it
their own feelings, even their external features, to the subject upon
which they are working. Thus, reproducing with remarkable likeness,
the lower part of my face, where kindness and the expression of
authoritativeness and calm dignity are so harmoniously blended, K.
undoubtedly introduced into my eyes his own suffering and even his
horror. Their fixed, immobile gaze; madness glimmering somewhere in
their depth; the painful eloquence of a deep and infinitely lonely
soul--all that was not mine.

"Is this I?" I exclaimed, laughing, when from the canvas this terrible
face, full of wild contradictions, stared at me. "My friend, I do not
congratulate you on this portrait. I do not think it is successful."

"It is you, old man, you! It is well drawn. You criticise it wrongly.
Where will you hang it?"

He grew talkative again like a magpie, that amiable young man, and
all because his wretched painting was to be preserved for some time. O
impetuous, O happy youth! Here I could not restrain myself from a
little jest for the purpose of teaching a lesson to the self-confident
youngster, so I asked him, with a smile:

"Well, Mr. Artist, what do you think? Am I murderer or not?"

The artist, closing one eye, examined me and the portrait critically.
Then whistling a polka, he answered recklessly: "The devil knows you,
old man!"

I smiled. K. understood my jest at last, burst out laughing and then
said with sudden seriousness:

"You are speaking of the human face but do you know that there is
nothing worse in the world than the human face? Even when it tells the
truth, when it shouts about the truth, it lies, it lies, old man, for
it speaks its own language. Do you know, old man, a terrible incident
happened to me? It was in one of the picture galleries in Spain. I was
examining a portrait of Christ, when suddenly--Christ, you understand,
Christ--great eyes, dark, terrible suffering, sorrow, grief, love--well,
in a word--Christ. Suddenly I was struck with something; suddenly it
seemed to me that it was the face of the greatest wrongdoer, tormented
by the greatest unheard-of woes of repentance--Old man, why do you look
at me so! Old man!"

Nearing my eyes to the very face of the artist, I asked him in a
cautious whisper, as the occasion required, dividing each word from the
other:

"Don't you think that when the devil tempted Him in the desert He did
not renounce him, as He said later, but consented, sold Himself--that