I said nothing to that. I was astonished by your keenness, because there really were many resemblances of character between the lady of the portrait and Michael Angelo's unhappy friend. Her fate, too, was curiously like Vittoria Colonna's. Of course, I may not tell how I came to know her story. At that time it was still in progress, and the change that came later--well----
She was the widow of a well-known architect. His house was a social centre for a swarm of talented young artists, among them K----, the painter of the portrait. He was a jolly young fellow, easy-going and saucy. The maelstrom of the years at the Academy had not destroyed the perfect childlikeness of his genius, and, as a result, the air of being blasé and weighted with the woes of the world that he put on in deference to his varied experiences was all the more becoming as at the slightest provocation he dropped this manner and burst into a ringing laugh.
Hedwig soon realised there was a sound core to the young man's rather giddy character, and since everybody felt that his talent was of the first order and only needed a little cultivation to bear glorious fruit, she took pleasure in looking out for him. And he, for his part, surrendered himself ardently to the guidance of a woman a few years older than himself, a woman whom he came to adore.
He brought her his sketches, and she passed upon them, with a sharp eye for both the painter's sense of form and for the tiniest slip of his still uncertain hand. He made her the confidante of his creative ideas, which gushed from his brain impetuously, and he received them back from her matured and refined. There was not a corner of his heart that did not lie open to her view, and she was wise enough even to place the right estimate upon the youthful coarseness with which his sentiments sometimes bubbled over. Another woman might have felt hurt, while she took it as evidence of his surplus of strength, and smiled and gently poked fun at him, and so brought harmony out of the chaos within him.
She showered riches on him, and what she got back in return was scarcely less in value. Held fast at the side of an ill-tempered aging husband, an ailing woman herself and growing weaker from year to year, she had matured in mind at an early age; and she had paid toll in the loss of youthful spirits and elasticity. But now whole streams of a fresh blithe life poured out of him into her. She felt rejuvenated in his presence. And a tender motherliness, the shadow of a joy that had been denied her, was interwoven with her other feelings for him.
Her husband was glad to see his lonely wife occupied and did not interfere. And why should he have interfered? Never was there less occasion for jealousy. The young scapegrace, as a matter of fact, even confided his love affairs to her, and she tried by smiling advice to render them at least innocuous enough not to hamper the development of his talent.
Three years passed. Hedwig's husband died. Her illness had grown worse, and at the physician's advice she went south, to Nice.
She lived in great retirement, broken into only now and then, when a young genius long of hair and none too clean of shirt turned up in her modest drawing-room, generally in money difficulties and bringing a letter of recommendation from her friend.
Her one diversion was corresponding with K----, whose work and position kept him in Berlin.
He often wrote her that he adored her like a saint.