He was particularly happy, also, in his drawings of the _Landsknechte_, those famous Mercenaries of "Blut und Eisen"; always ready to drink a good glass, and a-many; to love a good lass after the same liberal fashion; to troll a good song or fight a good fight; and all with equal zest. He had not mixed with these masterful gentry for nothing; nor they with him to wholly die. There are a number of drawings where they are engaged in combat, too, which show that Holbein's heart leapt to the music of sword and spear as blithely as does Scott's or Dumas's--as blithely as did the hearts of the _Reislaeufer_ themselves. Look at the mad rush, the hand-to-hand grapple, in a drawing of the Basel Collection, for instance (Plate 7). The blood-lust, the heroism, the savagery, the thrust, the oath, the dust-choked prayer, the forgotten breathing clay under the bloodstained foot; the very clash and din of the fray;--all is told with the brush. And yet not one unnecessary detail squandered. It is as if one watched it from some palpitating refuge, just near enough to see the forefront figures distinctly and to make out the interlocked hubbub and fury where the ranks have been broken through. It would be a great day for Art could we but chance upon some lost painting for which such a study had served its completed purpose. * * * * * On the 3rd of July, 1520, Holbein fulfilled what was then the requirement of almost every guild, and purchased his citizenship; a citizenship to reflect unfading honour on Basel, and of which she has ever been justly proud. And somewhere about the same time he married Elsbeth Schmidt, a tanner's widow, who had one child, Franz. Illustration: PLATE 7 FIGHT OF LANDSKNECHTE _Washed Drawing. Basel Museum_ For the past four or five years Basel had been steadily becoming more and more democratic. And at a period when its _elite_ were scholars and printers and civic officials of every origin,--when the illegitimate son of a Rotterdam doctor was the true prince, and Beatus Rhenanus, the grandson of a butcher, was his worthy second in the reverence of Basel,--the widow and son of a reputable tanner and a rising young artist, who had already the suffrages of the most influential citizens, would find no doors closed to them on the score of social disabilities. The friendship of such men as Erasmus, Froben, Bonifacius Amerbach, and the Mayor,--all conspicuous stars in the Church party,--would have ennobled a man of less genius than Holbein in the eyes of his fellow-citizens; and rightly. But as to the exact locality in which Holbein set up his first married roof-tree--that Bethel of sacred or saddest dreams--no documentary evidence has yet come to light. Circumstantial evidence, however, amounts to a strong probability in favour of the _Rheinhalde_ of Great-Basel.