tic age if you like--glorious,
vigorous, flourishing, when I decorated this hall with all these gay
pictures in honour of the wise King Arthur and his Round Table. I
verily believe that the tall stately figure who once came to me as I
was working here, and exhorted me to go on and gain my mastership--for
at that time I had not reached that dignity,--was King Arthur himself."
Here the young man interposed, "My father is an artist, sir, who has
few equals; and you would have no cause to be sorry if he would allow
you to inspect his works." Meanwhile the old man was taking a turn
through the hall, which had now become empty; he now called to the
youth to go, and then Traugott begged him to show him his pictures. The
old man fixed his eyes upon him and regarded him for some time with a
keen and searching glance, and at length said with much gravity, "You
are, I must say, rather audacious to be wanting to enter the inner
shrine before you have begun your probationary years. But--be it so! If
your eyes are still too dull to see, you may at least dimly feel. Come
and see me early to-morrow morning," and he indicated where he lived.
Next morning Traugott did not fail to get away from business early and
hasten to the retired street where the remarkable old man lived. The
youth, dressed in old-German style, opened the door to receive him
and led him into a spacious room, in the centre of which he found
the old man sitting on a little stool in front of a large piece of
outstretched grey primed canvas. "You have come exactly at the right
time, sir," the old man cried by way of greeting, "for I have just put
the finishing-touch to yon large picture, which has occupied me more
than a year and cost me no small amount of trouble. It is the fellow of
a picture of the same size, representing 'Paradise Lost,' which I
completed last year and which I can also show you here. This, as you
will observe, is 'Paradise Regained,' and I should be very sorry for
you if you begin to put on critical airs and try to get some allegory
out of it Allegorical pictures are only painted by duffers and
bunglers; my picture is not to _signify_ but to _be_. You perceive how
all these varied groups of men and animals and fruits and flowers and
stones unite to form one harmonic whole, whose loud and excellent music
is the divinely pure chord of glorification." And the old man began to
dwell more especially upon the individual groups; he called Traugott's
attentio