If there was an emblem peculiarly abhorrent to the Basilisk (the Device of Basel) it was the Crescent-and-star. But nothing could better serve to recall the rough outline of Basel in Holbein's day than this very emblem. As the Rhine suddenly swerves from its first wild rush westward and races away, northerly, to the German Ocean, it shapes the hollow of the crescent in which Little-Basel (_Klein-Basel_) nestled as the star; and, appropriately enough, since it was here that the Catholic's Star of Faith rallied when overcome across the river, where curved the crescent of Great-Basel (_Gross-Basel_). And the relative proportions of the two would be fairly enough represented by the symbols respectively used. Great-Basel's northern face was protected by the Rhine, while the stout city wall secured its convex curve. Of this wall the eastern horn was St. Alban's Gate; its north-west was St. John's Gate (_St. Johann Thor_); beside which stood the decaying Commandery of the Knights of Malta, which had contributed a large sum toward the expanded wall, in order to be included within it. And just as these spots still mark the horns of the old crescent, the _Spalen Thor_ shows where it had its greatest depth, midway between the other two. A straight line running due north-east from this Spalen-Thor would cross the big square of the Fish-market (_Fischmarktplatz_) pretty nearly as the uncovered stream of the Birsig, or "Little Birs," did before the quaint little bridge, which then united the two halves of the Fischmarkt, was absorbed in the paving over of stream and square before Holbein's day. This same straight line would of itself draw the "Old Bridge" (_Alte Bruecke_) with approximate exactness, the even then ancient bridge which centred the star of Klein-Basel to its crescent. And in the Historical Museum, where the Barefooted Friars worshipped then, we may still see the grotesque piece of clockwork, the wooden "Stammering King" (_Laellenkoenig_), that for centuries used hourly to roll great eyes and stick out its tongue a foot long across the river from the Gross-Basel end of the bridge. It is often said that this monster was set up as a public token of the hatred which the triumphant Protestantism of the south bank felt for the stubborn Catholicism of Klein-Basel. But the thing was a famous ancient joke before party feeling turned it into a gibe. Bonifacius Amerbach's home, the "Emperor's Seat" (_Kaiserstuhl_, now 23, Rheingasse), was in Klein-Basel. Johann Amerbach had bought it, near to his beloved friends, the Carthusians. In 1520 the good old man had slept for six years in the cloisters of the monastery; where to-day the children of the Orphan Asylum play above his grave.