This language, however, did not seem to be understood in the next room. Angelica's room remained tight shut, and when it was opened, a few hours after, soft steps came down the stairs, and the listeners below were led to conclude that the sitting was over. In the mean while dinner-time had come, and the assistants in the adjoining room had stopped work and left the studio. Jansen, too--although, as a rule, he seldom made a pause before two o'clock--now laid down his modeling-tool. "Come," he said, "you must make your calls of ceremony upon our fellow-lodgers." They mounted the stairs, and went first into Rosenbusch's studio. As no notice had been taken of his flute-playing, he had seated himself at his easel again, and had set himself zealously to work to paint away his anger. His room certainly presented a most remarkable appearance; the walls shone, almost like those of an armory, with old arms, halberds, muskets, and swords, relieved here and there by enormous boots with wheel-spurs, leather collars, saddles, and singular stirrups. An immense old kettle-drum stood on a rickety stand in front of a worm-eaten arm-chair, and served as a table on which to pile all sorts of odds and ends. Some cactus-plants, with great red blossoms, stood in full bloom in the window, and among them was a delicate little wire-cage, containing two white mice, who ran restlessly up and down, squeaking and looking shyly at the new faces out of their little red eyes. The battle of Lützen stood on the easel; it was quite a vigorous work, and Felix could praise it with a good conscience. The horses, especially, reared and plunged, full of life and spirits; and the young baron could hardly believe it when the painter confessed that he had never mounted a horse in his life. After they had joked and laughed about this for a while, and Rosenbusch had delivered an earnest speech in defense of the romantic school, he threw off the old, much-patched Swedish trooper's jacket in which he always painted, in order, as he said, to have the true historical inspiration, and dressed himself, in spite of the heat, in a violet-colored velvet coat, so that he might accompany the friends in their visit to the adjoining room. Their knock on Angelica's door was answered by a cordial "Come in!" Rosenbusch had not exaggerated: the studio did, in truth, resemble a hot-house decked out for a festival, to which the sketches, and studies, and half-finished pictures of flowers merely served as decorations. The painter had had a window cut through the wall on the east side at her own expense, in order that she might give her plants, which she tended with scientific knowledge, plenty of sun whenever the nature of her work did not require a pure north light. The plants were truly grateful, and twined and throve so luxuriantly that the slender stems of the palms and figs reached almost to the ceiling.