praise and gifts of
new clothes. Many a delicate hand stroked his curls, and it always seemed
to him as if his mighty spell could bestow nothing better.

One day Moor took him aside, and told him that he had commenced a
portrait of young Count Rappolstein too. The lad was obliged to be still,
having broken his foot in a fall from his horse, and as Ulrich was of the
same size and age, the artist wished him to put on the young count's
clothes and serve as a model.

The smith's son now received the best clothes belonging to his
aristocratic companion in age. The suit was entirely black, but each
garment of a different material, the stockings silk, the breeches satin,
the doublet soft Flanders velvet. Golden-yellow puffs and slashes stood
forth in beautiful relief against the darker stuff. Even the knots of
ribbon on the breeches and shoes were as yellow as a blackbird's beak.
Delicate lace trimmed the neck and fell on the hands, and a clasp of real
gems confined the black and yellow plumes in the velvet hat.

All this finery was wonderfully becoming to the smith's son, and he must
have been blind, if he had not noticed how old and young nudged each
other at sight of him. The spirit of vanity in his soul laughed in
delight, and the lad soon knew the way to the large Venetian mirror,
which was carefully kept in the hall of state. This wonderful glass
showed Ulrich for the first time his whole figure and the image which
looked back at him from the crystal, flattered and pleased him.

But, more than aught else, he enjoyed watching the artist's hand and eye
during the sittings. Poor Father Lukas in the monastery must hide his
head before this master. He seemed to actually grow while engaged in his
work, his shoulders, which he usually liked to carry stooping forward,
straightened, the broad, manly breast arched higher, and the kindly eyes
grew stern, nay sometimes wore a terrible expression.

Although little was said during the sittings, they were always too short
for the boy. He did not stir, for it always seemed to him as if any
movement would destroy the sacred act he witnessed, and when, in the
pauses, he looked at the canvas and saw how swiftly and steadily the work
progressed, he felt as if before his own eyes, he was being born again to
a nobler existence. In the wassail-hall hung the portrait of a young
Prince of Navarre, whose life had been saved in the chase by a
Rappoltstein. Ulrich, attired in the count's cloth