"Time, my good sir! impossible! I can't hear of such a thing," said the landlord in a rage, flourishing the key he held in his hand. "Perhaps you don't know that Colonel Potogònkin lodges in my house—a colonel, sir, and has lived here these seven years; and Anna Petròvna Buchmìsteroff—a lady of fortune, sir, who rents a coach-house, and a two-stall stable, sir, and keeps three out-door servants: these are the sort of lodgers I have. My house, I tell you plainly, is not one of those establishments where people live who don't pay their rent. So I will thank you to pay yours directly, and be off bag and baggage."
"You had better pay," said the Kvartàlnü Nadzirátel, with a slight but significant shake of the head, sticking his forefinger through a button-hole of his uniform.
"It's very easy to say pay, but where is the money? I have not a sous."
"In that case, you can satisfy Ivàn Ivànovitch with goods, with the produce of your profession," said the Kvartàlnü; "he will probably agree to take pictures."
"Not I, indeed! no pictures for me! It would be all very well to take pictures with respectable subjects, such as a gentleman could hang on his wall; a general with a star, or the likeness of Prince Kutúzoff; but, here I see nothing but paintings of mujíks in their shirt-sleeves, servants, and such like cattle—a mere waste of time and colours. He has taken the likeness of that blackguard of his, whose bones I shall assuredly break, for the thief has pulled the nails out of all my locks and window-hasps—a scoundrel! Just look; there's a subject for you! a picture of the room! It would have been all very well if he had drawn it clean, neat, and orderly; but there he has got it full of filth and rubbish, just as it is. Only see how he has bedevilled and dirtied my room; pretty work, indeed, when I have had colonels for lodgers seven years together, and Anna Petròvna Buchmìsteroff! Truly there are no worse lodgers than artists; they turn a drawing-room into a pigstye."
To all this, and much more, the poor painter was forced to listen patiently. Meanwhile the Kvartàlnü Nadzirátel amused himself by looking at the pictures and sketches, occasionally uttering a comment or question.
"Not bad!" said he, pausing before a female figure: "pretty woman, really! But what's the meaning of that black, there, under her nose? is it snuff, or what?"
"That's the shadow," replied Tchartkóff surlily, without turning towards him.
"You would have done better to have put it somewhere else. It is too remarkable just under the nose," said the critical Argus. "But, whose portrait is this?" continued he, approaching the picture that had occasioned Tchartkóff so restless a night. "What an ugly old heathen! And what eyes! They might belong to Belzebub himself. I must have a look at this."
And without asking permission, or thinking it necessary to use much ceremony with a poor devil of a painter who could not pay his rent, the agent of the law lifted the portrait from the nails on which it hung, to carry it to the window, and examine it at his leisure. But his hands were stiff and clumsy, and he had miscalculated the weight of the picture. It slipped through his fingers, and fell to the ground with a heavy thump and slight crashing noise, upsetting some lumber that stood against the wall, and raising a cloud of dust, which caused the man of manacles to step back and rub his eyes. With a muttered curse on the meddlesome official, Tchartkóff sprang forward to raise the picture. As he did so, a small board, forming one of the sides of the frame, and which had been cracked by the fall, gave way altogether under the pressure of his hand, and part of it fell out. The fragment was followed by a rouleau of dark blue paper, which emitted a dull chink as it struck the ground. Tchartkóff's eye glanced upon an inscription; it was—1000 DUCATS. To snatch up the packet, and thrust it into his pocket, was the work of an instant.