rly, timidly
Pensively rest.

As the ivy that creepeth
By lowly abodes,
On a thousand weak tendrils
Thou climb'st to the Gods.

Where memory glancing
The cleft ruins through,
As the sun to the vine
Giveth warm life anew.

Murmuring the last words aloud just as he turned into the Unter den
Linden, he suddenly felt his arm seized, and turning saw a face which
had been far from his thoughts.

The old Livonian baron, the enthusiastic connoisseur and friend of art,
who had formerly helped the worthy zaunkoenig to his short-lived dignity
of court painter, stood before him wearing an expression of the
greatest delight.

"Well," he cried, shaking Edwin's hand with boyish impetuosity, "this
is what I call 'talking of a wolf and seeing the tip of his tail.' Only
yesterday evening I was speaking of you for at least two hours, first
condemning and then defending you when others undertook to condemn; and
to-day, my dear fellow, you appear before me just as I was considering
whether I should go to your father-in-law, to get your address; you see
I wanted to write to you. I don't know how the worthy Herr Zaunkoenig
feels toward me, since that stupid piece of business; for gloriously as
he behaved in the matter, just as I expected him to do, I was at any
rate mixed up in it, and the wager--"

"You ought to know him better, my dear Baron," said Edwin, interrupting
the torrent of words. "True, he is by no means such a weak dove as not
to have been very much enraged against your prince at the first moment
of discovery, but it was less from offended personal dignity, than
indignation at the cold blooded frivolity, with which such noble
Maecenas' treat an insignificant artist. But then he grew quiet and
thoughtful, collected his studies and the few pictures he had finished,
and spread them before him. When I asked what he was doing, he replied:
'I am disgusting myself with my work. Let us be just: these things have
emanated from an aberration of the artistic instinct.' The next day
they had disappeared, and as I afterwards learned, were nailed up in a
chest, loaded with brick-bats, and sunk in the lagune."

"Oh! oh! oh!" said the old man, shaking his head, "then we have really
deprived him of the greatest pleasure of his life. I shall never look
at the Luini I won from the prince, without a pang of conscience. Oh!
oh!"