Durer now began to make preparations for his return home. He engaged a waggoner to take him and his wife to Cologne; he exchanged a portrait of the emperor for some white English cloth; and, on 1st July, he borrowed of Alexander Imhoff a hundred gold guilders to be repaid at Nuremberg; another proof that Durer, though treated with great distinction in the Low Countries, had not derived much pecuniary advantage during the period of his residence there. On the 2nd July, when he was about to leave Antwerp, the King of Denmark, Christian II, who had recently arrived in Flanders, sent for him to take his portrait. He first drew his majesty with black chalk--mit der Kohlen--and afterwards went with him to Brussels, where he appears to have painted his portrait in oil colours, and for which he received thirty florins. At Brussels, on the Sunday before St. Margaret’s Day,[V-51] the King of Denmark gave a grand banquet to the Emperor and the Archduchess Margaret, to which Durer had the honour of being invited, and failed not to attend. On the following Friday he left Brussels to return to Nuremberg, proceeding by way of Aix-la-Chapelle to Cologne. [Footnote V-51: St. Margaret’s day is the 20th July.] Out of a variety of other matters which Durer has mentioned in his Journal, the following--which could not be conveniently given in chronological order in the preceding abstract--may not, perhaps, be wholly uninteresting. He painted a portrait of one Nicholas, an astronomer, who was in the service of the King of England, and who was of great service to Durer on several occasions.[V-52] He gave one florin and eight stivers for wood, but whether for drawing on, or for fuel, is uncertain. He only mentions having made two drawings on wood during his residence in the Low Countries, and both were of the arms of Von Rogendorff, noticed at page 236. In one of those instances, he distinctly says that he made the drawing, “_das man’s schneiden mag_”--that it may be engraved. The word “_man’s_” clearly shows that it was to be engraved by another person.--He mentions that since Raffaele’s death his works are dispersed--“_verzogen_,”--and that one of that master’s pupils, by name “Thomas Polonier,” had called on him and made him a present of an antique ring. In a subsequent passage he calls this person “Thomas Polonius,” and says that he had given him a set of his works to be sent to Rome and exchanged for “_Raphaelische Sache_”--things by Raffaele. [Footnote V-52: Durer says that this astronomer was a German, and a native of Munich.]