ect unfading honour on Basel, and of which she has
ever been justly proud. And somewhere about the same time he married
Elsbeth Schmidt, a tanner's widow, who had one child, Franz.

Illustration: PLATE 7
FIGHT OF LANDSKNECHTE
_Washed Drawing. Basel Museum_

For the past four or five years Basel had been steadily becoming more
and more democratic. And at a period when its _elite_ were scholars and
printers and civic officials of every origin,--when the illegitimate son
of a Rotterdam doctor was the true prince, and Beatus Rhenanus, the
grandson of a butcher, was his worthy second in the reverence of
Basel,--the widow and son of a reputable tanner and a rising young
artist, who had already the suffrages of the most influential citizens,
would find no doors closed to them on the score of social disabilities.
The friendship of such men as Erasmus, Froben, Bonifacius Amerbach,
and the Mayor,--all conspicuous stars in the Church party,--would
have ennobled a man of less genius than Holbein in the eyes of his
fellow-citizens; and rightly. But as to the exact locality in which
Holbein set up his first married roof-tree--that Bethel of sacred
or saddest dreams--no documentary evidence has yet come to light.
Circumstantial evidence, however, amounts to a strong probability in
favour of the _Rheinhalde_ of Great-Basel.

If there was an emblem peculiarly abhorrent to the Basilisk (the Device
of Basel) it was the Crescent-and-star. But nothing could better serve
to recall the rough outline of Basel in Holbein's day than this very
emblem. As the Rhine suddenly swerves from its first wild rush westward
and races away, northerly, to the German Ocean, it shapes the hollow of
the crescent in which Little-Basel (_Klein-Basel_) nestled as the star;
and, appropriately enough, since it was here that the Catholic's Star of
Faith rallied when overcome across the river, where curved the crescent
of Great-Basel (_Gross-Basel_). And the relative proportions of the two
would be fairly enough represented by the symbols respectively used.

Great-Basel's northern face was protected by the Rhine, while the stout
city wall secured its convex curve. Of this wall the eastern horn was
St. Alban's Gate; its north-west was St. John's Gate (_St. Johann
Thor_); beside which stood the decaying Commandery of the Knights of
Malta, which had contributed a large sum toward the expanded wall, in
order to be included within it. And just as these spots still