utumn of this year, 1540, the two years of absence expired which
had been granted to Holbein by his contract with the Basel Council. But
he had now formed ties which were too powerful to yield to Basel's.
Those plans of painting again the walls by which coming generations
would judge him, the resolve to try again if he and Elsbeth might not
manage to live in peace under one roof where the children, who were
strangers to him, should come to know and be known by him in something
more than name, were all relinquished. They must certainly have
been relinquished on some definite mutual understanding, and at a
"compensation" agreed upon between him and Elsbeth and his step-son,
Franz Schmidt; because it must have been Holbein himself who enabled
Franz, acting on his mother's behalf, to take over as he did the entire
legacy--a snug little competency in itself--to which Holbein fell heir
in this autumn by the bequest of his uncle, Sigmund Holbein, citizen of
Berne. Philip having been launched by his father in the goldsmith's
craft, there only remained the second son and two daughters at home.
Thus so far as mere money went, Holbein might now think himself
discharged from the support of his family, and free to divert his future
earnings from them. And, as has been said, the Will and Inventory proved
at Elsbeth's death, six years after her husband's, that he had made no
bad provision for them in the matter of material comforts, however
remiss his conduct in its moral aspects.

The Royal Accounts break off in 1541, but the Subsidy Roll for the City
of London has a very precious item for Holbein's biography in the
October of this year. This announces that "Hanns Holbene" is among the
"straungers" then residing in "the Parisshe of Saint Andrew Undershafte,"
and that he is assessed as such.

Not only the Windsor chalk drawings, but the paintings at Vienna,
Berlin, and other Continental galleries, show the pressure, as well as
the high level of quality, at which he was now working. These portraits
are among almost his very best, while the one shortly to be mentioned is
quite among them.

By the summer of 1542 the tragedy of Catherine Howard was over. That
Royal Progress, like more than one of its forerunners, had become the
royal shame. This time it was a shame so black and so wide that within
two years, after madness and death had purged the complicity of many,
there still remained so many more involved in the sins and follies of