“Poets and painters have ever an eye for beauty in women; and when Carlotta D. entered the apartment, leaning on the arm of her father, Paul started as if one of the bright visions of his ideal world stood suddenly embodied before him. The lady, too, was for a moment half-embarrassed—for the fame of the young painter had reached her ears, and, womanlike, she had been wondering if report spoke truly when it ascribed to him the dark clustering locks, and the lustrous eyes of her own sunny south. ‘Love’s not a flower that grows on the dull earth; Springs by the calendar; must wait for sun— For rain; matures by parts—must take its time To stem, to leaf, to bud, to blow. It owns A richer soil, and boasts a quicker seed! You look for it and see it not: and lo! E’en while you look the peerless flower is up, Consummate in the birth!’ “Was it strange that Paul and Carlotta, both worshipers of the beautiful, with souls alive to the most holy sympathies of our nature, was it strange that they should love? “Paul had hitherto lived for his art alone. Painting was the mistress he had ever wooed with intense passion, but now another claimed his homage, and he bowed with a fervor little less than idolatrous at woman’s shrine. Such a love could not long remain concealed. The father of Carlotta, a vain and purse-proud man, hoping by his wealth to obtain a husband for his daughter among some of the haughty but decayed nobility, frowned on the artist, and forbade him his house. In secret the lovers plighted their troth, and parted, not knowing when they should meet again. “Paul left Florence with the resolve to win not fame alone, but wealth. “At Rome he was enrolled a member of the Academy of St. Luke, under Overbeck—the spiritually-minded Overbeck—who himself the son of a poet, has enriched his art with the divinely poetical conceptions of his own pencil. At Munich, one of his pictures was shown by Cornelius to the king of Bavaria, and purchased by that munificent patron of art at a price far exceeding the painter’s expectations. At Vienna a similar success attended him, and he returned to Florence after an absence of six years, with fame, and wealth enough for the foundation of a fortune.