As soon as Raisky reached St. Petersburg he hurried off to find Kirilov.
He felt an impulse to touch his friend to assure himself that Kirilov
really stood before him, and that he had not started on the journey
without him. He repeated to him his ardent confidence that his artistic
future lay in sculpture.
“What new fancy is this?” asked Kirilov, frowning and plainly expressing
his mistrust. “When I got your letter I thought you were mad. You have
one talent already; why do you want to follow a sidetrack. Take your
pencil, go to the Academy, and buy this,” he said, showing him a thick
book of lithographed anatomical drawings. “What do you want with
sculpture? It is too late.”
“I feel I have the right touch here,” he said, rubbing his fingers one
against the other.
“Whether you have the right touch or not, it is too late.”
“Why too late? There is an ensign I know who wields the chisel with
great success.”
“An ensign, yes! But you, with your grey hair....” Kirilov emphasised
his remarks with a vigorous shake of the head.
Raisky would wrangle with him no longer. He spent three weeks in the
studio of a sculptor, and made acquaintance with the students there. At
home he worked zealously; visited with the sculptor and his students the
Isaac Cathedral, where he stood in admiration before the work of Vitali;
and he spent many hours in the galleries of the Hermitage. Overwhelmed
with enthusiasm he urged Kirilov to start at once for Italy and Rome.
He had not forgotten Leonti’s commission, and sought out Juliana
Andreevna in her lodgings. When he entered the corridor he heard the
strains of a waltz and, he thought, the voice of Koslov’s wife. He sent
in his name and with it Leonti’s letter. After a time the servant, with
an air of embarrassment, came to tell him that Juliana Andreevna had
gone with a party of friends to Zarskoe-Selo, and would travel direct
from there to Moscow. Raisky did not think it necessary to mention this
incident to Leonti.
His former guardian had sent him a considerable sum raised by the
mortgage of his estate, and with this in hand he set out with Kirilov at
the beginning of January for Dresden. He spent many hours of every day
in the gallery, and paid an occasional visit to the theatre. Raisky
pressed his fellow-traveller to go farther afield; he wanted to go to
Holland, to England, to Paris.
“What should I do in England?” asked Kirilov. “There, all the
art-treasures are in private galleries to which we have no access, and the
public museums are not rich in great works of art. If you are determined
to go, you must go by yourself from Holland. I will wait for you in
Paris.”
Raisky agreed to this proposition. He only stayed a fortnight in England,
however, and was very much impressed by the mighty sea of social life.
Then he hastened back to his eager study of the rich art treasures of
Paris; but he could not possess his soul in the confusion and noisy
merriment, in the incessant entertainments of Paris.
In the early spring the friends crossed the Alps. Even while he
abandoned himself to the new impressions which nature, art, and a
different race made on his mind, Raisky found that the dearest and
nearest ties still connected him with Tatiana Markovna, Vera and
Marfinka. When he watched the towering crests of the waves at sea or the
snow-clad mountain tops his imagination brought before him his aunt’s
noble grey head; her eyes looked at him from the portraits of Velasquez
and Gerard Dow, just as Murillo’s women reminded him of Vera, and he
recalled Marfinka’s charming face as he looked at the masterpieces of
Greuze, or even at the women of Raphael. Vera’s form flitted before him
on the mountain side; he saw once more before him the precipice
overlooking the narrow plain of the Volga, and fought over again the
despairing struggle from which he had emerged. In the flowery valleys
Vera beckoned to him under another aspect, offering her hand with her
affectionate smile. So his memories followed him even as he contemplated
the mighty figures of Nature, Art and History as they were revealed in
the mountains and the plains of Italy.
He gave himself up to these varied emotions with a passionate absorption
which shook the foundations of his physical strength. In Rome he
established himself in a studio which he shared with Kirilov, and spent
much of his time in visiting the museums and the monuments of antiquity.
Sometimes he felt he had suddenly lost his appreciation of natural
beauty, and then he would shut himself up and work for days together.
Another time he was absorbed in the crowded life of the city, which
appeared to him as a great, crude, moving picture in which the life of
bygone centuries was reflected as in a mirror.
Through all the manifestations of this rich and glowing existence he
remained faithful to his own family, and he was never more than a guest
on the foreign soil. In his leisure hours his thoughts were turned
homewards; he would have liked to absorb the eternal beauty of nature
and art, to saturate himself with the history revealed in the monuments
of Rome in order that he might take his spiritual and artistic gains
back to Malinovka.
The three figures of Vera, Marfinka, and his “little mother” Tatiana
Markovna, stretched out beckoning hands to him; and calling him to
herself with even greater insistence than these, was another, mightier
figure, the “great mother,” Russia herself.
THE END