he was occupied with a model, she shook her head,
and shrugged her shoulders; then tapping her forehead with a very
significant gesture, she sighed and said, 'Things had not been right
with the good gentleman for some days past; he ate and drank nothing to
speak of, walked up and down his bed-room half the night, and spoke to
no one.' I asked whether the young lady who was with him on Whit Monday
had been there since. The answer was that she had not, but that he
still went on painting her, out of his head, and the good woman herself
had already thought that love might have something to do with her
master's silence and absence of mind.

"The truth flashed in upon me too plainly, and I tacitly reproached
myself with having poured oil on the flame by speaking of his
attachment to the lovely being as something quite reasonable and by no
means hopeless. Truly, if we always reflected the serious mischief our
jesting words might make, we should be at least as cautious in uttering
them, as we are in ascertaining upon what we are about to throw the
burning end of our cigar.

"Meanwhile there was nothing to be done. I knew my eccentric Mynheer
Jan too well. If he had taken it into his head to eat a whole Edam
cheese for his breakfast, no one could have dissuaded him. I made two
other attempts to get at him, but in vain; and one evening when I
accidentally met him by the 'Aukirche'--we had almost run up against
each other--he was off like a shot, and all my calling, and scolding,
and running after him did no good; he _would_ not have anything to do
with me.

"By-and-bye I came to take the matter more quietly, and to say to
myself, 'If he can do without thee, thou canst get on without him.'
This mood of mine won me approving looks from my dear wife. I willingly
allowed her the triumph--of which, by-the-way, she did not boast
ungenerously--of believing that her remonstrances had weaned me from
that soul-destroyer, Jan, and brought me back to the paths of virtue
and landscape-painting. When my oak forest was done, we broke up our
tent in the town, to pitch it, as we annually did, in the mountains. I
wrote a kindly note to wish my friend good-bye, but got no answer in
return. And so most of the summer passed away without my knowing
whether he were dead or alive. The fair Kate seemed to have been
swallowed up by an earthquake. Of all my friends and colleagues, who
were generally not long in tracking out anything rare, none had
disc