and to anchor
himself here. When they questioned him, he gave them some information
about Heidelberg and his journey to Hornberg. Frau Ellrich complimented
him on his sketch, and while he modestly disclaimed the praise, she
asked him why he had not devoted himself to art.

"That is a peculiar result of my development," answered Wilhelm
thoughtfully. "While I was still at the gymnasium I sketched and
painted hard, and after the final examination I went to the Art Academy
for two years; but the further I went into the study of art, and the
more attentively I followed in the beaten track of art-studies, the
clearer it was to me that he who would secure an abiding success in art
must be a blind copyist of nature. Certainly the personal peculiarities
of an artist often please his contemporaries. It is the fashion to do
him honor if he flatters the prevailing direction of taste. But those
of the race who follow after, scorn what those before them have
admired, and exactly what those of one time have prized as progressive
innovations, they who come after reject as mere aberration. What the
artist has himself accomplished, I mean his so-called personal
comprehension or his capricious interpretation of nature, passes away;
but what he simply and honorably reproduces, as he has truly seen it,
lives forever, and the remotest age will gladly recognize in such
art-work its old acquaintance, unchanging nature."

Fraulein Ellrich hung on his words in astonishment, while her parents
calmly went on eating their fish.

"So," went on Wilhelm, speaking chiefly to his opposite neighbor, "so,
I tried when I drew or painted to reproduce nature with the greatest
truth; but at a certain point I became conscious of a perception that a
hidden meaning in an unintelligible language lay written there. The
form of things, and also every so-called accident of form, appeared to
me to be the necessary expression of something within, which was hidden
from me. The wish arose in me to penetrate behind the visible face of
nature, to know why she appears in such a way, and not in another. I
wanted to learn the language, the words of which, with no understanding
of their sense, I had been slavishly copying; and so I turned to the
study of physical science."

"So your two years at the Art School were not wasted," remarked Herr
Ellrich.

"Certainly not, for to an observer of natural objects it is most
valuable to have a trained eye for form and color."