verse heart find in itself publicly to
calumniate the man by whose benefits you have been enriched, and of
whose thoughtlessness you take advantage, in order with your helpmates
to plunge him into misery? Hitherto I have only taken you to be absurd,
but good-natured; but I see it is not without a cause that you have the
very physiognomy of a fiend! I abhor you!" She pushed him back with
vehemence, and then hurried out of the room.

The company proceeded to the picture-saloon, where coffee was handed
round. "What was the matter with my daughter?" the counsellor asked the
painter: "she seemed so hasty, and had tears in her eyes."

"A dear good child," answered Eulenboeck with a sneer; "you are truly
fortunate, Mr. Privy Counsellor, in a daughter with such a sensitive
heart. She was so kindly solicitous about my health; she thinks she
sees an inflammation in my eyes, and imagined I might be in danger of
losing my sight. That was the cause of her emotion."

"Excellent child!" exclaimed the father; "if I could but see her well
settled, that I might die in peace!" The stranger had stayed behind to
inspect the new picture which Erich was shewing him in the dining-room;
they now rejoined the company, and Dietrich followed. They were all
engaged in very animated conversation: the stranger blamed the subject
of the picture, which Dietrich chose to defend. "If Teniers, and the
other Flemish masters," said the latter, "have represented the
temptation of St. Anthony in a comic and grotesque manner, it is a
fancy which we must excuse, considering the mood in which they painted,
and indulgence must be shown to the subordinate talent which was
incapable of creating a lofty work. But the subject requires a serious
treatment, and the old German master there has undoubtedly succeeded.
If the spectator can but be impartial, he will feel himself attracted
and gratified by that picture."

"The subject," replied the stranger, "is not one for painting. The
tormenting dreams of a doting old man, the spectres which he sees in
his solitude, and which by delusive charms or horrors endeavour to
divert him from his melancholy contemplation, can only fall within the
range of grotesque phantoms, and only be exhibited fantastically, if it
be permitted to exhibit them at all; whereas the female figure there,
which is meant to be noble and at the same time alluring, a naked
beauty in the bloom of youth, and which nevertheless is but a spectre
in disg