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For instance, when his dead wife first said she loved him, or when Albertine was born, or when he unexpectedly saw some dear friend whom he had thought to be lost to him; and to try and look as he had done then. "Wait a moment, Mr. Lehsen," said Bosswinkel; "I know what to do. One day, about three months ago, I got a letter from Hamburg telling me I had drawn a big prize in the lottery.
When she sets her heart on a thing, I can't refuse her. Besides, I like the fellow; he's a first-rate painter, you know; and where Art is concerned I'm a perfect gaby. There are a great many capital points about Lehsen. £12,000. I'll tell you what it is, Leonhard, just out of mere goodheartedness, I shall let this nice young fellow have my daughter."
Albertine said that was the best thing that could be done, but that, all the same, she was accustomed to see dear papa's picture in her room, that the bare space on the wall would be such a blank to her that she should never feel comfortable; so that the only course was for dear papa to have another portrait painted, by some painter who knew what he was about, and that she could think of nobody but Edmund Lehsen, so celebrated for his admirable portraits.
A fine little love-affair going on behind my back here! Excessively pretty! Very nice indeed, my young Mr. Lehsen! This is the meaning of your liberality your cigars and your pictures. He comes sliding into my house leads my daughter into all this sort of thing. A charming idea, that I should go and hang her round the neck of a miserable beggar of a dauber, without a rap to bless himself with!"
Bosswinkel ran up and down the room like a lunatic, crying over and over again, "It's all over with me; I am a miserable man, a ruined Commissionsrath. O Lord, if I only could get the girl off my shoulders; the devil take the whole lot of them, Lehsen, and Benjie, and my old Tussmann into the bargain." "Now," said the Goldsmith, "there is one way of getting out of all this mess."
Unless the landscape painter is every bit as much a poet as the portrait painter, he will never be anything but a dauber." "Heaven help us!" cried the goldsmith. "So you, dear Edmund Lehsen, are going to " "You know me, then, sir, do you?" the painter cried. "Why shouldn't I?" said Leonhard.
But Albertine declared that Edmund Lehsen painted for the love of the thing much more than for money, and would be sure to charge very little. And she kept on at her father so assiduously, that at last he agreed to go to Edmund Lehsen, and see what he would say about a portrait.
On the next day the Sunday at eleven o'clock the appointed time there arrived at the place of rendezvous old Manasseh with his hopeful nephew Tussmann and Edmund Lehsen with the Goldsmith. The wooers, not excepting the Baron, were almost frightened when they saw Albertine, who had never seemed so lovely and taking.
So that it was a matter of course that when the Commissionsrath asked, rather anxiously, about the price, Edmund said that the honour of being admitted, for the sake of Art, to the house and society of a gentleman such as he, was more than sufficient remuneration for any little effort of his. "Good Heavens! Can I believe my ears?" the Commissionsrath cried. "No money, dearest Mr. Lehsen?
Meanwhile the Baron had been filing at ducats quite as eagerly and absorbedly as the Clerk of the Privy Chancery had been reading, neither of them taking the slightest notice of what had been going on, till the Commissionsrath announced, in a loud voice, that Edmund Lehsen had chosen the casket containing Albertine's portrait, and was, consequently, to be her husband.
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