Rubens was unspoilt by success. Like many other great artists, he is conspicuous for "a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy.... His letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. He was an honourable and entirely well-intentioned man, earnestly industrious, simple and temperate in habits of life, highbred, learned, and discreet. His affection for his mother was great, his generosity to contemporary artists unfailing." He was twice married. In 1626 his first wife, Isabella Brant, died. Four years later he married Helena Fourment, a beautiful girl of sixteen, the living incarnation of his feminine type. "At the time of his second marriage Rubens was fifty-three years of age. He led a serious, happy, retired life. His leisure time he devoted to his family, to a few friends, to his correspondence, his collections, and his rides." "In the morning," we read, "he rose very early, and while he painted someone read aloud Livy, Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil or other poets. Then he would stroll in his gallery to stimulate his taste by the sight of the works of art he had brought from Italy. On other occasions he would study science, in which he always retained an active interest. Although he lived splendidly, he ate and drank moderately, and the gout from which he suffered in later life was certainly undeserved. He painted in the afternoon till towards evening, when he mounted a horse and rode out of the town." His house at Antwerp still stands; as also does his country-house, near Mechlin, of which there is a view in our Gallery (No. 66) (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15, sec. ii. ch. ii. § 12; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. i. § 2; vol. iv. pt. v. ch. i. § 17; vol. v. pt. viii. ch. iv. § 21, pt. ix. ch. vi. §§ 1-9; _On the Old Road_, i. 185, 186; _Stones of Venice_, vol. i. App. 15; Wauters, _The Flemish School_, p. 214).