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? Dædalus 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 Dædalus 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 mediæval 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 Dædalus, 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 Fräulein, 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 Männern, welche Liebe fühlen." 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 zoölogical 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 à 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, Fräulein?" 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' è 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."