This was the first day for many weeks on which he had felt warm, and as if he had enough to eat. Consequently he only made a few weak protests when Angelica insisted upon furnishing him his meals so long as their common labor lasted, and even made as though he did not notice that she acted like a very Penelope, and again and again put off the completion of the work under one pretext or another. However, the picture was finished at last, and Rosenbusch, who had in the mean while grown quite plump, would have been obliged to fall back again on his fasting and brooding, had not his friend taken care to provide for him without his knowledge. She succeeded in bringing it about that all the friends of the inconsolable widow became possessed by a desire to have the effigy of their dead or living husbands, done in the same way. Thus it happened that our battle-painter was all at once completely overwhelmed with orders for equestrian portraits, whereat he flew into a great passion, for the modern uniforms were very much at variance with his Wouverman tendencies. However, there were always the horses to fall back on, and upon these he could labor with a good conscience, though he was always complaining that the modern prejudices in regard to horse-breeding had exterminated the majestic Flemish and Burgundian breeds. He painted away at them with great zeal, "for his meals," as he expressed it, and it was only when the approach of twilight forced him to leave off that he allowed himself the pleasure of going round to his neighbors, and inveighing against this servile labor to which his great work was being sacrificed. Angelica never replied to his complaints by a single word. She had said once for all that she thought there was nothing unworthy in his painting military portraits by the dozen, provided he could get, respectable prices for them; and in support of this she referred him to some famous examples. But, in order that she might get him to work again upon some larger task, she persuaded the young widow to give him an order for the bombardment of Kissingen, at which her husband had fallen.