rew and sought for fresh talent which would allow
itself to be patronized by him.

He was never without the photograph of his ideal in his breast pocket,
and when he was in a good temper he used to show me one or other of
them, whom I had never seen, with a knowing smile, and once, when we
were sitting in a _cafe_ in the _Prater_, he took out a portrait without
saying a word, and laid it on the table before me.

It was the portrait of a beautiful woman, but what struck me in it first
of all was not the almost classic cut of her features, but her white
eyes.

"If she had not the black hair of a living woman, I should take her for
a statue," I said.

"Certainly," my friend replied; "for a statue of Venus, perhaps for the
Venus of Milo, herself."

"Who is she?"

"A young actress."

"That is a matter of course in your case; what I meant was, what is her
name?"

My friend told me, and it was a name which is at present one of the best
known on the German stage, with which a number of terrestrial adventures
are connected, as every Viennese knows, with which those of Venus
herself were only innocent toying, but which I then heard for the first
time.

My idealist described her as a woman of the highest talent, which I
believed, and as an angel of purity, which I did not believe; on that
particular occasion, however, I at any rate did not believe the
contrary.

A few days later, I was accidentally turning over the leaves of the
portrait album of another intimate friend of mine, who was a thoroughly
careless, somewhat dissolute Viennese, and I came across that strange
female face with the dead eyes again.

"How did you come by the picture of this Venus?" I asked him.

"Well, she certainly is a Venus," he replied, "but one of that cheap
kind who are to be met with in the _Graben_[3], which is their ideal
grove...."

[Footnote 3: The street where most of the best shops are to be found,
and much frequented by venial beauties.--TRANSLATOR.]

"Impossible!"

"I give you my word of honor it is so."

I could say nothing more after that. So my intellectual friend's new
ideal, that woman of the highest dramatic talent, that wonderful woman
with the white eyes, was a street Venus!

But my friend was right in one respect. He had not deceived himself with
regard to her wonderful dramatic gifts, and she very soon made a career
for herself; far from being a mute character on a suburban stage, she
rose in two years to be