What, however, lent a show of truth to the critics, was the penuriousness which increased more and more in Kamionka. For a number of years he had lived in his studio to lessen expenses; he lived God knows on what food, and injured his health so much that at last his face was as yellow and transparent as if moulded from wax. He avoided people also for this, lest some one might ask of him sometime a favor. In general, he was a man of broken character, embittered and uncommonly unhappy. Still his was not a common nature at bottom, for even his faults had artistic traits which were special to him. Those who judged that with his penuriousness he must have collected a considerable property were mistaken. In truth, Kamionka was poor; for all that he owned he had spent on engravings of which he had whole portfolios at the bottom of his bureau; these, from time to time, he counted with the greed and the care of a usurer counting his money. He concealed this taste the more carefully, perhaps, because it had grown on the basis of great misfortune and deep feeling. On a time, a year more or less after the death of his wife, he saw in an antiquarian's collection an old engraving, representing Armida. In the face of this Armida he detected a likeness to the face of his dead one. He bought the engraving immediately, and from that time on he sought copperplates, those at first representing only Armida, then, as the fancy increased, every other. Those who have lost persons much loved by them are forced to attach life to something, or they could not exist. As to Kamionka, no one would have thought that this rather aged original and egotist had ever loved his wife more than he loved his existence. It is likely, moreover, that had she not died, life would have flowed on for him more broadly, more calmly, and more in human fashion. Be that as it may, love in Kamionka survived his happy days, his youth, and even his talent. His piety, which in the course of years turned into a custom resting on the preservation of external forms, flowed from this love of his also. Kamionka, without being a man of deep faith, began after the death of his wife to pray for the dead one, since this seemed to him the only thing he could do for her, and thus a kind of thread kept them together. Natures apparently cold are often able to love with great power and persistently. After the death of his wife, Kamionka's whole life and all the thoughts that he had, entwined themselves around her memory, and drew food from it, just as plant parasites draw food from the tree on which they are growing. But from memories of that sort the human plant can gain nothing but poisonous juices made up of sorrow and enormous vexation, hence Kamionka too poisoned himself, grew distorted, went to nothing.