At last we came to a barrier
of pine boards, built right across the stairs. Knocking at a rough,
temporary door, we thrust a card beneath; and in a minute or two it was
opened by a person in his shirt-sleeves, a middle-aged figure, neither
tall nor short, of Teutonic build and aspect, with an ample beard of a
ruddy tinge and chestnut hair. He looked at us, in the first place, with
keen and somewhat guarded eyes, as if it were not his practice to
vouchsafe any great warmth of greeting, except upon sure ground of
observation. Soon, however, his look grew kindly and genial (not that it
had ever been in the least degree repulsive, but only reserved), and
Leutze allowed us to gaze at the cartoon of his great fresco, and talked
about it unaffectedly, as only a man of true genius can speak of his own
works. Meanwhile the noble design spoke for itself upon the wall. A
sketch in color, which we saw afterwards, helped us to form some distant
and flickering notion of what the picture will be, a few months hence,
when these bare outlines, already so rich in thought and suggestiveness,
shall glow with a fire of their own,--a fire which, I truly believe, will
consume every other pictorial decoration of the Capitol, or, at least,
will compel us to banish those stiff and respectable productions to some
less conspicuous gallery.
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