painter. I had heard much of him during my stay there, and of his
eccentricities. Just then it was quite the mode to circulate stories
about him, and I listened to so many which were incredible that I was
seized with an irresistible desire to meet him. I took, certainly, a
roundabout way to accomplish this. M---y had a horror of forming new
acquaintances,--so it was said. He fled from letters of introduction
coming in the ordinary way, as from the plague. Neither prince nor
noble could win his intimacy or tempt him out of the pale of his daily
routine. We are most eager in the pursuit of what is forbidden. I became
the more determined to make M---y's acquaintance, the more difficult it
seemed. After revolving the matter carefully, I wrote to America to my
intimate friend R., who I knew had subdued "the savage," as M---y was
sometimes called, and begged him to put me in the way of getting hold
of the strange fellow. In four or five weeks I received an answer.
R. simply inclosed me his own card with the painter's name in pencil
written on it,--advising me to go to the artist's house, deliver the
card in person, and trust the result to fortune. Now I had heard, as
before intimated, all sorts of stories about M---y. He was a bachelor,
at least fifty years old. He lived by himself, as was reported,--in
a superb house in an attractive part of the town. Gossip circulated
various tales about its interior. Sometimes he reigned a Sardanapalus;
at other times, a solitary queen graced but a temporary throne. He was
addicted to various vices. He played high, lost generally large sums,
and was in perpetual fear of the bailiffs. It was even reported that a
royal decree had been issued to exempt so extraordinary a genius from
ordinary arrest. In short, scarcely anything extravagant in the category
of human occurrences was omitted in the daily changing detail of the
scandal-loving society of Magnificent Munich. Only, no one ever imputed
a mean or dishonorable thing to M---y; but for the rest, there was
nothing he did not do or permit to be done. He painted when he liked and