“Elsa, dearest, what are your wishes?” asked the mother, and in a voice whose tremulous sweetness thrilled the painter, the young woman replied:
“Let it be at the castle, my dear mother, tomorrow at this time. I would rather not come to the studio, for I dread the ride over the rough mountain road.”
“I will be at your service, My Lady,” answered Friedrich, and his visitors departed without delay.
Friedrich marveled that his thoughts for the remainder of the day—and much of the night—should revert to the demure little figure whose voice had so moved him. Fame bespoke her the fairest of the fair, but it never entered his imaginings that he, a humble portrait painter, could think of the daughter of such an illustrious line but as one of a different order of beings from himself. He had never thought seriously of love; his mistress, he averred, had been fame. True, he had in idle moments dreamed of a being that he might madly adore—and, alas for him, his fancy had become embodied in human form. But why had this maiden so affected him? She had not lifted her veil and had spoken but once, and if her bearing were dignified and her form graceful, he had seen many others no less charming in these respects nor thought of them a second time. If he had analyzed his feelings he would probably have said that the unusual impression was due to the recognition of his talent by the Herwehes.
The appointed hour on the morrow found him following the footpath which led to the castle gate—a much shorter though steeper way than the coach road. Intent as he was on his mission, he could not but pause occasionally to view the wonderful scene that spread out beneath him. The cliff on which the many-towered old castle stood almost overhung the blue waters of the Rhine, which here run between rocks of stupendous height. A little farther down the valley, but in full view from his splendid vantage-point, were vineyard-terraced hills interspersed with wooded ravines and luxuriant meadows. The magic touch of early autumn was over it all—a scene of enchanting beauty. On the opposite cliff was an ancient ruin (now entirely vanished) and Friedrich recalled more than one horrible tale about this abandoned place that had blanched his youthful cheeks. At his feet lay the gray roofs and church spires of his native town and perhaps a shadow of a thought of the renown he would one day bring to it flitted through his mind—for on such an errand and such a day what could limit his ambitious musings?
He soon found himself at the castle gate and was admitted by the keeper, who knew of his coming. He was ushered into a magnificent apartment and told to await the Lady Elsa’s arrival—and the servant added that the baroness was absent, having gone that morning to Coblenz to join her husband.
Friedrich, in the few moments he waited, endeavored to compose himself, though feelings of anxiety and curiosity strove with his efforts at indifference; but when the oaken door swung softly open and his fair client stood before him, he started as though he had seen an apparition. Indeed, it flashed on him at once that all the perfection he had imagined, all the beauty of which he had dreamed, stood before him in the warm tints of life, though to his heated fancy she seemed more than a being of flesh and blood. In truth, the kindly eyes, the expressive and delicately moulded face, the flood of dark hair that fell over shapely shoulders, the slender yet gracefully rounded form, and, more than all, that certain nameless and indescribable something that makes a woman beautiful—did not all these proclaim her almost more than mortal to the over-wrought imagination of the young visionary?
“Are you ill?” were her first words when her quick eye caught the ghastly pallor of the artist’s face and the bewildered look that possessed it.
At the sound of her voice he strove desperately to regain his composure. “No, not ill,” he said. “I still suffer from a wound I received in the army and the climb up the mountainside somewhat overtaxed my strength.”
“I am sorry,” she replied. “Had I known, I would gladly have come to the studio.”