st, if one must forgo the masters, masterpieces might be had
for their price. For ten thousand marks--day ever to be remembered!--a
genuine work of "the Urbinate," from the cabinet of a certain
commercially-minded Italian grand-duke, was on its way to Rosenmold,
anxiously awaited as it came over rainy mountain-passes, and along the
rough German [127] roads, through doubtful weather. The tribune, the
throne itself, were made ready in the presence-chamber, with hangings
in the grand-ducal colours, laced with gold, together with a speech and
an ode. Late at night, at last, the wagon was heard rumbling into the
courtyard, with the guest arrived in safety, but, if one must confess
one's self, perhaps forbidding at first sight. From a comfortless
portico, with all the grotesqueness of the Middle Age, supported by
brown, aged bishops, whose meditations no incident could distract, Our
Lady looked out no better than an unpretending nun, with nothing to say
the like of which one was used to hear. Certainly one was not
stimulated by, enwrapped, absorbed in the great master's doings; only,
with much private disappointment, put on one's mettle to defend him
against critics notoriously wanting in sensibility, and against one's
self. In truth, the painter wham Carl most unaffectedly enjoyed, the
real vigour of his youthful and somewhat animal taste finding here its
proper sustenance, was Rubens--Rubens reached, as he is reached at his
best, in well-preserved family portraits, fresh, gay, ingenious, as of
privileged young people who could never grow old. Had not he, too,
brought something of the splendour of a "better land" into those
northern regions; if not the glowing gold of Titian's Italian sun, yet
the carnation and yellow of roses or tulips, such as [128] might really
grow there with cultivation, even under rainy skies? And then, about
this time something was heard at the grand-ducal court of certain
mysterious experiments in the making of porcelain; veritable alchemy,
for the turning of clay into gold. The reign of Dresden china was at
hand, with one's own world of little men and women more delightfully
diminutive still, amid imitations of artificial flowers. The young Duke
braced himself for a plot to steal the gifted Herr Boettcher from his
enforced residence, as if in prison, at the fortress of Meissen. Why
not bring pots and wheels to Rosenmold, and prosecute his discoveries
there? The Grand-duke, indeed, preferred