At Munich, last summer, I made the acquaintance of M---y, the famous painter. I had heard much of him during my stay there, and of his eccentricities. Just then it was quite the mode to circulate stories about him, and I listened to so many which were incredible that I was seized with an irresistible desire to meet him. I took, certainly, a roundabout way to accomplish this. M---y had a horror of forming new acquaintances,--so it was said. He fled from letters of introduction coming in the ordinary way, as from the plague. Neither prince nor noble could win his intimacy or tempt him out of the pale of his daily routine. We are most eager in the pursuit of what is forbidden. I became the more determined to make M---y's acquaintance, the more difficult it seemed. After revolving the matter carefully, I wrote to America to my intimate friend R., who I knew had subdued "the savage," as M---y was sometimes called, and begged him to put me in the way of getting hold of the strange fellow. In four or five weeks I received an answer. R. simply inclosed me his own card with the painter's name in pencil written on it,--advising me to go to the artist's house, deliver the card in person, and trust the result to fortune. Now I had heard, as before intimated, all sorts of stories about M---y. He was a bachelor, at least fifty years old. He lived by himself, as was reported,--in a superb house in an attractive part of the town. Gossip circulated various tales about its interior. Sometimes he reigned a Sardanapalus; at other times, a solitary queen graced but a temporary throne. He was addicted to various vices. He played high, lost generally large sums, and was in perpetual fear of the bailiffs. It was even reported that a royal decree had been issued to exempt so extraordinary a genius from ordinary arrest. In short, scarcely anything extravagant in the category of human occurrences was omitted in the daily changing detail of the scandal-loving society of Magnificent Munich. Only, no one ever imputed a mean or dishonorable thing to M---y; but for the rest, there was nothing he did not do or permit to be done. He painted when he liked and what he liked. His compositions, whether of landscape or history, were eagerly snatched up at extravagant prices,--for M---y was always exorbitant in his demands. Besides, when he chose, M---y painted portraits,--never on application, nor for the aristocracy or the rich,--but as the mood seized him, of some subject that attracted him while on his various excursions, or of some of his friends. Yet who _were_ his friends? Could any one tell? I could not find a person who claimed to know him intimately. Everybody had something to praise him for: "But it was such a pity that"--and here would follow one of the thousand bits of gossip which were floating about and had been floating for years, I had seen M---y often,--for he was no recluse, and could be met daily in the streets. His general appearance so fascinated me that