I were not
an artist, I should like best to be a soldier; but I cannot give up my
art."

"Right, right! Yet... do you think your cure of Satan will be lasting;
or will the dance begin again to-morrow?"

"Perhaps so; but grant me a week, Your Highness, and the swarthy fellows
can easily manage him. An hour's training like this every morning, and
the work will be accomplished. Satan will scarcely be transformed into
an angel, but probably will become a perfectly steady horse."

"If you succeed," replied Don Juan, joyously, "you will greatly
oblige me. Come to me next week. If you bring good tidings... consider
meantime, how I can serve you."

Ulrich did not need to consider long. A week would pass swiftly, and
then--then the king's brother should send him to Italy. Even his enemies
knew that he was liberal and magnanimous.

The week passed away, the horse was tamed and bore the saddle quietly.
Don Juan received Ulrich's petition kindly, and invited him to make
the journey on the admiral's galley, with the king's ambassador and his
secretary, de Soto.

The very same day the happy artist obtained a bill of exchange on a
house on the Rialto, and now it was settled, he was going to Italy.

Coello was obliged to submit, and his kind heart again showed itself;
for he wrote letters of introduction for Ulrich to his old artist
friends in Venice, and induced the king to send the great Titian a
present--which the ambassador was to deliver. The court-artist obtained
from the latter a promise to present his pupil Navarrete to the
grey-Haired prince of artists.

Everything was now ready for departure; Ulrich again packed his
belongings in the studio, but with very different feelings from the
first time.

He was a man, he now knew what the right "word" was, life lay open
before him, and the paradise of Art was about to unclose its gates.

The studies he had finished in Madrid aroused his compassion; in Italy
he would first really begin to become an artist: there work must bring
him what it had here denied: satisfaction, success! Gay as a boy, half
frantic with joy, happiness and expectation, he crushed the sketches,
which seemed to him too miserable, into the waste-paper basket with a
maul-stick.

During this work of destruction, Isabella entered the room.

She was now sixteen. Her figure had developed early, but remained
petite. Large, deep, earnest eyes looked forth from the little round
face, and the fresh, tiny mou