"Now you are talking again against your better convictions," interrupted the other, coolly, "There are more than enough people nowadays who pursue their so-called art for a practical purpose. Just listen once when our colleagues talk about their 'interests.' One would imagine he was at the Bourse: for this picture, five thousand gulden; for that, ten thousand, or even twenty and twenty-five thousand; and that a certain artist has an annual income of so and so much, and owns several houses besides--these things make up the motive power of an incredible number of them. Their pictures have no longer a value, but merely a price. How to go to work and make an equal amount from the fabrication of painted canvas, that is the pivot on which all the labor of an artist's fancy turns, instead of steering straight for the thing itself, as it ought by rights to do. Well, I have nothing in common with this worm that nourishes itself by crawling about in the dust. But what does it matter to me whether I spin silk, or only a plain thread that delights me alone, and from which I can beat my wings and soar away into space?"
"You are a thousand times too good for this century of banks and bourses, my dear enthusiast!" cried Rossel, with a sigh of honest admiration. "But, even though you despise the golden fruit on the tree of life, still all sorts of other things flourish there, which even the best of men need not be ashamed to find beautiful and desireable: for instance, fame or love, upon which you also turn your back with sublime contempt. Your life is quite as earnest as your art, and yet you know what Schiller says. If you go on in this way a few years longer, your flame of life will have consumed all its wick; and the magic-lantern pictures which the light has thrown on the dark background of your existence will go down with you into eternal night."
"No!" cried the other, and his yellow face lit up with a red flush. "I do not feel this fear! Non omnis moriar! Something of me will be left behind; and though you may be right that no glory will come to me during my life, a soft shimmer of posthumous fame will warm my bones under the ground, of that I am certain. For better times are coming, or else may God take pity on this wretched world, and dash it to pieces before it becomes one vast dung-heap from which no living flower will spring. Many a day when I have begun to lose faith, amid the wretchedness of the present, I have repeated to myself those comforting verses of Hölderlin's about the future of mankind."
"Now don't bring in your Hölderlin as a bondsman for yourself," cried Rossel. "To be sure, he was just as unpractical and as little suited to the times as you; and, moreover, one of those erratic fellows who have strayed out of the grand Greek and heathen worlds, and lost themselves in our shallow present--an artist for art's sake, a dreamer and ghost-seer in broad daylight. But for all that, he knew very well what makes life worth living; and though he despised gold, and did not run after fame very eagerly, he took love so seriously that he even lost his reason over it. But you, my dear Philip Emanuel--"
"Are you so certain that I am not on the straight road to it?" Kohle interrupted, with a peculiar, half-shy, half-bashful smile. "It is true, neither this nor that particular beautiful woman has caused me to tremble for the little sense I possess. But the woman and the beauty which I, being what I am--"
He broke off, and turned round in his chair, so as to present only his profile to his friend.
"I don't understand you, godfather."
"The thing is simple enough, I have never found a beautiful woman who claimed so little of a suitor as to be willing to take up with my insignificant self; that is to say--for I despise alms--who could seriously be satisfied with this drab-tinted sketch of a human figure that bears my name. And as I am too ignorant of the art of making the best of it, and seeking out a sweetheart who shall be suited to me in all ways and shall bear the stamp of the same manufactory, I stand but a poor chance so far as love is concerned. You will laugh at me, Rossel, but, in solemn earnest, the Venus of Milo would not be beautiful enough for me."
A short pause ensued. Then Rossel said: "If I understand you rightly, I must confess that I don't understand you at all. Besides, your estimate of woman is quite wrong. What you want is a husband; some one who shall show you that she is lord and master, and not a mere puppet. Put aside both your humility and your arrogance, and pitch in whenever you stumble upon a cheerful life. However, do just as you see fit. Who knows but what some time the Venus of Milo herself will take pity on you for having passed over all lesser women-folk in order to wait for the goddess?"
"And what if she has already appeared to me, ay, has visited me day by day up there above the tree-tops?" said Kohle, with a mysterious smile.