ocured, a good wife and a happy home, both destined to live always
on the canvasses of this most fortunate of painters.

In 1610, he married the lovely and beautiful Isabella Brandt, the
daughter of the Secretary of Antwerp. Happy indeed were the fifteen
years of their life together, and often do we find the wife and their
two boys painted by the gifted husband and father. We reproduce a
picture of the two boys.

He bought a house on Meir Square, one of the noted locations in
Antwerp. He re-modelled it at great expense in the style of the
Italians. In changing the house he took care that there should be a
choice place to keep and display his already fine collection of
pictures, statues, cameos, agates and jewels. For this purpose he made
a circular room, lighted from above, covered by a dome somewhat
similar to that of the Pantheon at Rome. This room connected the two
main parts of the house and was, with its precious contents, a
constant joy to Rubens and his friends. The master of this palace, for
such it certainly was, lived a frugal and abstemious life, a most
remarkable thing in an age of great extravagance in eating and
drinking. Here is the record of one of his days in summer: At four
o'clock he arose, and for a short time gave himself up to religious
exercises. After a simple breakfast he began painting. While he
painted he had some one read to him from some classical writer, and if
his work was not too laborious, he received visitors and talked to
them while he painted. He stopped work an hour before dinner and
devoted himself to conversation or to examining some newly acquired
treasure in his collection. At dinner he ate sparingly of the simplest
things and drank little wine. In the afternoon he again began his work
at his easel, which he continued until evening. After an hour or so on
a spirited Andalusian horse, of which he was always passionately fond,
and of which he always had one or more fine specimens in his stables,
he spent the remainder of the evening conversing with friends. A
varied assembly of visitors loitered in this hospitable home. There
were scholars, politicians, old friends--perhaps former fellow-pupils
in Antwerp studios. Occasionally the princess Isabella came among the
others, and Albert himself felt honored to stand as god-father to
Rubens' son. Surely the wicked fairy _did_ forget some of the evil he
was to have mixed with this life!

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN