She is a youthful,
beautiful old lady; he a grave, spare, worn, elderly man, in his full
strength, but with many a trace of care and thought, and far more of
silver than of brown in his thin hair and pointed beard, and with a
melancholy thoughtfulness in his clear brown eyes--all well
corresponding with the gravity of the dress in which he has been
meeting the burghers of Ulm; a black velvet suit--only relieved by
his small white lace ruff, and the ribbon and jewel of the Golden
Fleece, the only other approach to ornament that he wears being that
ring long ago twisted off the Emperor Maximilian's chain. But now,
as he has bowed off the chaplain to his study, and excused himself
from aiding his two gentlemen-squires in consuming their krug of
beer, and hands his mother to her favourite nook in the sunny window,
taking his seat by her side, his features assume an expression of
repose and relaxation as if here indeed were his true home. He has
chosen his seat in full view of a picture that hangs on the
wainscoted wall, near his mother--a picture whose pure ethereal
tinting, of colour limpid as the rainbow, yet rich as the most
glowing flower-beds; and its soft lovely pose, and rounded outlines,
prove it to be no produce even of one of the great German artists of
the time, but to have been wrought, under an Italian sky, by such a
hand as left us the marvellous smile of Mona Lisa.
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