can write, Master Gabriel Nietzel?"

"Yes, I can write; but--"

"Well, what signifies that _but_, and wherefore do you look all at once so
gloomy and so cross? Peradventure my commission does not please you?"

"No, your excellency, it does not please me, and I can not undertake it!"
cried Master Gabriel, indignantly. "You send me to The Hague, not as a
painter, but--let me call the thing by its right name--but as a spy, and,
what is yet more, as the corrupter of the Electoral Prince!"

"And that pleases not your virtue and your honesty?" asked the count,
shrugging his shoulders. "Well, good then, dear master! Stick to it! Let
all that we have said to one another be unsaid. Remain an honorable,
independent hero of virtue, paint pictures, and see to it that you sell
them, and if you do not succeed, then be contented to paint signboards
for merchants and their walls for burghers, and console yourself with
this, that you have refused a higher career from principles of virtue and
magnanimity. Take your Venus, Master Champion of Virtue; I had not
commissioned the purchase, and she is too dear for me. We are released
from our mutual obligations, and have nothing more to do with one another.
Go!"

"Will not your excellency keep the picture?" asked Nietzel, shocked, great
drops of agony standing upon his pale brow. "Will not your excellency
indemnify me for all my labors and expenses, and shall I go from you
with--"

"With the proud consciousness of your virtue," said the count, completing