at His Majesty's service--or whether it was the Emperor's
doing entirely that his niece married the Duke of Lorraine instead of
the man whose first wife had been Charles V.'s aunt, there is, at all
events, a soft lurking devil in the demure little face which seems to
whisper that the answer was one which she could have made an' she would.

Van Mander heard from Holbein's circle a story which modern pedantry
is inclined to flout. This is, that when an irate nobleman wanted the
painter punished for an affront, the King hotly exclaimed:--"Understand,
my lord, that I can make seven earls out of as many hinds, any day; but
out of seven earls I could not make one such painter as this Holbein."
An eminently ben-trovato story, at all events. And certain it is that
the painter stood sufficiently high in the royal favour to be despatched
on some special private mission for the King in the summer of 1538, of
which the secret was so well kept that nothing beyond the record of
payment for it has ever transpired.

From this date Holbein's name is regularly down in the Royal Accounts.
The amounts drawn total, it has been computed, about L360 in present
value, and would make an agreeable annual addition to his other
earnings. So that it is little wonder he was not tempted by the small
sum offered by the Basel Council in 1532. But in 1538 the Council
greatly increased the old offer, and was so anxious to have him among
her citizens that the painter seized the opportunity of his secret
mission to Upper Burgundy, whatever it was, to pay a flying visit to
Basel in the interests of his family.

* * * * *

His old companions of the Guild of St. Johann Vorstadt made this
visit--when Holbein was back among them, as was noted, "in silk and
velvet"--the occasion of a grand banquet in his honour. But the real
motive for his visit was to arrange upon what terms he could meet the
Council's wishes. The terms were far from ungenerous, as is shown by the
contract which followed him back to London.

In this the Council bound itself, in consideration of the great honour
of retaining in their city a painter "famous beyond all other painters
on account of the riches of his art," and in further consideration of
his promise to make no absence from Basel more prolonged than should be
really necessary to carry his foreign commissions to their destination
and receive his pay for them--to give him an annuity of fifty guldens,