We are now in Charlottenburg; but the little chamber in which Thorwaldsen lately sat to make his sketch is empty, and he, chased by the demons of fear and distrust, hastens down the narrow back-stairs with the intention not to return. Nothing is accidental in the life of a great genius; an apparent insignificance is a God's guiding finger. Thorwaldsen was to complete his task. Who is it that stops him on the dark stairs? One of the professors just comes that way, speaks to him, questions, admonishes him. He returns, and in four hours the sketch is finished, and the gold medal won. This was on August 15, 1791. Count Ditlew de Reventlow, minister of state, saw the young artist's work, and became his protector; he placed his own name at the head of a subscription that enabled Thorwaldsen to devote his time to the study of his art. Two years afterward the large gold medal was to be contended for at the Academy, the successful candidate thereby gaining the right to a travelling _stipendium_. Thorwaldsen was again the first; but before he entered on his travels, it was deemed necessary to extend that knowledge which an indifferent education at school had left him in want of. He read, studied, and the Academy gave him its support; acknowledgment smiled on him, a greater and more spiritual sphere lay open to him. A portrait figure stands now before us; it is that of a Dane, the learned and severe Zoega, to whom the young artist is specially recommended, but who only sees in him a common talent; whose words are only those of censure, and whose eye sees only a servile imitation of the antique in his works. Strictly honest in his judgment, according to his own ideas, is this man, who should be Thorwaldsen's guide. We let three years glide away after the arrival of Thorwaldsen, and ask Zoega what he now says of Albert, or, as the Italians call him, Alberto, and the severe man shakes his head and says: "There is much to blame, little to be satisfied with, and diligent he is not!" Yet he was diligent in a high degree; but genius is foreign to a foreign mind. "The snow had just then thawed from my eyes," he has himself often repeated. The drawings of the Danish painter Carstens formed one of those spiritual books that shed its holy baptism over that growing genius. The little _atelier_ looked like a battle-field, for roundabout were broken statues. Genius formed them often in the midnight hours; despondency over their faults broke them in the day.