Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

But I halted at the door and looked back once more at the singular man, who had thrown himself again into his chair and was watching me angrily through his round spectacles.

"Doctor, you said to me once that you could not well carry more than four glasses, and this evening you have drunk six. So I will ascribe the unfriendly way in which you dismiss me--for what other reason I cannot imagine--to the fifth and sixth glass; and now good-by."

I left the room without his making any attempt to detain me, and as I closed the door behind me I heard him burst into a peal of shrill laughter.

"This comes from a man's not keeping within his measure," I said to myself, excusing him.

But as I reached the street below, and the frosty night air blew upon my heated face, I began to perceive that I had not exactly kept within my own measure. My gait as I traversed the empty, badly-lighted streets, now swept by a sharp December wind, was less steady than usual, and strange thoughts passed through my head, and I had curious fancies, whose origin could only be traced to the glasses I had emptied. And once I had to laugh aloud, for I imagined I heard the voice of the short, fat commerzienrath saying quite distinctly: "My dear son, we must mind what we are about or we shall not get home at all, and our Hermine will be alarmed."

CHAPTER III.

As the next day was Sunday, I had leisure to reflect upon the singular behavior of the doctor the evening before; but either the affair was in itself too complicated, or else my memory had suffered from the effects of my strong potations, and I could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion. That the strange man loved me much, after his fashion, I had innumerable proofs, and his anger on the previous evening had been rather that of an elder brother, who sees that the younger, whom he loves, is straying from the right way.

But what upon earth had I done amiss, then? It could not be possible that the doctor could seriously reproach me with my determination to make my own way in the world. He himself had trusted to his own resources very early in life, and with the toughest perseverance carried out his own plans.

Assuredly the fact that I had chosen the lot of a workman could be no crime in the eyes of a man whose heart beat so warmly for the poor, and who devoted his whole life to the relief of poverty and misery. The cause of his wrath must lie elsewhere; and after long pondering I came around to the point, that the picture of Paula's, upon which I figured as Richard the Lion-heart, had been the starting-point of our dispute. Had he taken it amiss that Paula held fast to her model? Did he grudge me the honor of being painted by her? Was he vexed that this picture was not in his possession, but in the hands of a man whom he so hated and despised as the commerzienrath? These were all questions worth considering. I concluded at last that my supposition must be correct, and resolved that this very day, before I called on Paula, I would have a look at the cause of our quarrel.

So about noon I set out for the academy, in the halls of which the great exhibition of paintings had been open now for some weeks. It was my first visit to an exhibition of the sort. My knowledge of pictures up to this time was restricted to a few old discolored saints in the churches of my native town, the engravings and family portraits in the superintendent's house, and the pictures which I had seen growing under Paula's hand. Still, as I had over and over contemplated and studied these few with never-ceasing delight, and had for years been witness of the development of a genuine artist nature, I had, perhaps, if no more, at least no less enthusiasm for beauty than the hundreds that flooded the exhibition-rooms. I cannot describe the feeling with which I, now following the throng, and now separated from it, wandered through the lofty rooms. I had never seen anything like this. I could not have conceived it possible. Were there then so many men who knew how to handle pencils and colors that the walls of this labyrinth of rooms were hung from ceiling to floor with the works of their skill? And was the world so gloriously rich? Was the sky that bent above the sunny bays of the South in truth of so marvellous a blue? Did snow-clad mountains really tower so majestically into the luminous ether? Was the twilight thus mysterious in the pine-fringed gorges of our own mountains? Did such infinite multitudes of birds indeed hover over the enormous rivers of Africa? Did the palaces of Italian cities rise thus gorgeously above the narrow canals along which black gondolas were noiselessly gliding? Were there halls in princely mansions whose marble floors thus clearly reflected the luxurious furniture and the forms of the guests? Yes; all these things that I here saw depicted really existed, and much more which my eager fancy added, half in dreaming. For the more I looked, examined, and admired, the stronger came over me a sense of having seen all this before; yes, seen so clearly that I could tell the artist what he had done well, and where he had fallen far short of the lovely reality. Often I felt really angry with a stupid painter who had seen so dimly, and so poorly represented what little he saw. In a word, in the briefest space of time I had become a finished connoisseur of the noble art of the painter, with the solitary drawback that I could in no case have told how the artist should go to work to make his picture better; but perhaps this was a special qualification for the office of critic.