As none of the others uttered a single word, the artist finally appealed directly to Jansen, and begged for his judgment.
"Hm!" growled the sculptor, "the work is full of talent. Only you have christened it wrongly--or have forgotten the two veils."
"Christened it wrongly?"
"In the name of Goethe; Saint Priapus stood godfather to it."
"But--the two veils!" stammered the youth, who had cast down his eyes.
"Beauty and horror. Only read the poem. You will see how artistically everything immodest in it is veiled by these two. And yet--a decidedly talented work. It will find admirers fast enough."
He turned away and went quietly back to his seat. At the same instant the young man tore the picture from the wall, and, without saying a word, held the gilt frame in which it was enclosed over the nearest lamp.
Perhaps he had expected that some one would seize him by the arm; but no one stirred. The flame seized eagerly upon the canvas. When a part was consumed, the young man swung himself upon the window-sill and hurled the burning picture through the upper part of the window, which was open, into the dark garden below, where it fell hissing on the damp gravel.
Upon springing down again he was greeted with general applause, which he received with a gloomy brow and compressed lips. His hasty act had evidently given him no inward relief. Nor could even Jansen's kind greeting succeed immediately in banishing his sinister mood. It was his innermost nature that he had consigned to this fiery death.
Felix, upon whom this curious incident had made a deep impression, was just on the point of going up to the youth, whom he saw standing apart from the others and enveloping himself in a dense cloud of tobacco smoke, when a clock in one of the church steeples near by announced, with its twelve slow strokes, that the hour of midnight had arrived.