, and bold.
Bersenyev went into raptures over it.
‘That’s simply exquisite!’ he cried. ‘I congratulate you. You must send it to the exhibition! Why do you call that magnificent work your vengeance?’
‘Because, sir, I intended to offer this magnificent work as you call it to Elena Nikolaevna on her name day. Do you see the allegory? We are not blind, we see what goes on about us, but we are gentlemen, my dear sir, and we take our revenge like gentlemen.... But here,’ added Shubin, uncovering another figure, ‘as the artist according to modern aesthetic principles enjoys the enviable privilege of embodying in himself every sort of baseness which he can turn into a gem of creative art, we in the production of this gem, number two, have taken vengeance not as gentlemen, but simply en canaille.’
He deftly drew off the cloth, and displayed to Bersenyev’s eyes a statuette in Dantan’s style, also of Insarov. Anything cleverer and more spiteful could not be imagined. The young Bulgarian was represented as a ram standing on his hind-legs, butting forward with his horns. Dull solemnity and aggressiveness, obstinacy, clumsiness and narrowness were simply printed on the visage of the ‘sire of the woolly flock,’ and yet the likeness to Insarov was so striking that Bersenyev could not help laughing.