A few days after the wicked fairy's successful Thursday two fresh pieces of news were circulated in Berlin: one was that Goswyn von Sydow had fought another duel in his sister-in-law's behalf, and the other stated that Countess Lenzdorff had given the fashionable artist Riedel permission to paint her grand-daughter as "Heather Blossom." The truth as to the duel was never fully discovered. Goswyn von Sydow certainly appeared for a while with his arm in a sling, but, as he stoutly maintained that he had sprained his wrist in a fall from his horse, people were forced to be satisfied with this explanation. If some very sharp-sighted men added that in certain cases it was a man's duty to lie, no matter how strict might be his ideas of truth,--why, that was their affair.
As for the portrait, it was true that the old Countess had acceded to Riedel's request to be allowed to paint Erika as "Heather Blossom," of course not in the artist's studio, but in the Countess Lenzdorff's drawing-room, where Riedel worked away for a week, three hours daily, seated before a large easel, with colour-boxes beside him.
The result of his well-meant efforts was a commonplace affair, something between Ary Scheffer's Mignon and Gabriel Max's "Gretchen at her Wheel."
Naturally the Countess Lenzdorff was in no wise charmed by this picture, although in view of the ability of the artist in question she had not expected anything better.
"A 'Book of Beauty' painter, that Riedel," she said of him: "he flatters every one alike, and is blind to wrinkles, scars, and what he calls defects of all kinds. Such fellows as he are sure to be a success in the present day, when truth is at a discount. They never dissipate a single illusion, and the world--the world of society--delights in them."
She certainly took no pains not to dissipate illusions for the world to which she belonged: on the contrary, she delighted to destroy them, jeering coram publico at the beautifying salve which the model members of society as well as her favourite artists and literary men plastered over every peculiarity of humanity, and which in life passes for 'kindly criticism' and in art for 'idealistic conception.' She spent her time in tearing down the rose-coloured curtains from the windows of her acquaintances, and naturally her acquaintances did not like it; they loved their rose-coloured curtains, which excluded the pitiless garish daylight, admitting only a becoming twilight in which all the sharp edges and dark stains of life faded into indistinctness.
The Countess's rage for broad daylight seemed cruel to her acquaintances, while she in her turn called their love of twilight cowardly and when she alluded to the fashionable world usually designated it briefly as "Kapilavastu."
Erika asked her grandmother the meaning of this word. Upon which the old lady shrugged her shoulders and replied, "Kapilavastu is the name of the town in which Buddha grew up, the town where his parents hoped to shield him forever from the sight of old age, death, and disease!" Then, with a quiet laugh, she added, as if to herself, "Oh, what a world it is!"
All her life long she had sneered at the 'world of fashion,' which did not at all interfere with the fact that she would have greatly disliked being aught but 'a great lady.'
When Riedel had completed his picture of "Heather Blossom" to his own satisfaction, and enriched it with his valuable signature, he laid it as a tribute at the feet of the Countess Lenzdorff, begging permission to exhibit his masterpiece at Schulte's, 'unter den Linden.'