Guessing riddles was a kind of work in which I had no skill, so for the most part I enjoyed unalloyed the happiness which the friendship of this n.o.ble-hearted girl, and of her amiable family afforded me. Every moment spent in their society was precious to me, nor could I anywhere have found more purifying and enn.o.bling influences.

I do not recall a single instance of the slightest misunderstanding occurring between the members of this family, or even of one raising the voice in momentary irritation. In affectionate devotion to their mother, in chivalrously tender love for their sister, the brothers were literally one heart and one soul; and if even a shadow of misunderstanding threatened to fall between them, one word of Paula's, yes, often a mere glance from her loving eyes, sufficed to banish it.

Now as ever was Paula the good genius of the family, the honored priestess to whose keeping was committed the sacred flame of the hearth, the helper, the comforter, the adviser to whom each turned when he needed aid, consolation or counsel. And with what maidenly grace she wore this priestly crown! Who that did not know her could have divined that this delicate creature was not only the moral support of the whole family, but that this small, slender, diligent hand also provided their daily bread? Yet this was the fact: indeed it could hardly now be doubted that she would soon be able to raise her family to a comparatively brilliant position. Her _Monk and Templar_ had been purchased by one of the wealthiest bankers at an unusually high price, and there was already another picture upon her easel which had been bought at an even higher price before it was begun.

A picture-dealer--not the one who used to buy at a trifling price those pictures of Paula's which he afterwards sold to Doctor Snellius for handsome sums, but one of the first in the city, came to Paula and asked if she could paint a hunting piece. Just at that time there was a run on hunting-pieces: Prince Philip Francis had brought them into fashion, and the n.o.bility had run mad about them, so the Jewish bankers naturally began to take an interest in hares and foxes. Paula answered that she had not yet painted a picture of this kind, and did not feel warranted to undertake the commission; but the dealer was so importunate, and the price he offered so high--"what do you think of it?" Paula asked me. "Do you think I can do it?"

"How can you doubt it?" I replied. "The landscape and the figures will give you no trouble, and as for the technical part, I can help you, if you have any difficulty with it."

"You have told me so many things about your hunter's life with Uncle Malte," said Paula, "and one scene has especially fixed itself in my memory. It was in the earlier time of your stay at Zehrendorf, and you were sitting at breakfast with my uncle on the heath, in the shadow of a tree which grew on the edge of a hollow; my uncle was enjoying the repose of the bivouac, when suddenly a hare came in sight on the edge of the mound. Flinging bottle and gla.s.s away, you seized your gun, when the hare turned out to be a lean old wether grazing on the heath. Would not that make a picture!"

"You might try it at all events," I said.

She tried it, and the attempt, as I had never doubted, succeeded capitally. Even one who took no interest in the somewhat humorous character of the incident must at least have been captivated by the beauty of the landscape. The autumnal sunlight on the brown heath, to the left the white dunes between which here and there glistened the blue sea,--all this was painted with a delicious freshness that one felt invigorated even by looking at it. And the little scene which comprised the action of the picture was so clearly rendered that no one could fail to understand it--the elder hunter, lying in the gra.s.sy bank with his hand under his head, only taking the short pipe from his mouth to laugh at his companion, who with flashing eyes and in the greatest excitement has half-risen to his knee, and a few paces off the silly sheep's face looking over the heath, and saluting his over-hasty friend with a bleat of insulting confidence;--it was enough to bring a smile upon the face of the gloomiest hypochondriac. Naturally the elder hunter gradually a.s.sumed the features of the Wild Zehren, and the young novice day by day grew into a likeness of me.

"I ought not, really, to have introduced you again into one of my pictures," said Paula, "for two reasons: first, that you may not grow vain, and secondly that people may not think me barren of all invention. But in fact I cannot picture the scene to myself without you, any more than I can without my poor uncle; and I fear if I were to leave you both out the picture would be a poor one. You must give me one or two of your Sunday mornings. Of course I know your face well enough, and could paint it, I think, with any expression; but the action of a person throwing down a gla.s.s with his left hand, and reaching for his gun with his right, half-raised on his right knee while the left is still extended, is too complicated for me to paint without a model."

Thus it came that for several successive Sunday mornings I spent delightful hours in Paula's studio. The time never seemed long to us. I had so frequently gone over the ground of Paula's landscape that I could describe to her every bush, every tuft of gra.s.s, every peculiarity of the surface, and every effect of light upon the sandy dunes or the bushy heath. And while I was able thus to be really of use to the dear girl, it was a sweet reward to me to hear from her own lips that, if the picture turned out a good one, as she almost believed it would, it was in great measure owing to me. Then we had so many things to talk about: my progress in my trade, my increasing knowledge of the steam-engine, were topics of which Paula could never hear enough. Or else the question was discussed whether Kurt, who was now in his sixteenth year, ought to remain longer at school, or commence learning his trade, and if Streber's works were the right place, and Klaus, who was now a master-workman, the right master for this richly-gifted pupil. This led us again to speak of Klaus, what a good-natured and excellent fellow he was, and of Christel, whether any one would respond to her inquiry in the Dutch newspapers, and if so, whether this some one would be a Javanese aunt, as Klaus and Christel firmly maintained, or a Sumatran uncle.

So we were chatting together one morning, Paula at her easel, while I was pacing backwards and forwards at the farther end of the room, with my hands behind my back. The winter sun shown so brightly that the light had to be lessened at the high window near which the easel stood, while at the others it streamed brilliantly in, in cl.u.s.tering beams in which the motes were dancing. Frau von Zehren was out walking with her sons. A Sabbath stillness pervaded the house, and when Paula ceased speaking I felt like Uhland's shepherd, who "alone upon a wide plain hears the morning bell, and then all is silent, near and far."

Suddenly the hall-bell rang.

"I had hoped we should not be troubled with any visitors to-day," I said with some annoyance.

"Eminence must pay its penalty," said Paula, jestingly. "Let us only hope they will not stay too long."

At this moment the girl opened the door. I stopped my walk, and stood, stark with amazement, in the background, as I saw two gentlemen enter, one of whom was Arthur von Zehren, while the other, whom with a polite bow he had motioned to precede him, awakened in me some faint recollection which I could not precisely define.

"I have the honor," said Arthur, after apologizing to his cousin, with that grace of manner that always belonged to him, for not having called upon her immediately after his return--"I have the honor to present to you Count Ralow, whose acquaintance I was so fortunate as to make in London, and who is a great connoisseur, and an equally great admirer of your talents."

"My friend has not described me quite correctly," said the count, bowing respectfully to Paula. "I am by no means a great connoisseur; but he is quite right in calling me a great admirer of your talents. I have seen your picture at the exhibition, and been charmed with it, like all the world; and as your cousin was presumptuous enough to offer to present me to you, I could not forego a piece of such singular good fortune."

The young man, whose glance now fell for the first time upon the picture, suddenly started back, but rather with the gesture of one who is unpleasantly startled than of one who is agreeably surprised. And well might he be startled, when he suddenly recognized in the hunter by the willow-tree the Wild Zehren, the man who had only needed an opportunity to bathe his hands in the blood that flowed in the veins of Prince Karl of Prora-Wiek.

It had been now eight years since I had seen him, and in my whole life I had only seen him twice: once in the dim light of an autumn afternoon as he flew by me at a rapid gallop, and the second time in the dark forest by the glimmering moonlight; but the slender figure and the pale, refined face had impressed themselves indelibly upon my memory.

"Beautiful!" said the prince. "Admirable! superb! This sunlight, this heath--I know all this--know it perfectly. I tell you, Zehren, even to the minutest details it is nature itself! Is it not?"

Arthur did not answer, for if the confusion of the prince at the first sight of the picture had surprised him, he entirely lost his presence of mind when he caught sight of me in the background, where I had been standing motionless the whole time. I think there were few men whom Arthur von Zehren would not have preferred to meet in his cousin's studio just then.

"Is it not so, Zehren?" the prince repeated, rather impatiently.

"Certainly; it is perfectly superb: I said so before," replied Arthur, evidently in doubt whether it would not be best to overlook me altogether.

But as his hesitation did not prevent him from casting uneasy glances at me, which caused the eyes of the prince to turn in the same direction, the result was that the latter perceived, at the end of the studio, a tall, broad-shouldered, plainly-dressed young man, with curly blond beard and hair, whom he had already seen in the character of King Richard in the picture at the exhibition, and now again saw in the hunting-piece on the easel. Whom could he suppose that he had before him but one of those persons who go from studio to studio, now as a model for Joseph, and now for Pharaoh? And though it is probable that the prince was by no means addicted to minute observation of models in artists' studios, at this moment any opportunity of diverting attention from the unlucky picture was too welcome not to be seized at once.

"Ah! here is our original for King What's-his-name! A splendid fellow, whom I should like to see in the regiment of my cousin, Count Schlachtensee; don't you say so, Zehren?"

The unlucky Arthur's part of second-fiddle was a hard one to play to-day. But it was impossible for him, now that I had been brought directly into the conversation, to pretend, not to know his old schoolmate, apart from the fact that Paula would hardly have forgiven such a piece of insolence; and he perceived, moreover, by my looks that I was malicious enough to enjoy his confusion. Indeed I fear that I even indulged in a smile whose significance could not escape him, so he had no alternative--it was highly exasperating, but he really had no other--but to turn to me with as pleasant a smile as he could force to his whitened lips, and while toying with his eyegla.s.s, so as to have no hand free to offer me, to accost me in an affectedly condescending tone:

"Ah! see there! are we at last out of the--ahem--again? Congratulate you--congratulate you with all my heart--upon my honor--ahem!"

The young prince's looks grew by no means brighter during this singular salutation of his second. The expression of my face, which he now observed more closely, and Arthur's evident embarra.s.sment, showed that there was something wrong here; and at this moment he happened to catch a glance exchanged between Paula and myself, which probably seemed another mesh in the net which was here being drawn over his princely head. But now it seemed to Paula high time to interpose and put an end to this singular scene.

"You would have sooner had the pleasure," she said, turning to Arthur, "of meeting your old schoolmate, if you had found your way to our house earlier during the fortnight that you have been here; George has been in the city three months. This gentleman"--she went on, turning to the prince--"is my oldest and dearest friend, who stood faithfully by me at a time of great trial, and who now devotes a few hours of his valuable time to aid my imperfect invention with his advice. I esteem it an honor to introduce to you Herr George Hartwig."

At hearing my name the prince changed color and bit his lip, though he made a great effort to accost the lady's oldest and dearest friend with a polite phrase. Doubtless he had heard my name too often from Constance and others, and the a.s.sociations connected with it were of too peculiar a character for more amusing and more agreeable experiences to obliterate it entirely, even from the defective memory of the young prince. A dim recollection of a tall figure before which he had once crouched in a dark forest--and then the circ.u.mstance that this man with the broad shoulders and the memorable name stood by the side of the Wild Zehren in the picture by the hand of Paula von Zehren,--all this suddenly fitted into one combination. The prince had to find the meaning of it all, however pleasant it might have been to have been spared the whole riddle.

Just at this disagreeable moment, that is to say just at the right time, the Prince of Prora-Wiek remembered what he owed to himself. The signs of embarra.s.sment vanished from his face and his manner; he looked calmly at the picture and at me, comparing the copy with the original, and said a number of pretty things to Paula, which, if not quite well considered, and possibly not even well meant, sounded as if they were both. He hastily glanced at the drawings on the walls, and turned over the sketches in an open portfolio, declared that the light in the studio was admirable, and the whole arrangement exquisitely original and poetic, then remembered that he had been summoned to an audience of the princess, for which he would be too late if he did not take his leave at once, and went off with his companion.

In half a minute we heard the prince's coupe, which had been standing at the door, drive off, and we looked at each other and laughed, laughed with great apparent enjoyment, and then suddenly became grave.

"This is the great annoyance of our calling," said Paula. "Inquisitive visitors cannot be refused admission; indeed we are expected to be highly gratified if they come, and then chatter everywhere about our skill and the subject of our last picture. But, as I said, it is an annoyance at best; and Arthur might have been more considerate than to present himself in this fashion after staying away so long. His only apology is that he meant kindly, and thought he was bringing me a distinguished and wealthy patron. Certainly, if one may judge by the exterior, this Count Ralow must be both very distinguished and very rich."

"The inference is correct this time, at all events," I said; "and if you want the proof--it was the young Prince Prora."

"Impossible!" said Paula.

"I am sure of it," I replied. "I have seen in the papers that the prince has lately visited England, where Arthur says he made the acquaintance of this Count Ralow. But I should have recognized him without that; and besides, I now remember that the Princes of Prora are also Counts von Ralow."

"I am glad to hear it," said Paula, "though I should have preferred to make the acquaintance of the prince under his proper t.i.tle."

"I consider this incognito a piece of rudeness. Why can he not call upon you as he does upon the princess? But the real impertinence lies in his coming here at all. The former lover of Constance had no business to present himself to Constance's cousin. I felt all this strongly enough at the time, Paula; but I also felt that your house and your apartment were not the place to discuss these matters."

"I thank you for your considerateness," said Paula, taking my hand in hers. "I saw in your eyes that you were placing a restraint upon yourself about something. Men best prove their respect for women when they do not suffer any storms of this kind to break loose in their presence; and as to this matter, I beg of you to dismiss it from your thoughts. You have suffered far too much from it already; it is time you had rid yourself of it once for all."

"Yes, if that were only possible," I said; and then I told Paula, what I had never mentioned to her before, about my meeting at the exhibition with the beautiful Bellini, who had so striking a resemblance to Constance. "I have certainly no reason to cherish any love for Constance," I said; "on the contrary, I can meet her seducer without the slightest feeling of hatred or revenge; and yet the image of that beautiful woman follows me everywhere, and it could not be otherwise had I seen Constance herself. Now why is this?"

"Constance was your first love," Paula answered, "and that makes a difference with men."

"With men, Paula? Do you mean that with women it is otherwise?"

"I do mean that," she replied. "A woman's first love differs from a man's, and exceeds it. Exceeds it in proportion as a man is more to a woman than a woman to a man."

"What kind of new philosophy do you call that?"

"It is no new philosophy: at least it is as old as my thoughts upon these matters, which is no very great age, it is true."

A faint flush tinged her usually pale cheeks, but it seemed that altogether she was not displeased that we had fallen upon this theme, and she continued with some animation:

"A man's life is more full of change, richer in deeds and events, than a woman's; and for this reason individual impressions, even the strongest, do not remain so long with them. They have so many new and more important things to record on the tablet of their life that they are obliged from time to time to efface the old writing with the sponge of forgetfulness. With us women it is altogether different: we do not willingly efface a word which sounds sweetly to our ears, much less a line, much less a whole page of our poor life. And then even when a man has an unusually tenacious memory, he can not act and choose as he will: the stronger and manlier his nature, the more does he act and choose as he must. And he must choose suitably to his age and circ.u.mstances--to use another phrase, suitably to his development. The man of twenty-five differs from the youth of nineteen far otherwise than the woman of twenty-five differs from the girl of nineteen; and the man of thirty-five again is another man. If the man of twenty-five or thirty-five should make the same choice as the youth of nineteen--I mean such a choice as youth makes, romantically unselfish and inconsiderate--he would commit a folly, in my eyes at least."

"How did you come to be so selfish and practical, Paula?" I inquired, in laughing astonishment.

"One grows so, I suppose," she said, taking up palette and brushes, and beginning to work.

"It may be as you say," I said, "when one, as has been your case, pa.s.ses through a marked process of development; so that the laws which you have just laid down as governing us men are very possibly applicable to yourself. I knew you when you were but fifteen, and you were then a beginner in your art; now, at two-and-twenty, you are an artist, and at five-and-twenty you will be a distinguished one. In your case it is intelligible enough that the Paula of to-day has no longer those romantic illusions--to the future Paula, alas, I cannot venture to raise my thoughts."

"You are jesting, and cruelly too," she said; "and your good face has not the expression that I could wish it to wear at this moment."