"Speak, speak! How you look! One might really be alarmed."

"If I only can! No one here tells you the truth; but I--I love you;
so I will do it, ere it is too late. Don't interrupt me now, or I shall
lose courage, and I will, I must speak."

"My studies lately have not pleased you; nor me either. Your father...."

"He has led you in false paths, and now you are going to Italy, and when
you see what the greatest artists have created, you will wish to imitate
them immediately and forget Meister Moor's lessons. I know you, Ulrich,
I know it! But I also know something else, and it must now be said
frankly. If you allow yourself to be led on to paint pictures, if you do
not submit to again become a modest pupil, and honestly torment yourself
with studying, you will make no progress, you will never again accomplish
a portrait like the one in the old days, like your Sophonisba. You will
then be no great artist and you can, you must become one."

"I will, Belita, I will!"

"Well, well; but first be a pupil! If I were in your place, I would, for
aught I care, go to Venice and look about me, but from there I would ride
to Flanders, to Moor, to the master."

"Give up Italy? Can you be in earnest? Your father, himself, told me,
that I.....well, yes....in portrait-painting, he too thinks I am no
blunderer. Where do the Netherlanders go to learn anything new? To
Italy, always to Italy! What do they create in Flanders? Portraits,
portraits, nothing more. Moor is great, very great in this department,
but I take a very different view of art; it has higher aims. My head is