These ardent labours, and worse still, the hopes that elevated and
beguiled them, were however, destined to experience a sudden
interruption--of a character so strange and mysterious as to baffle all
inquiry and to throw over the events themselves a shadow of
preternatural horror.

Schalken had one evening outstayed all his fellow-pupils, and still
pursued his work in the deserted room. As the daylight was fast falling,
he laid aside his colours, and applied himself to the completion of a
sketch on which he had expressed extraordinary pains. It was a religious
composition, and represented the temptations of a pot-bellied Saint
Anthony. The young artist, however destitute of elevation, had,
nevertheless, discernment enough to be dissatisfied with his own work,
and many were the patient erasures and improvements which saint and
devil underwent, yet all in vain. The large, old-fashioned room was
silent, and, with the exception of himself, quite emptied of its usual
inmates. An hour had thus passed away, nearly two, without any improved
result. Daylight had already declined, and twilight was deepening into
the darkness of night. The patience of the young painter was exhausted,
and he stood before his unfinished production, angry and mortified, one
hand buried in the folds of his long hair, and the other holding the
piece of charcoal which had so ill-performed its office, and which he
now rubbed, without much regard to the sable streaks it produced, with
irritable pressure upon his ample Flemish inexpressibles. "Curse the
subject!" said the young man aloud; "curse the picture, the devils, the
saint--"

At this moment a short, sudden sniff uttered close beside him made the
artist turn sharply round, and he now, for the first time, became aware
that his labours had been overlooked by a stranger. Within about a yard