“Beneath the linden-trees which cast their shadows on the door of my homestead, I decided to carry out this resolution. I embraced for the last time my good father, my beloved mother, my sister Lotte, and my little brothers, who clamored to accompany me in my peregrinations. Profoundly moved, and bathed in tears, I entered on life’s highway, which others find covered with flowers. But—courage; man is born to labor, and I felt that Heaven would crown my efforts. I like the profession which I had chosen, because it is grand and noble; its object is the alleviation of our fellows, and the results are beautiful, although the drudgery seems painful.”
“And you made progress?”
Fritz Stein replied in German, inflicting an excited blow on his seat, and making a slight reverence.
A short time afterwards, the two new friends separated. One of the Frenchmen, who was placed in front of the door, saw that he was about to ascend the staircase, and offered to place on the shoulders of the German his Spanish cloak, lined with fur, to which the other showed some resistance, and the Frenchman, with a look of scorn, replaced it in his berth.
“Have you understood what they were talking about?” demanded he of his countryman.
“Truly,” rejoined the first (who was a commission merchant), “Latin is not my forte; but the red and pale youth seems to me a species of pale Werther, and I have heard there is in his history something of Charlotte. So is it with those little children described in a German novel. By good luck, instead of recurring to the pistol to console him, he prefers punch; it is less sentimental, but much more philosophical, and more German. As to the Spaniard, I believe he is a species of Don Quixote, protector of the destitute, who shares his cloak with the poor; that joined to these high allurements, his look, firm and ardent like a flame, his countenance, dull and wan like the light of the moon, form an altogether perfect Spaniard.”
“You know,” said the first, “that in my quality of painter of history, I go to Tarifa with the object of painting the siege of that city at the moment when the son of Guzman made a sign to his father to sacrifice him before surrendering the place, and this young man will serve me for a model, and I am thus sure to succeed with my tableau. I have never in my life seen nature approach so near the ideal.”
“There, then, ye gentlemen-artists! Always poets!” replied the commercial traveller. “For my part, if I am not deceived by the natural grace of this man, his lady foot well cast, the elegance of his profile, and his form, I would characterize him as a taureador (bull-fighter). Who knows? perhaps it is Montés himself, possessing the joint attractions of riches and generosity.”
“A taureador!” cried the artist; “a man of the people! You jest.”
“Not at all,” said the other; “I am very far, indeed, from jesting. You have not lived, like me, in Spain, and you do not know the aristocratic type of the nation. You will see, you will see. This is my opinion. Thanks to the progress of equality and fraternity, the insulting manners of the aristocracy disappear daily, and in a short time hence they will be found only among the men of the people.”