e with polished marbles, bronze
candelabra, and beautiful flowering plants in porcelain pots, that
perfumed the whole vestibule.

When they entered the high-studded room above, that served as a
studio, but looked more like a museum of choice objects and works of
art than it did like a regular artist's workshop, there rose from a low
divan, covered with a leopard's skin, a singular figure. On a portly
but by no means clumsy body rested a stately head, in which sparkled a
pair of exceedingly bright black eyes. The face was of a very white
complexion, the beautiful hands were daintily cared for. The cut of the
features, with the close cropped silky hair, and the long black beard,
recalled the beautiful, dignified type of the high-bred Orientals. This
impression was still further heightened by a little red fez, shoved
back on the head, and a variegated Persian dressing-gown with slippers
to match, into which his bare feet were thrust, while the dressing-gown
apparently served in lieu of any other clothing.

Slowly, but with great cordiality, the painter advanced to meet his
friends, shook hands with them, and said: "I made your acquaintance
yesterday from a distance, Herr Baron--through the blinds, when that
sly dog Rosebud was trying to entice me out into the noonday heat with
his flute. But that kind of thing is against my principles. It may be
all very meritorious to eat one's bread in the sweat of one's brow. But
as for enjoying art when reeking with perspiration--never! Excuse the
costume in which I receive you. I have just been taking a douche bath
and afterward resting a quarter of an hour. In five minutes I shall be
in a condition to present my material part with propriety."

He disappeared into a side chamber, that was only separated by a
magnificent piece of Gobelin tapestry from his studio, and went on
talking with his friends while completing his toilet.

"Just take a look at my Boecklin, that I bought the day before
yesterday--over there by the window on the little easel--I am quite
happy over the possession. Well, what do you say to it, Jansen? Isn't
that something to console one's self with for a while, in the midst of
this universal poverty of art?"

It was a little forest picture, that stood in the most favorable light,
near the window; it represented a dense wood of lofty oaks and laurel
bushes, through a little cleft of which could be seen a slender strip
of the distant horizon, and in one corner a p