I arose from where I had been sitting, my brain maddened with my sudden reverse of fortune, and fled from the salon to my home* In an agony of grief I threw myself upon my bed, and that night was to me like years of sorrowing and affliction. When morning broke, my first resolve was to leave Dresden for ever; my next to remain, until, by applying all my energies to the task, I had accomplished something beyond all my former efforts; and then, spurning the praise and flattery my success would inspire, take a proud farewell of my fickle and ungrateful countrymen. The longer I thought upon, the more was I pleased with, this latter resolution, and panted with eagerness for the moment of contemptuous disdain, in which, flinging off the caresses of false friends, I should carry to other lands those talents which my own was unworthy to possess. It was but a few days before this the Prior of the Augustine monastery had called upon me, to beg I would paint an altar-piece for their chapel: they wished to have a kneeling figure of Mary, to whom the shrine was dedicated; but the subject, being a favourite one of Titian’s, had at that time deterred me. Its difficulty was now its charm; and as I pondered over in my mind the features I wished to transfer to my canvass, I suddenly remembered a painting which I had had for some years in my possession, and which, from the surpassing loveliness of the countenance it represented, as well as the beauty of its execution, had long fascinated me. I now reverted to it at once, and opening a secret drawer in my cabinet, took out the picture and placed it before me. It was a small and most beautifully painted enamel, representing two figures--one that of an old and stern-visaged man, upon whose harsh and severe features there played a scowl of deadly hate and scorn: he stood, drawn up to his full height, his hands and arms widely extended before him, as if in the act of performing some mystic or sacred rite over the lovely being who knelt at his feet in an attitude of the deepest and most reverential supplication. This was a lovely girl, her age scarcely eighteen years: her forehead, fair as alabaster, was shaded by two braids of dark brown hair, which hung back in heavy locks upon her neck and shoulders. Her eyes, of the deepest blue, were upraised and tearful, and the parted lips seemed almost to utter a murmured prayer, as her heaving bosom told some inward anguish; her hands were firmly clasped, but the arms hung powerless before her, and the whole figure conveyed the most perfect abandonment to grief it was possible to conceive. Here were the features, here the very attitude, I desired. Could I only succeed in imparting to my Madonna the lovely and sorrow-struck countenance before me, my triumph were certain. I had walked every gallery of Europe, from one end to the other; I had visited every private collection where a good picture was to be found, yet never had I beheld the same magic