taken, and in quiet
meditation arranges lines, and assigns each color to its proper place, in
short your own art-spirit."

"And yours also, Sire. If you had begun to paint early, you would have
possessed what Ulrich lacks."

"Perhaps so. Besides, his defect is one of those which will vanish with
years. In your school, with zeal and industry. . . ."

"He will obtain, you think, what he lacks. I thought so too! But as I was
saying: he is queerly constituted. What you have admitted to me more than
once, the point we have started from in a hundred conversations--he
cannot grasp: form is not the essence of art to him."

The king shrugged his shoulders and pointed to his forehead; but Moor
continued: "Everything he creates must reflect anew, what he experienced
at the first sight of the subject. Often the first sketch succeeds, but
if it fails, he seeks without regard to truth and accuracy, by means of
trivial, strange expedients, to accomplish his purpose. Sentiment, always
sentiment! Line and tone are everything; that is our motto. Whoever
masters them, can express the grandest things."

"Right, right! Keep him drawing constantly. Give him mouths, eyes, and
hands to paint."

"That must be done in Antwerp."

"I'll hear nothing about Antwerp! You will stay, Antonio, you will stay.
Your wife and child-all honor to them. I have seen your wife's portrait.
Good, nourishing bread! Here you have ambrosia and manna. You know whom I
mean; Sophonisba is attached to you; the queen says so."

"And I gratefully feel it. It is hard to leave your gracious Majesty and
Sophonisba; but bread, Sire, bread--is necessary to life. I shall leave
friends here, dear friends--it will be difficult, very difficult, to find
new ones at my age."

"It is the same with me, and for that very reason you will stay, if you
are my friend! No more! Farewell, Antonio, till we meet again, perhaps
to-morrow, in spite of a chaos of business. Happy fellow that you are! In
the twinkling of an eye you will be revelling in colors again, while the
yoke, the iron yoke, weighs me down."

Moor thought he should be able to work undisturbed after the king had
left him, and left the door unbolted. He was standing before the easel
after dinner, engaged in painting, when the door of the corridor leading
to the treasury was suddenly flung open, without the usual warning, and
Philip again entered the studio. This time his cheeks wore a less pallid
hue than in the morni