"You are right," he interrupted, his frank, youthful face suddenly clouding. "You have expressed something which I often said to myself at first, but always thrust back again into a secret corner of my heart. Do you really find that my drawings show power for something greater and better? At the best I would fall far short of a great artist! Meanwhile, you know Schiller's poem, 'Pegasus in Harness.' A horse that suffers itself to be harnessed to the plough, even though it may be of good blood, proves that it has no wings. But perhaps it might have served for something better than ploughing. And yet, if you knew--if only you knew my Christel and the children!"
"I do not for an instant doubt that you have a charming wife and lovely children, Herr Hans Doppler; and nothing is farther from my thoughts than to render you suspicious of your domestic happiness. But that you, being so young, can regard it as final, as something never to be interrupted, never to be laid aside even temporarily for the sake of a higher aim--and you were even on the way to the beloved land of art, and had certainly heard and seen enough of it at the academy to have some presentiment of the joys awaiting you there--and nevertheless--"
"Oh, my lady!" he cried, suddenly starting up as if the narrow coupé had become too close and prison-like for him, "you are repeating my own thoughts! How often in the night, especially in clear spring nights, when I have awakened and heard my dear wife's quiet breathing near me; while the children were lying asleep in the neighboring room, and the moonlight was moving so weirdly and quietly over the low walls; and the ancient clock, which the old man wound so regularly, and which dates from the Thirty Years' War, was ticking drowsily to and fro--how often I have been forced to spring out of bed and look down into the valley through the little window with the round pane! And when I have seen the Tauber flowing along in its narrow bed as hastily as if it could not escape too soon from its restraining banks and throw itself into the Main, and with it into the Rhine, and thence into the ocean--how much I have suffered, as I ground my teeth together and slunk back to bed tired and saddened, I have never told a human soul. It seemed the blackest ingratitude against the kind fate which had dealt with me so gently. But the day after I could never touch a brush; and if I saw in a paper the word Rome or Naples, the blood rushed to my head as though I were some deserter caught on the road, and dragged handcuffed back to his barracks."
He thrust his hand through his curly hair, and fell back in his seat. She had regarded him during his excited speech with a keen, fixed look, and, for the first time, his face interested her. The innocent, youthful expression had disappeared; his clear, beautifully formed eyes blazed; and his slender figure, in spite of the common black coat, gained something animated, almost heroic, as well beseemed the descendant of the "great burgomaster."
"I understand your mood," said the stranger, composedly taking a cigarette from a small silver box and lighting it with a waxen taper, "but just so much the less do I comprehend your action. To be sure, I myself have always been accustomed to do only what satisfies my nature's deepest needs. I acknowledge no chains. Either they are too weak, and I break them; or they are too strong, and strangle me. To remain in them alive is for me an impossibility. Do you smoke? Do not be embarrassed. You see, I set the example."
He shook his head, thanked her, and became all attention.
"As I said," continued the lady, blowing the smoke slowly before her with her beautiful, expressive lips, "I have no right to criticise your plan of life. But you must allow me to wonder how a man can complain of a difficulty rather than help himself out of it, especially where it would be so easy. Do you fear that your wife would be untrue to you if you should take an art journey?"
"Christel? Untrue to me?" In spite of his gloominess he laughed aloud.
"Pardon!" she said calmly; "I forgot that she is a German, and, moreover, a Rothenburg woman. But just so much less do I comprehend why you condemn yourself to a lifetime of such work; representing only the church and klimperthor, or, as it is called--"
"Klingerthor, my lady."