ly, and then
with a winning smile--and how the boy, with his wondering gaze, had
illuminated everything about him, as if with balls of fire. And in his
efforts to do this--for he was an artist--he has attained to greater
and greater power and influence over his fellow-men, and each time has
succeeded better in catching the face; and that is the secret which can
be found in no history of art--the reason why this young Raphael has
become the greatest of all painters, and his picture of the Madonna
surpasses all others in beauty and in power."

CHAPTER II.

"By all the good spirits, but you are a poet!" cried Rossel, and he
sprang up with so unusual an alacrity that his red fez slipped off his
head.

"A poet!" responded his modest friend, with a sad smile. "There, you
see how low we have sunken nowadays. If it ever occurs to one of us to
let any idea enter his head that goes beyond a whistling shoemaker's
apprentice, or some celebrated historical event, or a bathing nymph, he
must immediately hear himself scouted as a poet. Those old fellows like
Duerer, Holbein, Mantegna, and the rest, were left unmolested to spin
into fables whatever struck them as beautiful or odd. But, nowadays,
the doctrine of the division of labor is the panacea for all things;
and if a poor fool of a painter or draughtsman works out for himself
anything which a poet could by any possibility put into verse, people
immediately come running up with Lessing's 'Laokoon'--which, by the
way, no one thinks of reading nowadays--and prove that in this case all
bounds have been overstepped. If a poor devil of an artist has a fancy
for poetry, why doesn't he go to work and illustrate? After all, it is
a trade that supports its man, and one who follows it can be a
thorough-going realist, and can easily guard himself against all danger
of infection from poetry. But an arrogant wight of an idealist, whom
the world refuses to keep warm, and who, therefore, must take care not
to let the sacred fire go out on the hearth of his art--"

"You are getting warm without cause, my dear Kohle!" interposed the
other. "Good heavens! it is indeed a breadless art, that of the poet,
but a deadly sin it certainly is not; and I, for my part, could almost
envy you for having such ideas as those you have just been telling me.
I'll tell you what--finish your plans, and then we will both of us
paint this beautiful story of Dame Venus inside the