"I would advise you, Rosenbusch, to go quietly upstairs again and wreak your martial ardor on the battle of Lützen," Jansen answered, without the slightest approach to a smile. "But, if your excitement will not let you work, convey your homage to the lady through the wall by means of your flute. Perhaps they will invite you to come round and declaim some of your verses."
"Wretched scoffer!" cried the battle-painter. "I thought to render you a service by bringing you this news. But you are of the earth, earthy, and are incapable of soaring to any height of enthusiasm. Well, God be with you! I see that I am not understood down here!"
He rushed out of the door, and, sure enough, they soon afterward heard the flute pouring out its most melting passages.
This language, however, did not seem to be understood in the next room. Angelica's room remained tight shut, and when it was opened, a few hours after, soft steps came down the stairs, and the listeners below were led to conclude that the sitting was over.
In the mean while dinner-time had come, and the assistants in the adjoining room had stopped work and left the studio. Jansen, too--although, as a rule, he seldom made a pause before two o'clock--now laid down his modeling-tool.
"Come," he said, "you must make your calls of ceremony upon our fellow-lodgers."
They mounted the stairs, and went first into Rosenbusch's studio. As no notice had been taken of his flute-playing, he had seated himself at his easel again, and had set himself zealously to work to paint away his anger. His room certainly presented a most remarkable appearance; the walls shone, almost like those of an armory, with old arms, halberds, muskets, and swords, relieved here and there by enormous boots with wheel-spurs, leather collars, saddles, and singular stirrups. An immense old kettle-drum stood on a rickety stand in front of a worm-eaten arm-chair, and served as a table on which to pile all sorts of odds and ends. Some cactus-plants, with great red blossoms, stood in full bloom in the window, and among them was a delicate little wire-cage, containing two white mice, who ran restlessly up and down, squeaking and looking shyly at the new faces out of their little red eyes.
The battle of Lützen stood on the easel; it was quite a vigorous work, and Felix could praise it with a good conscience. The horses, especially, reared and plunged, full of life and spirits; and the young baron could hardly believe it when the painter confessed that he had never mounted a horse in his life. After they had joked and laughed about this for a while, and Rosenbusch had delivered an earnest speech in defense of the romantic school, he threw off the old, much-patched Swedish trooper's jacket in which he always painted, in order, as he said, to have the true historical inspiration, and dressed himself, in spite of the heat, in a violet-colored velvet coat, so that he might accompany the friends in their visit to the adjoining room.
Their knock on Angelica's door was answered by a cordial "Come in!" Rosenbusch had not exaggerated: the studio did, in truth, resemble a hot-house decked out for a festival, to which the sketches, and studies, and half-finished pictures of flowers merely served as decorations. The painter had had a window cut through the wall on the east side at her own expense, in order that she might give her plants, which she tended with scientific knowledge, plenty of sun whenever the nature of her work did not require a pure north light. The plants were truly grateful, and twined and throve so luxuriantly that the slender stems of the palms and figs reached almost to the ceiling.
Angelica stood before her easel in an antiquated painting-jacket, her straw hat perched on one side, her cheeks glowing from her work, and was so busily occupied in "toning down" the background that she merely nodded to her friends as they entered, without interrupting her work.
"She has gone!" she cried to them, "otherwise I could not have let you in, no matter how much I had wanted to. My children, you have no conception of what a charming person she is! If I were a man, I would marry her or blow my brains out!"
"You are indulging in very reckless assertions," Rosenbusch interposed, raising himself a little on his toes, and stroking his thick beard. "Just let's see if she really is so dangerous."
Angelica stepped back from the easel.
"Gentlemen," she said, "I hope you will praise me. Either I understand as much about painting as a roast goose, or this will be my best picture, and a real work of art. But just look at these curves! All large, simple, noble, such as never grow under our native heaven. My first idea was to paint the picture alla prima; but in the nick of time it occurred to me that I should be very foolish to do so. For the longer I can study this heavenly face, the happier I shall be. Just see this figure, Jansen. Have you often come across anything like it?"
"The lady has style," remarked Rosenbusch, assuming as cool an air as possible. "However, she doesn't seem to be particularly young, or else your dead coloring gives her ten years too many."
"You are a strange mortal, Herr von Rosebud," answered the painter, angrily. "In art you rave over nothing but old leather, but in life no school-girl's complexion is rosy and satiny enough to suit you. It is true, my beauty here told me herself that she was already--but I won't be such a fool as to tell a girl's secret to gentlemen. But of this I can assure you: that twenty years from now, when certain pretty little dolls' faces have long grown old and faded, that woman there will still be so beautiful that people will stand still in the streets to look after her."
"And may we be permitted to ask of what nationality she is?" inquired Felix.
"Why not? She makes no secret of the fact that she is from Saxony, although you would never detect it from her accent; nor that her name is Julie S., nor that she lost her old mother a year or so ago, and now stands quite alone in the world. However, we haven't been having a mere family gossip, but the most profound conversation on art-matters. She is more intelligent in such things, let me tell you, than many of our colleagues. And now you must excuse me, gentlemen, if I don't let you interrupt me in my work, but go on and finish this background to-day, before the colors dry in."
Up to this time Jansen had not spoken a syllable. Now he stepped up to Angelica, gave her his hand, and said:
"If you don't spoil this, my dear friend, you will make something out of it that will do you great honor. Adieu!"
He turned quickly away, and strode out of the studio without casting a glance to right or left.
CHAPTER IX.