er journeymen, clever workmen, but rude fellows, quite
demoralised by their long wanderings. Coarse jests now echoed in the
workshop instead of the many pleasant talks of former days, and in
place of Frederick and Reinhold's agreeable singing were now heard low
and obscene ditties. Rose shunned the workshop, so that Frederick saw
her but seldom, and only for a few moments at a time. And then when he
looked at her with melancholy longing and sighed, "Oh! if I might talk
to you again, dear Rose, if you were only as friendly again as at the
time when Reinhold was still with us!" she cast down her eyes in shy
confusion and whispered "Have you something to tell me, dear
Frederick?" And Frederick stood like a statue, unable to speak a word,
and the golden opportunity was quickly past, like a flash of lightning
that darts across the dark red glow of the evening, and is gone almost
before it is observed.

Master Martin now insisted that Frederick should begin his masterpiece.
He had himself sought out the finest, purest oak wood, without the
least vein or flaw, which had been over five years in his wood-store,
and nobody was to help Frederick except old Valentine. Not only was
Frederick put more and more out of taste with his work by the rough
journeymen, but he felt a tightness in his throat as he thought that
this masterpiece was to decide over his whole life long. The same
peculiar feeling of anxiety which he had experienced when Master Martin
was praising his faithful devotion to his handiwork now grew into a
more and more distinct shape in a quite dreadful way. He now knew that
he should fail miserably and disgracefully in his work; his mind, now
once more completely taken up with his own art, was fundamentally
averse to it. He could not forget Reinhold and Rose's picture. His own
art now put on again her full glory in his eyes. Often as he was
working, the crushing sense of the unmanliness of his conduct quite
overpowered him, and, alleging that he was unwell, he ran off to St.
Sebald's Church. There he spent hours in studying Peter Fischer's
marvellous monument, and he would exclaim, as if ravished with delight,
"Oh, good God! Is there anything on earth more glorious than to
conceive and execute such a work?" And when he had to go back again to
his staves and hoops, and remembered that in this way only was Rose to
be won, he felt as if burning talons were rending his bleeding heart,
and as if he must perish in the midst