At the Karl-schüle Dannecker made but little progress in his studies. Nothing could be worse managed than this royal establishment. The inferior teachers were accustomed to employ the poorer boys in the most servile offices, and in this, so called, academy, he was actually obliged to learn by stealth: but here he formed a friendship with Schiller, who, like himself, was an ardent genius pining and writhing under a chilling system; and the two boys, thrown upon one another for consolation, became friends for life. Dannecker must have been about fifteen when the Karl-schüle was removed from the Solitude to Stuttgard. He was then placed under the tuition of Grubel, a professor of sculpture, and in the following year he produced his first original composition. It was a Milo of Crotona modelled in clay, and was judged worthy of the first prize. Dannecker was at this time so unfriended and little known, that the duke, who appears to have forgotten him, learnt with astonishment that this nameless boy, the son of his groom, had carried off the highest honours of the school from all his competitors. For a few years he was employed in the duke's service in carving cornices, Cupids, and caryatides, to ornament the new palaces at Stuttgard and Hohenheim: this task-work, over which he often sighed, may possibly have assisted in giving him that certainty and mechanical dexterity in the use of his tools for which he is remarkable. About ten years were thus passed; he then obtained permission to travel for his improvement with an allowance of three hundred florins a-year from the duke. With these slender means Dannecker set off for Paris on foot. There, for the first time, he had opportunities of studying the living model. His enthusiasm for his art enabled him to endure extraordinary privations of every kind; for out of his little pension of £23 a-year he had not only to feed and clothe himself, but to purchase all the materials for his art, and the means of instruction; and this in an expensive capital, surrounded with temptations which an artist and an enthusiastic young man finds it difficult to withstand. He told me himself that day after day he has studied in the Louvre dinnerless, and dressed in a garb which scarce retained even the appearance of decency. He left Paris, after a two years' residence, as simple in mind and heart as when he entered it, and considerably improved in his knowledge of anatomy and in the technical part of his profession. The treasures of the Louvre, though far inferior to what they now are, had let in a flood of ideas upon his mind, among which (as he described his own feelings) he groped as one bewildered and intoxicated, amazed rather than enlightened.