This did not escape the artist or Sophonisba, whom Moor had informed of what had occurred.

He trusted her as he did himself, and she deserved his confidence.

The clever Italian had shared his anxiety, and as soon as the king entered another apartment, she beckoned to Moor and held a long conversation with him in a window-recess.  She advised him to keep everything in readiness for departure, and she undertook to watch and give him timely warning.

It was long after midnight, when Moor returned to his rooms.  He sent the sleepy servant to rest, and paced anxiously to and fro for a short time; then he pushed Ulrich’s portrait of Sophonisba nearer the mantel-piece, where countless candles were burning in lofty sconces.

This was his friend, and yet it was not.  The thing lacking—­yes, the king was right—­was incomprehensible to a boy.

We cannot represent, what we are unable to feel.  Yet Philip’s censure had been too severe.  With a few strokes of the brush Moor expected to make this picture a soul mirror of the beloved girl, from whom it was hard, unspeakably hard for him to part.

“More than fifty!” he thought, a melancholy smile hovering around his mouth.—­“More than fifty, an old husband and father, and yet—­yet—­good nourishing bread at home—­God bless it, Heaven preserve it!  It only this girl were my daughter!  How long the human heart retains its functional power!  Perhaps love is the pith of life—­when it dries, the tree withers too!”

Still absorbed in thought, Moor had seized his palette, and at intervals added a few short, almost imperceptible strokes to the mouth, eyes, and delicate nostrils of the portrait, before which he sat—­but these few strokes lent charm and intellectual expression to his pupil’s work.

When he at last rose and looked at what he had done, he could not help smiling, and asking himself how it was possible to imitate, with such trivial materials, the noblest possessions of man:  mind and soul.  Both now spoke to the spectator from these features.  The right words were easy to the master, and with them he had given the clumsy sentence meaning and significance.

The next morning Ulrich found Moor before Sophonisba’s portrait.  The pupil’s sleep had been no less restless than the master’s, for the former had done something which lay heavy on his heart.

After being an involuntary witness of the scene in the studio the day before he had taken a ride with Sanchez and had afterwards gone to Kochel’s to take a lesson.  True, he now spoke Spanish with tolerable fluency and knew something of Italian, but Kochel entertained him so well, that he still visited him several times a week.

On this occasion, there was no translating.  The German first kindly upbraided him for his long absence, and then, after the conversation had turned upon his painting and Moor, sympathizingly asked what truth there was in the rumor, that the king had not visited the artist for a long time and had withdrawn his favor from him.