In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. I.
by Paul Heyse · English · Gutenberg #33704 · 564,938 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. I.
Author: Paul Heyse
Release date: September 12, 2010 [eBook #33704]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN PARADISE: A NOVEL. VOL. I. ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
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COLLECTION OF FOREIGN AUTHORS,
No. XII.
* * * * *
IN PARADISE.
VOL. I.
VOLUMES ALREADY PUBLISHED:
I. _SAMUEL BROHL AND COMPANY_. A Novel. From the French of Victor
Cherbuliez. 1 vol., 16mo. Paper cover, 60 cents; cloth, $1.00.
II. _GERARD'S MARRIAGE_. A Novel. From the French of Andre Theuriet.
Paper cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents.
III. _SPIRITE_. A Fantasy. From the French of Theophile Gautier. Paper
cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents.
IV. _THE TOWER OF PERCEMONT_. From the French of George Sand. Paper
cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents.
V. _META HOLDENIS_. A Novel. From the French of Victor Cherbuliez.
Paper cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents.
VI. _ROMANCES OF THE EAST_. From the French of Comte de Gobineau. Paper
cover, 60 cents; cloth, $1.00.
VII. _RENEE AND FRANZ_ (Le Bleuet). From the French of Gustave Haller.
Paper cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents.
VIII. _MADAME GOSSELIN_. From the French of Louis Ulbach. Paper cover,
60 cents; cloth, $1.00.
IX. _THE GODSON OF A MARQUIS_. From the French of Andre Theuriet. Paper
cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents.
X. _ARIADNE_. From the French of Henry Greville. Paper cover, 50 cents;
cloth, 75 cents.
XI. _SAFAR-HADGI_; or, Russ and Turcoman. From the French of Prince
Lubomirski. Paper cover, 60 cents; cloth, $1.00.
XII. _IN PARADISE_. From the German of Paul Heyse. 2 vols. Per vol.,
paper cover, 60 cents; doth, $1.00.
IN
PARADISE
_A NOVEL_
FROM THE GERMAN OF
PAUL HEYSE
VOL. I
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
549 AND 551 BROADWAY
1878
***_It has been decided to omit from this translation the poems which
are scattered through the novel in the German. A few trifling changes
in certain passages have been made necessary by this omission; and the
translator has in two or three cases very slightly condensed the text._
* * * * *
COPYRIGHT BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
1878.
IN PARADISE.
_BOOK I_.
CHAPTER I.
It was a Sunday in the midsummer of 1869.
The air, cleared by a thunderstorm the night before, was still
tremulous with that soft, invigorating warmth which, farther south,
makes breathing such an easy matter, but which, north of the Alps,
seldom outlasts the early morning. And yet the bells, that sounded from
the Munich Frauenkirche far across the Theresienwiese, and the field
where stands the great statue of Bavaria, were already ringing for high
mass. Here, outside the city, there seemed to be no human ear to
listen. The great bronze maiden stood there in the deepest solitude,
holding her wreath above her head, and with a mazed and dreamy look, as
though she might be thinking whether this were not an opportune moment
to step down from her granite pedestal, and to wander at will through
the town, that to-day raised its towers and roofs like a city of the
dead above the bare green plain. Now and then a bird flew out of the
little grove behind the Ruhmes-halle, and fluttered about the shoulders
of the giant maiden, or rested for a moment on the mane of the lion
that sat lazily listening, pressed close to the knee of his great
mistress. But away in the city the bells rang on. The air grew drowsy
with the steadily increasing heat, with the hum and the vibration of
the distant ringing, and the strong fragrance that rose from the
meadow, which had been mown the day before. At last the bells ceased;
and now not a sound was to be heard, save that there came from a house
in one of the outer streets the sound of a flute, played by fits and
starts, as though the player stopped for breath between the passages,
or as though he forgot his notes in other thoughts.
The window, from which this singular music sounded into the summer air,
opened from the upper story of a house that stood some distance back
from the street--a house of a kind of which there are many in this
western suburb. They are generally entirely unornamented, boxlike
buildings, windowless except on the northern side, and there pierced by
great quadrangular openings, supplied with all manner of arrangements
for admitting the steadiest possible light from above. In summer one
never sees above them the little cloud of smoke that betrays a domestic
hearth, and no profane smell of cooking meets the visitor upon the
threshold--as in most other Munich houses. From the open windows floats
only a light, invisible odor of tobacco-smoke, agreeably mingled with
the invigorating fragrance of varnishes, oils, and turpentine--which
shows that here only the holy fire of art is fed, and that here, upon
silent altars (three-legged easels and sculptors' pedestals) are
offered sacrifices that cannot even shelter the priests that offer them
from the pangs of hunger.
The house of which we speak turned its windowless southern side
toward a little yard, in which lay scattered marble and sandstone
blocks of different sizes. The four studio-windows of the northern side
looked into a carefully-tended, narrow garden, that sheltered them
from all disagreeable reflected lights. Around a little, slender,
drowsily-splashing fountain in the middle bloomed a glorious wealth of
roses; and the neighboring flower-beds, filled with all kinds of
garden-stuff, were enclosed in thick borders of mignonette. Here the
smell of oil and turpentine just referred to could not penetrate,
especially as only the two upper studios were those of painters; while
in the lower story, as could be seen by the blocks of stone in the
yard, a sculptor carried on his art.
Artists--enjoying, as they do, a perpetual holiday mood over their
work--are not wont to be supporters of a regular celebration of the
Sabbath. Those who are so must be such as in the course of years
have come to devote themselves--as not a few do in a so-called
"art-city"--to the mere business-like manufacture of pictures for
"art-clubs," or of parlor statuettes; and so are privileged to take
their rest on the seventh day, among the other customs of solid
citizens. They, "thank God, no longer feel obliged" to be industrious,
and to work even on a holiday.
But the dwellers in this little house were not of such a type.
On the ground-floor all possible panes in the windows had been opened,
to let as much as possible of the glowing air stream into the sunless
room; and perhaps, too, to tempt in the fragrance of the flowers, or
the notes of the flute that sounded from the window overhead. A flock
of sparrows, that seemed accustomed to make themselves at home in the
place, availed themselves of the opportunity to whirr in and out of the
garden, to flutter, chattering and scolding, about among the ivy-vines
with which one wall of the studio was thickly covered, and to hunt
through every corner for neglected crusts of bread. With all this,
however, they seemed well-bred enough to make no other trouble but
their noise--though the busts and clay models, that stood about the
room on boards and scaffoldings, showed many traces of their visits. On
the damp cloth, in which a large group that stood in the middle of the
great room was carefully wrapped, in order to keep the fresh clay from
drying, sat an old and rather decrepit-looking sparrow, who still
looked about him with an air of considerable dignity--evidently the
chief of this wild army, to whom the pleasant coolness of his seat
seemed to make it an agreeable one. He took no part in the fluttering
and chatter of the younger company, but fixed his attention with
critical gravity upon the artist in the gray blouse, who had moved his
modeling-table close to the window, and was busy in finishing from a
living model the statue of a dancing Bacchante.
The model was a young girl, hardly eighteen years old, who stood on a
little platform opposite the sculptor, and, with her arms thrown up and
backward, held fast by a rod that hung from the ceiling--for the statue
held a tambourine in the hands flung upward with such _abandon_, and
the _pose_ was none of the most comfortable. Still, the girl had borne
it a good half hour already without complaining or asking for a rest.
Although she had to hold her head far back, with its loosened auburn
hair that fell below her waist, yet she followed with intense
curiosity--her little eyes almost closed the while, so that the long
golden-blond lashes lay upon her cheeks--every movement of the artist,
every one of his critical and comparing glances. It seemed to flatter
her beyond measure that her youthful beauty should be the subject of
such conscientious study; and in this satisfaction to her vanity she
forgot fatigue. And indeed she was of unusually slender and graceful
form; and from the rough brown calico dress that was tightly fastened
about her waist there sprung, like a fair flower from a coarse husk, a
girlish figure of as perfect whiteness and delicacy as though the poor
child had no other occupation but to care for her complexion. Her face
was not exactly beautiful; a rather flat nose with broad nostrils
projected above the large, half-opened mouth. But in the ill-formed
jaws, that gave to the face something wild and almost like an animal,
shone perfect and beautiful teeth; and a merry, innocent, childlike
smile enlivened the full lips and the otherwise rather expressionless
eyes. The complexion of her face, too, was of a brilliant, transparent
white, spotted here and there by a few little freckles, of which there
were two or three also on her neck and breast. It was comical to see
how she herself shared in the study of her own beauty, as she found
such serious attention given to it by another; and, as she saw her
girlish self treated with such respect, she seemed to forget every
trace of anything like coquetry, such as might otherwise have entered
into the matter.
"You must be tired, Zenz," said the sculptor. "Don't you want to rest
awhile?"
She shook her auburn hair with a laugh. "It is so cool here," she
answered without stirring. "You don't feel your own weight at all in
the open air like this--and besides, there's the sweet smell of the
mignonette in the garden. I believe I could stand this way till night."
"So much the better. I was just going to ask you if you were not cold,
and didn't want a shawl over your shoulders. I don't need them now; I
am just doing the arms."
He went seriously and quietly on with his work. In his plain face,
framed in smooth blond hair streaked with gray, the only features that
struck one at first glance were the eyes, that shone with an unusual
force and fire. When he fixed them upon a certain point, it seemed as
though they took complete possession of what they saw, and made
themselves completely master of it. And yet there could be nothing more
quiet or less inquiring in expression than these same eyes.
"Who is that playing the flute up stairs?" asked the girl. "The first
time I was here, a week ago to-day, it was perfectly still up there;
but to-day it goes tramp, tramp, every few minutes, and somebody plays,
and then it stops again for a little while."
"A friend of mine has his studio just over us," answered the sculptor;
"a battle-painter, Herr Rosenbusch. If he can't make his work go to
please him, he takes up his flute and walks up and down like that, and
plays, and buries himself in thought. And then he stops in front of his
easel and looks at his picture; and so goes on until he hits upon what
he is after. But what are you laughing at, Zenz?"
"Only at his name. Rosenbusch![1] And paints battles!--Is he a Jew?"
"I don't think so. But now if you want to rest a little while--your
neck must be perfectly stiff by this time."
She let go the rod at once, and sprang down from the bench. While he
was polishing with his modeling-tool the portion he had just finished,
she stood close by him, her arms crossed behind her with a lightness
peculiar to her figure, and looked closely at the beautiful statue,
which within the last hour had made such obvious progress. But only in
the upper half; for the active hips and limbs of the dancer, only
hidden by her long, flowing hair, were only very roughly outlined.
"Are you satisfied, child?" asked the artist. "But then I can only, at
the best, work it out in marble for you, and you are really a better
bit for a painter. That snow-white skin and flaming mane of yours--if
you had lived two thousand years ago, when they made statues of gold
and ivory, you would have been just in your proper place."
"Gold and ivory?" she repeated, thoughtfully. "Those must have been
rich people! However, I am satisfied for my part with the beautiful
white marble--like the young gentleman there behind, that you didn't
finish."
"Do you like him? It was a long while ago that I began that bust. Isn't
it fine, how the small, firm, round head springs from the broad
shoulders? It's a pity that I only sketched out the face; you would
have liked that too."
"Are you going to make my portrait too, there in the clay? I mean, so
that it will be just like me--so that my friends will say at once 'That
is Red Zenz?'"
"That depends. I could use your little nose and your small, sharp-cut
ears well enough. But you know, child, I had quite another wish; and,
if you will fulfill that, I'll make the face so that no human being
will ever dream that Red Zenz was my model. Have you thought it
over--what I asked you a week ago?"
He did not look at her as he spoke, but kept on diligently smoothing
and kneading the soft clay.
She made as though she had not heard his question, and turned on her
heel, wrapping her thick hair about her like a cloak, and went over to
a corner of the studio, where a great black Newfoundland dog, with a
white breast, was lying on a straw mat with his head between his fore
paws, and growling lightly in his sleep. The girl bent down to him and
began to scratch his head softly--of which he took no other notice than
an instant's opening of his eyes, dim with old age.
"He isn't very gallant," said the girl, laughing. "One of my girl
friends has a little terrier, and when I stroke him he is perfectly
wild with joy, and I have to look out that he doesn't lick my face and
neck and hands all over with his little pink tongue. But this fellow is
as reverend as a grandfather. What is his name?"
"Homo."
"Homo? What a queer name! What does it mean?"
"It is Latin, and means 'man.' Years ago the old boy showed so much
human reason, just as his master seemed on the point of losing his
head, that it was decided to rechristen him. Since then he has never
brought shame upon his name. So you see, child, in what good company
you are. If I am hardly as old as a grandfather yet, I am almost old
enough to be your father. And I thought these two sittings would have
convinced you that you were perfectly safe with me--that I shall
faithfully keep what I promised you. And that is the reason--"
"No, no, no, no!" cried she, jumping suddenly up and whirling around,
and shaking her head so violently that her hair flew about her like a
wheel of fire. "What makes you speak of that again, Herr Jansen? You
take me for a silly, thoughtless kind of girl, no doubt--and think that
in time I shan't be able to refuse you anything. But you are very much
mistaken. It is true, I don't mind doing some foolish things; and
standing about for you here like this doesn't seem to me anything wrong
or disgraceful. Why, at a ball last winter where we had made up the
flowers, and so they let us look in through the dressing-room, the fine
ladies appeared before gentlemen in a very different way from the way I
am standing and walking about here; and there were a great many
officers there--not even artists, like you, that only look artistically
at a bare neck and shoulders. But, if I will do _that_ for you, you
mustn't ask anything more. It is true, my friend, when I told her, did
not think anything of it--and she could come with me. But that is
decided--it would make me so that I never could look anybody straight
in the face again. No--no--no! I will not do it--now or ever!"
"You are right, child," interrupted the sculptor, breaking in on her
excited words and, suddenly changing the form of his speech into the
more familiar "thou." "Nobody need know of it, and, if it is
disagreeable to you, I will not speak of it again. And yet--it's a
pity! I could make the figure from a single mould, so to speak; and in
half the time that I shall have to spend now in looking about for
something that will suit."
She made no answer, but of her own accord mounted upon the bench, and
leaned back again, hanging from the rod.
"Is that right?" she asked. "Am I standing just as I did before?"
He only nodded, without looking up at her.
"What makes you cross with me?" she asked, after a while. "I cannot
help it because I am not like my friend. To be sure, she has had a
great deal more experience than I. And then she has been in love more
than once."
"Have you never had a sweetheart, Zenz?"
"No; a real sweetheart, such as one would go through the fire
for--never! My red hair didn't have very good fortune out in Salzburg,
where I have generally lived. And, besides, I was too ugly. One of them
said I had a dog's face. It has only been within the last year, when I
have suddenly shot up a little, and grown a little stouter, that the
gentlemen have sometimes run after me; and with one of them--a right
nice young fellow--I had a kind of a flirtation. But he was so silly
that he tired me; and so it hadn't gone far between us when one fine
day he fell sick and died. And it was only then that I found I couldn't
have loved him so very, very much; for I didn't even cry about him.
Since then I have taken good care not to make a fool of myself again.
Men are bad; everybody says that that knows anything. As for me, if I
liked one--if I really liked him, 'von Herzen, mit Schmerzen'--"
"Well, Zenz, what would you do?"
She was silent for a moment, and then suddenly let her arms fall close
by her sides. It seemed as though a chill ran over her soft skin; she
shook herself, and shrugged her white shoulders.
"What would I do?" she repeated, as though to herself. "Everything he
wanted! And so it is better as it is--much better."
"You are a good girl, Zenz," he muttered, nodding his head slowly.
"Come, there is my hand; shake hands, and I promise you now that there
never shall be a word again between us of what you are not willing to
hear."
CHAPTER II.
She was just about to lay her round, white little hand in his, which
was rough and muddy from kneading the clay, when a knock at the door
caused them both to look up and listen.
The janitor called out through the key-hole that a strange gentleman
wished to speak with Herr Jansen. When he heard that the sculptor had a
model sitting to him at the moment, he had asked the janitor to take in
his card. With this the janitor pushed the card through a narrow hole
in the door made for the purpose.
The sculptor, grumbling, went toward the threshold and picked up the
card. "Felix, Freiherr von Weiblingen." He shook his head thoughtfully.
Suddenly he uttered an exclamation of joy. Under the printed name was
written, with a pencil, "Icarus."
"A good friend of yours?" queried the girl.
He made no answer, but threw down his modeling-tool hastily, hurriedly
wiped his hands on a towel, and hastened to the door again. As he
opened it, he turned around.
"Stay here, Zenz," he said. "Amuse yourself for a while; there is a
book of pictures; and, if you should be hungry, you will find something
in the cupboard. I will lock the door behind me."
In the hall outside there was no one but the janitor, with his bent,
long-shaped head, that looked very much like the head of a horse,
especially when he spoke; then he moved his under-jaw, as though he had
a bit between his great, yellow teeth.
He was a most serviceable old fellow, who had grown gray in the service
of art, and had a more delicate judgment than many a professor. He was
a thorough expert in preparing a canvas; and occupied his leisure in
studying the chemistry of colors.
"Where are the gentlemen, Fridolin?" asked the sculptor.
"There is only one. He is walking in the yard. A very handsome young
gentleman. You can see in his face the look of the 'Baron' that is on
his card. He said--"
But the sculptor had hurried by him, and had rushed down the steps that
led into the yard. "Felix!" he cried, "is it you or your ghost?"
"I am inclined to think it is both, and a heart in addition," replied
the person addressed, grasping the hand that the sculptor held out to
him. "Come, old fellow, I can't see why we should be ashamed to fall on
each other's necks, here under God's free heaven. I have had to get on
for years without my best and dearest old Daedalus--"
He did not finish his sentence. The sculptor had pressed him so
heartily to his breast that it fairly took away his breath.
Then suddenly he loosened his grasp, and, stepping back a pace, cast a
critical glance over the slight figure of his friend.
"Still just the same," he said, as though to himself; "but we must get
those Samson-like locks under the shears. You don't know your strongest
point, my dear boy, when you bury your round head in such a thicket.
And your full beard must come off. However, all that will come with
time. Tell me what has conjured you forth out of your primeval forests
into our tame art-city?"
He grasped the young man's arm, and led him around the house into the
little garden. Both were silent, and seemed to avoid looking at one
another, as though they had begun to feel ashamed of the extravagant
affection with which they had marked their reunion.
At the extreme end of the garden was an arbor overgrown with
honeysuckle; at its entrance stood sentry two potbellied Cupids in the
_rococco_ style, with little queues and all that--both of them painted
sky-blue from head to foot.
"It's easy to see whom one is visiting," said Felix, laughing. "'His
pig-tail hangs behind him,' or have you had it cut off?" Then, without
waiting for an answer: "But tell me, old fellow, how have you had the
heart to leave your poor Icarus all these terribly long years without a
sign of life on your part? Haven't any of the six or eight letters I
have written you--the last only a year ago from Chicago--"
The sculptor had turned away and buried his face in a bunch of
full-blown roses. He turned suddenly toward his friend, and said, with
a quick, lowering glance: "A sign of life! How do you know that I
_have_ lived these terribly long years? But let us drop all that. Come
and sit down here in the arbor, and now unpack your budget. A
circumnavigator like you must have brought all manner of things with
you that are entertaining and wonderful to dusty stay-at-homes like us.
When you went away from Kiel, we did not either of us think the earth
would turn so often before we looked each other in the face again."
"What shall I tell you?" asked the young man, and his delicate brow
contracted, "If my letters reached you, you have not lost the thread of
my story. As for all the details that belong to it, you knew me well
enough in my first university days, in those old times at Kiel, to
imagine how I went on afterward in Heidelberg and Leipsic, till I got
an older head under my corps-student's cap. It is true, I soon grew
tired of the ridiculous corps business; but, for the mere sake of not
seeming to play the renegade, I kept on with the old associations even
more shamelessly than before. My three years passed away, and a fourth
beside; I was fully three-and-twenty when I went back into my dear,
dull, little home, and passed my examination to enter the civil
service. How I managed to get on so long without giving you a call,
Heaven knows! As early as the second year after our separation, I was
very near you. I had a trifling reminder of a pistol-duel with a
Russian, here in my left shoulder, and had to go to a watering-place
for my health. In Heligoland I heard that you had moved to Hamburg. I
needn't say that I designed to call upon you on my way back. But,
suddenly, a sad message called me home abruptly. My poor old father had
had an apoplectic stroke, and I found him dead. Then there was all the
dreary necessary business, and, after it all--. But why must we spoil
our first pleasant hour with all these old stories? My dear Hans, if
you had a notion how good it is to be sitting here again by your side,
to smell these roses, and imagine that my life is beginning all over
again--a new life in a better world, free from all fetters and--. But,
by-the-way, you have married, I hear? An actress, was it not? Where did
she come from? I heard in Heligoland--"
The sculptor suddenly rose. "You find me as you left me," he said, his
face darkening quickly; "what is past, let us let it rest. Come out of
the arbor; it is suffocatingly hot under those thick vines."
He went toward the little fountain, held his hands under the slender
stream, and passed them over his brow. Then, for the first time, he
turned to Felix again. His face was once more composed and bright.
"And now tell me what has brought you here, and how long you are going
to stay with me."
"As long as you will have me--for ever and ever--_in infinitum_ if you
will!"
"You are joking. Don't do that, my dear boy. I am so utterly alone
here, in spite of a plenty of good comrades with whom I can share
everything except my most intimate thoughts, that the thought of
beginning our old life again seems far too happy to me to be only made
a jest of."
"But it is my most serious earnest, dear old Hans. I am going to stay
here with you, if you have nothing against it, in your most intimate
daily companionship; and, if some day you strike your tent and wander
away somewhere else, I will go too. In one word, I have put my whole
past career behind me, and broken up all my old associations, so that I
may begin, as I said, my whole life over again, and not be anything but
what I care most to be--a free man; not make myself anything but what I
have always secretly longed to be, an artist, as good or as bad a one
as mother Nature will let me."
He poured forth these words hurriedly, and with downcast face, and as
he talked drew a light circle in the nearest flower-bed with his cane.
It was only after a pause, and when his friend made no reply, that he
raised his eyes and met, with some embarrassment, the quiet gaze fixed
upon him.
"You don't seem quite able to accept this change in my life all at
once, Hans? Others besides you have had the same feeling--the person
most concerned in it, for instance. That I have become a conceited ass,
and fancy that because I used to be extravagantly fond of modeling all
manner of absurdities in clay, and cutting caricatures of my friends in
meerschaum--this I hope you will not believe. But why I can't get
beyond the condition of a dilettante, if I only am serious about it,
and think of and do nothing else but study my A, B, C, under a good
master--I beg of you, my dear Daedalus, don't pull such a disheartening
face! Don't look so sadly at the lost youth--as I probably seem to you;
or at least smile ironically, so as to rouse my anger and wound my
_amour propre_ a little! But by the eternal gods--what is there after
all so horribly fatal in this decision? That it hasn't occurred to me
till after twenty-seven years? That is bad, I admit, but not a proof
that it is hopeless. Think of your own half-countryman, Asmus Carstens,
or of--well, I won't give you a whole chapter of artists' biographies.
And besides, when I am altogether independent and have burnt my ships
behind me--"
He stopped again. His friend's silence seemed to check his utterance.
For a time nothing was to be heard around them but the splashing of the
little fountain, and from the window above them the notes of the
battle-painter's flute, every little while dying dismally away.
Suddenly the sculptor stood still.
"And does your fiancee agree to this project?"
"My fiancee? What in the world puts that question into your head?"
"Because, although I never answered your letters, I remember them all
very well. Is it possible that you too do not remember what you wrote
me three years ago, under the seal of the deepest--"
"So I did do it then!" cried the young man with a short, abrupt laugh.
"So I did chatter, did I? I assure you, my dear Hans, I was myself
doubtful how far I had initiated you--you, the only one before whom I
ever lifted even a corner of the veil from this veiled picture. After
awhile--as you sent no congratulations--I began to persuade myself that
I had kept a quiet tongue in my head, even with you; and, in truth,
that would have been the best thing to do. Then I should have escaped
the full confession that it is hard enough for me to make--and after
all, it is perfectly superfluous. For how shall I--who am no poet, and
who am besides an interested party in the transaction--how shall I
describe the persons concerned so that you will understand how it all
came about--how it was partly the fault of both--and yet how both are
innocent, after all?
"But if you must have it, let it be so--as briefly as possible.
"I came back, then, to my native town, to pay the last honors to my
good old father. You know what an unhomelike home I had always found
it. The capital of a third-class Duodezstaat--thank your good star that
you have no idea what it means. My father before me had suffered under
the absurd despotism of this court-etiquette, this endlessly-branching,
complicated, spun-out primeval jungle of dry genealogical trees--under
these ridiculous traditions of a worm-eaten bureaucracy. He was a man
of quite another type--a sturdy, stately country noble, of the most
exclusive and most independent spirit; and since the death of my
mother--who could not of course withdraw herself so entirely from her
family connections--he had lived on our own estate, altogether apart
from 'society.' Then came his death; and I--looked upon askance even as
a boy because of my likeness to my father, and almost given up as far
as a career at court or in politics was concerned--I believe no cock
would have crowed at it, if I had once for all acknowledged that I was
my father's true heir in this respect also, and had forever turned my
back on the spot where I was cradled. But, much as I felt inclined to
do so, it fell out otherwise."
He put his hand into his pocket and took out a little memorandum-book.
"You shall have the romance in an illustrated edition," he said, with a
rather forced attempt at jesting. "See, it was this little person's
fault that I thought for a while it was really my calling to be a
useful citizen--chamberlain to his Highness--by and by master of the
hunt--court marshal--heaven knows what all. Is not that a face that
could persuade one of anything, and could turn a head that never sat
very firmly? And that is only a commonplace photograph, and three years
old; and besides, in these three years the wicked child has learned all
manner of witches' arts; and the eyes that here in the photograph look
so still and fixed--half curious, half timid, as if they were looking
at a theatre-curtain that would not go up--I can tell you, my dear boy,
they look into the world now with such a queenly confidence and dignity
that it fairly--but that is no part of our present talk. And at that
time, when the misfortune happened and I lost my heart to the child,
the little thing was hardly more than a schoolgirl, just sixteen years
old; and shy, silent and unformed as a young bird. We had known each
other since we were children--she is some sort of a cousin, seventeen
times removed--just as all good families with us are related in some
way. I had not the least idea, however, of visiting her, until her
uncle, with whom she lived--her parents died when she was very
young--until this jovial gentleman came to make me a visit of
condolence. Of course I had to return it, and it was on this occasion
that I first saw the slender, pale, large-eyed child, with her
exquisite, tight-shut red lips and her ravishing, tiny little ears.
"Soon afterward I went away again, and only after a year had
passed--after the infernal examination that I would not shirk, in spite
of my freedom, lest it should seem as though I were afraid of it--only
then, when she was seventeen years old, did I see her again. While I
was away, a recollection of her had come back to me from time to time;
suddenly, in the midst of altogether different things, I had seen
something flitting before me that resembled nothing but her slight and
somewhat spare figure, about which there was one trait that always
seemed to me especially charming--that though she was perhaps not quite
tall enough, her little form was always so haughty and erect and so
delicately and perfectly balanced on its slender pedestal. Sometimes,
too, her eyes met me in a fairly ghost-like fashion, when I was among
my comrades or alone out of doors. And yet I had never exchanged ten
words with her.
"And now, when I found her again, a year older and suddenly developed
into a young woman--no, Hans, you need not fear that I am shamelessly
going to put our whole love-story at your mercy, here in the bright
morning sunlight. Enough to say that it had fared much the same with
her, as far as my worthy self was concerned, as with me in respect to
her. We saw that we were meant for one another, as people say--without
ever thinking how much is meant by the words.
"Well! everything would have been well enough; the match seemed as
_bien assortie_ as could possibly have been wished even in such an
aristocratic and cosmopolitan capital as ours. If we had only
married at once, on the spur of the moment, we should have been just
the people--she with her seventeen years, and I with my three or
four-and-twenty--to be altogether suited to one another, and, as time
went on, to so round off the very perceptible and serious corners and
sharpnesses of our two temperaments, that finally it would have been a
thoroughly happy marriage. But, unfortunately, Irene's mother had
married at seventeen, and attributed her lifelong invalidism--for she
was a delicate creature and always remained so--to this early marriage.
When she died--still very young--she charged her husband solemnly that
he should not let their only daughter marry before she was twenty; and
the uncle, who afterward filled a father's place to my sweetheart,
considered himself absolutely bound by this inherited pledge. I must
wait patiently, therefore, for three whole years. And as he was a
bachelor, and his niece had no chaperon to call upon but a former
servant, I was required to pledge myself to avoid all companionship
with my betrothed during this long probation, and only to carry on my
courtship by letter; so that every temptation to seek to shorten the
time of waiting might be put a stop to once for all.
"You can imagine what my feelings were when the old gentleman told me
all this. To decree a three years' banishment just because we should
give him trouble--because he hated responsibility, and because he
believed, as an old hand at love-making, that this was the best way to
protect lovers against themselves! But, jovial as his manner was, he
was an uncompromising egotist where his own quiet and comfort were
concerned. And I was too stubborn and too proud to make any
supplications, and too sure of myself and my sweetheart to fear the
length of the interval; which did not seem to me at first glance so
intolerable as I often felt it afterward--in sighs and misery.
"My sweetheart, too, threw back her little head and said: 'Yes, we will
wait.'--Afterward, it is true, when it came to our last parting, she
fell out of my arms as though she were dead, and I thought she would
never open her eyes again. Even now I don't know how I succeeded, in
spite of it all, in tearing myself away.
"And this three years' separation itself! If I had only been a man of
sense--that is, if I had been another than myself--I should have
settled down somewhere in Germany, and taken up some task at which
I could have worked myself tired--to fight down my unprofitable
lover's-melancholy. Why could not I devote my three years to making
myself a perfect agriculturist, or a prominent jurist, or a politician,
or something that is of some use in the world? To make one's self so
completely master of some department of life or knowledge that one
knows every square foot of it is rather an absurd and commonplace
consolation, to be sure; but it is better, after all, than an
objectless activity, a love nourished on prison-fare, and a longing for
freedom that at last makes one look upon mere change as something
desirable.
"Even then I thought of my old Daedalus. I was on the very point of
falling upon you in your studio, and, for want of a smooth, girlish
cheek to caress, of trying my hand on a soft bit of clay. Just then I
chanced upon an opportunity to go to England; there I stayed until I
was ripe for America; and he who once sets foot in the New World, and
hasn't left any very pressing business behind him in the Old, can get
rid of a few years of his life without knowing exactly how he has done
it. It is enough to tell you that I had already reached Rio, traveling
by way of San Francisco and Mexico, when I said to myself one day that
if I did not want to prolong my exile voluntarily, and so appear to my
betrothed in rather a bad light, I must take the next steamer that
sailed for Havre, in order to land at last, after all this wandering
over the wide world, in the harbor of my wedded bliss.
"I had written regularly to my betrothed every month--beautiful
diary-like love-letters--and had received with equal regularity letters
from her, which, to speak honestly, had now and then irritated me
greatly; so that we had already had (on paper) all manner of
misunderstandings, tiffs, quarrels, and reconciliations. I considered
that all this belonged of right to a well-conducted three-years'
engagement, and did not take it too much to heart when my well-bred,
rather provincial little sweetheart, who had grown up in the atmosphere
of the petty capital, occasionally gave her vagabond _fiance_ a little
moral lesson. Perhaps I was wrong, and certainly I was foolish, always
to report my varied adventures with absolute candor. There were no very
serious matters among them; and the few cases of real human weaknesses
and sins I kept to myself--shut up in a sincerely remorseful heart. But
she found fault even with the _tone_ of my 'sketches from two
hemispheres.' Good heavens! it is easily comprehensible that the poor
child, living as she did among such absurd surroundings, could not have
much taste for a free life out in the world! Thrown entirely on
herself, watched over by a hundred eyes in a narrow, starched, formal
society--I once wrote to her that she was only so serious beyond her
years because she had had to fill, as it were, a mother's place to
herself, and be her own governess and duenna. And, besides all this,
there was her uncle's frightful example--for she could not long remain
ignorant of his habit of compensating himself for outward
respectability by private orgies at his bachelor clubs and _petits
soupers_.
"Only let the three years be over, I thought to myself, and we will
soon weed out the tares that have sprung up between our roses. But I
did not know the vigor of the ground in which all this bad crop had
grown up. Nor did I know how much the years between seventeen and
twenty signified in such a girl's life.
"At last, then, I arrived at home, and found--but, no!" He checked
himself abruptly, and made a sharp cut at the air with his cane. "Why
should I bore you with a detailed story of a domestic comedy that has
only a decidedly unfavorable likeness to 'Much Ado about Nothing,' and,
instead of ending with the reconciliation between Benedict and
Beatrice, finished with a ridiculous eternal separation? For isn't it
almost as laughable as lamentable that two lovers, who for three whole
years, the world over, have been extravagantly fond of one another,
should count the days till they could fall again on one another's
necks, and then should not be able to get on together for six weeks?
And all this only because--as old Goethe says--man strives for liberty,
woman for morality; and because the said moral law seems to the man a
wretched slavery, while the unhappy young woman thinks even a very
moderate freedom immoral! Ah, my dear old Hans, what did I not endure
in those six weeks!--and more especially because I was thoroughly
dissatisfied with myself. After our altogether fruitless (and therefore
all the more obstinate) discussions of these questions, in which I
poured out my bitterest scorn upon her court-etiquette, her kid-gloved
prejudices, her duenna-like code of morals, while she put my baseless
principles to shame with a maidenly pride and firmness that I could
have kissed her for--always after these discussions I used to say to
myself, in the quiet of my chamber, that I was a mad fool to upset
matters as I did. With a little diplomacy, a little delicate tact, and
patient hypocrisy, I could have thoroughly gained my end; could have
borne the stupid ban of society until my marriage; and then, when we
were alone together, could have gradually developed my little wife out
of her doll-like state of servitude, and rejoiced to see her spread her
wings in freedom.
"But it was odd: as often as I appeared before her with the best
resolves in the world--the war began again. You must not imagine that
she fairly entered the lists, challenged me, and herself brought up our
old points of conflict. But it was precisely her quiet reserve, her
obvious good intention to be cautious with the reckless scapegrace, and
to leave his reform to time--it was all this that overthrew my finest
diplomatic projects. I would begin to joke, then to chaff, then to hurl
the most fearful insults against people and customs that seemed fairly
holy to her--and so it went on, day after day, until there came one day
that fairly 'forced the bottom out of the cask'--a wretched, wretched
day!"
He paused a moment, and fixed his eyes gloomily upon the ground.
"There's no help for it!" he said, at last. "It must come out.
Once in my life I did something that humiliated me in my own eyes. I
committed a sin against my own sense of honor--a base act, for which I
never can forgive myself, although a court of honor in matters of
gallantry--chosen from among my own equals, mind you--would probably
have let me off with a slight penance, if not scot-free altogether. You
know what I think of what is called sin; there is no _absolute_ moral
code; what brands one forever is only a little spot upon another--all
according to the delicacy and sensitiveness of the skin. Even
conscience is a product of culture, and the categorical imperative is a
pure fiction. What a brutal blackguard of a soldier permits himself in
plundering a captured town, and feels his conscience untroubled, would
dishonor his officer to all eternity. But I am not going to theorize;
suffice it to say that that inner harmony with one's self, on which
everything depends, was utterly destroyed in me by this act. From the
way in which it haunted me, you can conceive how, in a moment of
weakness, I confessed the whole story to Irene's uncle, little
consolation as I could get from the absolution of so very odd a saint.
I saw _how_ little, when he utterly failed to understand how I could
take the matter so to heart, especially as it had taken place a
considerable time before my engagement. I instantly repented most
bitterly that I had confided in him; and his promise, never by a single
syllable to recur to it, reassured me but little.
"I was right. He forgot it himself; and one unhappy day he began, in
the very presence of his niece--we had just been speaking of all manner
of far more innocent adventures, and even these she would not let
pass--he began to refer to that wretched story. Something must have
come into my face that instantly gave my sweetheart an idea that this
reference meant something beyond the common. Her uncle, too, began to
stammer, and made a clumsy attempt to change the subject. That made the
matter worse. Irene stopped talking, and soon after left the room. The
uncle, good-natured as usual, cursed his own loquacity again and again;
but, naturally, that did not help things. When I saw my little one
again, she asked me to what his words referred. I was too proud to lie
to her; I confessed that I carried about with me the memory of
something that I wished to conceal from myself--how much more from her!
With that she grew silent again. But on the evening of that day, when I
was a second time alone with her, she told me that she must know the
whole. I could not have done anything that she could not forgive me;
but she felt that she could not live by my side when there was such a
secret between us.
"Perhaps a wiser man might have invented some story, and so have
avoided a greater evil. There is such a thing as a necessary lie. But I
held to the belief that every man is alone responsible for his acts;
that I should add a second sin to the first if I burdened the pure soul
of my darling with such a confidence; and so I remained unshaken,
though I knew her too well not to know how much was at stake.
"On the next morning I received her parting letter--a letter that for
the first time showed me all that I was losing.
"But I had gone too far to turn back. I answered that I would wait
until she changed her opinions; that in the mean time I should look
upon myself as bound to her; but she was, of course, entirely free.
"That was a week ago. I reflected that of course it would be necessary
to leave at once those places where she might meet me. In putting my
house in order for an indefinite absence, I came upon a package of
visiting-cards in one of my mother's cupboards that had on them the
name of her brother, my godfather, Felix von Weiblingen. It occurred to
me as a good idea that, under this name, I might for a while
(_incognito_) breathe the same air with my oldest friend, and at the
same time attain the goal of my dearest wishes--to begin a new life.
There is nothing in me of the ordinary numbered and classified type of
'man with a calling,' and, even with the best wife in the world, I
never should have been able to busy myself quietly on my estate with
bringing up children, making brandy, and fox-hunting. It is better,
then, that I should use this involuntary opportunity to dispose of
myself as I choose, in trying whether I can't really make a life of my
own. If in time she should bring herself to my way of thinking, she
would then find a _fait accompli_ that she would have to accept.
"It will be no shame to me in your eyes if I don't at once find my
spirits so entirely in order that I can go rushing into a mastery of
the fine arts by lightning express. I have reached the door of your
studio but slowly, and by very short stages--but this very slowness has
done me good. You see before you a thoroughly sensible man, who is
determined to submit to fate without a grumble. If you will only take
me into _die Mache_, it will not be long before the wings of your
faithful Icarus will grow again, to lift him above all this wretched
world of Philistinism and its foolish love-affairs."
CHAPTER III.
The sculptor had listened to this long confession in silence. And even
now, when Felix ended, and began to pull to pieces a sprig of
mignonette as carefully as though he were trying to count the stamens
in the little blossoms, he betrayed neither by word nor look any
opinion of what he had just heard.
"I find that you have made great progress in your old art of expressing
yourself by silence," said the young man at length, with a somewhat
forced lightness of tone. "Do you remember how I used to be able to
tell from the degree, and, so to speak, from the pitch of your silence,
just what you were thinking of my nonsense? I can tell in the same way
now: you think my decision to become an artist is a mere absurdity. You
used to tell me that I was not fit either for science or art--that I
was an _homme d'action_. But there's no help for it now: if it is a
wrong road--why, I am in it once for all and mean to follow it to the
end. So speak out, and tell me candidly whether I must look up another
master, or whether the lion will endure the company of the puppy in his
cage--as he used to before he himself was a full-grown king of the
desert?"
"What shall I say to you, my dear boy?" replied the sculptor, in his
quiet, rather slow manner. "The thing is a matter of course. I need not
say to you, well as you know me, that I can hardly base any very
exalted hopes upon an art-apprentice who takes up his task somewhat as
a man might marry a woman with whom he had not been especially in love,
but who now, when his real sweetheart has given him the mitten, is a
good enough last resort; that the future career of an art adopted thus
out of spite, as it were, seems to me very doubtful. But then, too, I
know you well enough to be sure that all the Phidiases and Michael
Angelos in the world couldn't make you break your resolution, and that,
if I should lock my door against you, you would be just the fellow to
bind yourself out as an apprentice to the first of my colleagues you
might chance upon. And then--to be honest--it is such a pleasure to me
to have you back again at all, that out of pure selfishness I can't
make any objection if your energy, instead of taking hold of real life,
chooses to spend itself on a harmless bit of clay. For the rest--let us
speak of it another time--or not at all, whichever pleases you better.
In such matters we take no counsel, after all, but that of our own
souls; and if this isn't always the best for us--why, we are sovereigns
of ourselves, and have it in our own power to save or ruin ourselves
according to our natures. Here is my hand, then. You can begin
to-morrow, if you like, your apprenticeship as a kneader of clay and
chipper of stone--and your baronial ancestors can turn in their graves
at it as they please."
"Chaff away, dear old Hans!" cried the young man, joyously. "Now I'll
stake my head that I will become a famous artist just to have the laugh
on you! I will work from morning till night with a true malicious
pleasure, grinding and fretting till the dilettante skin is rubbed off
and something better appears below it. And you shall see that I have
not spent these seven years altogether in lounging. If you will run
through my sketch-books from both continents--but _apropos_, what have
you been doing in the mean while? Is it not a shame that I haven't been
able to keep track of your progress toward immortality, even by a
wretched photograph? And here I have been running on for an hour over
my own adventures, while the most glorious wonders of the world are
waiting for me over yonder!"
He strode quickly across the yard, to which they had come back while
they were talking, and entered the house.
"You will repent this haste, rash boy!" Jansen called after him, while
an odd smile played about his lips. "You will indeed wonder over much
that you see--but the wonders of the world that you dream of--they are
still in this narrow room" (he pointed to his forehead), "and even
there they are not always in the best light!"
With these words he unlocked one of the two lower doors, and let Felix
pass in.
It was a second studio, adjoining that in which he had worked during
the morning; a room precisely like the other, its walls painted in the
same stone-color, and its great square window half draped in the same
fashion. And yet no one would have believed that the same spirit ruled
here that had created the dancing Bacchante in the next atelier.
On slender pedestals stood a multitude of figures, most of them of half
life-size, such as are used for the decoration of Catholic churches,
chapels and cemeteries. Some of them were just begun, some were almost
finished works; and in all could be clearly recognized the hands of the
pupils who had their execution in charge--sometimes more and sometimes
less skillfully imitating the little original models, barely six inches
high, that stood on small shelves beside the copies. While the latter
were neatly cut in sandstone or in the cheaper marbles--and a few in
wood, decorated with all manner of painting and gilding--the little
models were in plaster, and spotted and nicked by constant use. Yet
these doll-like little madonnas, saints and apostles, and praying and
playing angels in their heavy draperies, had a certain odd and now and
then almost caricatured life-likeness--so great that not all of its
charm was lost, even in the dry copies made by the assistants. They had
something of the same element of humor that Ariosto gives to his
personages--which by no means lose in life or force because their
author has lost his own simple faith in them.
"Allow me to ask," said Felix, after looking about blankly for a
moment, "into whose room you have brought me? And is your good friend
who practises this pious art hidden somewhere close by, so that one
must be cautious in his criticisms?"
"You needn't be in the least disturbed, my dear fellow; the lord and
master of this worshipful company stands before you."
"You, yourself? Daedalus with a saint's halo! The preacher in the
wilderness of modern art actually at the foot of the cross! Before I
believe that, I shall have to take the cowl myself, and declare poor
naked Beauty to be an invention of the devil!"
The sculptor cast down his eyes for a moment.
"Yes, my dear fellow," he said, "this is what we have come to in our
art-desert. You ask me for beauty, and I offer you clothes-racks with
dolls'-heads! As long ago as when we were in Kiel, I had to learn that
the world of to-day will have nothing to do with true art. You know how
hard I found it to turn these stones of mine into bread. It was still
worse when I moved to Hamburg, and there--" he checked himself
suddenly, and turned away; "well, living is more expensive there, and I
began to be older and less easily satisfied; and, when I could no
longer support myself in the place--it was the wretched trading city's
fault, I thought--I packed up my best models and sketches and came
here, to the much-praised land of art, the 'Athens on the Iser,' of
which so much is said and sung. You will soon learn how it is here. I
won't begin as soon as you have crossed the threshold to sweep all the
disagreeable things in the house out of the corners for you. I will
only say that the Munich Philistine isn't a hair better than those on
the Jungfernstieg or in our old Holstein. After I had managed, with
great difficulty, to keep myself alive here for a year, and had hardly
earned enough in the service of pure beauty to keep life in my body, I
found that such misery was enough to make a man turn Catholic--and, as
this spectacle shows, I did turn so, half-and-half. It wasn't so easy
as it may seem to you here--to my shame! Besides a trace of conscience,
which was always reminding me that
'Man, after all, has higher goals to seek
Than simply feeding seven times a week;'
besides my own humiliation before myself and a few of my good
colleagues, I was hampered by a real lack of skill. It needs a good
deal to take all the manliness out of one's self, so that one can fit
himself to all the miserable complications, the twisted deformities and
tameness of our modern civilization. But it only depends, after all, on
one's capability of getting the humor out of the thing. The idea that
I, an unmitigated pagan, should establish a manufactory of images of
saints, struck me as so indescribably rich that one fine day I actually
set to work to model a Saint Sebastian, in which task my knowledge of
anatomy stood me in good stead. But, even here, I soon found that it is
only 'clothes that make the man.' It was only when I betook myself to
making draperies, trains, and sleeves, that the result took on the true
devotional air such as the public is accustomed to and desires. And,
since then, I have grown prosperous so fast that now I employ eight or
ten assistants; and, if it goes on, I shall some day bid farewell to
temporal affairs, in the odor of sanctity and as rich as----." (He
named a colleague who enjoyed a continued rush of business.)
"Yes, my dear Icarus," continued he, still more laughingly, as Felix
made no reply to these revelations, "you would not have believed it
all, I know, when in the first fire of youth we rode our proud hobbies,
and called every man a low fool who, in art or life, proved faithless
to his ideals by a straw's breadth. But the mill of every-day life rubs
off much that a man believed was bound to him as with iron--like a very
part of himself. And here you have an example, worth your deep
consideration, of that celebrated 'liberty' you think to find here. If
I allow myself the liberty of doing what I cannot give up, I must, at
the same time, make up my mind to work at absurdities with which my
heart has no sympathy. In order to be an artist, such as I wish to be,
I am compelled to make Nuremberg toys and to display them in the
market-places. But, after all--behind my own back, as it were--I
continue quietly to be my own master. Let thy troubled heart take
courage, beloved son! thy old Daedalus hasn't even yet become quite so
utterly bad as these trade-wares show him. I think you will give me
back your esteem if I lead you now out of my holy into my profane
_atelier_--out of my tailor's-shop into my paradise!"
CHAPTER IV.
With these words he opened the little door that separated the two
studios and passed in, followed by Felix.
"You will find an old acquaintance again," he said. "I wonder whether
friend Homo still remembers you. He has certainly had time to grow old
and dull."
The dog was still lying in front of the old sofa, on the straw mat, and
seemed to have slept quietly on, although the girl had seated herself
near him and had buried both feet in his thick coat as in a rug.
Evidently the old dog thought it not disagreeable, but rather pleasant
than otherwise, to be rubbed and trampled on by the little shoes. At
all events he uttered a comfortable growl from time to time, like a
purring cat.
To the girl herself the time had seemed very long. At first, when she
heard voices out in the garden, she had climbed upon a chair close to
the window, and, pulling her skirt over her bare shoulders that she
might not be seen by any chance passer-by, had peeped out curiously
through the roses. The strange young man, who spoke so long and
seriously with Jansen, had taken her fancy greatly, with his tall,
slender figure, his small head above the broad shoulders, and the fiery
glance of his brown eyes, that wandered absently about. She had seen
directly that he must be somebody of distinction. But, when he
disappeared with Jansen into the arbor, her post at the window grew
uncomfortable. She climbed slowly and thoughtfully down, stationed
herself before a little looking-glass on the wall, and looked
attentively at her own youthful figure, which only seemed to her
anything especially remarkable now that an artist copied from it. Only
to-day she was even less satisfied than usual with her face, and tried
whether it could not be improved if she screwed up her mouth as much
as possible, drew in her nostrils, and opened her eyes very wide. She
was vexed because she could not make herself as beautiful as the
plaster-heads that stood above her on the brackets. But suddenly she
had to laugh at the horribly distorted face she made; her old high
spirits came back; she thrust out her tongue at her reflection in the
glass, and was pleased to see how pretty and red it looked between her
glittering white teeth. Then she shook her thick red hair and went
singing, and patting her shoulders in time with the tune, up and down
the room, so that the sparrows were frightened and fluttered out at the
window. Then she stood still for a long while and looked at the casts
and clay models around her on the walls; and seemed especially
interested in the half-finished marble bust. It reminded her again of
the stranger outside in the arbor, whose head sprung just so from his
stately shoulders. Finally she tired of this also; and besides, she
began to feel a little hungry. She found in the cupboard, behind her in
the corner to which the sculptor had directed her, a few rolls and an
opened bottle of red wine. There was all sorts of rubbish besides in
the cupboard; a masquerader's costume, pieces of gold-stamped leather
tapestry, of blue and red silk and brocade, with large flowers in their
patterns, and a saint's halo, cut out of paper and painted with
beautiful golden rays--that might have done service for a _tableau
vivant_, or some other profane purpose. The idle girl seized upon this
last, fastened it on her head with the two ribbons still attached to
it, and went again before the looking-glass, where she smiled and made
faces at her own reflection. Then she took a piece of blue damask out
of the pile of things, and threw it like a cloak over her white
shoulders. Her hair flowed freely over it, so that at a distance, when
one did not see her uncovered neck, she looked like a mediaeval madonna,
who had stepped out of her frame and had wandered into some merry
company. The girl thought herself very beautiful, and quite worthy of
reverence in this disguise, and secretly congratulated herself on the
surprise and admiration of the sculptor, when he should find her so
dressed. That she might await his return more comfortably, she had
seated herself on the sofa, put a glass of wine on a chair beside her,
and begun to eat a roll. She had come across a portfolio of photographs
of celebrated pictures, and had laid it open in her lap, resting her
feet on the dog's back; and so she had sat now a full half-hour,
absorbed in looking at the pictures (which she found generally very
ugly), when the little door opened and Jansen again entered the room.
At the same moment she started as though shot up by a spring--so rudely
that the old dog, giving a low howl and shaking himself, also scrambled
up from his sleep.
She had seen the young stranger enter behind the sculptor; and now she
stood in the middle of the atelier, drawing the little blue silk flag
as tightly as she could across her breast, her eyes flaming with anger,
and her whole body trembling with excitement.
"You need not be afraid, my child," said the sculptor, "this gentleman
is also an artist. Good Heavens! How magnificently you have dressed
yourself! The halo becomes you excellently. Turn round a little--"
She shook her head violently.
"Let me go! I will never come again!" she said half aloud. "You haven't
kept your word to me! Oh! it is shameful!"
"But, Zenz--"
"No, never again! You have deceived me. You know very well what you
promised me, and yet--"
"But if you would only listen! I assure you solemnly--"
Shaking her head and blushing crimson, she ran to the chair where she
had laid her waist and her straw hat, seized them hurriedly, and shot
like an arrow through the little side-door into the second studio.
The sculptor tried to follow her, but had to turn back at the bolted
door. Vexed and annoyed, he turned again to Felix, who had let the girl
pass almost unnoticed in the demonstrative recognition he received from
the dog. The powerful animal had come leaping toward him with all the
liveliness of his younger days, had rested his heavy paws on his old
friend's breast, barking hoarsely the while, and seemed unwilling to
let him go again.
"Do you really know me still, true old soul?" cried the young man,
patting the dog's great head, and looking with real emotion into the
faithful old fellow's large eyes, already grown a little dim.--"See,
Hans, with what _empressement_ he receives me! But what have I done to
vex the little girl? Is it the custom here in your blessed land of free
art for models to set themselves up as examples of propriety?"
"This is rather a peculiar case," answered Jansen, with some vexation.
"It was only after long hesitation that she did me the favor to stand
as a model at all; and I shall be hard put to it now to make the shy
thing so tame again. She has neither father nor mother--at least, so
she says. I used often to meet her on her way to an artificial-flower
factory, where she works hard to support, herself. Her figure attracted
me; and the little pert-nosed thing did not look as though her ideas
were very rigidly conventional. But she would have nothing to say to
it, although, as I look older than I am, I have made much shyer people
trust me. Finally, though, my last resort helped me here, as it had
before."
"Your last resort?"
"Yes; the remark that, after all, the matter really was not worth so
much trouble as I had given to it; and perhaps, on the whole, she was
wise in only wishing to show her figure with the aid of dress. This was
too much for the vain little creature, and she consented to come as a
model--but no one but myself must ever enter the studio. I
thoughtlessly broke this agreement to-day in admitting you."
Felix stepped before the statue of the Bacchante.
"Unless you have greatly flattered her, you are to be congratulated on
finding so good a one," he said. "And, as far as I have been able to
see in to-day's wanderings through the town, you must have every reason
to be satisfied with most of the figures you can find here."
Jansen did not answer. He seemed to be absorbed in gazing at his
friend, who happened to be standing at the moment in a most favorable
light. Then, muttering to himself, he went over to the cupboard in
which the girl had been rummaging, searched a while in its
compartments, and at last came back to Felix, hiding behind him a great
pair of shears. The young man still stood absorbed in admiration of the
Bacchante.
"Before we do anything else, my dear boy," said the sculptor, "you must
allow me to crop this hair of yours into a more rational shape. Sit
down there on that stool. In less than five minutes we shall have it
all arranged; and that neck of yours, that looks like the neck of the
Borghese Gladiator--the very best point about you--will be got out of
all this thicket."
At first Felix laughingly refused; but finally he submitted; and his
friend's skillful hand cropped his long hair, and trimmed his full
beard more closely.
"There!" said Jansen. "Now a man needn't be ashamed to be seen with
you. And, as a reward for this submission, I will show you something
that until now very few mortal eyes have had the privilege of seeing."
He approached the great veiled group in the middle of the studio, and
began cautiously to unwrap the damp cloths in which the work was
everywhere enveloped.
The figure of a youth appeared, of more than mortal strength and
stature, lying stretched upon the ground in an attitude of perfect and
natural grace and beauty. Sleep seemed to have just left his eyes; for
he lay with his head a little raised, leaning upon his right arm, and
passing the left across his forehead as though to clear away the mists
of some deep dream. Before him--or behind him, as it appeared to the
spectator--knelt upon one knee a youthful female figure, bending over
him in a posture of innocent wonder. This figure was much less advanced
toward completion than that of its male companion--there being, indeed,
scarcely anything left to do on the latter excepting a little delicate
work upon the luxuriant hair and the hands and feet. And yet, though
the lines of the woman's figure were still almost in the rough, and her
beautiful form seemed only the fruit of a few days' labor, the modeling
of the whole was so broad and strong, the bend of the neck and the
posture of the arms were so expressive, that no one could fail to catch
the full force of the whole, even from the unfinished work, and to see
that the two figures were worthy of one another, and of equal birth.
Felix uttered an exclamation of delight. Then, for a full quarter of an
hour, he stood motionless before the mighty group, and seemed
altogether to forget the sculptor in his work.
At length the dog, which came beside him and began again to lick his
hand, aroused him from his reverie.
"The old-time Hans still lives!" he cried, turning to Jansen. "And more
than that--this is for the first time the complete, genuine Daedalus,
who has thoroughly learned to use his wings. Listen, old boy; it is
gradually dawning upon me that I must have been altogether mad and
absurd when I introduced myself to you as a kind of fellow-artist!"
"You shall go to the art-club to-morrow, and gather new courage when
you see some of your other colleagues," said Jansen, dryly. "However, I
am glad the thing pleases you. You remember how I used to dwell on the
germ of the idea of this work years ago. The First Man face to face
with the First Woman--hardly daring as yet to actually touch the being
who for the first time makes his human existence full and complete;
while she--more mature already, as a woman is, and having had time
while he slept to recover from her first surprise--feels herself drawn
by a strange and joyful yearning to him who is to be her lord, and to
call forth for the first time her true woman's nature. It is a subject
that stirs one to the core; it touches all that is deep and sacred in a
man's fancy; and yet it is not impossible to reproduce it with the
means our art affords. I have made more than one study of it, and yet
not satisfied myself. It was only this spring, when I realized one day,
to my horror, how this wretched business next door--this money-getting
and trying to please priests and women--was threatening to demoralize
me, that for three weeks I never set foot in my saint-factory, but
locked myself in here and expanded my soul again with this work. I know
that I am only doing it for myself and for a little group of true
friends, as restless as I am. Where could I put such a thing as that
nowadays? True Art is homeless and without a place to lay her head. A
dancing Bacchante is sure to find a lover in some rich man who will put
her in some niche in his _salon_, and think when he looks at her of the
ballet-girls who have been his associates. But Adam and Eve, before
their fall, in all their rude and vigorous strength, with the fragrance
of the fresh earth lingering, as it were, about them--they are as
useless for a decoration as they would be for the altar of a chapel.
Even their heroic proportions would pass for brutal! But, after all,
they are my old favorites; and, if they please me, to whom does it
matter?"
Felix did not answer. He was again absorbed in gazing at the group.
"A good friend of mine, whose acquaintance you will soon make, by the
way," continued the sculptor, "one Schnetz, who likes to play the
Thersites, advised me to put a fusilier's uniform on Adam, and make Eve
into a sister of charity, with a medicine-glass and spoon in her hand.
Then the group would perhaps be adopted to ornament the pediment of
some hospital. His satire on the present condition of our art was so
true that I had almost a mind to try it for a joke. My first man and
woman, without an inkling of all the ills of our pestilential century,
enthroned over the door of a _lazaretto_--what do you say to that as a
piece of colossal humor?"
"Only finish it, Hans!" cried the younger man. "Dream out your dream,
and I will vouch for it that, however stupidly and sleepily men are
plodding on, this lightning-stroke of genius will dash the scales from
their eyes! Why haven't you made more progress with your Eve?"
"Because I have never yet found a model; and because I will not
botch my work by mere patching together of my own recollections,
or by the last resort of borrowing from the Venus of Milo. Ah,
my dear fellow--the fine figures you think you saw in the streets
to-day--psha! you'll soon think otherwise. The German corset-makers,
the school-room benches, and the miserable food we live on, may
possibly leave enough of dear old Nature for me to make a laughing-doll
out of, like my dancer there; but a future mother of mankind, untouched
as yet by any breath of want or degradation, and fresh from the hand of
her Creator--what do you think our professional models would say to
that--or the seamstresses or flower-girls that money or persuasion can
induce to enter the service of art? If it were a Roman, now, or a
Greek, or any untamed child of Nature who had grown up under a happier
heaven than ours! And that is what makes the ground here fairly burn
under my feet--and if they were not fettered with leaden fetters--"
He suddenly checked himself, and a dark shadow passed across his face;
but Felix shrunk from the effort to draw from him by a question any
confidence beyond what Jansen offered willingly.
At this moment the clock in a neighboring tower struck twelve; and for
a few moments the bells for mid-day service filled the pause that had
interrupted the talk of the two friends.
The sculptor began to wrap up the group again, after he had given it a
thorough sprinkling. And then, while Felix examined in silence the
other sculptures, many of which were familiar, he went to a wash-stand
in a corner, where he washed the traces of the clay from his hands and
face, and exchanged his working-blouse for a light summer-coat.
"And now," said he, as he finished his toilette--"now you shall go with
me to our high mass--one that we never miss on Sundays. At the stroke
of twelve we working-bees forsake our hives, and swarm to that great
flower-garden, the Pinakothek, to gather our store of wax and honey for
the whole week. Do you hear the door slam above us? That is my neighbor
in the upper story--a right good fellow, by the name of Maximilian
Rosenbusch, but called 'Rosebud' for short by his friends. An excellent
youngster, not in the least cut out by Nature for a desperado--but
rather inclined, on the contrary, to all the more delicate pursuits of
the muses. He is suspected of being secretly engaged on a volume of
'Poems to Spring,' and you could have heard his flute up-stairs
an hour ago. But at the same time he paints the most tremendous
battle-pieces--generally in Wallenstein or Swedish costume--battles of
the bloodiest sort, and where there is no quarter. In the studio next
to his lives a Fraeulein, a thoroughly estimable woman, and by no means
a despicable artist. Among her friends she goes by the name of
Angelica, but her real name is Minna Engelken. This good creature--but
there they come now down the stairs. You can make their acquaintance at
once."
CHAPTER V.
It was certainly an odd pair that they found waiting in the yard. The
battle-painter, an animated young fellow, with a clear, bright, rosy
complexion, wore an enormous gray felt hat, with a small cock's-feather
in the band; and an abundant red beard, that looked as queerly against
his pink-and-white face as though a girl had tied a false beard round
her chin, in the attempt to disguise herself as a brigand. Looking at
the face closely, there was a decidedly spirited and manly look in the
clear blue eyes, while a merry laugh lurked constantly about the mobile
mouth. Beside him, his companion--though she was apparently still under
thirty--seemed almost as though she might be his mother, there was such
a weighty seriousness and prompt decision in her movements. She had one
of those faces in which one never sees whether they are pretty or ugly;
her mouth was a little large, perhaps; her eyes were bright and full of
life, and her figure was rather short and thickset. She wore her hair
cut short under a simple Leghorn hat; but in the rest of her dress
there was nothing especially conspicuous.
Jansen introduced Felix, and a few commonplaces were exchanged. After
her first glance at him, Angelica whispered something to the sculptor
that evidently related to the stately figure of his friend, and its
likeness to the bust she had seen in his studio. Then all four strolled
along the Schwanthalerstrasse, followed by the dog, which kept close
behind Felix, and from time to time rubbed its nose against his hand.
They stopped before a pretty one-story house in the suburb, standing in
the middle of a neatly-kept garden. Rosenbusch took his flute out of
his pocket, and played the beginning of the air "Bei Maennern, welche
Liebe fuehlen." But nothing stirred in the house, although the upper
windows were only closed with blinds, and every note rang out far and
clear in the hot noonday air.
"Fat Rossel is either asleep or else he pretends he is, so as to shirk
our high mass again," said the painter, putting up his flute. "I think
we had better go on."
"_Andiamo!_" said Angelica, nodding. (She had once passed a year in
Italy, and certain everyday Italian phrases had a way of slipping
involuntarily from her lips every minute or two.)
The conversation, as they strolled on, was not exactly animated. Jansen
seemed to be lost in thought; long silences were a habit of his, and,
especially when there were several people about him, he could remain
for hours apparently without the least interest in what was going on.
And then, if something that was said happened to kindle a spark in him,
his eloquence seemed all the more surprising. Felix knew him well, and
made no attempt to disturb his abstracted mood. He looked about him as
he walked, and tried to recognize the streets that he had first
strolled through, long before, in one of his vacation journeys. Nor did
Rosenbusch seem to be in a particularly talkative frame of mind; and
only Angelica, who had a way of assuming a certain chaffing tone toward
him, and besides was out of humor because, as she said, she had got
"into a blind alley" with one of her pictures, kept up a fire of little
sarcasms and ridicule against her neighbor. She even adopted the
familiarity of calling him by his nickname, but not without putting a
"Herr" before it.
"Do you know, Herr Rosebud, when you're composing a picture, you ought
to repeat your poems instead of playing the flute? I know it would
inspire you a great deal more, and your neighbors would suffer less.
Now, to-day, for instance, I put some carmine on a whole group of
children I was painting, and spoiled it, just because that everlasting
_adagio_ of yours had made me so sentimental."
"Why didn't you pound on the door, then, my honored friend, as we
agreed, and then I would have 'ceased my cruel sport?'"
"If it hadn't been Sunday, and I hadn't said to myself it will soon be
twelve o'clock, and then he'll stop anyhow--. But see that sweet little
girl in the carriage--the one with the blue hat, next to the young
man--it's a bridal couple, surely! What eyes she has! And how she
laughs, and throws herself back in the carriage like a thoughtless
child!"
She had stopped in the street in her ecstasy, and impulsively imitated
the gesture of the girl who was driving by, bending back and crossing
her arms behind her head. The friends stood still and laughed.
"I must beg of you, Angelica, calm your enthusiasm," growled
Rosenbusch; "you forget that not only God and your artistic friends are
looking at you, but profane eyes also, that can't imagine what you are
driving at with your rather reckless studies of posture."
"You are right," said the little painter, casting a scared glance about
her, but somewhat relieved to find that the street was deserted. "It's
a silly habit of mine, that I have fought against from a child. My
parents gave up taking me to the theatre because they said I always
went through too many contortions over what I saw. But, when anything
excites me, I always forget my best resolutions to maintain my
composure and dignity. When you come to see my studio, baron," she
said, turning to Felix, "I hope you will bear me witness that I know
how to keep within bounds on canvas at least."
"It is comical," she continued, as no one answered, "what singular
neighbors we are. Here Rosebud, who looks so gentle and innocent, as if
he could not kill a fly, wades ankle-deep in blood every day, and isn't
happy unless, like a new Hotspur, he can kill at least fourteen
Pappenheimer cuirassiers with oil in a morning. And I--whose best
friends have to confess that the Graces didn't stand beside my
cradle--I bother myself over fragrant flower-pieces and laughing
children's faces, and then read in the reviews that I should do well to
take up subjects that have more body to them!"
So she ran on for a while, without sparing herself or her companions in
her jokes--yet without the least rudeness or old-maidish bitterness in
her talk. A certain element of womanly coquetry showed now and then in
her frank, honest speeches--an attempt to caricature herself and her
faults and follies, so that she might be taken, after all, at a little
higher value than her own exaggerations gave her credit for. But even
this was done so good-naturedly that any gallant speeches that her
companions might try to make were generally smothered in laughter.
Felix was greatly attracted by her cleverness and droll good-humor;
and, as he showed clearly how they amused him, her mood grew all the
merrier, and one jest followed another so that the long walk seemed
very short to all of them, and they stood at the door of the Pinakothek
before they realized that they had come so far.
"And here, Baron, we must bid one another good-by for the present,"
said the painter. "You must know that in this art-temple of ours we
behave like good Catholics in their churches. Each kneels before a
different altar; I before St. Huysum and Rachel Ruysch; Herr Rosebud
before his Wouvermans; Herr Jansen before Saints Peter and Paul; and
Homo stays outside, in silent converse with the stone lions on the
steps. I hope I shall soon have the pleasure of seeing you in my
studio. Don't let yourself be alarmed by these two malicious gentlemen
with the idea that I shall try to capture you for a sitter. I must
paint your portrait some time, of course--it is a fate you cannot
escape; but my brush is by no means so presumptuous as these wicked men
will try to represent it. When you are a little more at home among us,
perhaps; but now--good-by!"
She nodded to the others, and disappeared into a side hall, into which
Rosenbusch also retreated, after a short stay among the old German
masters.
"We don't enforce this separation very rigidly, of course," said
Jansen, smiling. "But we have found out that when we all go together we
cannot bring ourselves into a really proper mood for study; we neither
learn nor enjoy. At best, we only get into a discussion of technical
points--problems of color and secrets of the palette, which are
especially unimportant to me, as I make no use of that kind of thing."
"But why do not you prefer to hold your Sunday solemnities before the
Medusa or the Barberini Faun?" said Felix.
"Because I know the Glyptothek by heart. And besides, I do not believe
that what we ought to look at in the works of the great masters is the
purely artistic side, if we want to profit by their study. Every one
who has passed his apprenticeship has his own ideas and prejudices and
obstinacies on those points. What we ought to get from them are
characteristics; force, refinement, and contempt for small means used
to small ends. But these I can learn just as well from a symphony of
Beethoven as from a noble building--from a gallery of paintings as from
a tragedy of Shakespeare; and then next day I can turn them to account
in my own work. And it is just these things that Rubens gives me better
than any other here--Rubens, whose works fill this whole room. As soon
as I come near him, he makes me forget all the photographic pettiness,
the fashionable rubbish and 'art-association' absurdities of our own
day."
"Tell me yourself," he continued, pointing to the walls of the Rubens
room, "do not you too feel as though you were in your tropical
wildernesses again, where Nature hardly knows how to restrain her
overflowing vigor, and where all that moves or grows seems fairly
intoxicated with its own abounding strength? Here, no one dreams that
there is an everyday, prosaic life outside, that presses all created
things into its service--men serving the State, women mere family
beasts of burden, horses harnessed to the plough--and only suffers
untamed animals to exist in its midst when they are on show in
zoological gardens or fair-booths. Here the whole glorious creation
swarms unadorned and vigorous as on the seventh day after chaos; and
all that we conceal and pamper in our dapper civilization appears here
in all innocence in the open light of day. Look at this brown, lusty
peasant and this beautiful woman--these sleeping nymphs watched by the
satyrs--this glorious throng of the blessed and the damned--all this
unveiled humanity is living and acting for itself alone, and never
dreams whether prudish and pedantic fools are looking on and taking
umbrage at it. You know that nothing is really good or bad _in itself_;
it is only the power of thinking about it that makes it so. And these
creatures have never troubled themselves with thinking. They are
enjoying life fully and overflowingly--like the fat little satyr's wife
above there, nursing her twins--or they are absorbed in the sharp
struggle for existence. Look at this lion-hunt! Horace Vernet, who
wielded no unskillful brush, has painted one too. But just there you
can see the contrast between great art and petty art. Here everything
is mingled in a raging turmoil, so that there is not a hand's breadth
between--here is the very instant of highest conflict, the climax of
struggle and defense, fury and death--every muscle strained to its
utmost, and everything in such deadly yet triumphant earnest that one
trembles and yet is filled with the spirit of victory. For all true
strength is full of a certain triumphant joy. But the French picture is
like a tableau in a circus, where, in spite of all the grimacing and
posturing, there is no real struggle _a l'outrance_, And look at the
purely artistic side; here all the outlines are so melted into one
another, so lost in each other in spite of the strongest contrasts,
that they necessarily lead the eye into a network from which it cannot
escape, where it never has an opportunity to wish for anything else, or
indeed to think that anything else is possible. A skillful modern
artist, going to work with his patchwork of knowledge on the various
subjects, could not possibly produce such a work. You will always find
holes and gaps--stiff triangles and hexagons between the legs of the
horses, and the figures kept apart as nicely and neatly as though they
were going to be packed up in their cases again after it was all over."
He stood a good half hour before the lion-hunt, looking at it as though
for the first time. And then, as though tearing himself away with
difficulty, he took Felix by the arm and said, "You know I am no mere
fanatical _doctrinaire_. Nobody can have more respect for the other
great artists of the golden age. But still it always seems to me as
though I did not find, even in the greatest and most immortal of them,
a true balance between art and Nature. There is always an excess of
technical aim over unaffected seeing and feeling--an excess of 'can'
over 'must.' Even with Raphael (whom, it is true, they say one doesn't
really know until one has seen his work in Rome), I feel a too great
excess of the purely spiritual and abstract over the sensuous. And with
the glorious Titian and the Venetians, this paradisaic naturalness,
this effortless flow of beauty from an exhaustless soil, this breathing
forth of pure and unadulterated force and freedom, is only found in
their greatest moments; while this man, like the immortal gods, seems
never to have known an hour of poverty or insufficiency."
He talked on in this fashion for some time, as though to pour out his
heart before his friend. But just as they were standing before the
little picture of Rubens and his beautiful young wife in the garden,
walking beside a bed of tulips, they heard Angelica's voice behind
them.
"I cannot help it, gentlemen; you must tear yourselves away from this
well-fed domestic happiness and these tedious box-hedges, and come with
me. I have something to show you that is quite as much a masterpiece of
its kind. Please have confidence in my artistic eye for this once, and
come quickly, before the miracle disappears again."
"What is this beautiful thing you have discovered, Fraeulein?" asked
Felix, laughing, "that instantly vanishes again if one is not
immediately on the watch?"
"Something that is alive--but hardly according to your taste, as I
imagine it," answered the painter. "But our master there--"
"A beautiful woman?"
"Ah! and what a woman! I have followed her about like a young Don Juan
ever since we have been here, and looked askance at her as I stood
before the pictures. She seems to be a little near-sighted--at least
she half shuts her eyelids when she looks intently at anything; and she
looks at the upper row of pictures through a lorgnette. A blonde--and a
face, I tell you--and a figure!--just what you call _Portament_,
Jansen--the kind of thing that grows much oftener in Trastevere than
among our German oaks."
"And why don't you give _me_ credit, too, for enough taste to do this
lady justice?" asked Felix.
"Because--well, because you are a trifle young, and--thus far at
least--you are not an artist. This beauty of mine is far from being
conspicuous or attracting attention--like everything really great. I
will wager, Baron, that you find my enthusiasm exaggerated. These
polished checks and temples, and the poise of the head on the neck and
the neck on the shoulders, and the whole figure--neither too full nor
too slender--but hush! I believe she is standing over there at this
moment! Yes, it is she--the one in the raw silk, with the broad,
somewhat antiquated straw-hat set back upon her head--doesn't it look
almost like a halo? Well, Jansen? Do say something! Generally you are
so extraordinarily prompt in picking flaws in my ideals."
Jansen had paused, and had coolly turned his quiet, clear gaze upon the
lady, who stood, entirely unsuspicious of scrutiny, a few alcoves away
from them, and turned her full face toward the observing party.
Angelica had not said too much. Her figure was of rare grace and
majesty, as her light summer-dress showed its beautiful outlines
clearly against the dark background; her head, thrown back a little,
hardly moved upon the slender, graceful neck, and her hat allowed its
form to be all the more distinctly seen, as she wore her soft, light
hair simply parted, and falling in a few curls upon her shoulders. Her
face was not striking at first glance; quiet, steel-gray eyes,
concealing their brilliancy behind the slightly closed lids; a mouth
not exactly full or rosy, but of the most beautiful form and full of
character; and a chin and neck worthy of an antique statue. She seemed
so completely absorbed in the study of the gallery that she did not
look up as the friends approached her. It was only when they entered
the alcove, and Angelica began to express her wild admiration (quite
secretly, she imagined, but really loud enough to be plainly audible),
that the stranger suddenly noticed them. With a slight blush, she drew
about her shoulders the white shawl that had hung carelessly about her
waist--as though to shield her from these curious eyes--cast an annoyed
glance at the whispering painter, and left the alcove.
"See how she moves--a queenly walk!" cried Angelica, looking after her.
"But alas! I have driven her away. I like that in her, too, that she is
too refined to let herself be stared at. _Quant' e bella!_ But _do_ say
something, Jansen! Have you suddenly turned into a statue, or has the
enchantment worked too strongly?"
"You may be right, Angelica," said the sculptor, smiling. "I have met
this kind of phenomenal being here now and then; and, as they were
always strangers (for you never see a native of Munich in the
Pinakothek), looking at them was always but a fleeting joy, and I could
only gaze after them as they went. So now I have grown cautious. You
know 'a burnt child--'"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the artist. "This divine being may be a stranger,
of course, but no one studies the pictures so closely who is looking at
them for the first and last time, only to carry out the instructions of
her Baedeker. What's to prevent our watching her again? And, even if I
lose all to-morrow forenoon over it, and let my group of children dry
into the canvas, I must study this exquisite creature once more, and at
leisure. There--there she is again! Rosebud is just passing her, and
starts back as if he had met the _Bella di Tiziano_ in person! See how
he stares after her! He has taste, after all, in spite of his old
Swedes."
And now the little battle-painter came hurrying up to his friends, and
began to tell them what a discovery he had made. Angelica laughed.
"You come too late, Herr von Rosebud! _I_ am the one to whom belongs
the fame of having discovered this comet! But do you know what I have
in mind, gentlemen? As none of you seem to be inclined to follow up
this adventure, I, as the least suspicious of us four, will take it
upon myself to pursue our beauty, and see if I can discover where she
lives and who she is. If she stays here but a week, she shall be
painted. I have sworn it! And whichever of you is particularly good
shall come to the last sitting; and Herr Rosebud hereby receives
permission to play her a serenade under my window. _Addio, signori!_
To-morrow you shall hear how the matter turns out."
She nodded hurriedly to the friends, and followed the stranger, who had
in the mean time passed through the rooms, and was now preparing to
leave the gallery.
"I'll wager she does it!" said Rosenbusch. "An astoundingly resolute
woman that, and absolutely not to be stopped when an enthusiasm seizes
her! This time she really has made a devilish remarkable discovery; but
you know what wonderful beauties she has tried to talk up to us
before--eh, Jansen? She has a positive mania for admiration, and, when
she is possessed by it, she is not very fastidious in her choice of
subjects. 'The sea rages, and will have its sacrifice!'"
The sculptor did not answer. He strolled along beside the others for a
while, silent and abstracted. Then he suddenly said: "Let us go! It
seems as though the art-sense had suddenly disappeared or died out in
me. Such a perfect piece of living Nature puts to shame all illusions
of color, so that even the great masters seem like bunglers beside it."
CHAPTER VI.
Meanwhile the beautiful unknown had slowly descended the steps of the
Pinakothek, and turned in the direction of the Obelisk, clearly
unconscious of the fact that twenty paces behind her an enthusiastic
artist was upon her track, never losing sight of her for an instant.
And, indeed, it was a rare refreshment to the eye to look upon this
beautiful figure as it passed along. If one may talk of a "silent music
of form," here everything was _legato_, while the little artist was in
a perpetual _staccato_ movement. The stranger moved as though she
stepped on an elastic ground, and seemed not to mind the walk in the
least, in spite of the oppressive mid-day heat. She looked neither to
the right nor left; in her hands, on which she wore half-gloves of
black net, she held a large green fan, which she opened now and then to
protect her face against the sun.
Her worshiper grew more enthusiastic with every moment, and gave
utterance to her feelings in muttered monologue, sprinkled, according
to her fashion, with Italian interjections.
At length she saw the subject of her admiration turn to the left, and
go into a neat house on the Briennerstrasse. Here, she knew, there were
furnished rooms to let; so the stranger must have arranged for a
considerable stay in Munich. But how to get at her? To ring at every
bell in the two stories, and ask if a beautiful woman in yellow silk
lived there, did not seem very practicable. And did she live here,
after all? Might she not be only making a visit?
The painter was just debating whether she should walk up and down
before the house like a sentry, when a window opened in the corner-room
on the ground-floor, before which lay a little garden with its tall
shrubs looking dry and dusty in the mid-day sun, and the beauty leaned
out to shut the blind. She had taken off her hat, and her hair was a
little disordered, which wonderfully added to her beauty. Without
hesitating a moment, Angelica marched through the little path past the
garden, and entered the vestibule.
Her ring was answered by a very old servant with a white,
soldierly-looking mustache, and dressed in a long, silver-buttoned
livery-coat that reached to his knees. He eyed the visitor
suspiciously, took her card, on which there was nothing but "Minna
Engelken," and came back at once, indicating by a silent nod that his
mistress would receive her.
As Angelica entered the stranger was standing in the middle of the
room, in the midst of the warm, greenish light that came through the
closed blinds. She had hastily put up her hair again, but without
special care; and now she greeted her visitor somewhat coldly, with a
scarcely perceptible nod of her exquisite head.
"First of all, I must introduce myself a little more fully than the
very obscure name on my card can have done," began the artist, without
the slightest trace of embarrassment. (She had begun immediately upon
her entrance to study the head, as though at a regular sitting.) "I am
a painter; that is the sole excuse I have for my intrusion upon you. I
met you a short time ago at the Pinakothek. It can hardly be a novelty
to you to have people stop when you go by, or even follow you. But that
a person should intrude into your very house does seem a little too
much. My honored Fraeulein, or should I call you Madame?" (the stranger
shook her head slightly) "I do not know whether you, too, have a
prejudice against women-artists? If you have, I shall certainly appear
to you in a very bad light. And it is true, I must say that this
meddling with brushes and colors doesn't particularly become many of my
colleagues. Although the nine Muses are women, our sex easily get by
association with them an unwomanly touch that is not by any means to
their advantage.--Oh, please keep that position just an instant; the
three-quarters face is especially effective in this light! Yes, it is
true, Fraeulein, I myself know women-artists who think it is prosaic to
put on a clean collar or darn a stocking. And yet--"
"If you would only be kind enough to tell me the motive of your
visit--"
"I was just coming to that. I had really a double motive. First, to beg
your pardon if I drove you away from the gallery by my persistent
staring. You see, my dear Fraeulein--oh, please bend your head a
little--so! If you could only see how capital that is--that _chiar'
oscuro_--and what glorious hair you have! I see you think I am fairly
crazy, treating you like a model in the first ten minutes! But so much
the better; you will know at once what we are coming to. I am really,
you must know, not quite responsible for my actions when I see anything
that greatly delights me; and however lacking my talents may be in the
power to produce anything beautiful from mere imagination, I have
attained a real mastery in the discovery, the enjoyment, and admiration
of true living beauty. The moment I saw you afar off--no, you must not
turn away, dear Fraeulein. How can you help it, and what sin is it, if
an honest artist-soul--of your own sex, too--expresses its delight in
and admiration for your beauty? It seems petty to me, the way that many
people keep such a gift of God hidden--or pretend to. There are some
little doll-like faces, it is true, whose chief charm lies in the fact
that they always seem to be ashamed of their own prettiness. But you,
Fraeulein--such a classic head--please turn for once fully round toward
the light--a pure Palma Vecchio, I tell you--"
The Fraeulein could not help smiling, and, although she blushed,
permitting this singular, unrestrained, formless admiration. "I
confess," she said, "that I have been such a recluse for years, only
busied with the care of an invalid, that I have quite fallen out of
practice in listening to such flatteries and wearing the fitting
expression when I hear them. And besides, in spite of hard and sad
experience, I am still young and foolish enough not to take offense at
the pleasure you seem to take in my personal appearance. But if you
would only tell me--you spoke of a _double_ motive."
"Thank you a thousand times, dear, dear Fraeulein!" cried the painter,
excitedly. "Every word you say confirms me in the opinion I formed at
the first glance--that you would be as good and amiable in character as
you were beautiful in face and figure. And you give me courage to come
out at once with my other petition: I should be the happiest person
under the sun, if I might paint your portrait.--Please don't be
alarmed," she added, hurriedly. "The agony is brief--I am no torturer.
If you have not more time to spare, I will paint you _alla prima_--at
most three or four sittings--you shall not be able to complain of me.
Of course I can't ask that you will let me have the picture; but you
will allow me to have a little sketch for a study and a souvenir?--The
great picture--"
"A large portrait, then?"
"Only a three-quarters length, but of course life-size. It would be a
sin and a shame to put such a head and such a figure on a canvas the
size of a tea-tray. But my dear, best Fraeulein, tell me you will have
the heavenly goodness to visit my studio--the street and number are on
my card--and look at my things, and sit to me only if--if you yourself
take pleasure in them; for I would not for anything have you think you
were making a sacrifice for the benefit of a mere dauber."
"My dear Fraeulein, I really do not know what--"
"Perhaps you haven't time at this moment? Perhaps you are an artist
yourself? The careful way in which you studied the pictures in the
Pinakothek--"
"Unfortunately I have not the smallest natural talent," answered the
Fraeulein, smiling; "but only a little taste and a strong yearning
toward everything beautiful and artistic; and this is the reason why I
have come to Munich--as I am quite alone in the world. It is still
uncertain how long I shall stay here. But if I can really give you
pleasure by doing so--I rely upon it, of course, that it shall be
entirely a matter between ourselves if I sit to you. And in return, you
shall initiate me into the secrets of your art, which to a lay observer
must always remain closed, no matter of how good intentions he may be,
unless he is given the right introduction."
"_Brava! bravissima!_" cried the delighted painter. "Heaven reward you a
thousand times for your great kindness; and I will see to it that you
shall not repent it. My dear, dear Fraeulein, when you know me a little
more intimately you will see that you have to do with an honest woman
who has a grateful heart, and against whom no one of her friends can
utter a reproach."
In the wildest delight she took her leave of the beautiful
face--which, in spite of all this worship, had preserved a rather cool
expression--and, as though she feared the promise might possibly be
retracted on further reflection, she hurried from the room.
When she reached the street, she stood still for a moment, fairly out
of breath, tied her loosened hat-strings more firmly under her chin,
and gleefully rubbed her hands. "What eyes they'll make!" she said to
herself. "How they will envy me! But then what makes them such shy,
silly Philistines? It's true, to make such a conquest in a moment, one
must not be a man, but just such an utterly harmless old maid as I!"
CHAPTER VII.
The friends turned their steps toward a beer-garden on the Dultplatz,
where, at this time of day--between two and three o'clock--it was
pretty quiet in spite of its being Sunday. The noonday guests had
finished with their dinners long ago, and the afternoon concert had not
yet begun. Instead of it three sleepy fiddlers, an elderly harp-player,
and a jovial clarinet were playing on a platform in the middle of the
garden. Of these musicians the clarinet-player alone still defied the
drowsy influences of the siesta hour, attempting, by wild and desperate
runs, to rouse the nodding quartette. On the benches in the shade of
the tall ash-trees there sat a very mixed company, for in Munich the
differences between the classes is far less marked than in any of the
other large German cities; and among the rest, at the smallest tables,
were numerous pairs of lovers who, lulled into a state of dreamy
comfort by plentiful eating and drinking, rested their heads on one
another's shoulders, held each other's hands and abandoned themselves
freely to their feelings. Yet no one seemed to take offense at this; on
the contrary, it seemed to belong to the place as much as the gnats
that swarmed in the air. The three late arrivals seated themselves in
one of the most secluded corners and proceeded to do justice to the
viands which the waitress, who treated Jansen with conspicuous respect,
had put aside for them. It was anything but a sumptuous meal, but the
taste for the pleasures of the table seemed to be so little developed
in the sculptor that it never occurred to him to celebrate the reunion
with his friend by a bottle of wine. Felix knew this and overlooked it.
Still, he had hoped to find him more animated and communicative after
their long separation; and now he could not help noticing how he sat at
his side, preoccupied and speaking only in monosyllables, intent only
upon feeding Homo, who swallowed the big mouthfuls that were given him
with grave decorum.
In the mean time, there joined the group a fourth person, for whom the
battle-painter seemed to have looked from the beginning. He was a slim
young man, pale and with curly black hair, whose manner at once
announced him to be an actor. He wore, over one eye, a black silk
shade, that made his paleness still more conspicuous, and the sharp
lines above his expressive mouth gave evidence of some hardly
suppressed suffering. Rosenbusch introduced him as his neighbor, Herr
Elfinger, formerly a member of the ---- court-theatre, now a clerk in
one of the Munich banking-houses. The manner in which Jansen also
welcomed him showed that he was one of the intimates of this circle. He
bore himself with such easy cheerfulness and enlivened the conversation
in such an agreeable way that Felix felt very much drawn toward him,
and even Jansen brightened up and took part in the lively chat.
But suddenly the sculptor stood up, looked at his watch, cast a glance
over the picket fence that separated the garden from the sunny square,
and said, coloring slightly: "I must leave you now, old boy. My friends
here will bear me witness that nothing is to be done with me on Sunday
afternoons. At such times I have to go my own ways and to fulfill
certain duties, which, to-day in particular, I could only escape with
the greatest difficulty. I hope you will excuse me."
"He has to turn back into a sea monster one day in seven, like
Melusine," laughed Rosenbusch. "We are used to that."
Felix looked up in surprise. "Don't let me disturb you, old boy," he
said. "Besides, I still have to find a lodging. Where are you
quartered? Perhaps I could find a place in your neighborhood--"
"I am not going home now and I should hardly recommend the neighborhood
where I live," the sculptor interrupted, with such a frown that it put
an end to all further questioning. "You will find me in my studio again
tomorrow. Good-by for to-day and good luck to you. Come, Homo!"
He nodded to his friends without giving them his hand, pulled his hat
down over his eyes, and left the garden with his faithful dog.
They saw him stride with rapid steps across the square and approach a
two-horse _fiacre_ that stood on the other side, not far from the gate,
apparently waiting for him on the shady side of the street. Then, as he
stepped in they could plainly see that there was some one sitting
inside; there was a glimpse of a woman's bright-colored dress, and a
child's little hand thrust a sunshade out the window. Except this, all
the windows were shut, notwithstanding the great heat; and, as the
mysterious vehicle rolled rapidly away, the friends who had been
looking after it turned to one another with wonder in their eyes.
"He appears to have a family," said Felix. "Why doesn't he say anything
to anybody about it? Even to me, his oldest friend, he has never
uttered a word about his projected or perhaps actual marriage, about
which there was a rumor some six years ago. I thought the whole matter
had either fallen through or else turned out unhappily. But now he
seems, after all, not to be alone. Do you know anything about his
private circumstances?"
"Nothing whatever," answered the painter. "None of us have ever set
foot across his threshold; and, the moment any one asks where he
lodges, he grows as snappish as a bear, just as you saw him a few
minutes ago. As for women, he will have nothing to do with them, that
can be seen plainly enough from all he does. Whether, in spite of all
this, he has a household of his own, can't be discovered. He once cut
dead a prying fellow who followed him one night to see where he kept
himself."
"I think," said Elfinger, "that the pleasure we get from his society
six days in the week is so great that we might at least leave him to
himself on the seventh. But now let us help the Baron look for rooms,
and debate how we can best show him the city this evening."
When, toward midnight, Felix left the beer-cellar, where he had been
for several hours enjoying the evening air, and returned to his
lodgings--a suite of pleasant rooms overlooking flower-gardens and the
quiet streets beyond--a singular feeling of depression suddenly came
over him. He had now attained what he cared more for than for anything
else. No one could enjoy more perfect freedom than he. No one could
begin life afresh more untrammeled by social forms. Then, too, the
cheerful, lively city, with its gay life, the free and easy artists'
society into which he had entered--all this had corresponded with his
wish and expectations, and promised him compensation for many a ruined
hope. It was the only atmosphere that seemed suited to him, the only
surroundings among which he could find again, even in the Old World,
something of that unrestrained freedom that he had enjoyed so much
beyond the ocean. And when, notwithstanding all this, he went to bed
with a heavy sigh and waited long for sleep in vain--why was it?
CHAPTER VIII.
On the following morning, Felix brought a whole armful of his
sketch-books to Jansen. The latter seemed to look through them with
interest, and listened patiently to the accounts of the adventures, of
which many of them were hasty illustrations, but he did not utter a
single word in regard to any artistic worth which the sketches might
possess.
When the last page had been turned, and Jansen, with a quiet "hm!" had
begun to pile up the books and tablets in a little tower, Felix was
forced to ask whether he had not made some progress after all.
"Progress? Why, that depends upon the way you look at it."
"And how do you look at it, old fellow?"
"I?--Hm! I look at it from a geographical point of view."
"You are very good. I understand perfectly."
"Don't be angry, my dear fellow, but understand me rightly. I mean, on
the path of dilettantism, on which you have been wandering up to this
date, all progress must necessarily be deceptive, even though,
outwardly, you have circumnavigated the world; for, after all, all your
efforts move in a circle. I am very sorry for it, though."
"For what?"
"That you really want to take up art in earnest. You might have
remained such an enviable dilettante, for you have all the necessary
qualifications to an uncommon degree."
"And they are?"
"Self-confidence, time, and money. No, don't be angry. I am truly
serious when I say this to you, and of course it would be needless for
me to assure you that I mean well when I say it. Seriously: these
traveling sketches of yours are done so skillfully that any of the
illustrated papers might consider themselves lucky if they had such
special artists. And yet I wish, since you are determined to be an
artist, that they were not half so skillful."
"If it is nothing more than that, a remedy can easily be found. You
will soon see how much talent I have for unskillfulness, when you give
me something to model."
The sculptor shook his head gently. "It is not the hands," he said. "It
is the mind that has already attained a very respectable maturity and
facility in you; only, unfortunately, in a wrong direction. For the
truth is, my dear fellow, the very things that please you best, and
have probably most impressed unprofessional persons, the dash and
readiness, the so-called artist's touch, those are the very things that
stand most in the way of your getting back into the right track. It is
just as if, instead of learning to write in the ordinary way, one
should begin with stenography. He never in all his life will have a
good handwriting. For the spirit of dilettantism, take it for all in
all, is, like that of stenography, in the art of abbreviation; in
substituting a symbol for the _form_, just as in the other case
we substitute one for the letter, so that in the course of time
all real feelings--yes, the very want of and appreciation of the
rightly-developed natural form--are hopelessly lost. Why is it then
that the dilettanti attain their end so much more quickly than the true
artists? Because, with this system of abbreviation, they steer straight
for those results which seem to them of the most importance:
resemblance, spirit, elegance of execution. For that reason they are
often marvelously skillful in mastering the proportions of a face, for
instance, and setting it off by a few dots and strokes so that
everybody cries: 'Oh! how like! how speaking! and how quickly done!'
The true artist knows that the length of time spent in the production
is by no means a measure of excellence; and as he has not only a
general sense of proportion, but also a feeling for the true form
itself, he does not rest until he has done it full justice--until, so
to speak, he has worked outward from the very core of that the exterior
of which his eyes have already taken in and fully comprehended.
However," he went on after a short pause, during which he unwound the
wet cloths from his Bacchante, "you are at liberty to believe that all
this is merely my personal opinion and nothing more than exaggerated
estimate of what constitutes true art. In ordinary life the artist is
distinguished from the dilettante only by the fact that the former
follows the thing as a calling, and the latter only for his own
amusement. According to this, you would be an artist from the moment
you cast aside the baron, the statesman or jurist, the _homme
d'action_, that you have in you, and regularly devoted a certain number
of hours of the day to dirtying your fingers with clay. If you stick to
it persistently, it would be very hard lines indeed if, in the course
of several years, you should not possess the necessary mechanical skill
just as well as any one else. Even to become an academic professor need
not be an unattainable aim of your ambition. And if, in spite of all
that, I should still continue, in my heart, to look upon you as a born
dilettante, you could smile down upon me graciously, and heap coals of
fire upon my head by proposing me as an honorary member of your
academy. Ah! my dear boy, I tell you, if you should make a close
examination of many of our most famous great men, you would bring to
light little else than a disguised and beautiful dilettantism, made up
of humbug, elegant trappings, and perhaps a few so-called ideas. I know
painters who dash off a hand or a foot, a horse's head or an oak-tree,
with as unerring an audacity as--well, as a thorough stenographer will
bring a two hours' speech into the compass of an octavo page. But Lord
have mercy upon them, for they have long since ceased to know what they
do; and as the dear public has an even coarser sense, a still blunter
natural feeling, and even more respect for appearances--why, it's all
just as it should be, and no one can complain that he has been
cheated."
For some time after this speech silence reigned in the studio. There
were heard only the fluttering of the sparrows, the heavy breathing of
Homo, for the old fellow was already enjoying his morning nap again,
and, in the saint-factory near by, the clatter and scraping and picking
of seven or eight chisels in the hands of the assistants who were hard
at work.
"Thank you, Daedalus," said Felix, at last. "Upon the whole you are
perfectly right, and I think it very kind of you to try and scare me
off so thoroughly. But, with your permission, I intend to hold to my
intentions until I have been made wise by my own experience. If, a year
from this time, you preach me the same sermon, you shall see how
penitently I will beat my breast and become converted from all my
sins. But now, first give me something to sin with. Look here, my
coat is already off, and I have nothing more to do but to roll up my
shirt-sleeves."
"So be it, then!" replied Jansen, with a good-natured smile. "Not as
God wills, but as you wish--here!"
He went to the large closet and took out a skull, which he laid
on a little table near the window. At the same time he wheeled a
modeling-bench out of the corner, placed it before the table, and
pointed, without speaking, to a big lump of clay that lay moist and
shiny in a tub.
"Are we to study phrenology?" laughed Felix, rather nervously, for a
suspicion began to dawn upon him.
"No, my dear fellow, but we must take pains to make as exact a copy as
possible of this round mass of bones.... We shall have plenty of time
for the flesh when we have first mastered the skeleton."
"I am to model a whole skeleton?"
"Bone for bone, down to the big toe. In this way we combine an
anatomical course with practice in modeling forms. Yes, my dear
fellow," he smilingly continued, as he perceived the horrified
expression of his pupil; "if you thought to begin your apprenticeship
with the soft, white flesh of a woman, you have greatly deceived
yourself. However, since you have already done quite enough preparatory
studying in this field--"
He suddenly broke off. On the landing, outside, they heard a pleasant
feminine voice say:
"Is this the way to Fraeulein Minna Engelken's studio?"
"If you will kindly give yourself the trouble to mount a flight
higher," responded the hoarse bass of the janitor. "The door to the
right--the name is on the sign. The Fraeulein has been there for the
last two hours."
"Thanks."
At the first sound of the voice Jansen had hurried to the door; he now
opened it a little and peeped out. Then he came back to Felix, and,
with his face slightly flushed, went silently to work.
"Who was the lady?" asked Felix, though he felt no particular curiosity
on the subject.
"The stranger we saw yesterday. Strange! when I heard that unknown
voice her face suddenly came up before my eyes again."
Felix said nothing. He had gone up to the modeling-bench, had begun to
work at a great ball of clay about as large as the skull, and appeared
to be completely absorbed in his task.
But they had scarcely been working on in this way, side by side and in
silence, for more than a quarter of an hour when some one knocked
softly on the door and Rosenbusch entered, looking excited, merry, and
full of mischief.
He nodded to the friends, stepped close up to them and said, with an
air of mysterious importance: "Do you know who is up-stairs? The
lady of the Pinakothek! Angelica is painting her picture--she has
succeeded--an incredibly resolute woman that! And can keep a secret
like the devil! Now just conceive of it; I discovered her early this
morning clearing up her studio, as though the queen had given notice of
a visit. For that matter it always does look damned elegant and neat up
there--flowers in whichever direction you turn, and a hothouse
fragrance that makes you sick. But, to-day, it is a positive show-room!
'What the devil is this, Angelica?' said I; 'is to-day your birthday,
or are you going to get engaged, or are you painting a Russian
princess?'--for I had long forgotten all about the affair of yesterday.
But she, turning round the old yellow-silk cushion on the armchair so
as to present the side which had the fewest spots--she scarcely looked
at me, and said: 'Go and get to work, Herr von Rosebud'--that is what
she always calls me when she is cross--'I am not at home to you,
to-day!' In this way she morally turned me out of doors without farther
ceremony, and, I must confess, I rather like it in her; energy,
fearlessness, the courage of one's opinions, are always fine, even in a
woman. So I withdrew, wondering, and was already at work laying on my
colors when I heard some one coming up the stairs. Yes, I was right,
she was going to Angelica; and as the wall between us is not very
thick, and they did not at first take the precaution to lower their
voices, I discovered the whole mystery--that it is our beauty of
yesterday, that she is going to have her picture painted, and that her
first name is Julie. And now I appeal to you, friends and companions in
art, are we men or cowardly poltroons? Are we to suffer this vixen to
carry away such a prize from under our very noses, and to withhold such
a paragon of beauty from us under our own roof? Or shall we rush up as
one man, and, in the name of art, lay siege to the door of this
obdurate sister, and compel her, by force or persuasion, to open to
us?"
"I would advise you, Rosenbusch, to go quietly upstairs again and wreak
your martial ardor on the battle of Luetzen," Jansen answered, without
the slightest approach to a smile. "But, if your excitement will not
let you work, convey your homage to the lady through the wall by means
of your flute. Perhaps they will invite you to come round and declaim
some of your verses."
"Wretched scoffer!" cried the battle-painter. "I thought to render you
a service by bringing you this news. But you are of the earth, earthy,
and are incapable of soaring to any height of enthusiasm. Well, God be
with you! I see that I am not understood down here!"
He rushed out of the door, and, sure enough, they soon afterward heard
the flute pouring out its most melting passages.
This language, however, did not seem to be understood in the next room.
Angelica's room remained tight shut, and when it was opened, a few
hours after, soft steps came down the stairs, and the listeners below
were led to conclude that the sitting was over.
In the mean while dinner-time had come, and the assistants in
the adjoining room had stopped work and left the studio. Jansen,
too--although, as a rule, he seldom made a pause before two
o'clock--now laid down his modeling-tool.
"Come," he said, "you must make your calls of ceremony upon our
fellow-lodgers."
They mounted the stairs, and went first into Rosenbusch's studio. As no
notice had been taken of his flute-playing, he had seated himself at
his easel again, and had set himself zealously to work to paint away
his anger. His room certainly presented a most remarkable appearance;
the walls shone, almost like those of an armory, with old arms,
halberds, muskets, and swords, relieved here and there by enormous
boots with wheel-spurs, leather collars, saddles, and singular
stirrups. An immense old kettle-drum stood on a rickety stand in front
of a worm-eaten arm-chair, and served as a table on which to pile all
sorts of odds and ends. Some cactus-plants, with great red blossoms,
stood in full bloom in the window, and among them was a delicate little
wire-cage, containing two white mice, who ran restlessly up and down,
squeaking and looking shyly at the new faces out of their little red
eyes.
The battle of Luetzen stood on the easel; it was quite a vigorous work,
and Felix could praise it with a good conscience. The horses,
especially, reared and plunged, full of life and spirits; and the young
baron could hardly believe it when the painter confessed that he had
never mounted a horse in his life. After they had joked and laughed
about this for a while, and Rosenbusch had delivered an earnest speech
in defense of the romantic school, he threw off the old, much-patched
Swedish trooper's jacket in which he always painted, in order, as he
said, to have the true historical inspiration, and dressed himself, in
spite of the heat, in a violet-colored velvet coat, so that he might
accompany the friends in their visit to the adjoining room.
Their knock on Angelica's door was answered by a cordial "Come in!"
Rosenbusch had not exaggerated: the studio did, in truth, resemble a
hot-house decked out for a festival, to which the sketches, and
studies, and half-finished pictures of flowers merely served as
decorations. The painter had had a window cut through the wall on the
east side at her own expense, in order that she might give her plants,
which she tended with scientific knowledge, plenty of sun whenever the
nature of her work did not require a pure north light. The plants were
truly grateful, and twined and throve so luxuriantly that the slender
stems of the palms and figs reached almost to the ceiling.
Angelica stood before her easel in an antiquated painting-jacket, her
straw hat perched on one side, her cheeks glowing from her work, and
was so busily occupied in "toning down" the background that she merely
nodded to her friends as they entered, without interrupting her work.
"She has gone!" she cried to them, "otherwise I could not have let you
in, no matter how much I had wanted to. My children, you have no
conception of what a charming person she is! If I were a man, I would
marry her or blow my brains out!"
"You are indulging in very reckless assertions," Rosenbusch interposed,
raising himself a little on his toes, and stroking his thick beard.
"Just let's see if she really is so dangerous."
Angelica stepped back from the easel.
"Gentlemen," she said, "I hope you will praise me. Either I understand
as much about painting as a roast goose, or this will be my best
picture, and a real work of art. But just look at these curves! All
large, simple, noble, such as never grow under our native heaven. My
first idea was to paint the picture _alla prima_; but in the nick of
time it occurred to me that I should be very foolish to do so. For the
longer I can study this heavenly face, the happier I shall be. Just see
this figure, Jansen. Have you often come across anything like it?"
"The lady has style," remarked Rosenbusch, assuming as cool an air as
possible. "However, she doesn't seem to be particularly young, or else
your dead coloring gives her ten years too many."
"You are a strange mortal, Herr von Rosebud," answered the painter,
angrily. "In art you rave over nothing but old leather, but in life no
school-girl's complexion is rosy and satiny enough to suit you. It is
true, my beauty here told me herself that she was already--but I won't
be such a fool as to tell a girl's secret to gentlemen. But of this I
can assure you: that twenty years from now, when certain pretty little
dolls' faces have long grown old and faded, that woman there will still
be so beautiful that people will stand still in the streets to look
after her."
"And may we be permitted to ask of what nationality she is?" inquired
Felix.
"Why not? She makes no secret of the fact that she is from Saxony,
although you would never detect it from her accent; nor that her name
is Julie S., nor that she lost her old mother a year or so ago, and now
stands quite alone in the world. However, we haven't been having a mere
family gossip, but the most profound conversation on art-matters. She
is more intelligent in such things, let me tell you, than many of our
colleagues. And now you must excuse me, gentlemen, if I don't let you
interrupt me in my work, but go on and finish this background to-day,
before the colors dry in."
Up to this time Jansen had not spoken a syllable. Now he stepped up to
Angelica, gave her his hand, and said:
"If you don't spoil this, my dear friend, you will make something out
of it that will do you great honor. Adieu!"
He turned quickly away, and strode out of the studio without casting a
glance to right or left.
CHAPTER IX.
When his friends overtook him in the street he remained silent and
serious; while Rosenbusch praised, in the most extravagant language,
the beauty of the picture.
"If my heart were not already in such firm hands," he said, with a
sigh, "who knows what might happen! But constancy is no empty dream.
Besides, Angelica would scratch any one's eyes out who tried to play
the Romeo to her Juliet. But where are you dragging us to, Jansen?"
"We are going to see 'Fat Rossel.'"
"Then I prefer to withdraw at once to my feeding-place and to await you
there. I have made a solemn vow never again to visit that accursed
Sybarite just before meal-time. It smells so devilishly of ambergris,
_pati de foie gras_ and East-Indian birds'-nests, so that after coming
away a man feels like a thorough vagabond over his wretched dumplings.
The devil take these lazy voluptuaries! Long live energy and
_sauerkraut_!"
After this fierce outburst he nodded smilingly to the two others,
slouched his big hat over his left ear, and turned, whistling, into a
side street.
"Who is this 'Fat Rossel' against whom our friend Rosebud displays all
his thorns?" asked Felix.
"He isn't really so fierce as he tries to make himself out. The two are
good comrades, and would go through fire and water for one another in
case of need. This so-called 'Fat Rossel'--one Edward Rossel--is a very
rich man who isn't obliged to earn his living by painting--and for that
reason lets his great talent lie fallow. However, he has reduced his
intellectual laziness and amateur enjoyment of art to a system, and
concerning this system Rosenbusch invariably falls foul of him; for he
himself, in spite of all his 'energy,' has never produced anything of
much account. Here we are at the house."
They passed through the pretty little front garden, before which they
had halted the day previous while on their way to the Pinakothek,
entered the door of a villa-like house, and mounted a staircase covered
with soft carpets. The hall shone with polished marbles, bronze
candelabra, and beautiful flowering plants in porcelain pots, that
perfumed the whole vestibule.
When they entered the high-studded room above, that served as a
studio, but looked more like a museum of choice objects and works of
art than it did like a regular artist's workshop, there rose from a low
divan, covered with a leopard's skin, a singular figure. On a portly
but by no means clumsy body rested a stately head, in which sparkled a
pair of exceedingly bright black eyes. The face was of a very white
complexion, the beautiful hands were daintily cared for. The cut of the
features, with the close cropped silky hair, and the long black beard,
recalled the beautiful, dignified type of the high-bred Orientals. This
impression was still further heightened by a little red fez, shoved
back on the head, and a variegated Persian dressing-gown with slippers
to match, into which his bare feet were thrust, while the dressing-gown
apparently served in lieu of any other clothing.
Slowly, but with great cordiality, the painter advanced to meet his
friends, shook hands with them, and said: "I made your acquaintance
yesterday from a distance, Herr Baron--through the blinds, when that
sly dog Rosebud was trying to entice me out into the noonday heat with
his flute. But that kind of thing is against my principles. It may be
all very meritorious to eat one's bread in the sweat of one's brow. But
as for enjoying art when reeking with perspiration--never! Excuse the
costume in which I receive you. I have just been taking a douche bath
and afterward resting a quarter of an hour. In five minutes I shall be
in a condition to present my material part with propriety."
He disappeared into a side chamber, that was only separated by a
magnificent piece of Gobelin tapestry from his studio, and went on
talking with his friends while completing his toilet.
"Just take a look at my Boecklin, that I bought the day before
yesterday--over there by the window on the little easel--I am quite
happy over the possession. Well, what do you say to it, Jansen? Isn't
that something to console one's self with for a while, in the midst of
this universal poverty of art?"
It was a little forest picture, that stood in the most favorable light,
near the window; it represented a dense wood of lofty oaks and laurel
bushes, through a little cleft of which could be seen a slender strip
of the distant horizon, and in one corner a patch of blue sky. At the
feet of the shady trees a brook rippled through the luxuriant grass, on
the banks of which reclined a sleeping nymph, with her nursling at her
side, its blunt little nose pressed close against the full maternal
breast, from which it seemed to be feeding quietly. In the centre of
the picture, leaning against a luxuriant tree, stood the young father,
a slim, well-built faun, looking down well pleased upon his family, and
holding in his hand the shepherd's flute with which he had just played
his wife to sleep.
Felix and Jansen were still absorbed in the contemplation of this
charming work when Rossel again appeared.
"Such a thing is refreshing, isn't it?" he said. "It is a comfort to
know that there are still men who have such beautiful dreams, and the
courage to tell them to others, no matter if advanced and sensible
humanity, which now, thank God, has outgrown its baby shoes, and every
day sets its foot down more squarely on the broad sole of realism, does
shake its head and talk about having gotten beyond such standpoints.
This man is one of the few who interest me. You have undoubtedly seen
his splendid pictures in the Schack Gallery? No? Well, since you have
only been two days in Munich, I will forgive your ignorance. I will
take you there; it will afford me the greatest pleasure to recruit a
quiet list of worshipers for my few idols."
"First of all," said Felix, smiling, "you would do me a greater favor
if you would show me something by one Edward Rossel, to whose
acquaintance my friends have led me to look forward with great
curiosity."
"My own immortal works!" cried the painter, threatening Jansen with his
finger. "I know who is behind all this. I know the sly cabals of my
much-esteemed friends, who seize every opportunity to parade my
unproductiveness before my eyes. I know that they mean no harm, and
give me credit for some talent; I ought to be ashamed of myself for not
sharing this good opinion and at last rousing myself to action. But it
all glances aside from the armor of my own self-knowledge. I don't deny
that I have all sorts of good qualifications for an artist, sense and
brains and some insight into the true aims of art. Unfortunately, there
is only one little thing lacking--the disposition to really produce
something. I should have been just the man to have been born a Raphael
without hands, and would have borne this fate with the greatest
complacency. But won't you light a cigar, or do you prefer a chibouque?
By the way, a little refreshment wouldn't be out of place, considering
this tropical temperature."
Without waiting for an answer, he rang a beautifully chased silver
bell.
A young servant-girl, of pretty figure and graceful manner, entered;
the painter whispered a word in her ear, whereupon the girl disappeared
and returned, five minutes after, with a silver waiter, on which stood
a wicker-work bottle and some glasses.
"I brought this wine myself from Samos," said Rossel; "You must at
least taste it and drink to our good friendship!"
"Then let me immediately sin against that friendship and ask a somewhat
indiscreet question: how is it possible for you to bury, like a dead
treasure, a talent which you yourself admit you have?"
"My dear fellow," replied the artist, coolly, "the matter is much
simpler than you suppose. My object is, like that of all men--let them
prate as much as they like about duty, virtue, or self-sacrifice--to be
as happy as possible. But happiness consists, as I believe, in nothing
else than in creating for one's self a certain state, a manner of life
or pursuit, in which one finds himself at the height of his
individuality, in the full enjoyment of his peculiar powers and gifts.
Therefore, every man has a happiness of his own; and nothing can be
more foolish than for one person to object to another's way of enjoying
himself, or to persuade or advise others to exchange their way for his.
The more any one makes himself feel, by his manner of life, that he is
a particular individual, the more Nature has attained her end in making
him, and the more contented he can be with himself and his situation.
All unhappiness arises from the fact that men try to do things for
which they are not fitted. If you give a million to a man born with a
genius for begging, you will make him an unhappy millionaire. He can no
longer exercise his talent. A virtuoso in suffering, a Stylites, or a
sister of charity, for whom you should suddenly provide a healthy and
comfortable life, would at once lose all individuality and so all
happiness. For it is undeniable that there are men who are only
conscious of their individuality when they are torturing themselves, in
the coarser or finer sense of the expression. To such, a state of
repose is an abasement, and to this class belong all truly productive
artists. To work, to produce something which shall afterward stand as a
monument of their power, appears to them the highest happiness; and
this happiness ought to be accorded to them all the more readily, from
the fact that most of them cannot live without it. Only they ought to
be just enough to look at the matter also from the opposite point of
view, where an individual only feels conscious of his powers and gifts
when in the free enjoyment of an apparently fruitless repose. When I
lie on my back and make pictures in the smoke of my cigar, or gaze upon
the works which great creative beings have produced in times gone by,
am I not, in my way, putting to good use that buried treasure within me
in which you were so good as to believe? and making of this individual,
whom his friends accuse of culpable laziness, the very thing for which
he was really fitted and intended--a perfectly harmonious and happy
man? Once in a while, indeed, the vulgar prejudice seizes even me, and
I suddenly grow tremendously active. But after the paroxysm has lasted
a week, at the longest, I suddenly see the folly of the proceeding and
throw the unfinished daub into some dark closet, among other embryos
of immortal works. Ah! my dear friend, there is so much struggling, and
pushing, and producing going on, that a quiet, inoffensive art-lover of
my disposition might well be tolerated as a salutary antidote to this
epidemic of activity."
"We will let this old apple of discord drop for to-day," interrupted
Jansen, smiling. "I won't yet give up my old bet that some fine day you
will cease to take comfort in this bed that you have stuffed with
sophisms, and will begin to seek your happiness in some other way. But
in the meanwhile you might certainly show yourself at my place again. I
should like to know what you would say to my dancing girl; and besides,
I have done all sorts of other things since you were there."
"I will come, Hans. You know how I delight to take to heart the
frightful example of industry that I see in your saint-factory. By the
way--isn't next Saturday 'Paradise?'"
"Certainly. The last before the autumn. Most of the fellows have
already begun to make their preparations for the summer vacation, and
in fourteen days we three shall probably be almost the only ones who
still hold out in the city."
They left the studio, the painter accompanying them as far as the gate
of the front yard, and taking leave of Felix with great cordiality and
the hope that he should see him often.
"What is this about 'Paradise?'" inquired the latter, when they were
alone in the street again.
"You shall soon see for yourself. We come together once a month and
attempt to delude ourselves into the idea that it is possible in the
midst of this world to throw off the hypocrisy of society, and return
once more to a state of innocence. And for a few years past we have
really been fairly successful. A little group of good fellows has been
brought together, who are all equally impressed with the worthlessness
of our social state. But, after all, the German is not a social
creature; that which constitutes the charm of such societies among the
Latins and Slavs--the delight in talking for talking's sake, a certain
delicacy in lying, and, moreover, an early-acquired and really humane
tact and consideration for one's neighbors--all this we may possibly
gain in time in some of our large cities. But for the time being it is
certainly foreign to the genius of our nation, and it is only feebly
developed. The consequence is that in this city of art, where of all
the arts that of sociability is most behindhand, one has to choose
between two evils: the conventional society entertainments, which are
chiefly devoted to eating and drinking, and where one is seldom
compensated for the constraint of cultivated _ennui_; or else
Philistinism over the beer-table. For this reason we have adopted
another plan, which, to be sure, can only be successful when all those
who take part in it are united by the same longing for freedom, and the
same respect for the freedom of their neighbors. For, when no one wraps
a cloak about him, but shows himself unrestrainedly just as he is, no
one, on the other hand, has a right to pounce maliciously on the weak
spots which his neighbor may possibly expose--and each must, upon the
whole, be so constituted that he can show himself in his true character
without being disagreeable."
CHAPTER X.
In the first days of his wanderings through the quaint old streets--for
he avoided, as far as possible, the new and deserted quarters of the
town--Felix felt to the full the charm of South German life; that
robust, unrestrained power of enjoyment, that perpetual holiday-mood,
whose motto is "You may do what you choose." That this cheerful state
also has its dark sides; that it is not possible, without the sacrifice
of some higher benefits, to establish an average of character and
education which makes all classes mingle easily; that the lack of a
proletariat brings with it the lack of a rich and powerful intellectual
aristocracy--all such political and social speculations never entered
our friend's head, in spite of the fact that his travels about the
world had given him a keen insight into the civilization of different
countries. In a spirit of quiet defiance, he took delight in doing here
the very things which would have been most severely frowned on in that
native town from which he had fled. He visited the dingiest restaurants
and the most modest beer-gardens, ate from an uncovered table, and
drank from the mug which he had himself washed under the water-pipe;
and it seemed as if the only thing wanting to make his happiness
complete was, that the highly aristocratic society with which he had
quarreled should happen by and see, in silent horror, how happy the
fugitive was in his self-imposed exile.
And yet, since everything inspired by pique carries with it a secret
feeling of dissatisfaction, he was after all not quite contented. Jolly
as it looked to wander about again at his own sweet will, it was, after
all, very different from what it had been years before when he first
spread his wings. In short, in his moments of reflection, when he
neither cared to forget nor to deceive himself, he was forced to admit,
with a kind of shame, that he was no longer young enough to goon
looking upon life as a brilliant adventure amid shifting scenes, and
that, in riper years, more depended upon the piece and the _role_ which
one played in it than upon the scenes and the spectators who sit before
the footlights.
True, he had from the first devoted himself zealously to his new
apprenticeship. But his conscience was too delicate to forget what
Jansen had said in regard to his fitness for art. Had his friend
congratulated him upon his decision, who knows but what, in spite of
all that was wanting to his happiness, he might have felt as contented
as it is possible for any man to feel in this imperfect world? But his
proud heart told him that the people who were now to be his associates
did not, in their hearts, consider him quite genuine, but looked upon
him as a singular being, who, from mere whim, had taken up with art
instead of with some other noble passion more suitable to his rank.
This unfortunate feeling was still further heightened by the fact that
his relation to the only old friend he had here, for whose society he
had passionately yearned, did not, in spite of their daily intercourse,
ripen again into the old intimacy.
When, years before, they had become acquainted with one another in
Kiel, where Felix first began the study of the law, they had soon
become inseparable. The lonely artist stood in special need of a friend
with quick perceptions, who, in those early days when his talent was
cautiously working its way to the front, could fan his courage by
taking a lively interest in his work; and Felix soon saw enough of the
senseless and tasteless life led by his fellow-students to make him
long for other society. The hours that he stole from his beer-club and
his fencing-school, in order to work with Jansen at all sorts of noble
arts, sometimes making an attempt himself with a piece of clay, and
then again spending the evening in his friend's simple little room in
confidential talk over a very frugal supper and some modest wine, were
looked back upon as the happiest of his whole youth. Even then Jansen
struck people as a very original, reserved, strong, and forceful man,
who had no needs but those which he was able to supply by his own
unaided powers. It was known that he sprang from a peasant family,
that, impelled by accidental incentives only and without any
encouragement from teachers or patrons, he had made himself an artist
by the force of his iron will. How he also succeeded in attaining, in
other fields, such an education that it was not easy for any one to
detect the want of a regular course of schooling, was scarcely less
incomprehensible. Gradually his talent began to attract some attention,
and a few orders straggled in, which enabled him to earn a scanty
living. But as he scorned to let himself be lionized in society, to be
petted by ladies and engaged for aesthetic tea parties, the first
feeling of interest soon grew cold; and with a shrug of the shoulders
people left this eccentric individual, who placed himself in such sharp
antagonism to the modern tendency of art, to himself again, and to his
pictures of naked gods and his undisguised contempt for social
traditions.
It was thus that Felix found him then, and he found him but little
different now, after all these years of separation--averse to all
intercourse with men who did not stand in some relation or other to his
art, and inaccessible, so far as his inner life was concerned, even to
his few intimate acquaintances. But still the years had not passed
without leaving some traces. They had so estranged him, even from that
one person to whom he had then loved to unbosom himself, that, after
the first outburst of his old tenderness, a steady medium temperature
had set in in the relations of the two old friends, that was scarcely a
degree warmer than that between Jansen and the other members of the
little circle. During the long hours that the pupil spent working at
his master's side, there were hundreds of opportunities to talk
over old times. But the sculptor seemed to avoid all recollections
of the past. Then, they had made no secret to one another of their
love-affairs; and now Felix made several attempts to return to the
subject of his late betrothal. But, when he did this, it was as if some
dark spectre rose up before Jansen. He sought to give the conversation
a general direction with some bitter sarcasm or forced jest, and soon
relapsed into more sullen silence than before.
Felix felt how heavily this cool reserve weighed on his spirits, which
would have been none too light even without it. After the shipwreck of
his happy love, he had tried to fall back upon this friendship; and
now, though he had indeed found firm ground, it was no longer the green
island of his youth, but bare and inhospitable; and the soil, which was
then so yielding, had turned to rugged rock.
One evening, as he was walking down the Briennerstrasse, alone, and not
in the most cheerful spirits, he met the beautiful stranger, who now
visited Angelica daily, but who was jealously guarded by the latter
from all other eyes. She appeared to be returning home from a walk, and
her old servant walked a few steps behind her, carrying her shawl.
Felix bowed to her, and she distantly returned his salute. She
evidently had not recognized him. Then he saw her enter the house, and
soon afterward the corner-room on the ground-floor was lit up by the
light of a lamp. It would have been easy for him to watch her
proceedings through the low window. But he did not care at all to do
so, though he admired her beauty. For no beautiful, no charming face
could cross his path without carrying his thoughts back to his lost
love, and plunging him in a melancholy reverie.
And so it was to-day. And suddenly it struck him as so absurd and
idiotic for him to be wandering about alone in this utterly strange
city, among people who cared nothing for him, separated from her who
was his only love, that he could not help bursting out into a laugh,
only to sigh all the more sadly the next minute.
He felt the impossibility, in his present mood, of joining his friends,
who were waiting for him at a beer-cellar. Jansen was generally one of
the party. But, even if everything between them had remained just as it
was in the old times, Felix would have avoided him to-day.
When he found himself in such a mood that he could not endure his
fellow-men, he generally found that he nowhere felt so well as upon
horseback.
He went to a stable in the neighborhood, and was soon cantering across
the Obeliskenplatz on a powerful horse. He rode down the beautiful
broad street, through the marble gate of the Propylaea, and outside, in
the shady avenue that leads to the Nymphenburger Villa, he gave his
horse full rein. But even here, where a fresher air blew across the
quiet fields, it was so sultry that the animal soon dropped into a
quieter gait of his own accord.
The street was not very lively. Only a few workmen were strolling home
from the town, and some soldiers came singing arm-in-arm out of a
tavern. They were walking behind a girl who was hastening to get back
to town before it grew quite dark. She was neatly dressed, of a very
pretty figure, and, according to the fashion then in vogue, wore her
hair falling loose over her shoulders. This seemed to incite the
fellows to strike up an acquaintance with her, and the short, snappish
way in which she repelled their advances only fanned their impudence
the higher. One seized her by her fluttering hair, another laughingly
attempted to get possession of her arm; and, as it chanced that the
foot-path behind the trees was quite deserted, she would have tried in
vain to shake off her tormentors had not Felix happened to gallop up
just at that moment. He shouted to the fellows in a loud voice to
instantly let the girl alone, and go to the devil. Whether they took
him for an officer in _mufti_, or were frightened by his commanding
manner, they obeyed at once, and started across the fields to the
barracks, whose massive structure towered from afar across the dark
meadow.
The deliverer now took a closer look at the girl. There could be no
doubt he had seen this little nose, these white teeth, and that red
hair, once before, on that first morning in Jansen's studio. And now he
recalled her name.
"Good-evening, Fraeulein Zenz," he said. "What lonely and dangerous
walks you take!"
"Dangerous!" she returned, laughing, for she had immediately recognized
him. "What is there dangerous about it? They wouldn't have eaten me. I
can take care of myself."
"But if I hadn't by good luck come up--"
"Do you suppose I couldn't have got away from those two without your
help? I can run like the wind. You couldn't catch me even on
horseback."
"Well see about that, you little witch! If you don't look out--"
He bent over and began, in his turn, to try and seize hold of her hair.
But her slim little figure instantly spun round on its heels, so that
her long locks slipped out of his hand again, and then she sprang like
lightning over the narrow ditch by the side of the road, and, before he
could collect himself, was away across the broad field, where she
suddenly vanished from his sight as if by miracle.
His horse had shied at the girl's quick movement, and, for a moment,
gave his master enough to do in looking after him. Now, when he had
quieted him again, and, half laughing, half provoked, had dashed into
the meadow in pursuit of the fugitive, he could find no trace of her.
He called her name, spoke to her persuasively, and promised not to
touch her any more if she would only show herself again. It was only
after he had given up the search, and had angrily wheeled his horse
round in order to ride back into the avenue, that he heard, from behind
a heap of stones close at his side, which he had overlooked in his
zeal, a shrill giggling; and suddenly the girl sprang from the ground
and coolly marched up to him.
"Now you see that you couldn't have caught me, if I had not wanted you
to," she cried. "Now just ride quietly home; I can find my way well
enough."
"You are a regular witch--that's what you are!" he cried, laughingly.
"I see that people have more reason to be afraid of you than you of
them. But listen, Zenz, since we have chanced to meet in this way, tell
me now why you won't come to Herr Jansen's any more?"
The question seemed to be disagreeable to her. She turned sharply on
her heel, and said, defiantly, beginning to put her dishevelled hair in
order: "What is that to you? What do you know about me, anyway? I can
do as I like, I suppose."
"To be sure, Zenz. But it would be very nice of you if you would listen
to reason, and show yourself again. I am an artist, too, and would like
very much to make a sketch of you. Or, if you don't want to come to the
big studio any more, I have a very quiet lodging, and not a soul would
find it out if you came to me; you may be sure no one would do you any
harm, and I would give you a good reward--and you should choose what
you would have."
While he was speaking she had never left off shaking her head. What her
expression was he could not see, for she had sank her chin on her
breast. Now she suddenly looked up at him and said, with a little laugh
that became her charmingly, while she twisted her streaming hair into a
thick knot: "I would just like to sit on horseback once, and ride round
real fast in a circle."
"If it's nothing more than that," he laughed, "come! Don't be afraid,
but put your foot in the stirrup."
He bent down over her again, grasped her under the arm that she reached
out to him, and swung up the light little figure as if it had been a
feather; then he let her down on the saddle before him and seized the
bridle. She instantly clasped her arms tight round his body, and clung
so close to him that for a moment she almost took his breath away, "Do
you sit firmly?" he called to her. She nodded, and laughed softly to
herself. Then he set his horse in motion and began to ride round in a
circle, at first slowly, then faster and faster, and she sat before him
on the saddle without moving, and pressed her head close against his
breast.
"Is that what you like?" he cried; "or shall I stop?"
She did not answer.
"How would it be," he said, "if now I should trot back to town with
you, and not draw rein until I came to my house? You would have to come
with me, then, whether you wanted to or not, and do what I asked you.
Aren't you quite in my power now?"
He reined in the horse for a moment, as though to give her opportunity
to settle herself for a longer ride. But suddenly he felt how her arms
unclasped, and in the next instant she had slid down from the saddle,
and stood before him in the dusk, out of breath and rearranging her
light dress.
"I thank you very much." she said. "It was very jolly; but, now, that's
enough. And all the rest is nonsense, and so, good-night! If you can
catch me again you may keep me!"
In a second she had sprung away and disappeared behind the nearest
houses. Even if he had been seriously inclined to follow her, he would
never have been able to find her trail again among the gardens and
hedges that bordered the field.
A few passers-by had watched this singular performance from the avenue.
He heard all sort of jokes that he did not understand. "Thank God!" he
said to himself, "if I had allowed myself to do such a thing in my own
dear home, the whole town would be talking of nothing else to-morrow,
besides adding all sorts of exaggerations. But here--'Hier bin ich
Mensch, hier darf ich's sein!' Long live golden liberty!"
He rode back to town in merry mood. He imagined that he could still
feel the arms of the girl about his breast, and her warm breath on his
face. His blood had not been cooled by his ride, as he had hoped, and
the sharp trot to which he spurred on his horse did not help him. He
gave up the reeking horse at the riding-school, and then turned into
the Briennerstrasse, in order to sit awhile in the Court Garden, and
eat an ice and nurse his dreams.
When he came back to the house where Julie lived, he checked himself
suddenly. Who was that standing motionless by the garden fence, with
his eyes fixed on the bright parterre window? Jansen?
Felix made a wide circuit to avoid him, and stood looking at him on the
other side of the street in the shadow of the houses. For a good half
hour he saw his friend opposite continue at his post. Then the window
was closed by a heavy curtain, and, immediately after, the watcher at
the gate tore himself away and departed slowly.
Felix did not follow him. He scorned to be a spy on the secret ways of
his friend. What chance had disclosed to him gave him enough to think
about for to-day, without being able to find a solution to the riddle.
_BOOK II_.
CHAPTER I.
It was unusually still in Angelica's studio, so still that one could
plainly hear, through the thin wall that separated her from her
neighbor, the cheerful squeak of his white mice. This was always a sign
that their master was, as he expressed it, on the rampage, wielding his
brush in the thick of the battle of Luetzen.
Angelica, too, was very busy. But although she usually liked to chat
over her work, to keep the people who sat to her from falling asleep,
to-day she rarely opened her lips. It was the last sitting; the last
touch, which, after all, is always a new beginning, was to be given to
the picture--every stroke of the brush decided the fate of a _nuance_,
the success or failure of an expression.
In order to work more surely, she had put on a pair of spectacles,
that can scarcely be said to have improved her appearance, and the
painting-jacket, on the left sleeve of which she was accustomed to wipe
her brush, had burst open in the ardor of her work, and, with her
lance-like maulstick and her shield-like palate, gave a certain
pugnacious aspect to her good, honest face, as if she were engaged in a
struggle for the release of the enchanted princess who sat in a chair
opposite her, and who was also unusually quiet. Whether Julie was
turning over in her mind some especially serious thought, or had, like
all people sitting to a painter, merely fallen under the influence of a
certain absent-minded melancholy, it was impossible to make out.
She was especially beautiful to-day. Instead of her raw-silk dress, she
wore a lighter stuff of transparent black, through which gleamed her
white neck. Angelica had planned this in order that all the light
might be concentrated on the face; and the arrangement of the hair,
which left the contour of the head fully visible and allowed a few
simply-braided locks to flow over the shoulders, was a special
invention of the artist. Now, in the steady light, the dead white of
her complexion, and the soft blond of her hair, shone out so gently
subdued and yet so clear, and the eyes, under the brown lashes, had,
with all their softness, such a fiery sparkle, that one could
appreciate Angelica's assertion that a thing of this sort could not be
painted--gold, pearls, and sapphires were the only materials with which
to rival this fusion of color.
It is true, the first bloom of youth was passed. A keen eye could
detect a wrinkle here and there, a certain sharpness of feature, and
the easy grace with which her noble figure moved left no doubt that she
had passed those years when a girl is always turning this way and that,
like a bird on a branch, as if always on the point of fluttering away
into the unknown, tempting, beautiful life outside, or else glancing
eagerly around to see whether a hunter or trapper is in sight.
For that matter it would have been hard to conceive that this still,
reserved, charming creature had ever committed the usual school-girl
follies. But as soon as she began to speak, and especially to laugh,
her expressive face beamed with youthful merriment, her eyes, which
were a little near-sighted, slightly closed and took on a mischievous
look, and only her firm mouth retained its expression of thoughtful
determination. "The rest of your face," said Angelica at the very
first sitting, "was given you by God; for your mouth you must thank
yourself."
She had intended by this remark to lead up to a conversation about
careers and experiences; but the only answer was a meaning, yet
reserved, smile from the mouth of which she spoke. Angelica was a girl
of delicate feeling; she was naturally burning with curiosity to learn
more of the past life of her admired conquest. But, after the repulse
of her first attempts, she was much too proud to beg for a confidence
that was not proffered. For this self-denial she was to-day to be
rewarded, for Julie suddenly opened her lips, and said with a sigh:
"You are one of the happiest human beings I ever knew, Angelica."
"Hm!" replied the artist. "And why do I seem so?"
"Because you are not only free, but know how to make some use of your
freedom."
"If it were only a good use! But do you really believe, dear Julie,
that my pictures of 'flower, fruit, and thorn pieces,' and my bungling
attempts to imitate God's likeness, have made me imagine that I am an
especially interesting example of my class? Dearest friend, what you
call happiness is really only the well-known 'German happiness'--a
happiness, because it is not a greater unhappiness--a happiness of
necessity."
"I can well understand," continued Julie, "that a moment never comes
when one feels perfectly contented; when one, so to speak, has reached
the summit of the mountain, and looks around and says: there is nothing
higher than this, unless one steps straight into the clouds. But yet
you love your art, and I think you can busy yourself all day, your
whole life long, with anything you love--"
"If I only knew whether it loved me in return! Don't you see, there
lies the rub; a most 'devilish' rub, Herr Rosebud would say. Are
you really consecrated to art--I mean consecrated by the grace of
God--when, if it hadn't been for the merest chance in the world, you
would never have touched a brush?"
"You would never have touched a brush!"
"Certainly; but instead of it a common kitchen-spoon and similar
household utensils. Why do you look at me incredulously? Do you think I
have been all my life a plain old maid? I, too, was once seventeen
years old, and by no means ill-looking--naturally not to be compared to
what is now sitting opposite me--not a regular feature in my whole
pretty face, no form, no style, merely the ordinary _beaute du diable_.
But, if one may trust certain evidences--though my archives of sonnets,
ball-favors, and other delicate offerings of the sort are burned, to be
sure--I was as neat and attractive a young person as thousands of
others. I had plenty of mother wit, you could read in my eyes that I
had a good heart, and, besides, I was by no means poor. Why should I
have lacked suitors? No, my dear, I even had a choice; and although I
do not now understand why I preferred one particular mortal to all
others, I must have known well enough at the time. I dimly remember how
wonderfully happy, joyous, and in love I was! If all had gone on in the
beaten track, I should probably have always been as happy and as much
in love--constancy is my chief fault--even if no longer so joyous. But
this was not to be. My betrothed was drowned while bathing--just think
of it, what an absurd misfortune! I was driven into a brain fever by
the shock and grief; when I got up from it my little _beaute du diable_
had gone to the _diable_. The next few years were spent as a widowed
bride, in tears; and, when these gradually ceased to flow, I was a
plain, prematurely-faded person, with a heart to be sure that had never
yet fairly blossomed out, but about which no one troubled himself
particularly. It was at that time also that we lost our little
property, and I was obliged to take up with some pursuit or other; then
it turned out to be good luck that even as a child at school I had
wasted much time on drawing and painting. Do you believe, dear friend,
that a virtue which one makes in this way out of a necessity--no matter
how deserving it may be--can ever make a mortal thoroughly happy at
heart?"
"Why not, when all kinds of happiness come with it, as has been the
case with you? You visited Italy with that kind old lady about whom you
told me such nice stories the other day; you can work at your art here
in perfect freedom, without anxiety, thanks to the legacy of your
motherly friend; you live in this beautiful city, in the society of
friends and colleagues in art by whom you are respected--is all that
nothing?"
"True, it is a great deal, and yet--I will whisper something in your
ear--let it be entirely between ourselves, and if I did not love you so
unreasonably that you might ask anything of me I would sooner bite off
my tongue than confess it to any living mortal--if I should become, in
the course of time, as celebrated as my namesake (whose pictures, it
must be confessed, always appear to me to be very stupid), or even
should in so far succeed as to become contented with myself as an
artist, I would give up all this exceptional good fortune for an
ordinary, humdrum happiness; a good husband, who need not even be a
remarkable combination of excellences, and a few pretty children, who,
for all I care, might be a little bit boisterous and naughty. There,
now you know all about it, and you will laugh at me because I so
naively confessed to you what we women generally hide like a sin."
"You would certainly have made a splendid housewife," said Julie,
musingly. "You are so good, so warmhearted, so unselfish; you might
have made a husband very happy. I--when I compare myself with you--but
why shouldn't we call each other '_du_?' I have had all sorts of
unpleasant experiences with women friends with whom I have used that
familiar form, and that is the reason I have been so slow about it with
you--. Stop, stop, you must leave my head on my shoulders!--you are
squeezing me to death--if I had only known it sooner! And who knows but
what if you learn to know me better--."
The artist had thrown away palette and maulstick, and had, after her
enthusiastic fashion, rushed upon the adored friend who had at last
made this return for her worship.
"If I should know you a hundred years, I'll take care to love you a
hundred times more dearly!" she cried, as, kneeling down before Julie,
she folded her hands in her lap with a droll vivacity, and gazed
reverentially through her spectacles at the beautiful face.
"No," said her friend earnestly, "you do not really know me yet. Have
you any suspicion that by my own fault I have thrown away that
happiness for which you long, because, even as my best friends said, I
was heartless?"
"Nonsense!" cried Angelica. "You heartless? Then I am a crocodile and
live on human flesh!"
Julie smiled.
"Were they right? Perhaps. I don't believe it myself. But you know it
is such a universal fashion to show one's self 'full of heart,' to
express feeling, sympathy, tenderness, even when one remains perfectly
cold, that the Cordelias will always be at a disadvantage. Even when
very young, and perhaps by inheritance from my father, who was a
strict, and on the surface a severe, old soldier, not much given to
demonstrations--even when a school-girl I felt a disgust for sweetness
and suavity, for affected sentimentality and humility--for all that
conventional amiability behind which the most cruel envy, the most icy
egotism, lurk concealed. I could never take kindly to sentimental
bosom-friendship, to compacts of the heart for life and death, that
were suddenly broken up by a ball-room rivalry, an honest reproof, or
even by pure _ennui_. My first experience in this respect was my
last. And how much sincere liking, and fidelity, and unappreciated
self-sacrifice I wasted on this child's play! From that time forth I
knew how to take better care of myself. And, in truth, it was not
difficult for me to keep guard over my heart. I lived with my old
parents, who both appeared, on the surface, dry and pedantic; but who
understood the art of making for themselves and me a rich, warm, and
beautiful life, that gave my thoughts and feelings ample nourishment. I
modeled myself after them, and spoke much the same language. I must
indeed have borne myself rather strangely, when, in the society of
young people, I expressed myself with regard to certain conventional
feelings in scornful terms which might have been pardoned to an old
soldier, but which did not become his daughter. I meant no harm with it
all. On many occasions, when others were moved to tears or enthusiasm,
I really experienced no sensation whatever, unless it were a feeling of
discomfort. But as often as anything really touched me--beautiful
music, a poem or some solemn impression of Nature, I became perfectly
dumb, and could not join in the enthusiastic prattle that went on in
the circle about me. Out of pure contempt for phrases, I assumed, in
defiance of my real feelings, to be cool and critical, and had to bear
being told that there was no getting on with me, that these secret joys
must always remain closed to me, a girl without a heart. I smiled at
this, and my smile confirmed these fine-strung souls in their belief in
my lack of feeling. As it so happened that I found none of them all
amiable enough to love in spite of these bad practices, I didn't care
in the least for my isolation. I had fared thus with my own sex, and
soon I was to find that I did not succeed much better with young men. I
was not long in observing that the stronger sex merely had other, and
by no means more amiable, weaknesses than we; above all, that they were
much vainer, and so care most for those of us who are willing to do
homage to their manly superiority. What is generally called maidenly
modesty, womanly tenderness, and virginal feeling--is it not, in ninety
cases out of a hundred, a craftily-planned artificial stratagem for
making fools of these mighty lords of creation? Here they find what
they want. Do they not meet in this pliant, yielding, dependent being
the best supplement to their dominant natures, the most touching
submission to their higher will, an accurately-toned echo of all their
most excellent wishes and thoughts? Afterward, when the purpose of the
pretty comedy has been attained, the mask is laid aside quickly enough;
we good lambs show that we, too, have a will and a mind and a power of
our own, and the beautiful delusion is rudely dissipated. As soon as I
had come to clearly recognize this, I felt the bitterest disgust for
it. Soon, however, I was forced to laugh, and to say to myself, this
farce is as old as the world! If, notwithstanding this, the proud lords
of creation still permit themselves to be deceived, they must, in one
way or another, find some advantage in it. But I could not even then
bring myself to join in the game, as I saw all the rest do. I cared
nothing for the object which made these petty means holy to all the
others. Merely to please the men in general? To do this I had no need
to exert myself especially, for I resembled my mother, who had passed
for a beauty. And to have won the _love_ of a man it would have been
necessary for him to have first taken _my_ fancy, for him to have first
become dangerous to _me_. But it never came to that. Really, I often
thought, have you a heart, or have you none, since it feels nothing at
all in the society of these gay officers, students, and artists, who
are such good dancers, have such a triumphant mien, and such faultless
white cravats, and who, with the most condescending superiority, allow
themselves to be enticed into the share by all these timid, blushing,
demure, sweet creatures, who are all the while secretly laughing in
their sleeves."
Julie paused for a while with downcast eyes. "It is strange," said she,
with a sigh, "how we happened to come upon these old stories! You must
know, my dear, they are _really_ very old--older than you think. I
shall soon be thirty-one years old! When I first began to make these
observations I was eighteen--now you can subtract for yourself. If I
had married then, I might now have had a daughter twelve years old.
Instead of that I am a well-preserved old maid, and my only admirer is
a silly painter, who has fallen in love with me merely out of a whim
for color."
"No," said Angelica, who, in the mean time, had zealously gone on with
her painting, "I won't be put aside in that way. I always did consider
the men pretty stupid, because, as you very rightly said, they allow
themselves to be caught by such clumsy tricks and artifices. But that
they should not have recognized your worth, that they should not have
cut each others' throats about you--as they did before Troy for that
Grecian witch--that is really incomprehensible to me! They cannot all
be so conceited and foolish; and, after all, there must be a few--I,
myself, have known one or two--. But please lower your chin just a
trifle."
"Yes, it is true," continued Julie, "there are a few. I have even come
across one for whose sake I myself might finally have been induced to
take part in the comedy, had not all talent for that kind of thing been
denied me. What his name was, how he came to know me, cannot matter to
you. He long ago married another, and has probably forgotten all of me
but my name--if not that. I--one of us never forgets such an
experience, even when it lies dead and buried in some corner of our
hearts; for that I had a heart, as well as other people, I discovered
at that time only too plainly--I pleased him exceedingly--he took care
to let me see this on every occasion--and then he really was better by
far, and much less infected by conceit and selfishness than most of the
others; and my straight-forward way of showing myself just as I was,
without affecting any coquettish sensibility, seemed to be attractive
to him because of its very rarity. As he was rich, and my parents were
well off, there was, on the other hand, no outward hinderance in our
way. And so, although no binding words had been exchanged, we were
tacitly looked upon as a match--I think the men relinquished me to him
much more honestly than my female friends gave up this much-sought man
to me. To be sure I myself was, even in this case, at least outwardly
much cooler and more reserved than happy lovers generally. I was, at
heart, deeply attached to the man of my choice; but there was always
mixed with it a silent fear, a sort of lack of sympathy--perhaps a
prophetic impulse of my heart that warned me not to give myself up
absolutely and entirely to this love. And, one day, during a
conversation about an accident in a Brazilian mine, where fifty men had
suddenly been killed by an explosion of fire-damp, the storm burst upon
me, and I had to suffer with those distant victims. All were deeply
lamenting over the occurrence, as is the fashion. I remained silent;
and when my betrothed asked me whether the terrible accident had
absolutely petrified me, I said I could not help it, but it affected me
very little more than if I had read in some history that in some
battle, a thousand years ago, ten thousand men had perished. The misery
of this world was so near us daily and hourly, and we were, for the
most part, so culpably indifferent to it, that I could not understand
why I should all of a sudden be expected to feel so much sympathy for a
misfortune which only attracted attention because it was in the latest
newspaper; and which was, moreover, a very common one and not even
accompanied by especially horrible circumstances. I had scarcely said
this when they all fell upon me--at first, of course, in a joking way,
and my old nickname--'the heartless girl'--was raked up again; but, as
I kept quiet and rather sharply repelled the accusations of these
delicate souls, their tempers became more and more aroused, and the
most zealous sermons on philanthropy were launched at me by the very
ones who would not have given a drink of water to a sick dog, and who
would only succor a poor man if it didn't make them too much trouble.
My friend, too, had grown silent, after having at first attempted to
take my part. But, like a thorough man--for such he always remained--he
could not conceal from himself the frightful truth that I was by no
means sufficiently soft and womanly in my feelings. My combative spirit
began to trouble him more and more--I could see this clearly--but now
all my pride was enlisted against any smoothing over or suppression of
my true nature. Although I was very near bursting into tears, I kept up
my bravery, fought out my case, and had the miserable satisfaction of
appearing to bear off the victory. A dearly-purchased victory! From
this evening my lover perceptibly began to draw back, my 'best friend'
took it upon herself to enlighten him more and more concerning my
character; and since she herself possessed those very traits which were
lacking in me, and which alone, it is said, can guarantee the happiness
of marriage, nothing could be more natural than that before three weeks
were up he should become engaged to this sympathetic being, who for
thirteen years now has--. But I will say nothing bad of her. She has
certainly done _me_ a great service, for, perhaps, I might not have
made this man much happier. And, at the time, she spared me a hard
spiritual struggle. Had I been actually engaged, I might, perhaps, have
hesitated to fulfill the duties that my poor mother had a right to
demand of me. For you must know that my father died very suddenly, and
then it appeared that the mother of the heartless girl--who also passed
for a cold character--concealed a much more passionate love under an
austere exterior than most old women are accustomed to retain beyond
their silver-wedding. The death of her old husband first threw my
mother into a serious illness, and then into a half-wandering state, in
which she lived on for many years, to her torture and to mine!"
She paused; then she suddenly stood up and stepped to the artist's side
behind the easel.
"Pardon me, dear," she said, "but I think you ought to stop. Every
additional stroke of the brush that tones down or paints away anything
will make it look less like me. Look at me more carefully--am I really
that blooming creature that beams upon the world from out that canvas?
Twelve years of denial, loneliness, and living entombment, have they
left no trace upon my face? That is the way I might have looked,
perhaps, had I known happiness. They say, you know, happiness preserves
youth. But I--I am horribly old! And yet, in reality, I have not begun
to live!"
She turned hastily away and walked to the window.
Angelica laid aside her palette, went softly up to her, and threw her
arm about her agitated friend.
"Julie," said she, "when _you_ speak that way--you, who by a mere smile
could tame wild animals and drive tame men mad!"
She turned to her comforter, and the tears stood in her eyes.
"Oh, my dear," she said, "what nonsense you are talking! How often I
have envied a young peasant girl, with an ugly, stupid face, who
brought us eggs and milk, simply because she could come and go as she
liked, and moved among living beings! But I--can you conceive what it
means to have constantly at your side a being whom you cannot but love,
and yet whom you are forced to look upon as one dead, as a living
ghost; to hear the voice that once caressed you utter senseless
sounds, to see the eye that once beamed on you so warmly, strange and
dimmed--the eye, the voice, of your own mother? And this, year in and
year out--and this half-dead being only waked into anxiety and
agitation whenever I made an attempt to leave her. For, truly, when I
had borne it a year, I thought I was being crushed by it, without
feeling the satisfaction that the sacrifice of my life could be of any
possible service to this most miserable being. Yet as often as she
missed me for a longer time than the few hours daily to which she had
become accustomed, she lapsed into the most violent uneasiness, and
only became quiet again when she saw me once more. I had to reconcile
myself to the idea that I was necessary to her existence--to an
existence that I could by no possibility make happy, or enliven, or
even lighten. For so long as I was at her side she scarcely noticed me;
indeed, she often appeared not even to recognize me. And still she
could not exist without me; and in the asylum, to which she was once
carried for the sake of an experiment, she lapsed into a state so
pitiable that even 'a girl without a heart' could not but be moved by
it."
"Horrible! And you lived with her in this way for twelve long years?"
"For twelve long years! Does it still seem to you so incomprehensible,
so 'stupid' of the men that they did not positively force themselves
upon a girl who would have brought, with a little bit of beauty and
property, this face into their house? No, dear, the men are not so
stupid, after all. Even if I had been engaged, and had loved my lover
with my whole heart, I could never have expected him to join his life
to that of a woman who was chained fast to so horrible a lot."
"But now, since you have become free--"
"Free! A fine freedom to be allowed to dance when the ball is over, to
console myself with artificial or painted flowers for the rosy time
that was neglected. I once read somewhere that happiness is like wine;
if one does not drink up the entire cask at once, but pours some of it
into bottles, some time one will have the good of it. It will have time
to ripen and become nobler, if it is of the right sort. There may be
some truth in this; but, no matter how noble it may be, the old wine
has lost its bouquet. The happiness that one hasn't enjoyed when young
has a bitter taste; and, for that matter, who guarantees that I shall
ever slake my thirst again? Many thousands never moisten their lips,
and live soberly on. Why should I fare better? Because I have more
beauty than many! That would be fine, indeed! Fate is not in the least
gallant, and draws up its decrees without regard to persons. Now, when
I stand before the glass, I always see the same well-known face that
has lost its youth. I seem to myself like a silk dress that has hung in
the closet for twelve years. When one takes it out it is still silk,
but the color has faded, the folds tear when it is touched, and when it
is shaken out fly the moths! But I have let enough of them fly out of
my head to-day. There is no use in going over old experiences. Come! we
will paint a little more, and then go and take a drive--for what is our
glorious liberty for?"
CHAPTER II.
In Jansen's studio, too, there was more talking than working going on
this morning.
Edward Rossel had, at last, in spite of the heat, summoned up
sufficient energy to undertake the short walk thither. A gigantic
Panama hat, over which he also held a sunshade, protected his head;
besides this he wore a summer suit of snow-white pique, and light shoes
of yellow leather.
He was in a very good humor, praised Felix for the assiduity with which
he continued to study his skeleton, and then stepped up to the Dancing
Girl, to which Jansen had just put the finishing touches.
He stood silently before it for some time, then he drew up a chair near
it and begged Jansen to turn the stand so that he would be able to view
the work from all sides.
His friends declared that it was a pleasure to see him look at
anything. His glances seemed to fairly fasten upon the form, or rather
to take it all in; all the muscles of his face became animated, and an
intellectual tension curved his somewhat languid mouth.
"Well," asked Jansen, at last, "how does it strike you? You know I can
bear anything."
"_Est, est, est!_ What is there to be said about it, especially?
Naturally, it has gained and lost, as is always the case. The innocent
audacity, the Pompeian _abandon_, that charmed me in the little sketch
has, as a whole, suffered in the execution. You might do better,
perhaps, to disguise your respect for Nature a little more. And,
by-the-way--with all respect for this Nature--what sort of a model did
you have? Of course it is very strongly idealized?"
"Not in the least. A pure _facsimile_."
"What? This neck and breast, these shoulders, arms--"
"A conscientious copy, without any additions."
Fat Rossel stood up.
"I should have to see that to believe it," he said. "Look here,
compared with this the conventionalities of Canova are mere wretched
sugar-work. And that is what I was just going to say to you--the
Grecian element that was in the sketch is gone. In its place there are
a grace, an _esprit_, an elegance of form--and that, too, of a
spontaneous sort. Don't you find it so, my dear baron? You are a lucky
man, Hans, to have such a being run into your hands. In what garden did
this little slip grow?"
Jansen shrugged his shoulders.
"Come, out with it, old Jealousy! You need not lend her to me for any
length of time--only for one forenoon. I happen to have a composition
in mind, for which this little one--"
"You will have to run after luck more persistently than the law of your
laziness permits," added Jansen, quietly. "I myself didn't catch it by
the forelock this time without some trouble; and, although this
forelock is very thick, and shone before me in the most beautiful
red--"
"Red hair? Now no dodges will help you, Jansen, you must hand her over
to me. Something of this sort has floated before my fancy for weeks
past--something of the wood-nymph, water-nymph nature."
"Hand her over! But it isn't in my power. Friend Felix happened to drop
in, the second time she was with me. She took this so to heart that,
since then, she has disappeared, leaving no traces behind her."
"Is there virtue under this beautiful exterior? So much the better.
Nature will enjoy her natural bounds all the longer, and so virtue will
also tend to the benefit of art. Tell me where she lives--the rest
shall be my care."
He noted down the address, which was written in charcoal on the wall
near the window, and then advanced toward the large, veiled group in
the middle of the studio.
"How far have you got with the Eve?"
"Unfortunately, I can't show her to you to-day," replied Jansen,
quickly. "She is just at a stage--"
"What the devil!" laughed Fat Rossel; "this looks very dangerous! How
long is it since you have fastened your cloths down with safety pins?
Don't you want the priests to snuff around here when they wander in
from the saint-factory?"
A knock on the door relieved Jansen from the evident embarrassment of
answering. The door opened, and Angelica, in her painting-jacket and
with her brush behind her ear, just as she had come from her easel,
appeared on the threshold.
"Good-day, Herr Jansen," she said. "Ah! I am disturbing you. You have
company. I will come again later--I merely had a favor to ask."
"And you hesitate to give utterance to this request before a colleague
and old admirer?" cried Rossel, going up to the artist and gallantly
kissing her hand. "If you only knew, Fraeulein Angelica how this
undeserved slight hurt my tender heart!"
"Herr Rossel," continued the artist, "you are a scoffer, and, as a
punishment for boasting of a tender heart, which you do not possess,
you shall not be given a chance to see something beautiful. I simply
wished to request Herr Jansen to come and look at my picture, for I
have just had my last sitting, and my friend has given me permission.
She knows how important his judgment is to me."
"But if I vow to be very good, and not to open my mouth--"
"You have such a deprecating way of screwing up the corners--"
"I will hold my hat before my face--only my eyes shall peep over the
rim."
"For Heaven's sake, come then! although I don't place much confidence
in your most solemn vows. I place myself under Herr Jansen's
protection; and if the Herr Baron would perhaps like to come too?"
Jansen had not spoken a word, but, with conspicuous haste had exchanged
his frock for a coat and had washed the dust from his hands.
When they entered the studio above, they found Rosenbusch already
engaged in the most enthusiastic admiration of the picture, while, at
the same time, he endeavored in his chivalrous way, to bestow at least
half of his enthusiasm upon the original.
Julie had risen and gone toward his chair. When she saw Angelica return
with a triple escort, instead of the one she expected, she seemed
slightly confused. But the next moment she greeted the gentlemen, whom
Angelica introduced to her, with easy grace.
A pause followed. Jansen had stepped before the picture, and, with the
great authority which he enjoyed in this circle, not even Edward
himself dared to say a word before he had expressed his opinion. It was
Jansen's way not to reduce his impression immediately to words. But, on
this occasion, he remained silent unusually long.
"Tell me frankly, dear friend," Angelica began at last, "that I have
once more undertaken something that deserves the palm for no other
reason than for its audacity. If you only knew what contemptuous
epithets I have heaped upon myself while I was painting! I have made
myself out so bad, have so run myself down, that Homo would not take a
piece of bread from me if he had heard me. And yet, in the midst of my
dejection, I still took such unheard-of pleasure in my daubery that, do
what I would, I could not let my courage sink. If my friend were not
present, I should be able to explain to you the reason for this. As it
is, it would seem in very bad taste if I should forthwith make her a
declaration of love in the presence of witnesses."
The sculptor still remained silent. At last he said, dryly,
"You may set your mind at rest, Angelica. Don't you know very well that
this is not only your best picture, but, moreover, a most excellent
performance, such as one only too seldom meets with nowadays?"
A deep blush of joyful embarrassment suffused the good-natured, round
face of the painter.
"Is that your candid opinion?" cried she. "Oh, my dear Jansen! if it
only is not meant as a salve for the goadings of my own conscience--"
Jansen did not answer. He was once more deeply absorbed in the
contemplation of the picture. Now and then he cast a critical glance at
the original, who stood quietly by and appeared to be thinking of other
things.
In the mean while Edward labored zealously to efface the bad opinion
that Angelica had formed of his love for critical mockery. He praised
the work highly in detail--the drawing, the arrangement, the successful
coloring, and the simple light effects, and what he found to criticise
in the details of the technique only served to heighten the worth of
his commendation as a whole.
"But, do you know," he said, enthusiastically, "this is only one way to
do it, a very skillful and talented way, but by no means the only one.
What do you say, for instance, to dark-red velvet, a light golden chain
around the neck, a dark carnation in the hair--_a la Paris Bordone_? or
a gold brocade--I happen to have a magnificent genuine costume at home,
that was sent to me last week from Venice? or shall we have simply the
hair disheveled, a dark dress, behind it a laurel-bush--"
"And so on, with graces _in infinitum_!" laughed the painter. "You must
know, Julie, this gentleman has already painted thousands of the most
magnificent pictures--unfortunately nearly all in imagination. No, my
dear Rossel, we are obliged to you. We are only too glad to have
accomplished it in this very modest way, and to have received so
favorable a criticism. My dear friend, although she is an angel of
patience, has had quite enough to do with the fine arts for some time
to come."
"O, Angelica!" sighed Rossel with comical pathos, "you are merely
jealous: you will vouchsafe to no other person the good fortune that
has been accorded to you. Now, what if I had always been waiting for
just such a task, so that I, too, might produce something immortal?"
"You?--your laziness is all that is immortal about you!" replied the
painter.
They continued for a while to chaff and plague one another, Rosenbusch
and Felix also contributing their share. Jansen alone did not jest, and
Julie, too, took advantage of her slight acquaintance to take no
further part in the conversation than common politeness demanded.
After the men had gone, a long silence followed between the two
friends. The artist had taken up her palette again, in order that she
might, after all, make use of Rossel's hints. Suddenly she said:
"Well, how did he please you?"
"Who?"
"Why, of course, there can be only one in question: the one who exerted
himself least to please anybody, not even you."
"Jansen? Why, I scarcely know him!"
"One knows such men in the first quarter of an hour, when one is as old
as we two are. It is just that which distinguishes the great men and
the thorough artists from the petty and the half-way ones--one knows
the lion by his claws. Just one look, and you will believe him capable
of the most incredible and superhuman things."
"I really believe, my dear, you are in--"
"Love with him! No. I am, at all events, sensible enough not to let
anything so nonsensical as that enter my head. But, if he were to say
to me: 'I should take it as a favor, Angelica, if you would just eat
this bladder-full of flake-white for your breakfast,' or, 'if you would
try to paint with your foot, it would afford me a personal pleasure,' I
believe I should not hesitate a moment. I should think he must
undoubtedly have his reasons for it, and that I was only too stupid to
comprehend them. Don't you see, such is my immovable faith in this
unprecedented man, so impossible does it seem to me that he could do
anything small, foolish, or even commonplace. Something horrible--yes,
something monstrous and insane--I could believe him capable of, and who
knows whether he has not really done something of the sort? He has
something about him like a little Vesuvius, that stands there in the
sun peacefully enough, and yet everybody knows what is boiling inside.
His friends say of Jansen that, if the Berserker once breaks out in
him, he is a bad man to deal with. I felt this from the first, with an
unerring instinct, and I hardly dared to sneeze in his presence. Then I
chanced to meet him in the garden, near the fountain, where he was
combing his Homo, and showing himself pretty awkward at it. He struck
me then as being so helpless that I could not help laughing and
offering myself as a lady's maid for the dog, at which he showed great
delight. That broke the ice between us, and, since then, I take the
most inconceivable liberties with him, although my heart still
continues to thump if he chances to look at me in his quiet, steady
way, for a minute at a time."
Julie was silent. After some time she said, suddenly:
"It is true he has eyes such as I have never before seen in a man. One
can read in those eyes that he is not happy; all his genius cannot make
him glad. Don't you find it so, too? Wonderfully lonely eyes! Like
a man who has lived long, years in a desert, and has seen no living
soul--nothing but earth and sun. Do you know anything of his life?"
"No. He himself never speaks of it. Nor do an
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