"Traugott got out all the drawings he had ever done, and looked through them critically. Much of his work struck him quite differently from what it had formerly done, and generally seemed much better than he had thought. There was one drawing particularly--one of his childish attempts, done in his early boyhood--a leaf, on which the old burgomaster and the page were copied, in somewhat distorted, but clearly recognizable outlines; and he remembered well that, even in these early days, those figures had a strange influence upon him, and that he was once, in the gloaming, impelled, as by an irresistible spell, to leave his play and go to the Artus Hof, where he laboured diligently at copying them. He was moved by the deepest, most melancholy yearning as he looked at this drawing. He ought by rights to have gone to the office for a couple of hours as usual, but he felt that he could not; and, instead, he went out and up on to the Karlsberg. Thence he looked out over the sea: and in the dashing billows, in the grey evening haze rising, and lying in wonderful shapes of cloud-vapour over Hela, he strove to read, as in a magic mirror, the destiny of his future life. "Do you not hold, dear reader, that that which comes down into our breasts from the higher realm of love has to reveal itself to us at first as hopeless sorrow? That is the doubt, the misgiving, which comes surging into the artist's heart. He sees the ideal, and feels his powerlessness to grasp it. But then there comes to him a godlike courage; he makes endeavour, and his despair melts away into a sweet longing which gives him strength, and incites him to approach nearer and nearer to that Unattainable which he never reaches, though always getting closer to it. "Traugott was now powerfully attacked by this hopeless pain. When, early the next morning, he looked again at his drawings, they all seemed feeble and wretched, and he remembered what an experienced friend had often said: that great mischief, together with very mediocre results in art, proceed from the circumstance that people often mistake mere vivid, superficial excitement for a true, inward calling for art. He was much disposed to look upon the Artus Hof and the figures of the burgomaster and the page as outward, superficial excitements of this description. He condemned himself to go back and work in the office, regardless of the loathing, which often came so forcibly upon him that he was obliged to leave off work all of a sudden and rush into the open air. Herr Elias, with careful consideration, attributed this to the poor state of health which he felt certain the deadly pale face of the youngster indicated.