"Are you familiar with all of Doré's pictures?"
"Certainly, Countess."
"And do you like him?"
"I admire him. I do not agree with him in every particular, but he is a genius, and genius has a right to forgiveness for faults which mediocrity should never venture to commit, and indeed never will."
"Very true," replied the lady.
"I think," Ludwig Gross continued, "that he resembles Hamerling. There is kinship between the two men. Hamerling, too, repels us here and there, but with him, as with Doré, every line and every stroke flashes with that electric spark which belongs only to the genuine work of art."
His companion gazed at him in amazement.
"You have read Hamerling?"
"Certainly. Who is not familiar with his 'Ahasuerus?'"[[3]]
"I, for instance," she replied with a faint blush.