equally whether Holbein should be ill or well, but only during his own
life. In addition to this, they granted him permission to make short
visits to specified art-centres, of which Milan was one, "once, twice,
or thrice, every year." And recognising the impossibility of his freeing
himself from his English engagements in less than two years, they also
granted him this interval before he need resume his residence at Basel;
and engaged to pay forty guldens yearly to his wife, on his behalf, for
each of these two years.

There is every probability that Holbein himself took a goodly sum to
Basel to invest for his family's permanent benefit in one way and
another. For it could only have been as a part of this gleaning for
them that he drew--as the Account Books show that he did just at this
juncture--a whole year's salary in advance from the Royal Exchequer;
seeing that the same books prove that he was liberally paid for all his
own expenses on the King's service, in addition to his regular salary.

Part of the sum he collected to take with him was doubtless used to
apprentice his son Philip, now sixteen, to the goldsmith's trade. And
that the father chose Paris for this purpose, where he left Philip on
his return journey, might well be due either to his own estimation
of Jerome David, to whom Philip was indentured, or to the fact that
Benvenuto Cellini's presence at Paris afforded some advantage; or that
his own promised return to Basel would make it preferable to have the
lad on the same side of the Channel as all his family. And that Holbein
fully intended to make the necessary and obvious sacrifice involved in
exchanging London for Basel is also proved by a contemporary account.
"His intention was," says his fellow-townsman, "had God lengthened his
life, to paint many of his pictures again at his own expense, as well as
the hall in the Rathaus. The paintings on the _Haus zum Tanz_ he
pronounced 'pretty good.'" But it was not to be.

His New Year's offering to the King on the opening of 1539 was a
portrait, probably the oil painting in the Hague Gallery, of the infant
Prince of Wales. It was a spirited picture of the royal baby with his
gold rattle in his chubby little fist, such as might have delighted a
father less doting than Henry VIII., whose return gift is recorded: "To
Hans Holbyne, paynter, a gilte cruse with a cover, weighing x oz. 1
quarter." The cruse was made by a friend of the painter; that Cornelius
Haye