"Then I prefer to withdraw at once to my feeding-place and to await you there. I have made a solemn vow never again to visit that accursed Sybarite just before meal-time. It smells so devilishly of ambergris, pâti de foie gras and East-Indian birds'-nests, so that after coming away a man feels like a thorough vagabond over his wretched dumplings. The devil take these lazy voluptuaries! Long live energy and sauerkraut!"
After this fierce outburst he nodded smilingly to the two others, slouched his big hat over his left ear, and turned, whistling, into a side street.
"Who is this 'Fat Rossel' against whom our friend Rosebud displays all his thorns?" asked Felix.
"He isn't really so fierce as he tries to make himself out. The two are good comrades, and would go through fire and water for one another in case of need. This so-called 'Fat Rossel'--one Edward Rossel--is a very rich man who isn't obliged to earn his living by painting--and for that reason lets his great talent lie fallow. However, he has reduced his intellectual laziness and amateur enjoyment of art to a system, and concerning this system Rosenbusch invariably falls foul of him; for he himself, in spite of all his 'energy,' has never produced anything of much account. Here we are at the house."
They passed through the pretty little front garden, before which they had halted the day previous while on their way to the Pinakothek, entered the door of a villa-like house, and mounted a staircase covered with soft carpets. The hall shone with polished marbles, bronze candelabra, and beautiful flowering plants in porcelain pots, that perfumed the whole vestibule.
When they entered the high-studded room above, that served as a studio, but looked more like a museum of choice objects and works of art than it did like a regular artist's workshop, there rose from a low divan, covered with a leopard's skin, a singular figure. On a portly but by no means clumsy body rested a stately head, in which sparkled a pair of exceedingly bright black eyes. The face was of a very white complexion, the beautiful hands were daintily cared for. The cut of the features, with the close cropped silky hair, and the long black beard, recalled the beautiful, dignified type of the high-bred Orientals. This impression was still further heightened by a little red fez, shoved back on the head, and a variegated Persian dressing-gown with slippers to match, into which his bare feet were thrust, while the dressing-gown apparently served in lieu of any other clothing.
Slowly, but with great cordiality, the painter advanced to meet his friends, shook hands with them, and said: "I made your acquaintance yesterday from a distance, Herr Baron--through the blinds, when that sly dog Rosebud was trying to entice me out into the noonday heat with his flute. But that kind of thing is against my principles. It may be all very meritorious to eat one's bread in the sweat of one's brow. But as for enjoying art when reeking with perspiration--never! Excuse the costume in which I receive you. I have just been taking a douche bath and afterward resting a quarter of an hour. In five minutes I shall be in a condition to present my material part with propriety."
He disappeared into a side chamber, that was only separated by a magnificent piece of Gobelin tapestry from his studio, and went on talking with his friends while completing his toilet.
"Just take a look at my Böcklin, that I bought the day before yesterday--over there by the window on the little easel--I am quite happy over the possession. Well, what do you say to it, Jansen? Isn't that something to console one's self with for a while, in the midst of this universal poverty of art?"
It was a little forest picture, that stood in the most favorable light, near the window; it represented a dense wood of lofty oaks and laurel bushes, through a little cleft of which could be seen a slender strip of the distant horizon, and in one corner a patch of blue sky. At the feet of the shady trees a brook rippled through the luxuriant grass, on the banks of which reclined a sleeping nymph, with her nursling at her side, its blunt little nose pressed close against the full maternal breast, from which it seemed to be feeding quietly. In the centre of the picture, leaning against a luxuriant tree, stood the young father, a slim, well-built faun, looking down well pleased upon his family, and holding in his hand the shepherd's flute with which he had just played his wife to sleep.