And, in any event, on such a journey Lucerne must come first. And that he thought of making some long stay here when he returned is shown by his having joined in this year 1517, the Guild of St. Luke, the Painters' Guild of Lucerne, then but newly organised. "Master Hans Holbein has given one Gulden," reads the old entry. Two other items of this visit give us glimpses of its flesh-and-blood realities, perhaps of its unrest. The first, that he also joined a local company of Archers, the Militia of his day, seems to bring his living footfall very close. A resonant, manly, wholesome footfall it is, too! This broad-shouldered young fellow is as ready to draw a good stout bow among mountain-marksmen as a lamb among its daffodils. The second item makes it still clearer that he had other elements as well as the pastoral in his blood. On the 10th of December he got himself fined for his share in a street-scrimmage, where he would seem to have decidedly preferred the livelier to the "better part" of valour. And then he would appear to have shaken the dust, or more likely the snows, of Lucerne off his feet for the road to Italy, if not for Italy itself. Whatever his objective, he got, at any rate, well on toward the Pass of the St. Gothard. The scanty clues of such works as have remained on record prove that he reached Altdorf. But there the actual trail is altogether lost. If he spent the entire interval brush in hand, or if--as I believe--he treated himself to a bit of a holiday beyond the Alps, can be but a guess in the dark. By this time the New Year of 1518, then falling in March, could not have been far off, before or behind him. And in 1518 Holbein executed the commission which must have been the envy of every local artist. Jacob von Hertenstein, Burgomaster of Lucerne, had now got his fine new house ready for decoration; and it was to Holbein that he gave the splendid commission to decorate it to his fancy,--the interior as well as the facade.