mous contemporary,--"The Stork," in the Fischmarkt,--the special
patronage of the chief printers. Basilius Amerbach, for instance, the
brother of Holbein's friend Bonifacius, lived at the Blume; and often
the painter must have turned in for a friendly glass with him and a chat
about Bonifacius, away at his law studies in Avignon.

As for the Stork, its very rooms were named in remembrance of the envoys
and merchant traders who flocked to it on all great occasions. There
was a "Cologne Room," for instance, and a "Venetian Room," among many
others. The men of Venice, indeed, had a particular affection for it.
Here Holbein met with all nationalities, and learned much of the great
centres of other countries. Here came all the Basel magnates and
printers. And here, a few years later on, came that bizarre personage
who was for a very brief time Basel's "town physician," the Paracelsus
Theophrastus Bombastus to whom we owe our word _bombastic_. Holbein
was on a visit to England during the latter's short tenure of office,
when the combined scholarship and poverty of Oporinus made him the
hack of Paracelsus and the victim of many a petty tyranny. At that time
Oporinus,--the son of that Hans Herbster, painter, whose portrait is
now attributed to Ambrose Holbein,--was glad to place his remarkable
knowledge of Greek at Froben's service. He was not yet a printer, as
later when Holbein drew a clever device for him. And neither he nor the
painter could know that one day the daughter of Bonifacius Amerbach
should marry him out of sheer pity for his unhappy old age,--somewhat as
he himself, when but a lad of twenty, married an aged Xantippe from
gratitude.

But in 1520, when Holbein was just married, Oporinus was still a
student and Bonifacius unmarried. Erasmus, too, did not permanently
take up his home with Froben until the following year, and was now at
Louvain. Yet what a true university was that little house _zum Sessel_
(now 3, Todtengaesslein, the little lane where the old post-office stood)
to an intelligence such as Holbein's! And what a circle was that of
Froben's staff! From Froben himself, above whom Erasmus alone could
tower in scholarship, down through every member to the youngest, and
from such men as Gerard Lystrius on the one hand and the literally
"Beatus" Rhenanus on the other, what things were not to be learned!

And what discussions those were that drew each man to give of his best
in the common talk! Venice sent