"And is it true that this Mihailov is in such poverty?" asked

Vronsky, thinking that, as a Russian Maecenas, it was his duty to

assist the artist regardless of whether the picture were good or

bad.

"I should say not. He's a remarkable portrait-painter. Have you

ever seen his portrait of Madame Vassiltchikova? But I believe he

doesn't care about painting any more portraits, and so very

likely he is in want. I maintain that..."

"Couldn't we ask him to paint a portrait of Anna Arkadyevna?"

said Vronsky.

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"Why mine?" said Anna. "After yours I don't want another

portrait. Better have one of Annie" (so she called her baby

girl). "Here she is," she added, looking out of the window at

the handsome Italian nurse, who was carrying the child out into

the garden, and immediately glancing unnoticed at Vronsky. The

handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was painting a head for his

picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna's life. He painted

with her as his model, admired her beauty and mediaevalism, and

Anna dared not confess to herself that she was afraid of becoming

jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly

gracious and condescending both to her and her little son.

Vronsky, too, glanced out of the window and into Anna's eyes,

and, turning at once to Golenishtchev, he said: "Do you know this Mihailov?"

"I have met him. But he's a queer fish, and quite without

breeding. You know, one of those uncouth new people one's so

often coming across nowadays, one of those free-thinkers you

know, who are reared _d'emblée_ in theories of atheism, scepticism,

and materialism. In former days," said Golenishtchev, not

observing, or not willing to observe, that both Anna and Vronsky

wanted to speak, "in former days the free-thinker was a man who

had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and

only through conflict and struggle came to free-thought; but now

there has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers who grow up

without even having heard of principles of morality or of

religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up directly

in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages.

Well, he's of that class. He's the son, it appears, of some

Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When

he got into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he's

no fool, to educate himself. And he turned to what seemed to him

the very source of culture--the magazines. In old times, you

see, a man who wanted to educate himself--a Frenchman, for

instance--would have set to work to study all the classics and

theologians and tragedians and historiaris and philosophers, and,

you know, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in

our day he goes straight for the literature of negation, very

quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation,

and he's ready. And that's not all--twenty years ago he would

have found in that literature traces of conflict with

authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived

from this conflict that there was something else; but now he

comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not

even furnish matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that

there is nothing else--evolution, natural selection, struggle for

existence--and that's all. In my article I've..."




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