his fiery temperament provoked,
and one great sorrow, arising out of the death of his first-born. There
can be no doubt at all that he spent far too much money in these years;
he would attend the sales of works of art and pay extravagant sums for
any that took his fancy. If he ever paused to question himself, he would
be content to explain that he paid big prices in order to show how great
was his respect for art and artists. He came to acquire a picture by
Rubens, a book of drawings by Lucas van Leyden, and the splendid pearls
that may be seen in the later portraits of Saskia. Very soon his rash
and reckless methods became known to the dealers, who would push the
prices up with the certain knowledge that Rembrandt would rush in where
wiser buyers feared to tread. The making of an art collection, the
purchase of rich jewels for his wife, together with good and open-handed
living, soon began to play havoc with Rembrandt's estate. The artist's
temperament offended many of the sober Dutchmen who could not understand
it at all, his independence and insistence upon the finality of his own
judgment were more offensive still, and after 1636 there were fewer
applications for portraits.

In 1638 we find Rembrandt taking an action against one Albert van Loo,
who had dared to call Saskia extravagant. It was, of course, still more
extravagant of Rembrandt to waste his money on lawyers on account of a
case he could not hope to win, but this thought does not seem to have
troubled him. He did not reflect that it would set the gossips talking
more cruelly than ever. Still full of enthusiasm for life and art, he
was equally full of affection for Saskia, whose hope of raising children
seemed doomed to disappointment, for in addition to losing the little
Rombertus, two daughters, each named Cornelia, had died soon after
birth. In 1640 Rembrandt's mother died. Her picture remains on record
with that of her husband, painted ten years before, and even the
biographers of the artist do not suggest that Rembrandt was anything but
a good son. A year later the well-beloved Saskia gave birth to the one
child who survived the early years, the boy Titus. Then her health
failed, and in 1642 she died, after eight years of married life that
would seem to have been happy. In this year Rembrandt painted the famous
"Night Watch," a picture representing the company of Francis Banning
Cocq, and incidentally a day scene in spite of its popular name. The
work