madonnas, saints and apostles, and praying and
playing angels in their heavy draperies, had a certain odd and now and
then almost caricatured life-likeness--so great that not all of its
charm was lost, even in the dry copies made by the assistants. They had
something of the same element of humor that Ariosto gives to his
personages--which by no means lose in life or force because their
author has lost his own simple faith in them.

"Allow me to ask," said Felix, after looking about blankly for a
moment, "into whose room you have brought me? And is your good friend
who practises this pious art hidden somewhere close by, so that one
must be cautious in his criticisms?"

"You needn't be in the least disturbed, my dear fellow; the lord and
master of this worshipful company stands before you."

"You, yourself? Daedalus with a saint's halo! The preacher in the
wilderness of modern art actually at the foot of the cross! Before I
believe that, I shall have to take the cowl myself, and declare poor
naked Beauty to be an invention of the devil!"

The sculptor cast down his eyes for a moment.

"Yes, my dear fellow," he said, "this is what we have come to in our
art-desert. You ask me for beauty, and I offer you clothes-racks with
dolls'-heads! As long ago as when we were in Kiel, I had to learn that
the world of to-day will have nothing to do with true art. You know how
hard I found it to turn these stones of mine into bread. It was still
worse when I moved to Hamburg, and there--" he checked himself
suddenly, and turned away; "well, living is more expensive there, and I
began to be older and less easily satisfied; and, when I could no
longer support myself in the place--it was the wretched trading city's
fault, I thought--I packed up my best models and sketches and came
here, to the much-praised land of art, the 'Athens on the Iser,' of
which so much is said and sung. You will soon learn how it is here. I
won't begin as soon as you have crossed the threshold to sweep all the
disagreeable things in the house out of the corners for you. I will
only say that the Munich Philistine isn't a hair better than those on
the Jungfernstieg or in our old Holstein. After I had managed, with
great difficulty, to keep myself alive here for a year, and had hardly
earned enough in the service of pure beauty to keep life in my body, I
found that such misery was enough to make a man turn Catholic--and, as
this spectacle shows, I did turn so, h