when he then looked
at her with melancholy longing, and sighed out, "Ah! dearest Rosa! if I
could but talk with you again! if you would only be kindly with me as
you used to be when Reinhold was here!" she would cast her eyes
bashfully down, and murmur, "Have you anything to say to me, dear
Friedrich?" But he would stand transfixed and speechless. The lucky
moment would pass, as quick as lightning which flashes in the evening
sky, and has vanished ere one has noticed it almost.

Master Martin was now all insistence that Friedrich should set to work
on his "Master-piece." He had himself chosen, in his workshop, the
finest, cleanest, most flawless timber, which had been stored there for
over five years, and had not a vein or a streak in it; and nobody was
to give Friedrich the slightest hand in the job except old Valentine.
More and more intensely disgusted with the whole thing as Friedrich now
was, on account of those brutes of journeymen, the thought that all his
future life hung upon this piece of work almost stifled him. The
strange sense of dread and anxiety which had developed itself in him
when Master Martin had lauded his faithful devotion to the craft, took
shape, now, more and more clearly. He felt convinced that he would come
to the most utter and shameful failure in an occupation completely
repugnant to his whole nature, filled as it was with the love of his
own art. Reinhold, and Rosa's portrait he could not drive out of his
mind; at the same time, his own branch of Art shone upon him in the
brightest splendour. Often, when the terrible sense of the full
wretchedness of the trade he was engaged in was like to overpower him
as he was working at it, he would pretend to be unwell, and hurry off
to the church of St. Sebald, where he would gaze for hours at Peter
Fischer's marvellous monument, and then cry out, like one enchanted,
"Oh, Father of Heaven!--to conceive, to execute such a work as
that--could there be anything on earth more glorious!" and then when he
had to go back to his staves and hoops, and remember that by means of
them, only, Rosa was to be won, the very devil's glowing talons seemed
to touch his heart, and he felt as if he must perish in the terrible
misery of it all. Reinhold often appeared to him in dreams, bringing to
him lovely designs, in which Rosa was worked in, and displayed now as a
flower, now as a beautifully winged angel. But there was always a
something wanting. Reinhold had forgot