h of dear old Nature for me to make a laughing-doll
out of, like my dancer there; but a future mother of mankind, untouched
as yet by any breath of want or degradation, and fresh from the hand of
her Creator--what do you think our professional models would say to
that--or the seamstresses or flower-girls that money or persuasion can
induce to enter the service of art? If it were a Roman, now, or a
Greek, or any untamed child of Nature who had grown up under a happier
heaven than ours! And that is what makes the ground here fairly burn
under my feet--and if they were not fettered with leaden fetters--"

He suddenly checked himself, and a dark shadow passed across his face;
but Felix shrunk from the effort to draw from him by a question any
confidence beyond what Jansen offered willingly.

At this moment the clock in a neighboring tower struck twelve; and for
a few moments the bells for mid-day service filled the pause that had
interrupted the talk of the two friends.

The sculptor began to wrap up the group again, after he had given it a
thorough sprinkling. And then, while Felix examined in silence the
other sculptures, many of which were familiar, he went to a wash-stand
in a corner, where he washed the traces of the clay from his hands and
face, and exchanged his working-blouse for a light summer-coat.

"And now," said he, as he finished his toilette--"now you shall go with
me to our high mass--one that we never miss on Sundays. At the stroke
of twelve we working-bees forsake our hives, and swarm to that great
flower-garden, the Pinakothek, to gather our store of wax and honey for
the whole week. Do you hear the door slam above us? That is my neighbor
in the upper story--a right good fellow, by the name of Maximilian
Rosenbusch, but called 'Rosebud' for short by his friends. An excellent
youngster, not in the least cut out by Nature for a desperado--but
rather inclined, on the contrary, to all the more delicate pursuits of
the muses. He is suspected of being secretly engaged on a volume of
'Poems to Spring,' and you could have heard his flute up-stairs
an hour ago. But at the same time he paints the most tremendous
battle-pieces--generally in Wallenstein or Swedish costume--battles of
the bloodiest sort, and where there is no quarter. In the studio next
to his lives a Fraeulein, a thoroughly estimable woman, and by no means
a despicable artist. Among her friends she goes by the name of
Angelica, but her real name i