He must find
her; or the world might go to the bottomless pit for him. But how?
"Yes. He would be a painter. Teufelsbuerst would receive him as a humble
apprentice. He would grind his colours, and Teufelsbuerst would teach him
the mysteries of the science which is the handmaiden of art. Then he might
see _her_, and that was all his ambition.
"In the clear morning light of a day in autumn, when the leaves were
beginning to fall seared from the hand of that Death which has his dance
in the chapels of nature as well as in the cathedral aisles of men--he
walked up and knocked at the dingy door. The spider painter opened it
himself. He was a little man, meagre and pallid, with those faded blue
eyes, a low nose in three distinct divisions, and thin, curveless, cruel
lips. He wore no hair on his face; but long grey locks, long as a woman's,
were scattered over his shoulders, and hung down on his breast. When
Wolkenlicht had explained his errand, he smiled a smile in which hypocrisy
could not hide the cunning, and, after many difficulties, consented to
receive him as a pupil, on condition that he would become an inmate of his
house.
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