In Paradise (Musaicum Must Classics). Paul Heyse

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, half-and-half. It wasn't so easy as it may seem to you here--to my shame! Besides a trace of conscience, which was always reminding me that

      'Man, after all, has higher goals to seek

      Than simply feeding seven times a week;'

      besides my own humiliation before myself and a few of my good colleagues, I was hampered by a real lack of skill. It needs a good deal to take all the manliness out of one's self, so that one can fit himself to all the miserable complications, the twisted deformities and tameness of our modern civilization. But it only depends, after all, on one's capability of getting the humor out of the thing. The idea that I, an unmitigated pagan, should establish a manufactory of images of saints, struck me as so indescribably rich that one fine day I actually set to work to model a Saint Sebastian, in which task my knowledge of anatomy stood me in good stead. But, even here, I soon found that it is only 'clothes that make the man.' It was only when I betook myself to making draperies, trains, and sleeves, that the result took on the true devotional air such as the public is accustomed to and desires. And, since then, I have grown prosperous so fast that now I employ eight or ten assistants; and, if it goes on, I shall some day bid farewell to temporal affairs, in the odor of sanctity and as rich as----." (He named a colleague who enjoyed a continued rush of business.)

      "Yes, my dear Icarus," continued he, still more laughingly, as Felix made no reply to these revelations, "you would not have believed it all, I know, when in the first fire of youth we rode our proud hobbies, and called every man a low fool who, in art or life, proved faithless to his ideals by a straw's breadth. But the mill of every-day life rubs off much that a man believed was bound to him as with iron--like a very part of himself. And here you have an example, worth your deep consideration, of that celebrated 'liberty' you think to find here. If I allow myself the liberty of doing what I cannot give up, I must, at the same time, make up my mind to work at absurdities with which my heart has no sympathy. In order to be an artist, such as I wish to be, I am compelled to make Nuremberg toys and to display them in the market-places. But, after all--behind my own back, as it were--I continue quietly to be my own master. Let thy troubled heart take courage, beloved son! thy old Dædalus hasn't even yet become quite so utterly bad as these trade-wares show him. I think you will give me back your esteem if I lead you now out of my holy into my profane atelier--out of my tailor's-shop into my paradise!"

CHAPTER IV.

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      With these words he opened the little door that separated the two studios and passed in, followed by Felix.

      "You will find an old acquaintance again," he said. "I wonder whether friend Homo still remembers you. He has certainly had time to grow old and dull."

      The dog was still lying in front of the old sofa, on the straw mat, and seemed to have slept quietly on, although the girl had seated herself near him and had buried both feet in his thick coat as in a rug. Evidently the old dog thought it not disagreeable, but rather pleasant than otherwise, to be rubbed and trampled on by the little shoes. At all events he uttered a comfortable growl from time to time, like a purring cat.

      To the girl herself the time had seemed very long. At first, when she heard voices out in the garden, she had climbed upon a chair close to the window, and, pulling her skirt over her bare shoulders that she might not be seen by any chance passer-by, had peeped out curiously through the roses. The strange young man, who spoke so long and seriously with Jansen, had taken her fancy greatly, with his tall, slender figure, his small head above the broad shoulders, and the fiery glance of his brown eyes, that wandered absently about. She had seen directly that he must be somebody of distinction. But, when he disappeared with Jansen into the arbor, her post at the window grew uncomfortable. She climbed slowly and thoughtfully down, stationed herself before a little looking-glass on the wall, and looked attentively at her own youthful figure, which only seemed to her anything especially remarkable now that an artist copied from it. Only to-day she was even less satisfied than usual with her face, and tried whether it could not be improved if she screwed up her mouth as much as possible, drew in her nostrils, and opened her eyes very wide. She was vexed because she could not make herself as beautiful as the plaster-heads that stood above her on the brackets. But suddenly she had to laugh at the horribly distorted face she made; her old high spirits came back; she thrust out her tongue at her reflection in the glass, and was pleased to see how pretty and red it looked between her glittering white teeth. Then she shook her thick red hair and went singing, and patting her shoulders in time with the tune, up and down the room, so that the sparrows were frightened and fluttered out at the window. Then she stood still for a long while and looked at the casts and clay models around her on the walls; and seemed especially interested in the half-finished marble bust. It reminded her again of the stranger outside in the arbor, whose head sprung just so from his stately shoulders. Finally she tired of this also; and besides, she began to feel a little hungry. She found in the cupboard, behind her in the corner to which the sculptor had directed her, a few rolls and an opened bottle of red wine. There was all sorts of rubbish besides in the cupboard; a masquerader's costume, pieces of gold-stamped leather tapestry, of blue and red silk and brocade, with large flowers in their patterns, and a saint's halo, cut out of paper and painted with beautiful golden rays--that might have done service for a tableau vivant, or some other profane purpose. The idle girl seized upon this last, fastened it on her head with the two ribbons still attached to it, and went again before the looking-glass, where she smiled and made faces at her own reflection. Then she took a piece of blue damask out of the pile of things, and threw it like a cloak over her white shoulders. Her hair flowed freely over it, so that at a distance, when one did not see her uncovered neck, she looked like a mediæval madonna, who had stepped out of her frame and had wandered into some merry company. The girl thought herself very beautiful, and quite worthy of reverence in this disguise, and secretly congratulated herself on the surprise and admiration of the sculptor, when he should find her so dressed. That she might await his return more comfortably, she had seated herself on the sofa, put a glass of wine on a chair beside her, and begun to eat a roll. She had come across a portfolio of photographs of celebrated pictures, and had laid it open in her lap, resting her feet on the dog's back; and so she had sat now a full half-hour, absorbed in looking at the pictures (which she found generally very ugly), when the little door opened and Jansen again entered the room.

      At the same moment she started as though shot up by a spring--so rudely that the old dog, giving a low howl and shaking himself, also scrambled up from his sleep.

      She had seen the young stranger enter behind the sculptor; and now she stood in the middle of the atelier, drawing the little blue silk flag as tightly as she could across her breast, her eyes flaming with anger, and her whole body trembling with excitement.

      "You need not be afraid, my child," said the sculptor, "this gentleman is also an artist. Good Heavens! How magnificently you have dressed yourself! The halo becomes you excellently. Turn round a little--"

      She shook her head violently.

      "Let me go! I will never come again!" she said half aloud. "You haven't kept your word to me! Oh! it is shameful!"

      "But, Zenz--"

      "No, never СКАЧАТЬ