While he remained silent, the fire sang in the chimney and the large venerable samovar sang; and the ancient chair in which I sat rocking to and fro smoking my cigar, and the cricket in the old walls sang too. I let my eyes glide over the curious apparatus, skeletons of animals, stuffed birds, globes, plaster-casts, with which his room was heaped full, until by chance my glance remained fixed on a picture which I had seen often enough before. But to-day, under the reflected red glow of the fire, it made an indescribable impression on me.
It was a large oil painting, done in the robust full-bodied manner of the Belgian school. Its subject was strange enough.
A beautiful woman with a radiant smile upon her face, with abundant hair tied into a classical knot, on which white powder lay like a soft hoarfrost, was resting on an ottoman, supported on her left arm. She was nude in her dark furs. Her right hand played with a lash, while her bare foot rested carelessly on a man, lying before her like a slave, like a dog. In the sharply outlined, but well-formed linaments of this man lay brooding melancholy and passionate devotion; he looked up to her with the ecstatic burning eye of a martyr. This man, the footstool for her feet, was Severin, but beardless, and, it seemed, some ten years younger.
“Venus in Furs,” I cried, pointing to the picture. “That is the way I saw her in my dream.”
“I, too,” said Severin, “only I dreamed my dream with open eyes.”
“Indeed?”
“It is a tiresome story.”
“Your picture apparently suggested my dream,” I continued. “But do tell me what it means. I can imagine that it played a role in your life, and perhaps a very decisive one. But the details I can only get from you.”
“Look at its counterpart,” replied my strange friend, without heeding my question.
The counterpart was an excellent copy of Titian’s well-known “Venus with the Mirror” in the Dresden Gallery.
“And what is the significance?”
Severin rose and pointed with his finger at the fur with which Titian garbed his goddess of love.
“It, too, is a ‘Venus in Furs,’” he said with a slight smile. “I don’t believe that the old Venetian had any secondary intention. He simply painted the portrait of some aristocratic Mesalina, and was tactful enough to let Cupid hold the mirror in which she tests her majestic allure with cold satisfaction. He looks as though his task were becoming burdensome enough. The picture is painted flattery. Later an ‘expert’ in the Rococo period baptized the lady with the name of Venus. The furs of the despot in which Titian’s fair model wrapped herself, probably more for fear of a cold than out of modesty, have become a symbol of the tyranny and cruelty that constitute woman’s essence and her beauty.
“But enough of that. The picture, as it now exists, is a bitter satire on our love. Venus in this abstract North, in this icy Christian world, has to creep into huge black furs so as not to catch cold—”
Severin laughed, and lighted a fresh cigarette.
Just then the door opened and an attractive, stoutish, blonde girl entered. She had wise, kindly eyes, was dressed in black silk, and brought us cold meat and eggs with our tea. Severin took one of the latter, and decapitated it with his knife.
“Didn’t I tell you that I want them soft-boiled?” he cried with a violence that made the young woman tremble.
“But my dear Sevtchu—” she said timidly.
“Sevtchu, nothing,” he yelled, “you are to obey, obey, do you understand?” and he tore the kantchuk1 which was hanging beside the weapons from its hook.
[Footnote 1: A long whip with a short handle.]
The woman fled from the chamber quickly and timidly like a doe.
“Just wait, I’ll get you yet,” he called after her.
“But Severin,” I said placing my hand on his arm, “how can you treat a pretty young woman thus?”
“Look at the woman,” he replied, blinking humorously with his eyes. “Had I flattered her, she would have cast the noose around my neck, but now, when I bring her up with the kantchuk, she adores me.”
“Nonsense!”
“Nonsense, nothing, that is the way you have to break in women.”
“Well, if you like it, live like a pasha in your harem, but don’t lay down theories for me—”
“Why not,” he said animatedly. “Goethe’s ‘you must be hammer or anvil’ is absolutely appropriate to the relation between man and woman. Didn’t Lady Venus in your dream prove that to you? Woman’s power lies in man’s passion, and she knows how to use it, if man doesn’t understand himself. He has only one choice: to be the tyrant over or the slave of woman. As soon as he gives in, his neck is under the yoke, and the lash will soon fall upon him.”
“Strange maxims!”
“Not maxims, but experiences,” he replied, nodding his head, “I have actually felt the lash. I am cured. Do you care to know how?”
He rose, and got a small manuscript from his massive desk, and put it in front of me.
“You have already asked about the picture. I have long owed you an explanation. Here—read!”
Severin sat down by the chimney with his back toward me, and seemed to dream with open eyes. Silence had fallen again, and again the fire sang in the chimney, and the samovar and the cricket in the old walls. I opened the manuscript and read:
