So he had been sleeping! God, what a dream! And why wake up? why not wait one more moment: she surely would have appeared again! The unpleasant and wan light of vexatious day showed in his windows. Such gray, such dingy disorder in his room… Oh, how repulsive reality is! What is it compared with dreams? He undressed hastily and went to bed, wrapped in a blanket, wishing to call back the flown vision for a moment. Sleep, indeed, was not slow in coming to him, but it did not at all present him with what he would have liked to see: now a Lieutenant Pirogov would come with his pipe, now an Academy watchman, now an actual state councillor, now the head of a Finnish woman whose portrait he had painted once, and other such nonsense.
He lay in bed till noon, wishing to fall asleep; but she would not appear. If only she would show her beautiful features for a moment, if only he could hear her light footstep for a moment, if only her bare arm, bright as snow on a mountaintop, could flash before him.
Abandoning everything, forgetting everything, he sat with a crushed, hopeless look, filled only with his dream. He did not think of eating anything; without any interest, without any life, his eyes gazed out the window to the courtyard, where a dirty water-carrier was pouring water that froze in the air, and the bleating voice of a peddler quavered: "Old clothes for sale." The everyday and real struck oddly on his ear. Thus he sat till evening, when he greedily rushed to bed. For a long time he struggled with sleeplessness and finally overcame it. Again some dream, some trite, vile dream. "God, be merciful; show her to me for a moment at least, just for one moment!" Again he waited till evening, again fell asleep, again dreamed of some official who was an official and at the same time a bassoon. Oh, this was unbearable! At last she came! her head and her tresses… she looks… Oh, how brief! Again the mist, again some stupid dream.
In the end dreams became his life, and his whole life thereafter took a strange turn: one might say he slept while waking and watched while asleep. If anyone had seen him sitting silently before the empty table or walking down the street, he would certainly have taken him for a lunatic or someone destroyed by hard drinking; his gaze was quite senseless, his natural distractedness developed, finally, and imperiously drove all feeling, all movement, from his face. He became animated only with the coming of night.
Such a state unsettled his health, and his most terrible torment was that sleep finally began to desert him entirely. Wishing to salvage this his only possession, he used every means to restore it. He heard that there was a means of restoring sleep-one had only to take opium. But where to get this opium? He remembered one Persian shopkeeper who sold shawls and who, whenever they met, asked him to paint a beauty for him. He decided to go to him, supposing that he would undoubtedly have this opium. The Persian received him sitting on a couch, his legs tucked under him.
"What do you need opium for?" he asked.
Piskarev told him about his insomnia.
"Very well, I give you opium, only paint me a beauty. Must be a fine beauty! Must be with black eyebrows and eyes big as olives; and me lying beside her smoking my pipe! Do you hear? Must be a fine one! a beauty!"
Piskarev promised everything. The Persian stepped out for a minute and returned with a little pot filled with dark liquid, carefully poured some of it into another little pot and gave it to Piskarev, with instructions to take no more than seven drops in water. He greedily seized this precious pot, which he would not have given up for a heap of gold, and rushed headlong home.
On coming home, he poured a few drops into a glass of water and, having swallowed it, dropped off to sleep.
God, what joy! It's she! She again! but now with a completely different look! Oh, how nicely she sits by the window of a bright country house! Her dress breathes such simplicity as only a poet's thought is clothed in. Her hair is done… O Creator, how simply her hair is done, and how becoming it is to her! A short shawl lightly covers her slender neck; everything in her is modest, everything in her is-a mysterious, inexplicable sense of taste. How lovely her graceful gait! how musical the sound of her footsteps and the rustle of her simple dress! how beautiful her arm clasped round with a bracelet of hair! She says to him with tears in her eyes: "Don't despise me. I'm not at all what you take me for. Look at me, look at me more closely, and say: Am I capable of what you think?" "Oh, no, no! If anyone dares to think so, let him…" But he woke up, all stirred, distraught, with tears in his eyes. "It would be better if you didn't exist, didn't live in the world, but were the creation of an inspired artist! I would never leave the canvas, I would eternally gaze at you and kiss you. I would live and breathe by you, as the most beautiful dream, and then I would be happy. My desires could reach no further. I would call upon you as my guardian angel, before sleep and waking, and I would wait for you whenever I had to portray the divine and holy. But now… what a terrible life! What is the use of her being alive? Is the life of a madman pleasant for his relations and friends who once used to love him? God, what is our life! An eternal discord between dream and reality!" Thoughts much like these constantly occupied him. He did not think about anything, he even ate almost nothing, and impatiently, with a lover's passion, waited for evening and the desired vision. His thoughts were constantly turned to one thing, and this finally acquired such power over his whole being and imagination that the desired image came to him almost every day, always in a situation contrary to reality, because his thoughts were perfectly pure, like the thoughts of a child. Through his dreams, the object itself was somehow becoming more pure and totally transformed.
Taking opium enflamed his thoughts still more, and if anyone was ever in love to the utmost degree of madness, impetuously, terribly, destructively, stormily, he was that unfortunate man.
Of all his dreams, one was the most joyful for him: he imagined his studio, he was so happy, he sat holding the palette with such pleasure! And she was right there. She was his wife now. She sat beside him, her lovely elbow resting on the back of his chair, and looked at his work. Her eyes, languid, weary, showed the burden of bliss; everything in his room breathed of paradise; there was such brightness, such order! O Creator! she leaned her lovely head on his breast… He had never had a better dream. He got up after it, somehow more fresh and less distracted than before. Strange thoughts were born in his head. "It may be," he thought, "that she's been drawn into depravity by some involuntary, terrible accident; it may be that the impulses of her soul are inclined to repentance; it may be that she herself wishes to tear herself away from her terrible condition. And can one indifferently allow for her ruin, and that at a moment when it is enough just to reach out a hand to save her from drowning?" His thoughts went further still. "No one knows me," he said to himself, "and who cares about me anyway? And I don't care about them either. If she shows pure repentance and changes her life, then I'll marry her. I must marry her, and surely I'll do much better than many of those who marry their housekeepers, and often even the most despicable creatures. But my deed will be an unmercenary and perhaps even a great one. I'll restore to the world its most beautiful ornament."