willingly have gone to the rack once, twice, thrice, if he could merely
have obtained the certainty of creating other pictures like this, and
perhaps still nobler, more beautiful ones.

Art! Art! Perhaps this was the "word," and if not, it was the highest,
most exquisite, most precious thing in life, beside which everything else
seemed small, pitiful and insipid. With what other word could God have
created the world, human beings, animals, and plants? The doctor had
often called every flower, every beetle, a work of art, and Ulrich now
understood his meaning, and could imagine how the Almighty, with the
thirst for creation and plastic hand of the greatest of all artists had
formed the gigantic bodies of the stars, had given the sky its glittering
blue, had indented and rounded the mountains, had bestowed form and color
on everything that runs, creeps, flies, buds and blossoms, and had
fashioned man--created in His own image--in the most majestic form of
all.

How wonderful the works of God appeared to him in the solitude of the
dark dungeon--and if the world was beautiful, was it not the work of His
Divine Art!

Heaven and earth knew no word greater, more powerful, more mighty in
creating beauty than: Art. What, compared with its gifts, were the
miserable, delusive ones of Fortune: gay clothes, spiced dishes,
magnificent rooms, and friendly glances from beautiful eyes, that smile
on every one who pleases them! He would blow them all into the air, for
the assistance of Art in joyous creating. Rather, a thousand times
rather, would he beg his bread, and attain great things in Art, than riot
and revel in good-fortune.