take
possession of him, and in the mad delight of possessing the greatest
earthly felicity, he cried: 'Oh, it was no delirious dream! No! it is
my wife whom I embrace, and whom I will never leave!'

"Escape from the city was at first impossible, for at the gate stood
the French army, whose entrance the people, although badly armed and
without leaders, were able to dispute for two days. Berthold, however,
succeeded in flying with Angiola from one hiding-place to another, and
at last out of the city. Angiola, deeply enamoured of him, could not
think of remaining in Italy; she wished her family to consider her
dead, that Berthold's possession of her might be secure. A diamond
necklace, and some valuable rings which she wore, were sufficient to
provide them with all necessaries at Rome--whither they had proceeded
by slow degrees--and they arrived happily at M----, in Southern
Germany, where Berthold intended to settle, and to support himself by
his art. Was it not a state of felicity, not even to be dreamed, that
Angiola, that creature of celestial loveliness, that ideal of his most
delightful visions, now became his own,--when all social laws had
seemed to raise an insurmountable barrier between him and his beloved?
Berthold could hardly comprehend his happiness, he was abandoned to
inexpressible delight, until the inner voice became louder and louder,
urging him to think of his art. He determined to found his fame at
M---- by a large picture which he designed for the Maria church there.
The whole subject was to be the very simple one of Mary and Elizabeth
sitting on the grass in a beautiful garden, with the infant Christ and
John playing before them; but all his efforts to obtain a pure
spiritual view of his picture proved fruitless. As in that unhappy
period of the crisis the forms floated away from him, and it was not
the heavenly Mary--no, it was an earthly woman, his Angiola herself,
fearfully distorted, that stood before the eyes of his mind. He
fancied that he could defy the gloomy power that seemed to grasp
him,--he prepared his colours and began to paint; but his strength was
broken, and all his endeavours were--as they had been formerly--only
the puny efforts of a senseless child. Whatever he painted was stiff
and inanimate, and even Angiola,--Angiola his ideal, became, when she
sat to him, and he tried to paint her, a mere wax image on the canvass,
staring at him with its glassy eyes. His soul became m