"That must be the devil's," said Roth- | a rule. Far be it from us to throw suskopf. picion on the impartiality of our honourable judges." "Silence! Silence!" cried the beadle. "Next number!" croaked the parchment-skinned man. "Number one!" Elsa was bewildered; but this was like her own Max, and her heart beat high again. She leaned forward to listen with all her ears. But, before the cover could be drawn from number one, Adolf Meyer rushed forward and stood before it with outstretched arms, his back to the picture and his face to the two judges. His wild eyes were wilder than ever, his hair almost bristled on his head, and his cheeks | rule I have intentionally broken shall not were deadly pale. "No!" he said. one. It is withdrawn." "Hold your tongue, Max Brendel," shouted Meyer, "or I will make it the worse for you- this is no affair of yours. I have a right not to show my picture unless I please. I don't please, and the be waived. I appeal to the Herr Burgo"No; not number master, who knows the law. I say that to compel a man to show an unfinished work is unfair.” "Stand back, sir!" said the burgomas"Who are you, and why do you in ter. terfere?" "Enough of this," said the burgomaster. "Herr Meyer is in the right: we break no rules here. The drawing is closed." "Number one is withdrawn," persisted Adolf Meyer, in a sort of scream. "It is mine-Adolf Meyer's-and I may do The two great painters conferred towhat I please with my own. It is with-gether for an instant. Then the parchdrawn, I say. It is unfinished-it was ment-skinned man said brought here by mistake - it is-anything, but it shall not be seen." "What folly is this?" asked the parchment-skinned painter. "We are here to decide not you and we will see all." "If you are afraid of being beaten," said the dark man, with sombre good-nature, "that is a mistake that those only make who are His eyes suddenly fell upon number five, and he did not add, "likely to win." "I am not afraid," said Adolf Meyer. "But this picture shall not be seen." "And I say it shall, sir," said the burgomaster, angrily. "Beadle, remove this man." "Herr Burgomaster," said Adolf Meyer, with a sudden change of tone, "it is no longer in the competition, even if it were not withdrawn. I stand upon the rules. The judges must be ignorant of the painter's name till they have decided which picture is the best on its merits without suspicion of favour. If a student lets them know his name beforehand, he is disqualified, and his picture is out of the field. These gentlemen now know that number one is painted by Adolf Meyer; and if I choose to insist on a rule to my own disadvantage, what is that to them or you?" "That is true," said the burgomaster. "Gentlemen, we must observe the rules." "This is too bad," grumbled Sleinitz. "We sha'n't see Meyer's picture after all." But Max Brendel came forward. "My fellow students, Herr Burgomaster," he said, "will, I am sure, waive such "And not only the drawing, Herr Burgomaster, but our deliberation. I speak both for myself and my colleague when I say that the prize is awarded, without hesitation, to number five. We are impatient to learn the name of the young man who has begun his career with a masterpiece. Whichever of you gentlemen he may be, we hasten to congratulate him on having combined the work of a thorough artist with an originality of conception and treatment very rare in modern times. We formally award him the prize, as the first and the least of the distinctions he will achieve for himself, for this town, for German art, and for the glory of our fatherland." "Max Brendel - his name is Max Brendel,” cried out a dozen of voices as Max came forward, almost trembling. The hall rang once more with his name joined to loud hurrahs. Elsa was weeping tears of joy she longed to throw herself upon his neck before them all. But there was one envious soul to whom this triumph was worse than terrible. Unable to bear the mortification of open defeat for the first sight of Max Brendel's picture, so glaringly superior to his prophetess, had overthrown in a moment his palace of Alnaschar-he had given up the contest in a rage. But to see his rival in the actual enjoyment of the glory he had promised himself, was too much for his flesh and blood to bear. He was still the scorned Adolf Meyer, and now doubly scorned. His nervous, morbid temperament allowed him to see nothing beyond Her face fell. "Oh Max, that is cruel to make me think of our parting in the midst of my joy! It is that, then, that makes you so sad and grave? Must you go soon?” "It is too true-I fear I must lose no time: every day's delay will eat into the prize. It is hard, Elsa, but the humiliation of the hour- he had become the laughing-stock not only of his fellow-students but of fate, and was conscious of no latent strength wherewith to renew a lost battle. None can despair so easily and so utterly as the young. No one thought of, or looked at him; his apparently unaccountable caprice was set down to natural folly; but every cheer for "Is there no happiness that does not Max Brendel came upon him like a jeer taste bitter when it comes? But no, I for Adolf Meyer. He slunk away in the don't mean that, dearest, dearest Max - I midst of his rival's triumph with his invis- won't think a word that shall trouble the ible prophetess under his arm. His new-other life of yours that isn't me. I am so born genius, his hopes, his pride, his van- proud - so happy! Think how miseraity had all received a mortal wound-and ble we should be if we were not going to he had no Elsa to teach courage and for-part-if you were not going to Rome. titude to one who had none of his own. It is what we have prayed for, and we mustn't find fault with what God gives us. It will be easy waiting now." VII. "AT last, then, dear Max!" exclaimed Elsa, as she linked her arm into her lover's at the Rath-haus door. "Ah! I knew you would win: the idea of Adolf Meyer or Adolf anybody daring to think he could beat you; why, the very sight of your picture frightened him away. But what is your picture, Max? That was not the Cleopatra,' I know, that you used to tell me about; she was dark, like me," she added, with a passing touch of loving jealousy. "I didn't think you cared to paint grey eyes and yellow hair-you used not to. But never mind-I shall love grey eyes and yellow hair now, as they have brought us nearer. What will father say now, when his awkward Elsa is betrothed to the greatest painter in all Germany? Oh Max!-But what is it? Are you not well? It has been too much for you, my poor boy! Yes, when they said number five had won, I too found there is nothing so hard to bear as joy. But you look so pale and your arm trembles Max kissed her, but coldly. They were now at her father's door, but he would not come in. "I am fit for nothing to-day," he said. "I have a splitting headache I must get some sleep at once, if I can. Don't worry yourself though, dear Elsa — it's only excitement: I only want a good long sleep, that's all. Good-bye, darling: I must get well at once-I have so much to do before I leave for Rome." It was a sad disappointment to lose her pleasure after her triumph. But there was no help for it, since Max was really unwell, and she dried her eyes. Had all her little plans been fulfilled she would have had too much happiness for a single day. It was hard that he and she would not spend together this day of all days, in the face of their coming separation; but she felt how much Max must need rest, and was half-relieved to find that over-work and over-anxiety might be taken to account for his changed ways. He embraced her again, more warmly, it seemed to her, than ever, and again said "Good-bye." Then he hastened home, ran quietly up the gloomy staircase, entered his room, and slowly removed from the mirror a cloth with which it was cov "It is joy, Elsa-joy does not kill." But though he spoke of joy, it was not with the air of a joyful man. His eyes still dreamed, and the cloud had deepened on his brow. "But you are right, Elsa-ered. I am not well; I suppose the excitement has been too much for me, and I have been working too hard." "Then you must take a good long holiday, and you shall begin it with me this very day. We will have a feast, and you shall take me to the coffee-garden-father will spare me, and I may wear my earrings now. We are to be always together now, you know, and we'll lose no time." Ah, Elsa! you forget; this prize obliges me to go to Rome. I must do much still before I can win you." 66 Poor Elsa! How can the truth be told? Through the whole of the night in which that mysterious face had appeared to him he had sat in a mental maze, doubting the truth of his eyesight and the soundness of his brain. He tried every test he could think of to prove himself the victim of a passing illusion, but it was all in vain : the vision was as real, at least to him, as if it had been a living form. At last there was nothing for it but to let his eyes and his brain have their own way. Perhaps satiety of sight might cause the phantom to disappear. He examined, one by one, every point of form, hue, and feature, every fold of her dress, every movement of her eyes. Sleep overcame him; and, when he awoke, the phantom, unexorcised even by slumber, was the first object on which his eyes fell. It was proved, therefore, to be no offspring of a weary brain. The light of returning day and the waking sounds of morning did not affect his midnight apparition. He made himself some strong coffee, and then, moved by some impulse with which conscious intention had nothing to do, he went straight to his canvas and began to sketch rapidly. If any definite idea had a share in what he did, it was a desperate sort of fancy that an attempt to reproduce a brain-phantom on canvas would be a crowning test of its reality. He had learned too well his lack of all creative power, and that he could not express what he could not really see. But, as he worked and as he became familiar with every detail, every turn and trick of his model, his interest grew. He had the unprecedented experience of finding his idea ready to hand without the effort of thinking, and was thus enabled to concentrate his whole mind upon overcoming the mere technical difficulties of reproduction. Never had painter so obliging a sitter. He had only to change his attitude in order to place her at once in any position or aspect he pleased. Nay, he had only to frown to make her frown too; and doubtless he could have made her smile had he himself been in a smiling mood. His work grew under his hand; and when darkness came he left off with a new fear — the fear lest the vision should fade away before another morning came. Like Adolf Meyer he spent the night not in sleep but in waiting for daylight. He sat up the whole night through, to see that the face did not vanish, and was rejoiced when, at sunrise, he found it more clear and perfect than when it had first appeared. Some may think that the long-continued effort to create had at last succeeded, and that his association of his fancy with the looking-glass was an accidental and not unprecedented hallucination. He did not think so, however he had ceased to think at all. He only worked, toiling on and on at his no longer barren canvas till the form and features of his model became more deeply fixed on his mind than even those of Elsa. He would have given up half his hopes to hear her voice, or at least to be able to read the unspoken language of her deep eyes. He spoke to her at last, in the half hope that a mirror which reflected a non-existent face might be able to effect the scarcely greater marvel of reflecting a voice also. But, though her lips parted and moved in answer, not a sound came. Such work as this soon becomes a passion. An artist seldom loves the forms that he consciously invents: they are only the daughters of his soul. But the fancies that he cannot refer to his own mental parentage, and which come upon him as it were from an unknown world, — these are his soul's wives. His work gave him no pride of genius, like Adolf Meyer's: self-love could not be born from what was not his own. Some sort of love, however, could not fail to spring. When he was with Elsa he dreamed of her whom he had left at home: when he painted, he did not think of Elsa. Few and rare are the souls that are large enough to contain two ideas at once and to blend them into one: seldom may human love survive when a man is seized with the enthusiasm of an idea, whether of art, fame, or gold. There cannot be two all-sufficing things-even the few diviner spirits must blend the two loves into one before they can contain the two. Max Brendel's spirit was very human, and it had been seized with the fullest enthusiasm of a new idea. The Max who had seen this face could not be, even to Elsa, the Max who had never seen it; no wonder she thought him changed. When his picture was finished, he almost felt as if his life had come to an end. When the prize was won, he felt as if such a result had degraded his labour of love. When Elsa wept for joy, he felt as though he had suddenly fallen to earth from the heights of a glorious dream. How, in his heart, could he sympathize with her childish joy? He had been wandering among regions wherein the foot of no mortal wife could bear him company, and which he must travel alone. But how should he travel them, seeing that man is not made to be alone? His mind could henceforth conceive but of one face and form fit to occupy his dreams; and that was now on canvas: it could be nothing to him any more. It had done its work, and must be thrown aside. When he returned to his room after saying goodbye to Elsa, he felt as though he had come to say a yet longer' farewell to her whom his mind had married-to the one new form in all the universe of art that he should ever be able to call his own. Never would he be able to live in such a rapture of soul-absorbing work again; such a di- | great foreign baroness with a taste for the vorce as this emptied all value from a antique, the cheap, and the beautiful. On common money-prize that brought him, at my word, it will make the Elsa look like a best, the power to win a mere earthly wife baroness, but it will make a baroness look by dull and plodding toil. like the Elsa! And to-morrow, my good Herr Max, that beautiful, cheap bargain will be at Regenstein, and in the AdlerGasse no more; here to-day, gone to-morrow, as they say, and even so are we all." 66 Good-bye- good-bye," he exclaimed, as he pressed his lips to the mirror so closely as to feel, in what seemed more than fancy, the pressure returned. He took a last look, and let the cloth fall over the face like the corner of a lifted shroud. So ended this grand contest for Adolf Meyer, Elsa Frohmann, and Max Brendel. Victors and vanquished were alike disappointed; only those got any gratification from it who, like Rothkopf and Sleinitz, never expected any at all. "Eh, eh! my good Herr Max," coughed a voice at his elbow. He started; it was only Herr Elias, in his black skull-cap and ragged white beard. "Well, Herr Elias? Here I am, if you want me." "Yes, my good Herr Max, there you are. Before that beautiful glass - so cheap, too, for you! So you have got the great prize, and are going to Rome? There are all sorts of curious things in Rome, my good Herr Max- all sorts, they say. If you find any old heathen temples to be sold cheap, or mummies a bargain, or any old red hats going begging, think of Herr Elias, my good Herr Max-it's all in his line. You are a clever young man. But that mirror? will you buy? If you are going to Rome, you see, I can add it to the rent no more, eh?" How was not his phantom his own even so much as this? He had forgotten that when he bade it farewell. It was too true; his vision was the property of an old broker, and might be thrown into a bargain with a suit of old clothes. "Well, well," he said; "you are in no hurry about such a thing as this, I suppose. I should like to have that-mirror I own; but one doesn't go to Rome in a day." "Eh, eh! my good Herr Max-but one may sell a looking-glass in a day. For example: you know the old castle just outside the town?" "Castle Regenstein? What then?" "Aha! the tumble-down old castle is to be made to tumble up again, brand-new; It has been taken by a great foreign baroness who loves the antique and has come to Herr Elias to help her." "And that mirror feeling himself turn pale. " asked Max, "And that glass, as you rightly say, my good Herr Max, is just the thing for a It only wanted this to prove to him how the face had by this time grown to be a part of himself - how its loss would fill him with an eternal hunger. True, it was nothing more to him as a painter, but it had been the soul of his soul: its very shadow was his life's one reality. It would have been easier to part with Elsa than with her. "And the price?” he asked in a fever. "Dirt is dear to it, my good Herr Max. I shall charge the good baroness five hundred little gulden not a kreutzer more." "Five hundred gulden!" IT may be remembered - or forgotten that five hundred gulden, a fortune to a poor German art-student, was precisely the amount of the prize. Max Brendel had not been to bed for weeks, nor did he lie down to-night, though his head really ached almost as much as he had professed to Elsa. He paced up and down his room, from midnight to morning. If it had not been for this accursed prize! It was not in nature to bear the thought that his genius - wife should be made a matter of vulgar traffic between a baroness and a broker. It would be profanation, sacrilege, to allow this masterpiece of supernature to be hung up in a fine lady's boudoir, far away from the only eyes that could penetrate its secret and comprehend its wonder. After all, was the prize itself, morally speaking, his own? Did it not belong to the vision who had as it were intrusted it to him? Would not Adolf Meyer have won it but for her? Was it not a debt to be repaid? Elsa might have vowed her ear-rings a thousand times over, and nothing would have come of it: the lady of the diamond | time get out of going to Rome. Meanlocks came, was seen, and conquered. It while, for at least one morning, he would was to him alone she had revealed her- revel in his dream now his very own. self; and now, for the sake of a paltry Partly to kill thought, partly from impulse, five hundred gulden, she, the mistress, partly to make work an excuse for not genius, and poetry of his life was to be visiting Elsa, he placed a fresh canvas on sold from him to a baroness! To lose the easel, took a crayon and began a bold her for the sake of keeping five hundred sketch of the same figure in another form. gulden, would be literally to sell his blessing for a mess of pottage. And Elsa? Well, he would be true to her, of course: but would is not could, and Elsa was not his soul. This was his soul and to sever himself from his soul is the one thing that man cannot do. It did not strike him that selling Elsa for an old looking-glass was at least as much like Esau's bargain as the other alternative. At last, having worked himself to that pitch of fever-heat in which men are most prone to make irrevocable decisions, he put the matter into the hands of destiny. "I must see Elsa at once," he thought: "if I see Herr Elias before I see Elsa I will keep the mirror: if I see Elsa before I see Herr Elias I will keep the prize." At any rate, he threw the advantage of probability on the side of Elsa. It was early, but not too early to visit his betrothed: the sun was up, and she was always up before the sun. He took a last lingering look at his shrine, covered it again, and prepared to leave the room and the house. "Eh, eh, my good Herr Max," coughed Herr Elias in his ear. "I am come to take away the glass, for the baroness at Regenstein. Ah, it is the early bird that picks up the worm." He soon became so absorbed in the work of giving a new shape to his one idea that he failed to hear a quick though gentle tap at the door. It was repeated before he answered "Come in." "Elsa!" he exclaimed in surprise. "I couldn't help coming, Max," she said. "I was dreaming all night long you were ill. Nobody knows I'm here, and if they did I shouldn't mind, so long as you're well." He stood up with his back against the easel, so as to hide the subject of the sketch on which he was engaged. "Quite well, as you see, Elsa. I was only waiting till it was late enough to come to you. I wish, though I hope you have not been seen coming to me Herr Elias is "Late enough, Max! Why, it's close on noon. Do you think I should have come to you unless I thought you were never coming to me, and that it must be because you were ill?" This was the first reproachful speech she had ever made him since their betrothal two years ago. "So late? Near noon? Impossible! But I have been working "What! again, again? Oh Max, can't you put by your work for one day, when It was decided, then. With the best we have so few together now? I am anxwill to see Elsa before there was any ap-ious about you, Max; you will be really parent chance of seeing Herr Elias, he had seen Herr Elias before Elsa. It seemed to him less his own voice than the voice of the chance he had invoked that stammered out "Not so, Herr Elias. With five hundred and one gulden I outbid the baroness. The mirror is mine." "Aha! I thought you would buy," said Herr Elias, nodding his head sagaciously. "You are wise, my good Herr Max, and I wish you joy." So ended the struggle for the prize of Rome. It was gained only to be thrown away for a fancy-for a dream. Max had obtained his heart's desire, but he threw down his hat and cloak- he could not go to see Elsa now. There would be time enough for him to think how he could keep the prize, so as to pay Herr Elias, and at the same ill, and then though I shall keep you a little while longer you'll lose your great chance by having to stay at home. I wouldn't keep you from going away, no, not for the world. There put down your crayon: you'll have lots of time for work in Rome when you haven't got Elsa to plague you. Why, what's this? You are drawing the same girl you got the prize for, who is she, Max?" "Nobody, Elsa-nobody at all. Fancy: nothing more. Why, what girl is there like that in all the town? And you know I haven't been away to look for models." |