The Press., 1890-10-30

gently. Bot if she work for photogra- phers, you know hit is because, as we say in France, Il faut yivre, one must Live. What would you ave? She mek no money if she don't.
 Z .'Yes. yes, I understand. But the wo- man who painted that has it in her to do things that would really be worth while. Does she never attempt anything better?"
 ''H you come down stairs wiz me" returned the exterminator, T show you 8 beeg picture witch she pent, and w'ich I tek one time in place of the rent money they howed me. It is magnificent; it is supairb., You come, yes?"
 'tWhy, yes; by all means" said l.
 And thinking In my soul that 8 land- lord who would take paintings in lieu of rent money was most convenient sort of landlord for painters to put up with, I followed him down stairs. He led me to the back room on the second story, which was furnished as bedroom, and there, having closed the door and thrown open the blinds, "This is my 'ome," he announced; "and here is the picture"
 He had described it as 8 big picture; and big 1t scarcely was. But in point of artistic merit 1t far surpassed what had come prepared for, even though the specimen of her work which he had shown me above stairs had been so good. It's dimensions were, perhaps two feet by eighteen, inches, and 1t represented the interior of dungeon or prison cell. An oblong window, too high up to be reach ed withouta laddef,rtoo narrow to per init the passage through it of human body, and further protected by stout iron bars, admitted daylight and framed in a patch of slaty wintry sky. For the rest there were bare stone walls, stone ceiling and a stone floor; while broad stone slab, so constructed that 1t formed 8 part, of the solid masonry of the wall from which it projected, was the only piece of furniture in evidence, and manifestly answered at once for bed, stool and table. So much for the access. sories. They were rendered in spirit of exact, almost photographic realism; and the effect of massiveness, remoteness and gloom, proper to the subject, was wildly conveyed. And now the interest of the composition centered in the figure of an old man, seated upon the broad stone bench, with his elbows resting on his knees, his fingers buried in his long, white beard, and his eyes fixed intently, lvacantly, painfully straight before him.
 There was something so irresistibly pathetic in that old mans face and figure that I, who had come to criticise, felt myself instantly penetrated by an emo tion of distress and sympathy as if l were looking upon veritable human being and not upon mere efdgy in paint and canvas. His face was terribly emaciated; the cheekbones and the bridge of his nose seemed to be almost starting through the skin. His hair and beard were long and white and un- combed and untrimmed. His skin had that clayey, ghastly pallor which results from long seclusion from fresh air and sunshine. His clothes were old and worn and they hung baggily about his limbs as if he had shrunk up within them. His attitude, limp and bent over and huddled together, breathed 8 broken spirit in every line; and his eyes in their fixed, purposeless stare expressed the de- spair and the hopelessness and the deep dull pain that consumed his heart far more movingly than words ever could have done. In examining this picture you quite forgot to think of the artists technique, which, however, was excel lent. Indeed, if the drawing, coloring and modelling had not been very good no such final emotional effect could have been obtained.
 ssWen," demanded the exterminator, who stood at my elbow, low you like it, ehy'
 .Oh," I said, Fit is very strong. Very powerful and imaginative and moving. But how did she come to choose such a painful subject? And who was her model? Where did she ever find such an awfully broken down old man?'
 ''Eh, for the sobjec' she pent wat in- terest her, I suppose. The model, e was the ole man himself
 'What old man? Where did she find him? It's 8 wonderful face-like the wreck of 8 face that had once been strong, intellectual, almost beautiful"
 "W'y, don't tell you it was her ole man, her fazair; Dr. Eczardy, who leeve upstairs"
 "What!. Igasped. "Her father? Her own fatherY'
 '.Yes.- It represent him in the prison in Rossia, were they keep him five, six years waiting to be tried, and were e catch the cawnsumption. You see it was pretty hard staying all alone there, in solitar' confinement, one, two, tree, four, five, six years. 'E pretty near go crazy."'
 "Hard! I should think it was. And you-I don't see how you can sleep with that picture in the room"
 'Oh, you get use' to it" he explained, with 8 shrug.
 ''But shel However she could bring herself to paint it can't understand, Her own fatheri The subject is horrible enough in itself. But when it comes to ones own father! To work over such a thing day after day, week after week! don't see how she could do it. She she must be young woman of consid- erahle grit"
 ssYes, you right; she his," said Mu- sel1e. s.She tole me about that picture, MT. Muselle,' she tole me, T want to pent a picture w'ich mek people see low in Rossia they 'treassa gentleman who is arrested only as suspect, and before e is tried to find if e is guilty or hinnocent. E is only suspect, waiting to be tried; yet for. five years they keep him all alone there, in solitar' confinement like that till his 'ealth is destroyed, his career in the world ruined, his heart broken, his mind almost gone crazy and his family not knowing if e is, dead or alive, or in Rossia or in Siberia, or wat, or were, o1 anysing about him. She tole me that, to explain wy she pent him that way"
 EContinued next week.l