ngelica."

"Thank you. Every one has his manner, and my ideas never come to me
until I see them first upon the canvas. But listen, Rosenbusch, does
this dry mental painting take up all your time? Couldn't you steal a
few hours in the day for outside work? A young officer's widow
has given me an order for a portrait of her husband, who fell at
Kissingen, to be inclosed in a wreath of laurels, cypresses, and
passion-flowers--between ourselves, a regular sampler idea. Only think
of it: the departed one on horseback, in the background the city; and
around it all a wreath, like onions about a dish of sauerkraut and
sausages. I let fall a few hints, as to whether it would not look
better, perhaps, if we should leave out the wreath, or at most paint in
the bust of the deceased? But no, it would not do to leave out the
horse, he might almost have been said to have been one of the family,
the widow declared--a beautiful bay stallion with a white star; and he
had also died in consequence of a wound. As the times are bad and the
lady did not find the price I asked any too high, I accepted the
commission. I immediately said to myself, it is nonsense; the horses
that you paint look a good deal like hippopotamuses, so you can't get
it done without Rosenbusch's help; and as he is now at work on his
great picture--but still, as you are only painting it in your head--"

She turned away, so that he should not see the sly look that flashed
over her round face. But, in his wretched state of body and mind, all
his sharpness had left him.

"You know, Angelica," said he, "that if I were painting the battles of
Alexander, I would always have time enough left for you. Besides, one
nag won't be anything of a job. I shall paint him with wide-spread
nostrils snuffing at the wreath, as though the laurels that beckoned to
his master had excited his own appetite. Symbolical allusions like that
can give an interesting air even to the most foolish picture."

"Will you have the goodness to dispense with all your jokes? The matter
is serious, the picture is to be placed on a sort of household altar in
the widow's sleeping-chamber, and a night-lamp is to be kept constantly
burning before it. So, if you will undertake to do the figures,
including, of course, the portrait of the officer--a photograph of the
horse is also to be sent to me to-day--I will paint a wreath around
them, and we will go shares in the fame and money."

She named twice the sum sh