Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/85

 is a worse plague in society than fire, flood and famine! I have said already that there was such general depravity in prison that spying and treachery flourished, and the convicts were not angry at it. On the contrary they were all very friendly with A., and behaved far more amiably to him than to us. The favour in which he stood with our drunken major gave him importance and weight among them. Meanwhile he made the major believe that he could paint portraits (he had made the convicts believe that he had been a lieutenant in the Guards) and the major insisted on A.’s being sent to work in his house, to paint the major’s portrait, of course. Here he made friends with the major’s orderly, Fedka, who had an extraordinary influence over his master, and consequently over everything and everybody in the prison. A. played the spy amongst us to meet the major’s requirements, and when the latter hit A. in the face in his fits of drunkenness he used to abuse him as being a spy and a traitor. It happened sometimes, pretty often in fact, that the major would sit down and command A. to go on with his portrait immediately after beating him. Our major seemed really to believe that A. was a remarkable artist, almost on a level with Brüllov, of whom even he had heard. At the same time he felt himself quite entitled to slap him in the face, feeling probably that, though he was a great artist, he was now a convict, and had he been ten times Brüllov the major was still his superior, and therefore could do what he liked with him. Among other things he made A. take off his boots for him and empty his slops, and yet for a long time he could not get over the idea that A. was a great artist. The portrait lingered on endlessly, almost for a year. At last the major realized that he was being duped, and becoming convinced that the portrait never would be finished, but on the contrary became less and less like him every day, he flew into a rage, gave the artist a thrashing and sent him to hard labour in the prison as a punishment. A. evidently regretted this, and felt bitterly the loss of his idle days, his tit-bits from the major’s table, the company of his friend Fedka and all the enjoyments that Fedka and he contrived for themselves in the major’s kitchen. At any rate after getting rid of A., the major gave up persecuting M., a convict whom A. was always slandering to the major.

At the time of A.’s arrival M. was the only “political” in the prison. He was very miserable, had nothing in common with the other convicts, looked upon them with horror and loathing,