benevolence, and with what penetrating, I might say fatherly kindness, he
talked and even jested with us in his impressive way. I had the best of
it, for my blond curly head struck him as usable in some work of his, and
my mother readily consented to my being his model. So I had to keep
still several hours day after day, though I confess, to my shame, that I
remember nothing about the sittings except having eaten some particularly
good candied fruit.

Even now I smile at the recollection of his making an angel or a spirit
of peace out of the wild boy who perhaps just before had been scuffling
with the enemy from the flower-cellar.

There was another celebrated inhabitant of the Lennestrasse whose
connection with us was still closer than that of Peter Cornelius.
It was the councillor of consistory and court chaplain Strauss,
who lived at No. 3.

Two men more unlike than he and his great artist-neighbour can hardly be
imagined, though their cradles were not far apart, for the painter was
born in Dusseldorf, and the clergyman at Iserlohn, in Westphalia.

Cornelius appears to me like a peculiarly delicate type of the Latin
race, while Strauss might be called a prototype of the sturdy Lower
Saxons. Broad-shouldered, stout, ruddy, with small but kindly blue eyes,
and a resonant bass voice suited to fill great spaces, he was always at
his ease and made others easy. He had a touch of the assured yet fine
dignity of a well-placed and well-educated Catholic prelate, though
combined with the warlike spirit of a Protestant.

Looking more closely at his healthy face, it revealed not only benevolent