German fiction -- Translations into English; Netherlands -- History -- Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648 -- Fiction
We cannot represent, what we are unable to feel. Yet Philip's censure
had been too severe. With a few strokes of the brush Moor expected to
make this picture a soul mirror of the beloved girl, from whom it was
hard, unspeakably hard for him to part.
"More than fifty!" he thought, a melancholy smile hovering around his
mouth.--"More than fifty, an old husband and father, and yet--yet--good
nourishing bread at home--God bless it, Heaven preserve it! It only this
girl were my daughter! How long the human heart retains its functional
power! Perhaps love is the pith of life--when it dries, the tree withers
too!"
Still absorbed in thought, Moor had seized his palette, and at intervals
added a few short, almost imperceptible strokes to the mouth, eyes, and
delicate nostrils of the portrait, before which he sat--but these few
strokes lent charm and intellectual expression to his pupil's work.
When he at last rose and looked at what he had done, he could not help
smiling, and asking himself how it was possible to imitate, with such
trivial materials, the noblest possessions of man: mind and soul. Both
now spoke to the spectator from these features. The right words were
easy to the master, and with them he had given the clumsy sentence
meaning and significance.
The next morning Ulrich found Moor before Sophonisba's portrait. The
pupil's sleep had been no less restless than the master's, for the former
had done something which lay heavy on his heart.
After being an involuntary witness of the scene in the studio the day
before he had taken a ride with Sanchez and had afterwards gone to
Kochel's to take a lesson. True, he now spoke Spanish with tolerable
fluency and knew something of Italian, but Kochel entertained him so
well, that he still visited him several times a week.
On this occasion, there was no translating. The German first kindly
upbraided him for his long absence, and then, after the conversation had
turned upon his painting and Moor, sympathizingly asked what truth there
was in the rumor, that the king had not visited the artist for a long
time and had withdrawn his favor from him.
"Withdrawn his favor!" Ulrich joyously exclaimed. "They are like two
brothers! They wrestled together to-day, and the master, in all
friendship, struck His Majesty a blow with the maul-stick....But--for
Heaven's sake!--you will swear--fool, that I am--you will swear not to
speak of it!"
"Of course I will!" Kochel exclaimed with a loud laugh. "My hand upon
it Navarrete. I'll keep silence, but you! Don't gossip about that! Not
on any account! The jesting blow might do the master harm. Excuse me
for to-day; there is a great deal of writing to be done for the almoner."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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