There is something of Th. A. Hofmann's wild fantasy of the ague-fit in this picture,--something morbid, satanic, that suggests Félicien Rops; yet, at the same time, something so pithy and virile, and in form so compressed, well-balanced, and correct, that it brings the old Germans, too, to our recollection. And the reconciliation with which the series ends is pathetic. In the high steeple, lit by the rays of the setting sun, the grey old bellringer, his worn hands clasped in prayer, has fallen quietly asleep in his armchair. A calm peace rests upon his good, old, devout countenance. The thin hands, with their marks and furrows, tell a long tale of hard work, sorrow, and longing for rest. And the weary veteran has made a pilgrimage for the health of his poor soul, as prove the pilgrim's hat and staff by the wall; and now Death has really come, the well-known presence indeed, but this time with no grin of mockery, rather in profound pity. In his ingenious manner of giving an expression of mockery, cold indifference, or compassion to the head of the skeleton, Rethel stands on a level with Holbein. To the old ringer, Death, who before had grinned so diabolically, is a gentle and trusted friend. Quietly and pensively he performs the task that the old man has done so often when he attended the departure of some pilgrim of earth with the solemn notes of his bell. Rethel himself had still to drag through many years in an obscure night of the spirit before for him, too, Death, as the friend, rang the knell. [Illustration: RETHEL. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PAGAN IDOLS.] And now for him who was the most admirable of them all, Lady Adventure's true knight. "Master _Schwind_, you are a genius and a Romanticist." This stereotyped compliment was paid by King Ludwig to the painter on each occasion that, without buying anything of him, he visited his studio. And with equal regularity Schwind, when he had sat down again at his easel, after the royal visit, to smoke his pipe, is said to have muttered something extremely disloyal. In this trait the whole Schwind is already revealed,--free from all ambition, every inch an artist. W. H. Riehl has described a series of such episodes, which one must know in order to understand Schwind, that highly gifted child of nature, who separates himself from the group of philosophical, "meditative" artists of his age, both as an individual and as an audacious, original genius of effervescent wit. [Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._ RETHEL. HANNIBAL'S PASSAGE OVER THE ALPS.]