“I exude talent?” Frederick exclaimed, blushing.  “Never, Willy.  I beg of you, Miss Burns, don’t believe that enthusiast of a schoolboy.  If I really have talent, those sketches of mine in beer gazettes wouldn’t prove it.  As a matter of fact, I once did do some work in art.  Why should I deny that, like all silly children of between sixteen and twenty, I dabbled in painting, sculpture, and literature?  Once my father had to bring me to reason because I was all afire for going on the stage.  Later, I wanted to throw everything to the winds to enter politics and revolutionise society by working for a party which has never even existed, a German-Social party.  I leave you to judge how flighty I was and how much talent I had for art.  But I love art, with a love stronger, I think, now than ever before, because everything in the world beside art has become problematical to me.  I would rather have carved a wooden Mary like this”—­indicating the statue by Riemenschneider—­“than have been Robert Koch and Helmholtz rolled into one.  Of course, I am speaking purely subjectively.  I know how great Koch and Helmholtz are, and I have the profoundest admiration for both.”

“See here!  See here!  What’s the matter with us, Friedericus?” cried Peter Schmidt, jumping to his feet.  Though the artists had great fondness and respect for Peter Schmidt and went to him for advice, yet, whenever he was with them, a violent discussion invariably arose whether art or science deserves precedence in the field of human culture, Peter, of course, championing the cause of science.  “If you were to throw that wooden statue into the fire,” he said, “it would burn like wood.  Neither the wood nor the immortal art infusing it resists fire.  And once it burns to ashes, it can, of course, be of no significance to the world’s progress.  The world is full of marvellous gods and mothers of God, and so far as I know, they never cast a single ray of light into the night of the darkest ignorance.”

“I’m not saying anything against science,” Frederick declared laughing, “I am merely speaking of a very unsettled man’s love of art.  So be at ease, Peter.”

“If sculpture really attracts you,” said Miss Burns, who had given her exclusive attention to Frederick, “why don’t you begin right away to model here under Mr. Ritter?  Begin to-morrow.”

“I can’t say I know very much about wood-carving,” said Ritter, gaily.  “However, I am entirely at Doctor von Kammacher’s disposal.”

“I cannot leave my little Madonna, my wooden Mother of God,” cried Frederick, flushed with the wine, rising and holding up his glass.  The others followed his example, laughing; and they drank to the little Madonna, each with a secret thought linking Frederick’s outburst with the girl in the club-house.  The glasses rang, and Frederick continued rather daringly:  “I wish it had been granted me to do with divine intelligence and human hands, as Goethe said, what the animal man can