The young man, whose glance now fell for the first time upon the picture, suddenly started back, but rather with the gesture of one who is unpleasantly startled than of one who is agreeably surprised. And well might he be startled, when he suddenly recognized in the hunter by the willow-tree the Wild Zehren, the man who had only needed an opportunity to bathe his hands in the blood that flowed in the veins of Prince Karl of Prora-Wiek.
It had been now eight years since I had seen him, and in my whole life I had only seen him twice: once in the dim light of an autumn afternoon as he flew by me at a rapid gallop, and the second time in the dark forest by the glimmering moonlight; but the slender figure and the pale, refined face had impressed themselves indelibly upon my memory.
"Beautiful!" said the prince. "Admirable! superb! This sunlight, this heath--I know all this--know it perfectly. I tell you, Zehren, even to the minutest details it is nature itself! Is it not?"
Arthur did not answer, for if the confusion of the prince at the first sight of the picture had surprised him, he entirely lost his presence of mind when he caught sight of me in the background, where I had been standing motionless the whole time. I think there were few men whom Arthur von Zehren would not have preferred to meet in his cousin's studio just then.
"Is it not so, Zehren?" the prince repeated, rather impatiently.
"Certainly; it is perfectly superb: I said so before," replied Arthur, evidently in doubt whether it would not be best to overlook me altogether.
But as his hesitation did not prevent him from casting uneasy glances at me, which caused the eyes of the prince to turn in the same direction, the result was that the latter perceived, at the end of the studio, a tall, broad-shouldered, plainly-dressed young man, with curly blond beard and hair, whom he had already seen in the character of King Richard in the picture at the exhibition, and now again saw in the hunting-piece on the easel. Whom could he suppose that he had before him but one of those persons who go from studio to studio, now as a model for Joseph, and now for Pharaoh? And though it is probable that the prince was by no means addicted to minute observation of models in artists' studios, at this moment any opportunity of diverting attention from the unlucky picture was too welcome not to be seized at once.
"Ah! here is our original for King What's-his-name! A splendid fellow, whom I should like to see in the regiment of my cousin, Count Schlachtensee; don't you say so, Zehren?"
The unlucky Arthur's part of second-fiddle was a hard one to play to-day. But it was impossible for him, now that I had been brought directly into the conversation, to pretend, not to know his old schoolmate, apart from the fact that Paula would hardly have forgiven such a piece of insolence; and he perceived, moreover, by my looks that I was malicious enough to enjoy his confusion. Indeed I fear that I even indulged in a smile whose significance could not escape him, so he had no alternative--it was highly exasperating, but he really had no other--but to turn to me with as pleasant a smile as he could force to his whitened lips, and while toying with his eyeglass, so as to have no hand free to offer me, to accost me in an affectedly condescending tone:
"Ah! see there! are we at last out of the--ahem--again? Congratulate you--congratulate you with all my heart--upon my honor--ahem!"