generally filled his place in the family circle, and it seems had
frequently to appease my mother, who, rightly or wrongly,
complained of the frivolity of her husband.

How deeply the homeless artist, hard pressed by life and tossed
to and fro, longed to feel himself at home in a sympathetic
family circle, was proved by the fact that a year after his
friend's death he married his widow, and from that time forward
became a most loving father to the seven children that had been
left behind.

In this onerous undertaking he was favoured by an unexpected
improvement in his position, for he obtained a remunerative,
respectable, and permanent engagement, as a character actor, at
the newly established Court Theatre in Dresden. His talent for
painting, which had already helped him to earn a livelihood when
forced by extreme poverty to break off his university studies,
again stood him in good stead in his position at Dresden. True,
he complained even more than his critics that he had been kept
from a regular and systematic study of this art, yet his
extraordinary aptitude, for portrait painting in particular,
secured him such important commissions that he unfortunately
exhausted his strength prematurely by his twofold exertions as
painter and actor. Once, when he was invited to Munich to fulfil a
temporary engagement at the Court Theatre, he received, through the
distinguished recommendation of the Saxon Court, such pressing
commissions from the Bavarian Court for portraits of the royal
family that he thought it wise to cancel his contract altogether.
He also had a turn for poetry. Besides fragments--often in very
dainty verse--he wrote several comedies, one of which, Der