Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/168

152 The Domine rose in a roaring rage and departed, but Jan caught up his palette and painted the stern old gentleman, just as he had sat in that punishment-sermon position for model without knowing it The picture is admirable, and it hung in my bedroom in Leyden.

After having seen so many pictures of Jan Steen in Holland it seems to me as if I knew the man's whole life. Yes, I knew his whole kith and kin and acquaintance, wife and children, mother and cousins all, domestic foes, and other hangers on, absolutely face by face. They salute like friends from all his pictures, and a collection of them would be a biography of the painter. He has often set forth the deepest secrets of his soul with a few touches of his brush. I am very sure that his wife often scolded him for drinking, for in his picture of the Bean Feast, where Jan sits with his whole family at table, there we see his wife with a great wine jug in her hand, her eyes gleaming like those of a Bacchante. I am sure, however, that the good woman really drank very little, and the rogue wished to humbug us with the idea that it was his wife and not he who was given to toping. For this cause he himself laughs all the more joyfully from the