e festivities that were to celebrate the
marriage of the Infanta Maria Teresa with Louis XIV. If we may read
character in physiognomy, there is little risk that Philip would have
behaved generously without cause.

Velazquez left Madrid for Irun, on the Franco-Spanish frontier, in
April 1660. The work was harassing; he was not a _persona grata_ with
his colleagues, and none sought to lighten his burdens. He returned to
the capital at the end of June, when Madrid is not fit to live in, and
was taken ill a month later. Hard and unremitting labour, the folly
and bitter opposition of men who were not worthy to clean his palette,
the inconveniences and delays of travel in Spain, and the tender
mercies of several Spanish doctors of repute, seem to have combined,
with a bad attack of fever, to bring a troubled life to its closing
scene. The end came on the 6th of August 1660, when, to quote Senor
Beruete, "he delivered up his soul to God, who had created him to be
the admiration of the world."

The body was decorated with the ornaments of the knights of Santiago
and buried in the parish church of St. John the Baptist. Within a week
his devoted wife, Juana de Pacheco Velazquez, followed him to a rest
that no ceremonial of the Spanish court could disturb.

Strange as it may seem to those who know nothing of Spain, the petty
worries and vexations to which Velazquez had been subjected did not
cease with his death. It was decided by the authorities that the
thousand ducats paid to the dead painter for superintending the works
of the Alcazar must be returned, and in order that the claim might be
met, the contents of the artist's studio and some of his furniture
would seem to have been seized. King Philip recorded his gracious
distress at this decision, but did nothing to overrule it.

Litigation followed, and after some years the claim to the thousand
ducats was withdrawn by the authorities, the affairs of the master were
wound up for all time, and the stigma of debt was removed from the
memory of a man who never received a tithe of his deserts.

Philip IV. took Juan del Mazo, the painter's son-in-law, to be court
painter in Velazquez' place, and the appointment is worth noting,
because it is to this worthy man's wonderful facility for echoing his
father-in-law's style that we owe the presence of so many imitations in
the world's public galleries and private collections. Some of these
clever copies of lost pictures have