And this was the turning-point in Bertel's life. How often a rich man might help a struggling artist, and save a genius to the world, as did this banker! Young Thorwaldsen now made the acquaintance of the Danish ambassador to Naples, who introduced him to the family of Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, where the most famous people in Rome gathered. Soon a leading countess commissioned him to cut four marble statues,--Bacchus, Ganymede, Apollo, and Venus. Two years later, he was made professor in the Royal Academy of Florence. The Academy of Copenhagen now sent him five hundred dollars as an expression of their pride in him. How much more he needed it when he was near starving, all those nine years in Rome! The bashful student had become the genial companion and interesting talker. Louis of Bavaria, who made Munich one of the art centres of the world, was his admirer and friend. The Danish King urged him to return to Copenhagen; but, as the Quirinal was to be decorated with great magnificence, Rome could not spare him. For this, he made in three months his famous "Entry of Alexander into Babylon," and soon after his exquisite bas-reliefs, "Night" and "Morning,"--the former, a goddess carrying in her arms two children, Sleep and Death; the latter, a goddess flying through the air, scattering flowers with both hands. In 1816, when he was forty-six, he finished his Venus, after having made _thirty_ models of the figure. He threw away the first attempt, and devoted three years to the completion of the second. Three statues were made, one of which is at Chatsworth, the elegant home of the Duke of Devonshire; and one was lost at sea. A year later, he carved his exquisite Byron, now at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was now made a member of three other famous academies. Having been absent from Denmark twenty-three years, the King urged his return for a visit, at least. The Royal Palace of Charlottenburg was prepared for his reception The students of the Academy escorted him with bands of music, cannon were fired, poems read, cantatas sung; and the King created him councillor of state. Was the wood-carver's son proud of all these honors? No. The first person he met at the palace was the old man who had served as a model for the boys when Thorwaldsen was at school. So overcome was he as he recalled those days of toil and poverty, that he fell upon the old man's neck, and embraced him heartily. After some of the grandest work of his life in the Frue Kirke,--Christ and the Twelve Apostles, and others,--he returned to Rome, visiting, on the way, Alexander of Russia, who, after Thorwaldsen had made his bust, presented the artist with a diamond ring.