of substitutes. If we get as high as polished plaster we have
done a great deal, and our different kinds of marble are often nothing
more than the work of the painter. This is the case in our church,
which, thanks to the liberality of our patrons, has been newly
decorated."

I expressed a desire to see the church; the professor led me down, and
when I entered the Corinthian colonnade, which formed the nave of the
church, I felt the pleasing--too pleasing impression of the graceful
proportions. To the left of the principal altar a lofty scaffolding
had been erected, upon which a man stood, who was painting over the
walls in the antique style.

"Now! how are you going on, Berthold?" cried the professor.

The painter turned round to us, but immediately proceeded with his
work, saying in an indistinct, and almost inaudible voice: "Great deal
of trouble--crooked, confused stuff--no rule to make use
of--beasts--apes--human faces--human faces--miserable fool that I am!"

These last words he cried aloud in a voice, that nothing but the
deepest agony working in the soul could produce. I felt strangely
affected;--these words, the expression of face, the glance which he had
previously cast at the professor, brought before my eyes the whole
struggling life of an unfortunate artist. The man could have been
scarcely more than forty years old; his form, though disfigured by the
unseemly, dirty costume of a painter, had something in it indescribably
noble, and deep grief could only discolour his face, but could not
extinguish the fire that sparkled in his black eyes. I asked the
professor for particulars respecting this painter: "He is a foreign
artist," was the reply, "who came here just at the time when the repair
of the church had been resolved upon. He undertook the work we offered
him with pleasure, and indeed his arrival was for us a stroke of good
fortune, since neither here, nor for a great distance round, could we
find a painter so admirably fitted for all that we require. Besides,
he is the most good-natured creature in the world, and we all love him
heartily; for that reason he got on well in our college. Beside giving
him a considerable salary for his work, we board him, which, by the
way, does not entail a very heavy burden upon us, for he is abstemious
almost to excess, though perhaps it may accord with the weakness of his
constitution.

"But," said I, "he seemed to-day so peevish--so irritable."

"That,"