But from that time a happy change took place in his life. He expected his name to be covered in infamy, but it turned out quite the contrary. The lady who had commissioned the portrait went into raptures about this extraordinary artist, and our Chertkov’s studio filled with visitors wishing to double, and if possible increase tenfold, their own images. But the fresh, still innocent Chertkov, who felt in his soul that he was unworthy of taking on such an extraordinary task, in order to somewhat make amends and atone for his crime, decided to take up his work with all possible diligence, to double the exertion of his powers, which was the only thing that would produce miracles. But his intentions met with unforeseen obstacles. The visitors whose portraits he was painting were for the most part impatient, busy people in a hurry, and therefore, as soon as his brush began to create something a bit out of the ordinary, a new visitor would burst in and display his head in a most pompous way, burning with the desire to see it on canvas as soon as possible, and the artist would hurry to finish his work quickly.

His time was finally so filled up that he could not spend a single minute in reflection; and inspiration, continually destroyed at its very birth, finally got out of the habit of visiting him. Finally, in order to make his work go faster, he began to confine himself to well-known, defined, monotonous, long worn-out forms. Soon his portraits resembled those family depictions by the old artists, which are so often encountered in all the lands of Europe and in all corners of the world, where the ladies are depicted with their arms folded on their breasts and holding flowers in their hands, and the cavaliers in uniform with one hand tucked inside their jackets. Sometimes he wished to offer a new, not yet hackneyed posture that would be distinguished by originality and lack of constraint, but, alas! All that is unconstrained and easy is obtained by the poet and artist only in a most constrained way, and is the fruit of great exertions. In order to offer a new, bold expression, to grasp a new secret in painting, he would have to think for a long time, turning his eyes away from everything that surrounded him, flying away from everything worldly and from life. But he didn’t have time for this, and besides he was too exhausted by his daily work to be ready to receive inspiration; and the world he was using as a model to paint his works was too ordinary and monotonous to stimulate and stir his imagination. The deeply pondering and at the same time motionless face of the director of a department; the face of an Uhlan cavalry captain, handsome but always of the same type; the pale face of a St. Petersburg beauty with its forced smile; and many others that were just too ordinary—that is what appeared in turn every day before our painter. It seemed that his very brush had finally taken on the insipidity and lack of energy that marked his originals.