78 I GO A-FISHING. 



heimer, stupid from last night's excesses, and not able to 

 see that his friend wanted to be at work, Agnes would 

 come to his help by calling out, ' Albrecht, are you alone? 

 I am coming down to see you.' I would take my affida- 

 vit that through that hole in the ceiling a thousand kind 

 words went up and down, and never one either way that 

 was not loving. 



"Dismiss Pirkheimer and his libels from our minds, 

 and we may construct for Diirer a home full of all that 

 was beautiful and lovely. He had his mother, and it was 

 the delight of his life to care for her in the lonesome 

 years of coming age ; his young brother, whom he watched 

 and guided with tender anxiety ; above all, his gentle, 

 beautiful, and faithful wife, whose face is the Madonna 

 that he best liked of all his works, always with him, al- 

 ways enjoying with him those wonderful conceptions of 

 the beauty and grandeur of the unseen world, those ex- 

 quisite home ideas of the life of the Virgin mother of the 

 Lord, sharing constantly his every thought of earth and 

 heaven. 



" But I am not disposed to deal with imaginations 

 now. I prefer a plain discussion of known facts. There 

 is a great error, and succession of errors, in which writers 

 have followed one another like a flock of sheep, concern- 

 ing Diirer's letters to Pirkheimer written from Venice in 

 1506. The first mistake is made in regarding it as strange 

 that he so seldom mentions his wife, and that his few mes- 

 sages to her are so cold. Enough, in reply to this, that 

 he knew his wife's opinion of Pirkheimer, and their estab- 

 lished dislike, and he therefore exercised discretion and 

 judgment in his correspondence. Still more, he knew 

 Pirkheimer, and had no desire to talk to him about one 

 so pure as Agnes. 



