where the breath came so painfully--and then there was a crash and the
glass fell clattering on the floor.

When he had drawn the head his pride knew no bounds. His work was
exhibited with the drawings of pupils of the top class, the teacher had
made few corrections, had only here and there put broad strokes in the
shading, had drawn three or four more decided lines, had put a point in
each eye--and the eyes were now like life.

"How lifelike and bold it is!" thought Raisky, as he looked at the
strokes inserted by his master, and more especially at the points in the
eyes, which had so suddenly given them the look of life. This step
forward intoxicated him. "Talent! Talent!" sang in his ears.

He sketched the maids, the coachman, the peasants of the countryside. He
was particularly successful with the idiot Feklusha, seated in a cavern
with her bust in the shade, and the light on her wild hair; he had not
the patience nor the skill to finish bust, hands and feet. How could
anybody be expected to sit still all the morning, when the sun was
shedding its rays so gaily and so generously on stream and meadow?

Within three days the picture had faded in his imagination, and new
images were thronging his brain. He would like to have drawn a round
dance, a drunken old man, the rapid passage of a troika. For two days he
was taken up with this picture, which stood before his mind's eye in
every detail; the peasants and the women were finished, but not the
waggon with its three fleet horses.

In a week he had forgotten this picture also.