"I do not jest at all," I answered emphatically. "I perfectly understand that your claims upon life must rise higher with every year--I might say with every picture you produce."

"Are you really speaking in earnest?"

"Perfectly so; do you not wish to become a great artist?"

"a.s.suredly," she replied; "but is that within a woman's power? How many out of the hundreds and thousands of inspired girls and women who have turned to the easel or the desk have become great artists? Upon the stage they may; but I have often questioned whether the dramatic art be a true art, or rather a half-art, in which half-talents can reach the highest eminence. And those who are called actors of genius, what are they in comparison with men of true genius in art, in literature, in music? As far beneath them as I am beneath Raphael. And what have I produced so far? Two or three pa.s.sable heads; a striking scene or so, which I took directly from the life; recollections from books; Richard C[oe]ur de Lion, the Monk--where in these is an original invention, a single trace of real genius? And what is this picture here? What have I done towards it? Little more than mix the colors; the rest is all of your invention. You told me how the sunlight falls in the sandy dunes, how the wind waves the heads of the heath-flowers; you----"

"But Paula, Paula, you talk as if I were painting your picture, and as if you could paint no picture without me."

"And I have painted none without you: there you see my miserable poverty."

I could not see with what expression she p.r.o.nounced these words, for she had bent her face down to her easel.

CHAPTER V.

Since her success at the exhibition Paula had been overwhelmed with invitations, and she had accepted one for this day from the banker Solomon, the purchaser of the _Monk and Templar_. So I was left with Frau von Zehren and her sons. Yet Paula was present with us all, and with none more than her poor mother who was bereft of the pleasure of seeing her daughter's works.

"But all that she has she has from you, mother," said Benno; "and she knows that herself better than any of us."

"Then she has it from her grandfather," said Frau von Zehren. "He was really a great artist: what I might have done I cannot say.

Unfortunately it was never granted me to develop the talent that I had; but how can I say unfortunately? If it is true, as you say, that Paula's talent is mine, then her success is my success, and thus I perform the miracle of becoming a great painter with blind eyes."

A gentle smile played about the refined lips of the still beautiful woman, and as shortly afterwards I retraced my steps homewards through the dark streets her face continually recurred to my memory. She must in her youth have been even more beautiful than Paula, though Paula's beauty had wonderfully increased. How superbly indignation and shame contended in her features as that c.o.xcomb of a prince strutted about her studio without the slightest idea of how impertinent he was, and probably fancying all the time that he was making himself unspeakably agreeable.

This meeting with the prince who had been my favored rival with Constance, and with Arthur, whom I had so long believed to be the favored lover of Paula, gave me much matter for reflection, more indeed than was advantageous for the progress of my work, to which I had applied myself on my arrival home. As I recalled the refined and handsome but sadly worn face of the young prince, his eyes now vacant, now burning with unnatural fire, the twitchings of his brow and cheeks, his manner, at once insinuating and supercilious, I felt more and more indignant that Arthur should have dared to introduce such a man into Paula's house. What, at best, could be his motive for seeking the introduction? The gratification of ordinary curiosity. And at worst? I ground my teeth to think of the horrible possibility. My only consolation was that my fear that Arthur might have won, or yet win, Paula's affections, now appeared in all its absurdity. Clearly such a fop as he could never be dangerous to such a girl as Paula; though fop as he was, he was wonderfully handsome, the perfect model of an elegant gentleman in irreproachable kid gloves and varnished boots; a little vacant, perhaps, about the mouth, adorned with a slight black beard, and a little hollow under the large dark eyes that had lost all their brilliancy. It is possible that for certain women this rendered him all the more dangerous; but what had Paula in common with such?

Then my thoughts wandered from the prince, whom I had seen again so unexpectedly, to the fair Bellini who so singularly resembled Constance; and I pushed back my chair, stepped to the window, which Paula's kindness had furnished with dark curtains, and leaning my heated brow against the gla.s.s looked out, in dreary musing, into the yard, across which I observed a figure coming through the freshly-fallen snow, directly to the house. My thoughts involuntarily recurred to the figure I had once seen stealing by moonlight across the lawn to Constance's window. Was it the prince? What brought him to me?

The figure came to the stair that led up from the yard, and began to ascend the steps. I took the lamp from the table to give light to the visitor, whoever he might be. As I opened the door of my room he was just entering the house, and the light of my lamp fell brightly on the face of Arthur von Zehren.

"Thank heaven that I have found you at last, and without breaking my legs or my neck!" he cried upon seeing me. "How can any man in his senses live in such a place? But you always were an original. And really you seem comfortably fixed for a machinist, or whatever it was that the fellow at the gate called you,"--and Arthur, who had entered the room as he spoke, threw himself into the arm-chair which I had pushed near the fireplace, and held his gloved hands over the coals.

I remained standing by the fire, and said: "What procures me the pleasure of seeing you for the second time today?"

"The pleasure does not seem to be overwhelming, to judge from your tone; and in fact I should scarcely have come had not the prince--I mean to say, had not I--what was I going to say? oh, yes--had a bit of business to settle with you. While you were--you know where--you were several times so obliging as to help me out of some small difficulties.

I took exact note of it all, for a man who owes as many people as I do must be particular in these matters to keep his creditors from swindling him. Of course I had nothing of the sort to fear from you; but out of mere habit I took a note of it, and this is the amount, without the interest, which I cannot calculate, and therefore would rather leave off--a hundred and sixty _thalers_. I happen to be in funds just now, and it is a pleasure to me to acquit myself of my debt to you."

And rising from his chair he counted down a pile of treasury-notes on the table.

"Will you count them over?" he continued; "I have just come from a dinner where we had famous champagne, and a charming little game afterwards; and it is quite possible that I may have miscounted them."

He looked at me with a smile that was meant to be sly, and balanced himself unsteadily on his toes and heels: it was too evident that he had come from a dinner at which the champagne had not been spared.

"What I was going to say," he went on--"your lamp burns so dim that one can hardly collect his ideas--going to say, was this: it was with the very best motive that he sent me here. He is the n.o.blest fellow living--heart and purse--all genuine gold, as long as he has any. So you need not have any scruple, old fellow. And I was going to say--oh, in what relation did you ever stand to the prince? He told me himself that he was under an obligation to you; but what it can be is a mysterious enigma to me--a mysterious enigma," he repeated, leaning back in the arm-chair into which he had thrown himself again, and warming his feet alternately at the fire.

"You do not seem to be in a condition to solve enigmas," I said.

"Because I have had a little wine, you mean? Oh, that is nothing at all; on the contrary, but for that I should never have found my way here, notwithstanding I took the precaution this morning to get your address from Paula's porter. Was not that a happy idea? But one must always be ready in matters of that kind when one wishes to be intimate with men of high rank; and he takes an interest in you, too--a most astonishing interest."

I had by this time enough of his tipsy talk, and said: "I do not know, Arthur, if you are in a condition to understand me. If you are, let me tell you once for all, that I am fortunately in a position not to care a single farthing whether Prince Prora takes an interest in me or not; and you yourself, as far as I can see, would be doing yourself a service by mixing yourself as little as possible in the prince's concerns, in this direction at least."

"Thank you," said Arthur, "but that I foresaw. You are a lucky fellow; you need no one, and are sufficient for yourself. Always sober, always prudent, always clear-headed, and always in funds; while a fellow like me is forever in some devilish embroilment. But so it always has been and always will be. I have often wished I had been the son of a carter, had been beaten and knocked about, and forced to work for my bread, instead of this glittering misery, in which I starve one day and live in luxury the next. It is a misery, old fellow, a misery; but the best thing is that one can blow his brains out whenever he chooses."

I knew this declamation of old. It was the same, with but a slight alteration of the words, which Arthur used to deliver in our school-days when he had drunk too much of the bad punch at a boyish carouse, and got to talking of his unpaid glove bills and his little dealings with Moses in the Water-street. And it was the same Arthur, too, the same frivolous, selfish, cold-hearted voluptuary, with the soft voice and the insinuating manners; and I--I was just the same good-natured fellow, whom a light word carelessly spoken could move as if it came direct from the heart. And I had loved him in my young days, when I wore a linen blouse and he a velvet jacket; we had played so many merry pranks together, and so often basked in the afternoon sunshine in field and wood, and in the boat at sea; and things like these cannot be forgotten--at least I never could forget them.

"Arthur," I said, "_must_ you then always be in trouble and distress?

Could it not be otherwise if you chose? A man like you, with so much talent, so much tact, such engaging manners----"

"And such a father!" cried Arthur, with a laugh that went to my heart.

"Do you suppose that one can do anything with such a father, who compromises me every moment--every moment places me in the pillory, or at least keeps me in perpetual fear that he will do it?"

"I would never speak thus of my father, Arthur," I said.

"I suppose not," he answered. "You never had reason to: if I had had such a father as yours I would be a different man. But my father! Here he runs from this man to that, and begs for me a sort of position in our legation at London, and a few weeks later he goes round to the very same men and begs for himself; and the result is that they don't want in the London legation the son of a man whom they have to shut their door upon at home; and if I had not in London made the acquaintance of Prince Prora, who most kindly took an interest in me, I should not know how to pay for my cup of coffee to-morrow morning."

"Arthur," I said, "I believe you need the money more than I do. Suppose you take it back to the prince, for it comes from the prince, as you might as well confess--and say to him from me that I neither need it nor desire it, and request that it may be given to you. As for our little account, that we can settle when you really are in funds."

"You dear old George!" cried Arthur, springing up and seizing my hand.

"You are the same dear fellow you always were; I intended it for you, but if you don't need it--" and he hastily clutched up the notes which he had so carefully counted, and thrust them into his breast pocket.

"Cannot the prince open some definite career to you?" I asked.

"The prince!" he replied. "Bah! you remind me of the game the young girls used to play when we were children--Emilie Heckepfennig, Elise Kohl, and whatever their names were--the game of the meal-pile, into which a ring was stuck, and each one of the girls cut away in turn a part of the pile, and then more, and then a little more, until down fell the meal-pile, and the little snub-noses went to rooting in it for the ring. That is the very image of the man: everyday one charming hand or another cuts away a portion of the meal-pile that is called Prince Karl of Prora-Wiek, and before long down the pile will tumble; it leans over now, I can tell you," and Arthur b.u.t.toned up his overcoat, and drew on again his right glove, which he had pulled off to count the money.

"I should be sorry to know that, if I were, as you are, a friend of the young man."

"Friend?" said he, lighting a cigar at the lamp. "Friend? pah! I am as little his friend as he is mine. He needs me, because--well, he needs me, and I need him; and whoever first ceases to need the other will give him a friendly kick; only I imagine I shall need him longer than he me, or than his lungs will hold out, which I suspect are more than half gone already."

Arthur had put on his hat, and as he stood before me, and the light fell upon his handsome, pale, smiling face, I felt a sharp pang of sorrow for him, which he probably perceived in my looks, for he began to laugh heartily, and said:

"What a doleful face you are making, as if I were on my way direct to the gallows, and not to the Albert Theatre to see the fair Bellini who makes her _debut_ to-night. And afterwards a supper at Tavolini's with her, if we can manage it. You see my life has its bright sides, for all. Good-by, old raven!"

And he nodded familiarly to me, and lounged out of the door, which he forgot to close behind him.

I closed it, and put fresh coals on the half-extinguished fire, trimmed the light, and sat down at my table, and said as I opened my books: "It is very singular that a young prince should take such an interest in a poor blacksmith. Bah! I should be a fool to let such people move me from my path."

But though I strove to be wise, and to banish from my thoughts the folly of the world, it kept drawing as by some magnetic power my thoughts away from the dry formulas to bright life, of which I had caught, as it were, a glimpse in the opening and closing of the door.

Gay enough was the scene; a table covered with half-emptied bottles and the dainties of a dessert, and around the table a half-dozen jovial faces ruddy with the wine, and mine among them, glowing with wine and pleasure brighter than all the rest, since I was so much stronger than they that I could have drunk them all under the table, and I sang a baccha.n.a.lian song, and they all clapped and stamped, with cries of _Bravo_! _Encore_!

I pa.s.sed my hand across my brow. What insane dream was this? What had the solitary workman to do with things which had been invented only for rich idlers? Here was the work to which I had devoted myself; it was a jealous mistress, and I could, not divide my affection between it and the fair Bellini.

I sprang up, and I believe I struck my forehead with my clenched fist without producing any perceptible result. There she stood in my imagination just as she looked when, going out of the door, she turned round to take another look at the picture--the woman who so resembled Constance--the actress who made her first appearance to-night. And in a box close to the stage would be sitting the young prince with his boon-companions, staring through their opera-gla.s.ses at the fair Bellini, while I sat here by the comfortless light of a lamp, in a chilly room, with burning head and freezing hands, putting down upon paper long rows of figures which would lead to no result.

I do not know by what steps the evil thought that had arisen in my soul suddenly mastered my will; I only know that a few minutes later I was hastening through the dark snow-covered streets, and soon arrived, breathless, at the ticket-office of the Albert Theatre. Every place was taken the box-keeper a.s.sured me, but in the lowest proscenium-box on the right there was a standing-place.