A strong impulse urged him to sketch boldly and without long consideration, the picture of the Madonna, as it had once lived in his soul, but he restrained himself, repeating the warning words which had so often been dinned into his ears:  Draw, draw!

A female model was soon found; but instead of trusting his eyes and boldly reproducing what he beheld, he measured again and again, and effaced what the red pencil had finished.  While painting his courage rose, for the hair, flesh, and dress seemed to him to become true to nature and effective.  But he, who in better times had bound himself heart and soul to Art and served her with his whole soul, in this picture forced himself to a method of work, against which his inmost heart rebelled.  His model was beautiful, but he could read nothing in the regular features, except that they were fair, and the lifeless countenance became distasteful to him.  The boy too caused him great trouble, for he lacked appreciation of the charm of childish innocence, the spell of childish character.

Meantime he felt great secret anxiety.  The impulse that moved his brush was no longer the divine pleasure in creation of former days, but dread of failure, and ardent, daily increasing love for Isabella.

Weeks elapsed.

Ulrich lived in the lonely little palace to which he had retired, avoiding all society, toiling early and late with restless, joyless industry, at a work which pleased him less with every new day.

Don Juan of Austria sometimes met him in the park.  Once the Emperor’s son called to him: 

“Well, Navarrete, how goes the enlisting?”

But Ulrich would not abandon his art, though he had long doubted its omnipotence.  The nearer the second month approached its close, the more frequently, the more fervently he called upon the “word,” but it did not hear.

When it grew dark, a strong impulse urged him to go to the city, seek brawls, and forget himself at the gaming-table; but he did not yield, and to escape the temptation, fled to the church, where he spent whole hours, till the sacristan put out the lights.

He was not striving for communion with the highest things, he felt no humble desire for inward purification; far different motives influenced him.

Inhaling the atmosphere laden with the soft music of the organ and the fragrant incense, he could converse with his beloved dead, as if they were actually present; the wayward man became a child, and felt all the gentle, tender emotions of his early youth again stir his heart.

One night during the last week before the expiration of the allotted time, a thought which could not fail to lead him to his goal, darted into his brain like a revelation.

A beautiful woman, with a child standing in her lap, adorned the canvas.

What efforts he had made to lend these features the right expression.

Memory should aid him to gain his purpose.  What woman had ever been fairer, more tender and loving than his own mother?