he heard from Duerer himself.
One day the artist was finishing a sketch for the Emperor, who,
while waiting, attempted to make a drawing himself with one of
the charcoal-crayons; but the charcoal kept breaking away, and he
complained that he could accomplish nothing with it. Duerer then took
it from his hand, saying, "This is my sceptre, your Majesty;" and
afterwards taught the sovereign how to use it.

The story which is told of so many geniuses who have risen from low
estate is applied also to this one: The Emperor once declared to a
noble who had proudly declined to perform some trivial service for the
artist, "Out of seven ploughboys I can, if I please, make seven lords,
but out of seven lords I cannot make one Duerer."

Tradition states that the Emperor ennobled Duerer, and gave him a
coat-of-arms. Possibly this was the crest used in his later years,
consisting of three shields on a blue field, above which is a closed
helmet supporting the armless bust and head of a winged negro!

The idea of the immense woodcut of the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian
was conceived after 1512, either by the Emperor or by the
poet-laureate Stabius; and Duerer was chosen to put it into execution.
The history of the deeds of Maximilian, with his ancestry and family
alliances, was to be displayed in the form of a pictorial triumphal
arch, "after the manner of those erected in honor of the Roman
emperors." The master demanded payment in advance, and received an
order from the Emperor to the Rath of Nuremberg to hold "his and the
Empire's true and faithful Albert Duerer exempt from all the town taxes
and rates, in consideration of our esteem for his skill in art." But
he surrendered this immunity, in deference to the wishes of the Rath;
and Maximilian granted him an annual pension of 100 florins ($200),
which was paid, however, somewhat reluctantly.

"The Knight, Death, and the Devil," is the most celebrated of Duerer's
engravings, and dates from 1513. It shows a panoplied knight riding
through a rocky defile, with white-bearded Death advancing alongside
and holding up an hour-glass, and the loathsome Satan pursuing
hard after and clutching at the undismayed knight. The numerous
commentators on this picture variously interpret its meaning, some
saying that the knight is an evil-doer, intent on wicked purposes,
whom Death warns to repentance, while Satan rushes to seize him;
others, and the most, that he is the Christian man, fearless am