“How modest!”

“I think the best enjoyment in creating is had in anticipation.”

Henrica gazed at the artist with a look of sympathy, and said with a softer tone in her musical voice: 

“I am sorry for you, Meister.  Your music pleases me; why should I deny it?  In many passages it appeals to the heart, but how it will be spoiled in your churches!  Your heresy destroys every art.  The works of the great artists are a horror to you, and the noble music that has unfolded here in the Netherlands will soon fare no better.”

“I think I may venture to believe the contrary.”

“Wrongly, Meister, wrongly, for if your cause triumphs, which may the Virgin forbid, there will soon be nothing in Holland except piles of goods, workshops, and bare churches, from which even singing and organ-playing will soon be banished.”

“By no means, Fraulein.  Little Athens first became the home of the arts, after she had secured her liberty in the war against the Persians.”

“Athens and Leyden!” she answered scornfully.  “True, there are owls on the tower of Pancratius.  But where shall we find the Minerva?”

While Henrica rather laughed than spoke these words, her name was called for the third time by a shrill female voice.  She now interrupted herself in the middle of a sentence, saying: 

“I must go.  I will keep these notes.”

“You will honor me by accepting them; perhaps you will allow me to bring you others.”

“Henrica!” the voice again called from the stairs, and the young lady answered hastily: 

“Give Belotti whatever you choose, but soon, for I shan’t stay here much longer.”

Wilhelm gazed after her.  She walked no less quickly and firmly through the wide hall and up the stairs, than she had spoken, and again he was vividly reminded of his friend in Rome.

The old Italian had also followed Henrica with his eyes.  As she vanished at the last bend of the broad steps, he shrugged his shoulders, turned to the musician and said, with an expression of honest sympathy: 

“The young lady isn’t well.  Always in a tumult; always like a loaded pistol, and these terrible headaches too!  She was different when she came here.”

“Is she ill?”

“My mistress won’t see it,” replied the servant.  “But what the cameriera and I see, we see.  Now red—­now pale, no rest at night, at table she scarcely eats a chicken-wing and a leaf of salad.”

“Does the doctor share your anxiety?”

“The doctor?  Doctor Fleuriel isn’t here.  He moved to Ghent when the Spaniards came, and since then my mistress will have nobody but the barber who bleeds her.  The doctors here are devoted to the Prince of Orange and are all heretics.  There, she is calling again.  I’ll send the cloak to your house, and if you ever feel inclined to speak my language, just knock here.  That calling—­that everlasting calling!  The young lady suffers from it too.”