"Christina received them in a beautifully-fitting dress, which set off her well-developed, pretty figure to advantage. She wielded the massive soup-ladle with great skill.
"I suppose I ought to describe the five people at this dinner-table; but Traugott's adventures are waiting to be told, and such pictures of said people as I could sketch would be very hasty. You are aware that Elias Roos wears a round wig, and I could add little more, as, from what he has said, you can see before you the little, stoutish man in his leather-coloured suit with gilt buttons. Of Traugott I have much to say, because this is his story which I am telling, and he is the principal character in it. If it is true that our thoughts, words, and works--coming, as they do, from the inner depths of our natures--do so shape and model the outward man that there results a certain marvellous harmony of the whole--not to be explained, only to be felt--which we term 'character,' Traugott's appearance will be plain to you from my story without any further description. If this is not the case, all further description would be useless, and you can take this tale as not read. The two strange gentlemen are uncle and nephew, well-to-do business men, and 'friends'--that is to say, business connections--of Roos's. They come from Koenigsberg, wear English clothes, carry about mahogany boot-jacks from London, are connoisseurs in the arts, and, taking them all round, persons of much cultivation. The uncle is making a collection of pictures, which is why he pocketed Traugott's sketch.
"As I perceive that Christina will speedily vanish from my story, I had better give a few indications of what she is like before she makes her exit. She is of medium height, with a finely-developed figure; about two or three and twenty, with a round face, a short nose, slightly turned up, and kindly light-blue eyes, which say, with a charming smile, to every man she meets, 'I'm going to get married very soon (don't much mind to whom). She has a beautiful, fair complexion; hair not over red; most kissable lips, and a mouth rather too large, which she has an odd way of drawing on one side, though two rows of pearls are thereby rendered visible. If the next house were on fire, and the flames were catching the room, she would just, quickly, feed her canary and put away the clothes from the wash, and then go and tell her father that the house was on fire. No almond-tart ever came to grief in her hands, and her butter-sauce is always of exactly the right thickness, because she always stirs it from left to right, never the other way. As Elias Roos has just poured out the last of the bottle into old Franz's glass, I further remark, hastily, that it is because he's going to marry her that she's so fond of Traugott; for what in the world would become of her if she weren't to get married? After dinner Roos proposed to the strangers a walk round the walls. How gladly would Traugott have made his escape and been by himself! Never had he known anything like the thoughts, feelings, and sensations which he had experienced to-day. Escape he could not, however, for just as he was slipping out at the door, without even kissing Christina's hand, Herr Elias seized him by the coat-tails, crying, 'Come, partner; you're not going to give us the slip, are you, son-in-law?' So he had to stay.
"A well known professor of natural philosophy was of opinion that Nature, in her capacity of a skilled experimentalist, has somewhere or other set up a tremendous electrical machine, from which mysterious conductors stretch all through our lives; and, though we avoid them and keep clear of them as well as we can, at some given moment or other we can't help treading on them, and then the flash and the shock dart through us, altering everything in us completely. No doubt Traugott had stepped on to one of these conductors at the moment when he began sketching the old man and the page, without having any idea that they were standing behind him in the flesh; for the strange apparition of them had gone darting through him like a flash of lightning, and he felt that he now clearly knew and understood things which had formerly been but presages and dreams. The shyness which used to tie his tongue when conversation turned upon things which lay hidden, like holy mysteries, in the depths of his being, had vanished; and so, when the uncle began finding fault with the wonderful figures, partly painted, partly carved, in the Artus-Hof, as being 'in bad taste,' and particularly the soldier-pictures as being 'wild and extravagant,' Traugott boldly maintained that, though it was possible that they might not strictly conform to the canons of art, still, it had been the case with him, as well as with many others, that a marvellous world of imagination had dawned upon him in the Artus Hof, and that some of the figures had told him, in looks full of life, as well as in distinct words, that he was a mighty master himself, and able to make and form like him from whose mysterious atelier they had proceeded.
"Herr Elias really looked, if possible, even a greater ass than usual when the youngster spoke these lofty words; but the uncle, with a strange, slightly sneering smile, said:
"'I repeat what I said before, that I can't understand how you should be a man of business, and not devote yourself to art altogether.' The man was excessively antipathetic to Traugott, somehow; and he therefore, during the walk, kept to the nephew, who was very pleasant and friendly.
"'Ah, Heavens!' the nephew said, 'how I envy you that talent of yours! If I could only draw like you! I really have a great turn for it; I've drawn some capital eyes, and ears and noses, and two or three heads even; but oh!--the office, you know,--the office!'
"'I thought,' said Traugott, 'that when one was conscious of a real gift--a true calling--for art, one ought to devote one's self to it altogether.'
"'Be an artist, you mean? How can you say such a thing? Look here, my dear fellow; I've thought over this subject perhaps more than most people; indeed I have such a reverence for art that I've gone deeper into this, almost, than I can explain, so that I can only give you a hint or two of what I mean.'
"He looked so learned and so profoundly thoughtful as he said this, that Traugott really felt a sort of veneration for him.