From this date Holbein's name is regularly down in the Royal Accounts. The amounts drawn total, it has been computed, about L360 in present value, and would make an agreeable annual addition to his other earnings. So that it is little wonder he was not tempted by the small sum offered by the Basel Council in 1532. But in 1538 the Council greatly increased the old offer, and was so anxious to have him among her citizens that the painter seized the opportunity of his secret mission to Upper Burgundy, whatever it was, to pay a flying visit to Basel in the interests of his family. * * * * * His old companions of the Guild of St. Johann Vorstadt made this visit--when Holbein was back among them, as was noted, "in silk and velvet"--the occasion of a grand banquet in his honour. But the real motive for his visit was to arrange upon what terms he could meet the Council's wishes. The terms were far from ungenerous, as is shown by the contract which followed him back to London. In this the Council bound itself, in consideration of the great honour of retaining in their city a painter "famous beyond all other painters on account of the riches of his art," and in further consideration of his promise to make no absence from Basel more prolonged than should be really necessary to carry his foreign commissions to their destination and receive his pay for them--to give him an annuity of fifty guldens, equally whether Holbein should be ill or well, but only during his own life. In addition to this, they granted him permission to make short visits to specified art-centres, of which Milan was one, "once, twice, or thrice, every year." And recognising the impossibility of his freeing himself from his English engagements in less than two years, they also granted him this interval before he need resume his residence at Basel; and engaged to pay forty guldens yearly to his wife, on his behalf, for each of these two years. There is every probability that Holbein himself took a goodly sum to Basel to invest for his family's permanent benefit in one way and another. For it could only have been as a part of this gleaning for them that he drew--as the Account Books show that he did just at this juncture--a whole year's salary in advance from the Royal Exchequer; seeing that the same books prove that he was liberally paid for all his own expenses on the King's service, in addition to his regular salary.