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.

He pointed with his hand toward the studio, whose window sparkled softly in the starlight.

Rossel stared at him in amazement.

"You fear I am on the point of breaking into a divine frenzy," laughed the little man. "But I haven't yet confounded dreams and reality. That I have seen her, and have learned from her all sorts of things that other mortals do not yet know, is certain. But I believe myself that I only dreamed all this. It was on my very first morning out here. The evening before I had been reading the Last Centaur. The birds woke me very early, and then I lay for a few hours with closed eyes, and the whole story passed before me in a continuous train."

"What story?"

"I am now at work sketching it, after my own fashion, against which you will protest again. There is a cyclus of six or eight pictures--shall I tell you the story just as I am building it up in outline? It ought properly to be told in verse, but I am no poet. Enough, the scene opens with a mountain-cliff somewhere or other, the Hoesselberg, let us say, or any other mythological fastness in which a goddess could have lived apart from the world for a few centuries. From out it steps our dear Venus of Milo in proper person, leading by the hand a half-grown boy, who is no less a person than the little Amor. They are both but scantily clad, and gaze around with wondering eyes upon a world that has greatly changed since last they saw it. A city lies before them, with battlements and towers of strange shape standing out against the sky. Horsemen and pedestrians are coming out of the gate, dressed in bright-colored garments of a peculiar cut, which were nowhere in fashion in the world when the old gods were worshiped. The sky is clouded over, and a drizzling rain is gently falling, which forces the lady and her little boy to seek another place of refuge, since they can no longer find their way back to their old retreat. Yet they lack the courage to enter the town, with its swarming mass of human beings. But in the mountain over across the valley stands a high stone building, from which a tower, with a beautiful chime of bells, seems to ring out over the land an invitation for all men to draw near. It is true, this cannot be expressed in the sketch, but then the cloister over on the hill must have something homelike about it, so that everybody will understand why the fugitives, standing below in the rain, under shelter of a laurel bush, are gazing up at it with longing eyes. And now, when the sun breaks forth again, they muster up their courage and knock at the cloister gate. The nuns rush out at the cry their sister gate-keeper utters when she sees this queenly woman, with the black-eyed child of the gods, standing on the threshold, both half naked, and with their blonde hair falling about their shoulders. Then, too, as is natural, the nun understands no Greek, which would have enabled her to interpret the stranger's request for hospitality; nor can the abbess herself make out anything more as to the strangers' origin and character. But of one thing she is certain--this is not a strolling beggar of the usual sort. Thus, in the third picture, we see Madame Venus sitting in the refectory seeking to still her hunger; but the food is too coarse for her, and she tastes nothing but the cloister wine. They offer her a coarse, woolen nun's-dress, which, however, she scorns to wear. The only other dress they have on hand is the thin gown belonging to a beggar who died in the cloister a short time before. This she consents to put on; and although, here and there, her beautiful white skin peeps through a tear in the old rags, she seems to think this better than to be confined in the black shroud of the sisters. Her little boy has also been provided with a shirt, and is now being passed around from hand to hand, and lap to lap; for each of the nuns is eager to caress him. While they are sitting thus, on the best of terms, the priest of the place comes to have a talk with the abbess. He suspects something wrong, and stands on the threshold, dumb with amazement, and devours this strange beggar-woman with his eyes. But the little rascal of a boy goes up to him, and succeeds in making his reverence fall over head and ears in love with the strange lady, and scatter his older sentiments for the abbess to the four winds. A fourth sheet shows him as he strolls up and down the little cloister garden with Madame Venus, passionately declaring his love. At the window stands the pious mother of the convent, torn with jealousy; and it requires little imagination to foresee that her ecclesiastical friend has hardly turned his back before this dangerous guest is, under one pretext or another, thrust rudely forth into the wide world again, with her little boy--who is tired, and would have liked to sleep instead of having to wander about in the stormy night. But a house or hut is nowhere to be found, while, on the other hand, suspicious-looking groups pass by them: gypsies, who cast covetous eyes at the beautiful child; and one of them--a wicked, toothless old hag--actually catches him by the skirts of his little gown. But, fortunately, he glides out of her hands like an eel, and flies into the thicket, and his mother after him: who is so lost in thought that she scarcely heeds the danger. 'Where can all the others have gone?' is the question over which she broods ceaselessly.