As the ivy that creepeth
By lowly abodes,
On a thousand weak tendrils
Thou climb'st to the Gods.
Where memory glancing
The cleft ruins through,
As the sun to the vine
Giveth warm life anew.
Murmuring the last words aloud just as he turned into the Unter den Linden, he suddenly felt his arm seized, and turning saw a face which had been far from his thoughts.
The old Livonian baron, the enthusiastic connoisseur and friend of art, who had formerly helped the worthy zaunkönig to his short-lived dignity of court painter, stood before him wearing an expression of the greatest delight.
"Well," he cried, shaking Edwin's hand with boyish impetuosity, "this is what I call 'talking of a wolf and seeing the tip of his tail.' Only yesterday evening I was speaking of you for at least two hours, first condemning and then defending you when others undertook to condemn; and to-day, my dear fellow, you appear before me just as I was considering whether I should go to your father-in-law, to get your address; you see I wanted to write to you. I don't know how the worthy Herr Zaunkönig feels toward me, since that stupid piece of business; for gloriously as he behaved in the matter, just as I expected him to do, I was at any rate mixed up in it, and the wager--"
"You ought to know him better, my dear Baron," said Edwin, interrupting the torrent of words. "True, he is by no means such a weak dove as not to have been very much enraged against your prince at the first moment of discovery, but it was less from offended personal dignity, than indignation at the cold blooded frivolity, with which such noble Mæcenas' treat an insignificant artist. But then he grew quiet and thoughtful, collected his studies and the few pictures he had finished, and spread them before him. When I asked what he was doing, he replied: 'I am disgusting myself with my work. Let us be just: these things have emanated from an aberration of the artistic instinct.' The next day they had disappeared, and as I afterwards learned, were nailed up in a chest, loaded with brick-bats, and sunk in the lagune."
"Oh! oh! oh!" said the old man, shaking his head, "then we have really deprived him of the greatest pleasure of his life. I shall never look at the Luini I won from the prince, without a pang of conscience. Oh! oh!"
"Cheer up, dear Baron. You have only helped to prove his favorite saying, that to those who love God all things are for the best. His passion for art really emerged again, rejuvenated and vigorous, from the lagune where he had expected to bury it. Since he has lived in the suburbs, where in spite of his new and easier circumstances, he continues his old modest mode of life and industriously pursues his engraving, he has, it is true, made no attempt to return to his former 'specialty.' He says that now, when he daily sees the green fields, he perceives for the first time the full extent of the frivolous boldness, with which he daubed these wonders of God on his miserable canvass. To make amends, since what is denied always charms the soul and excites the fancy, he has how set up a new kind of genre picture; he paints views of the Spree and the green ditches, bridges, and steps leading to the water, not without skill, as it seems to me. You may suppose that he is more successful in reproducing the straight lines and grey tone, than the succulent weeds and bright sky of his former zaunkönigs. If you would come out to his house--he has just finished something--"
"Col sommo piacere! With the greatest pleasure. You take a hundred pound weight from my heart. But what was I going to say--what were we talking about just now? My head is growing old, friend, and nothing makes one more confused and forgetful, than intercourse with silent pictures."
"You were saying that you had been scolding about me yesterday for two hours. I am curious--"