and innocent, as if he could not kill a fly, wades ankle-deep in blood every day, and isn't happy unless, like a new Hotspur, he can kill at least fourteen Pappenheimer cuirassiers with oil in a morning. And I--whose best friends have to confess that the Graces didn't stand beside my cradle--I bother myself over fragrant flower-pieces and laughing children's faces, and then read in the reviews that I should do well to take up subjects that have more body to them!"
So she ran on for a while, without sparing herself or her companions in her jokes--yet without the least rudeness or old-maidish bitterness in her talk. A certain element of womanly coquetry showed now and then in her frank, honest speeches--an attempt to caricature herself and her faults and follies, so that she might be taken, after all, at a little higher value than her own exaggerations gave her credit for. But even this was done so good-naturedly that any gallant speeches that her companions might try to make were generally smothered in laughter. Felix was greatly attracted by her cleverness and droll good-humor; and, as he showed clearly how they amused him, her mood grew all the merrier, and one jest followed another so that the long walk seemed very short to all of them, and they stood at the door of the Pinakothek before they realized that they had come so far.
"And here, Baron, we must bid one another good-by for the present," said the painter. "You must know that in this art-temple of ours we behave like good Catholics in their churches. Each kneels before a different altar; I before St. Huysum and Rachel Ruysch; Herr Rosebud before his Wouvermans; Herr Jansen before Saints Peter and Paul; and Homo stays outside, in silent converse with the stone lions on the steps. I hope I shall soon have the pleasure of seeing you in my studio. Don't let yourself be alarmed by these two malicious gentlemen with the idea that I shall try to capture you for a sitter. I must paint your portrait some time, of course--it is a fate you cannot escape; but my brush is by no means so presumptuous as these wicked men will try to represent it. When you are a little more at home among us, perhaps; but now--good-by!"
She nodded to the others, and disappeared into a side hall, into which Rosenbusch also retreated, after a short stay among the old German masters.
"We don't enforce this separation very rigidly, of course," said Jansen, smiling. "But we have found out that when we all go together we cannot bring ourselves into a really proper mood for study; we neither learn nor enjoy. At best, we only get into a discussion of technical points--problems of color and secrets of the palette, which are especially unimportant to me, as I make no use of that kind of thing."
"But why do not you prefer to hold your Sunday solemnities before the Medusa or the Barberini Faun?" said Felix.
"Because I know the Glyptothek by heart. And besides, I do not believe that what we ought to look at in the works of the great masters is the purely artistic side, if we want to profit by their study. Every one who has passed his apprenticeship has his own ideas and prejudices and obstinacies on those points. What we ought to get from them are characteristics; force, refinement, and contempt for small means used to small ends. But these I can learn just as well from a symphony of Beethoven as from a noble building--from a gallery of paintings as from a tragedy of Shakespeare; and then next day I can turn them to account in my own work. And it is just these things that Rubens gives me better than any other here--Rubens, whose works fill this whole room. As soon as I come near him, he makes me forget all the photographic pettiness, the fashionable rubbish and 'art-association' absurdities of our own day."
"Tell me yourself," he continued, pointing to the walls of the Rubens room, "do not you too feel as though you were in your tropical wildernesses again, where Nature hardly knows how to restrain her overflowing vigor, and where all that moves or grows seems fairly intoxicated with its own abounding strength? Here, no one dreams that there is an everyday, prosaic life outside, that presses all created things into its service--men serving the State, women mere family beasts of burden, horses harnessed to the plough--and only suffers untamed animals to exist in its midst when they are on show in zoölogical gardens or fair-booths. Here the whole glorious creation swarms unadorned and vigorous as on the seventh day after chaos; and all that we conceal and pamper in our dapper civilization appears here in all innocence in the open light of day. Look at this brown, lusty peasant and this beautiful woman--these sleeping nymphs watched by the satyrs--this glorious throng of the blessed and the damned--all this unveiled humanity is living and acting for itself alone, and never dreams whether prudish and pedantic fools are looking on and taking umbrage at it. You know that nothing is really good or bad in itself; it is only the power of thinking about it that makes it so. And these creatures have never troubled themselves with thinking. They are enjoying life fully and overflowingly--like the fat little satyr's wife above there, nursing her twins--or they are absorbed in the sharp struggle for existence. Look at this lion-hunt! Horace Vernet, who wielded no unskillful brush, has painted one too. But just there you can see the contrast between great art and petty art. Here everything is mingled in a raging turmoil, so that there is not a hand's breadth between--here is the very instant of highest conflict, the climax of struggle and defense, fury and death--every muscle strained to its utmost, and everything in such deadly yet triumphant earnest that one trembles and yet is filled with the spirit of victory. For all true strength is full of a certain triumphant joy. But the French picture is like a tableau in a circus, where, in spite of all the grimacing and posturing, there is no real struggle à l'outrance, And look at the purely artistic side; here all the outlines are so melted into one another, so lost in each other in spite of the strongest contrasts, that they necessarily lead the eye into a network from which it cannot escape, where it never has an opportunity to wish for anything else, or indeed to think that anything else is possible. A skillful modern artist, going to work with his patchwork of knowledge on the various subjects, could not possibly produce such a work. You will always find holes and gaps--stiff triangles and hexagons between the legs of the horses, and the figures kept apart as nicely and neatly as though they were going to be packed up in their cases again after it was all over."
He stood a good half hour before the lion-hunt, looking at it as though for the first time. And then, as though tearing himself away with difficulty, he took Felix by the arm and said, "You know I am no mere fanatical doctrinaire. Nobody can have more respect for the other great artists of the golden age. But still it always seems to me as though I did not find, even in the greatest and most immortal of them, a true balance between art and Nature. There is always an excess of technical aim over unaffected seeing and feeling--an excess of 'can' over 'must.' Even with Raphael (whom, it is true, they say one doesn't really know until one has seen his work in Rome), I feel a too great excess of the purely spiritual and abstract over the sensuous. And with the glorious Titian and the Venetians, this paradisaic naturalness, this effortless flow of beauty from an exhaustless soil, this breathing forth of pure and unadulterated force and freedom, is only found in their greatest moments; while this man, like the immortal gods, seems never to have known an hour of poverty or insufficiency."
He talked on in this fashion for some time, as though to pour out his heart before his friend. But just as they were standing before the little picture of Rubens and his beautiful young wife in the garden, walking beside a bed of tulips, they heard Angelica's voice behind them.
"I cannot help it, gentlemen; you must tear yourselves away from this well-fed domestic happiness and these tedious box-hedges, and come with me. I have something to show you that is quite as much a masterpiece of its kind. Please have confidence in my artistic eye for this once, and come quickly, before the miracle disappears again."
"What is this beautiful thing you have discovered, Fräulein?" asked Felix, laughing, "that instantly vanishes again if one is not immediately on the watch?"
"Something that is alive--but hardly according to your taste, as I imagine it," answered the painter. "But our master there--"
"A beautiful woman?"
"Ah! and what a woman! I have followed her about like a young Don Juan ever since we have been here, and looked askance at her as I stood before the pictures. She seems to be a little near-sighted--at least she half shuts
