Wehlau had in the harshest terms refused to supply his son with the means for renting a studio, and Hans, who as yet had no income of his own, was forced to submit. But that very day he took possession of the garden pavilion, sent for masons and carpenters, had everything arranged according to his wishes, and when his father returned from a short excursion he found the bill for the whole upon his writing-table. Of course the Professor was furious; he protested that he would have nothing of the kind upon his property, and would not even glance towards the pavilion; but he paid the bill, and Hans had again carried his point.
At the present moment the young artist was standing before his easel, painting away at a large picture, while Michael stood opposite him with folded arms, leaning against a short pillar. Conversation was evidently at a stand-still, quite ten minutes having passed without a word from either of the two; suddenly Hans paused in his work and said, "I tell you what, Michael, you're no good to-day."
Michael seemed to have entirely forgotten that he was there as a model for his friend. There was something in his look of the old boyish dreaminess. At the sound of Hans's voice he started as if awakening. "Who? I? Why not?"
"There it is! Yon start like a somnambulist suddenly awakened. What were you thinking of? You have been a perfect John-a-Dreams since we came back from the mountains. You are not the same fellow at all."
The young captain passed his hand across his forehead and smiled in a constrained way. "I think I need active service. I may have overtasked my brain during these last few months."
"Probably. You are a thorough fanatic in respect to work,--quite unlike myself. But please do me the favour of adopting another expression of countenance; I can do nothing at all with your present melancholy air."
"How shall I look, then?"
"As furious as possible. Just as my papa looks when he surveys my studio at the distance of a couple of hundred paces, only grander, more heroic. Oh, you can look just as I want you to, and I have been tormenting myself for weeks with trying to put what I mean on canvas, and in vain. I must copy it from nature, and you must help me."
"I cannot understand why you are so persistently determined to make use of my face," Michael said, impatiently. "It is not at all suitable for an ideal picture, and it is not in the least like the face you have put upon your canvas."
"You don't understand," Hans declared, with an air of conviction. "Your face is the best model I could have. Of course I shall not make the thing a portrait. All that I can use of your features is already in the picture. But the expression,--the eyes are all wrong! I wish I could provoke you to the last degree,--put you into such a passion with something that you would like to hurl it into an abyss ten hundred thousand fathoms deep, after the example of your namesake with the Evil One,--then I should be all right!"