f my art than I do--an art I have practised
with such credit at Antwerp, Louvain, and Liege! A dish of spinach,
indeed!' And by this time the fury of the insulted painter had
increased to such a degree, that he seized David by the arm, and
shaking him violently, added: 'Do you know, you old dotard, that my
character has been long established? I have a red horse at Mechlin, a
stag at Namur, and a Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, that no one has
ever seen without admiring!'

'This is beyond all patience,' said David; and suddenly extricating
himself from the man's grasp, and snatching his palette from him, he
was up the ladder in an instant, shouting: 'Wait awhile, and you shall
have yourself to admire, with your fool's pate and your ass's ears!'

'Stop, stop, you villain!' roared the luckless artist, pale with
consternation. 'My splendid sign! A painting worth thirty-five francs!
I am ruined and undone!' And he continued shaking the ladder, and
pouring out a torrent of abuse upon David, who, caring neither for the
reproaches of his victim, nor for the crowd that the sudden clamour
had attracted, went on pitilessly effacing the 'Break of Day,' and
mingling in one confused mass sky and sun, and trees and figures; or
what was intended, at least, to represent them. And now--not less
rapid in creating than in destroying--and with the lightest possible
touch of his brush, the new sign-painter sketched and finished, with
magic rapidity, a sky with the gray tints of early dawn, and a group
of three men, glass in hand, watching the rising sun; one of these
figures being a striking likeness of the whitewasher, shewn at once by
his bushy eyebrows and snub-nose.

The crowd, that had at first shewn every inclination to take the part
of their countryman against a stranger unfairly interfering with him,
now stood quietly watching the outlines as they shone through the
first layers of colour, and shouts of applause burst from them as the
figures grew beneath the creative hand of the artist. The
tavern-keeper himself now swelled the number of admirers, having come
out to ascertain the cause of the tumult; and even the fourth-cousin
of Gerard Dow felt his fury fast changing into admiration.

'I see it all now,' he said to those nearest him in the crowd. 'He is
a French or Dutch sign-painter, one of ourselves, and he only wanted
to have a joke against me. It is but fair to own that he has the real
knack, and paints even better than I do