like
courteous manner and returned the money, saying that they had brought
twenty times the amount with which to pay their expenses.

[Illustration: MARIE DE MEDICIS _Rubens_
(Museum, Madrid)]

An interesting story is related of their return. Overtaken by dark
night in the open country they took shelter in a monastery. The next
morning Rubens, with an eye always quick to see rare and interesting
things, scanned the place carefully looking for something which might
interest him. He was about to give up the search as hopeless, when he
discovered in a dark corner a grand picture. It represented in more
than mortal fashion the beautiful things that a dead young man,
painted in the foreground, had renounced. Rubens called the prior to
him and begged to know the name of the artist of so masterly a work.
The prior, an old, bowed man, refused saying, "He died to the world
long ago. I cannot disclose his name." Then the artist said, "It is
Peter Paul Rubens who begs to know." The prior started, for even in
the remoteness of the isolated monastery the fame of that name had
gone, and fell in a dead faint at the artist's feet. The attendants
lifted the prior gently but he had ceased to live. Through the ashy
pallor they saw the features of the young man in the picture yonder.
They instinctively turned to look that they might more carefully
compare the faces, and lo! like some cloud-vision, the picture had
disappeared. Then they knew that the dead monk there had painted the
canvas from the depth of his own experience.

From Madrid, Rubens was sent to England in the interest of Spain. Here
he was most kindly received by Charles I., who made him a knight and
presented him with his own jeweled sword and a diamond ring. He also
gave him a hat-band set with precious stones which was valued at two
thousand pounds sterling. From London he went to Cambridge where the
ancient university conferred on him its highest degree. In London he
painted almost constantly. Among other commissions he was given that
of decorating the dining room in Whitehall palace with nine pictures
representing the life of James I. To make the person or events of this
king's life attractive must have been an immense task even for so
supreme a genius as Rubens.

As he sat painting one day a courtier entered and exclaimed, "Ah, his
Majesty's Ambassador occasionally amuses himself with painting." "On
the contrary," responded Rubens who was alw