"But come, brother," he continued, "let us rise superior to our fate, and although our manly spirit may not forbid us to shed a tear-- "So it is all over, and there is no more hope?" interrupted Elfinger, shutting up the sketch-book. "Over and gone forever! unless I should change my course in my old age and become a cattle-painter, or should crawl back into the womb so as to be born again as a pupil of Piloty. Just conceive it, Roscius! Only yesterday, hardly an hour before I paid my visit to papa, this brave Theban had fallen into the hands of a good friend at the art-club, who had stuffed him with a long account of the wonderfully flourishing financial condition of art in our good city of Munich. A flock of sheep, that had just been sold for eight thousand gulden, and the vivisection of a rabbit by some Hungarian or Pole whom that magician Piloty had developed into a celebrated man in six months, and whose pictures are now sold for unheard-of prices before they leave the easel, had given the two Philistines a chance to air their æsthetics, which are as irrefutable as mathematics. Figures show this. The export of painted canvas from this city, which has attained a gigantic height during the last few years, even surpassing the export of tanned leather, could not but impress even Nanny's unpoetical father. I might have carried off the little jewel without the slightest trouble if I could only have shown him a single cow, or some little historical atrocity. But for battles there was 'no demand'--eternal peace lay before us. How much did I make a year out of my old-fashioned art? Well--I lied like a trooper, and mentioned some unheard of sum for a man in my condition. Whereupon the monster laughed: he knew an animal-painter who had made double that amount from a single sheep's-head, in which, to be sure, you could distinctly perceive the quality of the wool by looking at it through a magnifying-glass. It was then that my temperament played me a shabby trick. I could not resist the temptation to make a disrespectful pun[4]--one, moreover, that was much too obvious to make it worth the while--and after this there was no helping matters. Unfortunately we could distinctly hear a burst of laughter, over my poor joke at papa's expense, proceeding from the adjoining room. The author of it had apparently been unable to withstand her maidenly curiosity, and had been listening to all that had been said. But I--" He checked himself suddenly. His eyes unconsciously wandered to the windows across the street, and what he saw there caused him to forget the end of his report.