y Ivan Ivanovitch with goods, with the
produce of your profession," said the Kvartalnue; "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 Kutuzoff;
but, here I see nothing but paintings of mujiks 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 Petrovna Buchmisteroff! 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 Kvartalnue Nadziratel 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 Tchartkoff 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 Tchartkoff 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 clo