in
crime looked on with special personal interest and encouraged him with
words of lavish praise. He worked to within ten minutes of the time the
master was due; and then all made their escape by the window through
which they had entered.

The next day, when the class assembled, the pupils were ordered to stand
up in line. Then they were catechized individually as to who had replaced
the master's picture with one of his own.

All pleaded ignorance until the master reached the blond-haired Van Dyck.
The boy made a clean breast of it all, save that he refused to reveal the
names of his accomplices.

"Then you painted the picture alone?"

"Yes," came the firm answer that betokened the offender was resolved on
standing the consequences.

The master relieved the strained tension by a laugh, and declared that he
had only discovered the work was not his own by perceiving that it was a
little better than he could do. Accidents are not always unlucky--this
advanced young Van Dyck at once to the place of first assistant to Peter
Paul Rubens.

* * * * *

Commissions were pouring in on Rubens. With him the tide was at flood. He
had been down to Paris and had returned in high spirits with orders to
complete that extensive set of pictures for Marie de Medici; he also had
commissions from various churches; and would-be sitters for portraits
waited in his parlors, quarreling about which should have first place.

Van Dyck, his trusted first lieutenant, lived in his house. The younger
man had all the dash, energy and ambition of the older one. He caught the
spirit of the master, and so great was his skill that he painted in a way
that thoroughly deceived the patrons; they could not tell whether Rubens
or Van Dyck had done the work.

This was very pleasing to Rubens. But when Van Dyck began sending out
pictures on his own account, properly signed, and people said they were
equal to those of Rubens, if not better, Rubens shrugged his shoulders.

There was as little jealousy in the composition of Peter Paul Rubens as
in any artistic man we can name; but to declare that he was incapable of
jealousy, as a few of his o'er-zealous defenders did, is to apply the
whitewash. The artistic temperament is essentially feminine, and jealousy
is one of its inherent attributes. Of course there are all degrees of
jealousy, but the woman who can sit serenely by and behold her charms
ignored for those of another, b