His speech had been long enough for Felix to think of some appropriate and sufficiently cheerful answer.
"You are terribly mistaken, my dear friend," he said, "if you think I wear no chain. Art, do you say? She is a gracious mistress to him alone who has gotten so far as to be able to rule her while he serves her. But, as for a wretched beginner and blunderer to whom she has not yet given her little finger to kiss, no raftsman or woodsman in the mountains groans under such a load. A thousand times I ask myself whether it was not, after all, a piece of folly for me, at my time of life, to join the scholars who are learning her first A B C; and whether I shall not discover to my horror, after the lapse of many weary years, that all this precious time has been thrown out of the window of Jansen's studio. It is certainly large enough for such a purpose."
"Hm!" growled the tall lieutenant. "You are singing a bad song to an old tune. Nowhere do you come across existences that are failures, more frequently than in a city of art like this. It's so damned seductive to go singing--
'Free, ah, free, is the life we lead, A life filled full of pleasure--'
and yet, what you say is quite right--he who cannot rule art, him she oppresses; and that to a worse degree than does any duty of life. You, as I know you, don't seem to me quite in your proper place. Both of us ought to have come into the world a few centuries earlier; and then I, as a leader of bandits, after the manner of Castruccio Castracani, and you, as a politician of the old energetic and unscrupulous stamp, might not have cut a bad figure. But now, all we can do is to help ourselves as best we can. Now let me tell you something. You have been over-excited, and have lost your spirits. Come out to the lake with me to-morrow. I will introduce you to her young highness. Perhaps you will fall in love with her and find favor in her eyes, and then our little princess and both of us would be made happy at one stroke."
Felix shook his head with increasing embarrassment. "He was not the man for such company," he said, in a stammering voice; "Schnetz would get little honor by introducing him. He couldn't swear that he wouldn't go out to the lake. He certainly did stand in great need of a change of air. But, unfortunately, he could be of no use to him in entertaining his countesses, baronesses, and young nobles."