"Why do we talk so much of such a crew?" I asked. "Rather tell me something about her. How does she live? How does she get on with her painting? Has she made great progress? And has she found sale for her pictures?"
"Made progress? Find sale?" cried the doctor. "Pretty questions, indeed! I tell you she is in a fair way to make her fortune. They fairly fight over her pictures."
"Doctor," I said, "I do not think this is a proper subject for jesting."
The doctor, who had spoken in his shrillest tones, tuned down his voice a couple of octaves by an energetic "ahem!" and said:
"You are right; but it is no jest--merely a lie. As I see, however, that I have not made any progress in the art of lying, it is probably best for me to tell you, or rather show you, the truth. Come with me."
He lighted two candles that stood under the looking-glass, and led me into an adjoining room, which he had first to unlock.
"I have put them here," he said, pointing to the wall, which was hung with large and small pictures, "because they are not safe from the boys anywhere else. Now what do you think of them?"
Taking the candles from the doctor, and letting the light fall upon the pictures, I saw at once that they were all by Paula's hand. I had too long watched her studies, and too deeply entered into her way of seeing and of reproducing what she saw, to be liable to any error.
There were three or four heads, all idealized, the originals of which I fancied that I recognized; two or three genre-pieces--scenes from the prison, which I had already seen in the first draught; and finally a landscape--a great reach of coast with stormy sea--the sketch of which I remembered perfectly. At this time I understood but little of painting, and least of all did I know how to justify my opinion when formed. Now I can say that I really perceived a decisive improvement in these pictures--an improvement both in the technical execution and in the freer and broader style of treatment: especially did the heads strike me as exhibiting remarkable power, and I enthusiastically expressed my opinion to the doctor in the best words I could find.
"Yes," said he, leaning his head first on one side and then on the other, and contemplating the pictures with melancholy pride, "you are right; perfectly right. She is a genius; but of what use is genius when it has no name? The world is stupid, my friend; incredibly stupid: it can discover anything grand or beautiful soon enough when the one or two enlightened heads that a century produces have given their testimony to it, one after the other; then the thing is an article of faith that the boys recite from their benches and the sparrows chatter upon the roofs. But when the gentlemen have to pass judgment upon the work of an author whose name they have never before heard, or the picture of an artist who comes before them for the first time, then they are at the end of their lesson and do not know what to think. How long would these pictures have travelled from one exhibition to another, or hung in the dealers' shops, if I had allowed them to hang there? So they have all travelled into my possession, and not to America, England, and Russia, as the good Paula believes. But do not look so seriously at me. My part of Mæcenas did not last long; her last picture at the Artists' Exposition--you know it, and are in it yourself--Richard the Lion-heart sick in his tent, visited by an Arab physician: well, that picture, as I hear, has been bought by the commerzienrath--your commerzienrath--strange to say, for the man knows just as much about paintings as I do about making money, and Paula, by my advice, fixed its price at a considerable sum. You see I am now superfluous. Sic tansit gloria!"