his aristocratic reserve of
manner were calculated to keep children at a distance, even to repel
them, and we avoided the stern little man whom we had heard belonged to
the greatest of the great. When he and his amiable wife became acquainted
with our mother, however, and he called us to him, it is indescribable
how his harsh features softened in the intercourse with us little ones,
till they assumed an expression of the utmost benevolence, and with what
penetrating, I might say fatherly kindness, he talked and even jested
with us in his impressive way. I had the best of it, for my blond curly
head struck him as usable in some work of his, and my mother readily
consented to my being his model. So I had to keep still several hours day
after day, though I confess, to my shame, that I remember nothing about
the sittings except having eaten some particularly good candied fruit.

Even now I smile at the recollection of his making an angel or a spirit
of peace out of the wild boy who perhaps just before had been scuffling
with the enemy from the flower-cellar.

There was another celebrated inhabitant of the Lennestrasse whose
connection with us was still closer than that of Peter Cornelius. It was
the councillor of consistory and court chaplain Strauss, who lived at No.
3.

Two men more unlike than he and his great artist-neighbour can hardly be
imagined, though their cradles were not far apart, for the painter was
born in Dusseldorf, and the clergyman at Iserlohn, in Westphalia.

Cornelius appears to me like a peculiarly delicate type of the Latin
race, while Strauss might be called a prototype of the sturdy Lower
Saxons. Broad-shouldered, stout, ruddy, with small but kindly blue eyes,
and a resonant bass voice suited to fill great spaces, he was always at
his ease and made others easy. He had a touch of the assured yet fine
dignity of a well-placed and well-educated Catholic prelate, though
combined with the warlike spirit of a Protestant.

Looking more closely at his healthy face, it revealed not only benevolent
amiability but superior sense and plain traces of that cheery elasticity
of soul which gave him such power over the hearts of the listening
congregation, and the disposition and mind of the king.

His religious views I do not accept, but I believe his strictly orthodox
belief was based upon conviction, and cannot be charged to any odious
display of piety to ingratiate himself with the king. It was in the time