"By all the good spirits, but you are a poet!" cried Rossel, and he sprang up with so unusual an alacrity that his red fez slipped off his head.
"A poet!" responded his modest friend, with a sad smile. "There, you see how low we have sunken nowadays. If it ever occurs to one of us to let any idea enter his head that goes beyond a whistling shoemaker's apprentice, or some celebrated historical event, or a bathing nymph, he must immediately hear himself scouted as a poet. Those old fellows like Dürer, Holbein, Mantegna, and the rest, were left unmolested to spin into fables whatever struck them as beautiful or odd. But, nowadays, the doctrine of the division of labor is the panacea for all things; and if a poor fool of a painter or draughtsman works out for himself anything which a poet could by any possibility put into verse, people immediately come running up with Lessing's 'Laokoön'--which, by the way, no one thinks of reading nowadays--and prove that in this case all bounds have been overstepped. If a poor devil of an artist has a fancy for poetry, why doesn't he go to work and illustrate? After all, it is a trade that supports its man, and one who follows it can be a thorough-going realist, and can easily guard himself against all danger of infection from poetry. But an arrogant wight of an idealist, whom the world refuses to keep warm, and who, therefore, must take care not to let the sacred fire go out on the hearth of his art--"
"You are getting warm without cause, my dear Kohle!" interposed the other. "Good heavens! it is indeed a breadless art, that of the poet, but a deadly sin it certainly is not; and I, for my part, could almost envy you for having such ideas as those you have just been telling me. I'll tell you what--finish your plans, and then we will both of us paint this beautiful story of Dame Venus inside there on the wall of our dining-room. The devil must be in it, if we don't succeed in producing something that will throw the Casa Bartoldi deep into the shade."
He knew when he said this what a great proposal he had let fall upon the listening soul of his friend.
Kohle, like all art apostles of his stamp, despised easel and oil painting, as it is usually practised. On the other hand, the great aim of his longing and ambition was to be able, just for once, to wield his fresco brush to his heart's content on a wall a hundred feet long; and his friends were fond of plaguing him about a wish that had once escaped him--"My life for a bare wall!" Heretofore no one had been willing to entrust him with a square yard of his house, or even of his garden, for this purpose. And now, suddenly, he had only to put forth his hand, and see his greatest desire for monumental art-creation fulfilled.
At first he could not believe in such overwhelming good-fortune. But when the look of glad surprise and trembling doubt which he cast upon his host encountered a perfectly serious face, he could no longer hold himself in his chair. He sprang to his feet, threw his shabby black hat high into the air, and, with outstretched arms and glowing face, prepared to throw himself upon his friend, who was slowly strolling back and forth. "Brother!" he cried, in a half-stifled voice, "this-- this--" But Rossel suddenly stood still and made a motion with his hand, which checked the enthusiast in the very height of his wild excitement.
The remembrance of a similar moment, when his heart had overflowed toward his friend, and he had been upon the verge of formally offering him "good-comradeship," came back to him with a rude shock. Then the word had not yet passed his lips, when Rossel, at the very same moment, though apparently without intention, had begun to speak of his aversion to the display of tenderness among men, and had frightened away this outburst of brotherly affection. And could it be that even now the ice was not to be broken between them, and that this fulfillment of the dearest wish of his life was nothing but the favor of a gracious patron, a whim on the part of the rich host toward the poor devil who sat at his hospitable table? His proud, sensitive soul was just on the point of revolting against this, when from afar off a sound struck upon his ear, which, as he instantly perceived, had been heard by Edward sooner than by him, and which had been the cause of his gesture of repulse. The soft notes of a flute came wafted to them over the lake, nearer and nearer to the spot on the bank where Rossel's villa stood.
"It is he!" said Rossel. "Even the peace of night is not so sacred as to guard defenseless beings from the attacks of this romantic amateur. Look here, Kohle, see how the boat is just floating out of the shadow into the silvery path of the moon--Rosebud stands erect in the centre, like Lohengrin; and that tall figure at the tiller is undoubtedly Elfinger's high-mightiness--they are making straight for our balcony--well, let the will of the gods be done!"
The notes of the flute died away in a melting trill, and immediately afterward Rosenbusch sprang ashore. "Salem aleikum!" he cried, waving his hat. "We make our attack from the side of the lake, obeying necessity and not our own desire, for a mouse-hole where two travelers might lay their heads for the night couldn't be had in Starnberg for all the gold of California. Saturday and this beautiful weather have lured half Munich out there. I immediately thought of you, old boy, and told Elfinger, who thought it would be presumptuous for us to force ourselves on you without a special invitation, that, in addition to all sorts of oriental qualities which are hateful to me, you also possessed three most estimable ones--namely, a number of superfluous divans, excellent coffee, and a spirit of hospitality worthy of a Bedouin. Consequently, that, unless your shady roof chanced to be sheltering a few odalisques who had already taken possession of all the couches, you would not turn us away from your threshold. At the worst, it won't be any great misfortune to two jolly juveniles like ourselves to pass a night, just for once, on the floor of a fishing-boat.
'Upon the laughing wave below,