in whose factory this leather was
manufactured; and when in the East I saw red, yellow, and green slippers
on the feet of so many Moslems, I could not help thinking of the shady
Black Forest.

Sometimes we drove to the little neighbouring town of Calw, where we were
most kindly received. The mornings were uninterrupted, and my work was
very successful. Afternoon sometimes brought visitors from Wildbad, among
whom was the artist Gallait, who with his wife and two young daughters
had come to use the water of the springs. His paintings, "Egmont in
Prison," "The Beheaded Counts Egmont and Horn," and many others, had
aroused the utmost admiration. Praise and honours of all kinds had
consequently been lavished upon him. This had brought him to the Spree,
and he had often been a welcome guest in our home.

Like Menzel, Cornelius, Alma Tadema, and Meissonier, he was small in
stature, but the features of his well-formed face were anything but
insignificant. His whole person was distinguished by something I might
term "neatness." Without any touch of dudishness he gave the impression
of having "just stepped out of a bandbox." From the white cravat which he
always wore, to the little red ribbon of the order in his buttonhole,
everything about him was faultless.

Madame Gallait, a Parisian by birth, was the very embodiment of the
French woman in the most charming sense of the word, and the bond which
united her to her husband seemed enduring and as if woven by the
cheeriest gods of love. Unfortunately, it did not last.

After leaving Hirsau, we again met the Gallaits in Wildbad and spent some
delightful days with them. The Von Burckhardts, Fran Henrietta
Hallberger, the wife of the Stuttgart publisher, the Puricellis,
ourselves, and later the author Moritz Hartmann, were the only persons
with whom they associated. We always met every afternoon at a certain
place in the grounds, where we talked or some one read aloud. On these
occasions, at Gallait's suggestion, everybody who was so disposed
sketched. My portrait, which he drew for my mother at that time in black
and red pencils, is now in my wife's possession. I also took my
sketch-book, for he had seen the school volume I had filled with
arabesques just before leaving Keilhau, and I still remember the
'merveilleux and incroyable, inoui, and insense' which he lavished on the
certainly extravagant creatures of my love-sick imagination.

During these exercises in drawing he rel