to my horror, how this wretched business next door--this money-getting
and trying to please priests and women--was threatening to demoralize
me, that for three weeks I never set foot in my saint-factory, but
locked myself in here and expanded my soul again with this work. I know
that I am only doing it for myself and for a little group of true
friends, as restless as I am. Where could I put such a thing as that
nowadays? True Art is homeless and without a place to lay her head. A
dancing Bacchante is sure to find a lover in some rich man who will put
her in some niche in his _salon_, and think when he looks at her of the
ballet-girls who have been his associates. But Adam and Eve, before
their fall, in all their rude and vigorous strength, with the fragrance
of the fresh earth lingering, as it were, about them--they are as
useless for a decoration as they would be for the altar of a chapel.
Even their heroic proportions would pass for brutal! But, after all,
they are my old favorites; and, if they please me, to whom does it
matter?"

Felix did not answer. He was again absorbed in gazing at the group.

"A good friend of mine, whose acquaintance you will soon make, by the
way," continued the sculptor, "one Schnetz, who likes to play the
Thersites, advised me to put a fusilier's uniform on Adam, and make Eve
into a sister of charity, with a medicine-glass and spoon in her hand.
Then the group would perhaps be adopted to ornament the pediment of
some hospital. His satire on the present condition of our art was so
true that I had almost a mind to try it for a joke. My first man and
woman, without an inkling of all the ills of our pestilential century,
enthroned over the door of a _lazaretto_--what do you say to that as a
piece of colossal humor?"

"Only finish it, Hans!" cried the younger man. "Dream out your dream,
and I will vouch for it that, however stupidly and sleepily men are
plodding on, this lightning-stroke of genius will dash the scales from
their eyes! Why haven't you made more progress with your Eve?"

"Because I have never yet found a model; and because I will not
botch my work by mere patching together of my own recollections,
or by the last resort of borrowing from the Venus of Milo. Ah,
my dear fellow--the fine figures you think you saw in the streets
to-day--psha! you'll soon think otherwise. The German corset-makers,
the school-room benches, and the miserable food we live on, may
possibly leave enoug