Her stranger from Rubes' land was a great man in a certain world. He had
become great when young, which is perhaps a misfortune. It indisposes men
to be great at their maturity. He was famous at twenty, by a picture
hectic in color, perfect in drawing, that made Paris at his feet. He
became more famous by verses, by plays, by political follies, and by
social successes. He was faithful, however, to his first love in art. He
was a great painter, and year by year proved afresh the cunning of his
hand. Purists said his pictures had no soul in them. It was not wonderful
if they had none. He always painted soulless vice; indeed, he saw very
little else.

One year he had some political trouble. He wrote a witty pamphlet that
hurt where it was perilous to aim. He laughed and crossed the border,
riding into the green Ardennes one sunny evening. He had a name of some
power and sufficient wealth; he did not feel long exile. Meanwhile he
told himself he would go and look at Scheffer's Gretchen.

The King of Thule is better; but people talk most of the Gretchen. He had
never seen either.

He went in leisurely, travelling up the bright Meuse River, and across
the monotony of the plains, then green with wheat a foot high, and
musical with the many bells of the Easter kermesses in the quaint
old-world villages.

There was something so novel, so sleepy, so harmless, so mediaeval, in
the Flemish life, that it soothed him. He had been swimming all his
life in salt sea-fed rapids; this sluggish, dull, canal water, mirroring
between its rushes a life that had scarcely changed for centuries, had a
charm for him.