appeared altogether. The quarter was a favourite one with members
of the Fishers' Guild and with decent folk of small mean
s.

As early as 1517 the Fishers' Company had extended itself so greatly as
to become a notable institution of the Vorstadt, including many members
from Klein-Basel also; while its military record was a proud one. But
it was in this year, while Holbein was making his visit to Lucerne
and beyond, that this guild took the more truly descriptive name
which it bears to this day, that of the "Vorstadt Association"
(_Vorstadtgesellschaft_). And to this association, which in after years
gave him a famous banquet, Holbein, we know, belonged later on, if not
now.

Every day would take him to the Fischmarkt,--the great square humming
with activity, crowded with inns, public-houses, shops, booths,
dwelling-houses,--the trade mart of every nationality. The Cornmarkt
near by, now the _Marktplatz_, with its almost finished Rathaus, was
the centre of official civic life. When the great bell clanged on the
Rathaus, and its flag was flung out, not only every professional
soldier, but every guild and every male above fourteen, knew his
appointed place at the wall, and took it. But every day, and all day,
the Fischmarkt flung out its peaceful standards, or rallied men to
this side or to that with the tocsin of its presses,--the old Amerbach
printing-house "of the Settle" (_zum Sessel_), which was Johann Froben's
home and printing-house in 1520.

Morning after morning, and year upon year, Holbein turned his back upon
St. Johannthor, and walked eastward along the Rheinhalde;--the river
racing toward him on his left hand, the University rising in front of
him beyond the bridge, and the delicate Cathedral towers beyond the
University. For the Basel Minster was still the Cathedral of the great
See of Basel. Passing the wall of the Dominican Cemetery, on which was
painted the ancient Dance of Death with which his own after-creations
were so often to be confused, Holbein must many a time have studied the
famous old copy. For though the Dominican painting was then nearly a
century old, it was a copy of a still older original in the Klein-Basel
nunnery of _Klingenthal_, a community under Dominican direction.

But he would pass another spot--one day to be of far more living
importance to him. In 1520 it was a corn warehouse, known by the name of
_ze Cruez_, which belonged to Adam Petri, the printer, who had inherited
it fr