ge of war, upon embellishment and the softer things of life, which
soothed the testy humours of the old Duke, like the quiet physical
warmth of a fire or the sun. He was ready to preside with all ceremony
at a presentation of Marivaux's Death of Hannibal, played in the
original, with such imperfect mastery of the French accent as the
lovers of new light in Rosenmold had at command, in a theatre copied
from that at Versailles, lined with pale yellow satin, and with a
picture, amid the stucco braveries of the ceiling, of the Septentrional
Apollo himself, in somewhat watery red and blue. Innumerable wax lights
in cut-glass lustres were a thing of course. Duke Carl himself, attired
after the newest French fashion, played the part of Hannibal. The old
Duke, indeed, at a council-board devoted hitherto to matters of state,
would nod very early in certain long discussions on matters of
art--magnificent schemes, from this or that eminent contractor, for
spending his money tastefully, distinguishings of the rococo and the
baroque. On the other hand, having been all his life in close
intercourse with select humanity, self-conscious and arrayed for
presentation, he was a helpful judge of portraits and the various
degrees of the attainment of truth therein--a phase of fine art which
the grandson could not value too much. The sergeant-painter and the
deputy sergeant-painter were, indeed, conventional performers enough;
as mechanical in their dispensation of wigs, finger-rings, ruffles, and
simpers, as the figure of the armed knight who struck the bell in the
Residence tower. But scattered through its half-deserted rooms, state
bed-chambers and the like, hung the works of more genuine masters,
still as unadulterate as the hock, known to be two generations old, in
the grand-ducal cellar. The youth had even his scheme of inviting the
illustrious Antony Coppel to the court; to live there, if he would,
with the honours and emoluments of a prince of the blood. The
illustrious Mansard had actually promised to come, had not his sudden
death taken him away from earthly glory.

And at least, if one must forgo the masters, masterpieces might be had
for their price. For ten thousand marks--day ever to be remembered!--a
genuine work of "the Urbinate," from the cabinet of a certain
commercially-minded Italian grand-duke, was on its way to Rosenmold,
anxiously awaited as it came over rainy mountain-passes, and along the
rough German roads, through