AGNES DURER. 77 



mer was poor, the son of an honest goldsmith, who had 

 counted no less than eighteen children in his family, most 

 of whom, indeed, had died in very early life. As they 

 grew up, the friendship continued ; but while the artist 

 was driven to hard work for his bread, the rich man de- 

 voted his life to luxury. Diirer married a young girl of 

 good family and of great beauty. He needed just such a 

 wife as she proved. Her influence on his life was all for 

 good. Pirkheimer grew to be a dissolute man, and Diirer 

 had hard work to resist his constant desire to carry him 

 off from his wife and his studio to join in ' gayety.' Then 

 commenced the differences between the artist's wife and 

 his friend. We can plainly see what he means when he 

 writes Tcherte that she prevented Albert from going into 

 society or indulging in gayety. The sort of society and 

 gayety which Pirkheimer desired him to enjoy is abun- 

 dantly evident from his correspondence when the artist 

 was in Venice. The young wife had a more powerful in- 

 fluence on the artist than his old friend and all his allur- 

 ing temptations. The result which came about is just 

 what we often see in modern life. The friend of the man 

 takes a strong dislike to the woman who wins the greater 

 influence, and the woman can never forgive the man who 

 wishes to draw her husband from her to low and vile asso- 

 ciations." 



THE DOCTOR. "There is a story that Agnes used to 

 sit above her husband's working-room, and keep him at 

 his work by speaking through a hole in the ceiling." 



" Yes ; and it has no other foundation than this, that 

 some one who had taken Pirkheimer's evidence against 

 Agnes imagined this absurd story. If such a hole there 

 was, I have little doubt that sometimes, when Albert was 

 bored to the last extreme by such lazy loungers as Pirk- 



