Tate attempts to destroy his Quentin portrait for vague reasons, with a mere palette knife, which has no edge, isn't really a knife, and which at worst could only smudge his work a little. Petofi prevents this smudging by coming at the right moment. There is now a dark suit on Q. Petofi, or rather Violet Welles probably, drops into his pompous prattle a nice reference to the story of "Echo", when dealing with Charity later, I think. She has become a problem because of her having seen the portrait transform earlier (and though they don't know it, because of having found out about Q's guilt more directly).
![[candle_in_skull_2]](http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/Smileys/classic/candle_in_skull_2.gif "Candle In Skull #2")
[spoiler]The difficulty with Petofi's master plan (to "become" Quentin and thus enable himself to escape the gypsies by travelling to the future) is that he is orchestrating all of this before he has had a chance to find out that he needs to do any of it. To have this master plan means that he knows Quentin is alive in 1969, and that he can only get there by being alive there already, in some sense, because only the astral, non-corporeal self makes the trip. One can only "leap" into oneself.
He doesn't know these things yet, though, which makes all his actions now seem random and pointless. Petofi may not be basing his Dorian Gray plan on Jamison/David's ramblings though... he had to start the wheels rolling before hearing "David" (arranging for Tate to come). So he has picked someone to make immortal and "leap" into to make the journey. Why Quentin? Why not "leap" into himself, since he's just become immortal?
Petofi does not know at this point, though, that only astral selves can make the journey, and that one can only leap into oneself, so he must "become" someone alive in the future. He only learns this later because of Julia. He also can't know Q is alive in the future at this point, because right "now", Q is not alive there. He's a ghost.
So if there's no master plan, does he really want to help Quentin end his curse? Perhaps Petofi is inclined to meddle in people's lives, for their own good sometimes, and it just wasn't established sufficiently onscreen. Of course, once it became clear that he could use Quentin and discard him to escape in time, any helpful notions went out the window.[/spoiler]
