His pupil, Van Dyck, being pushed for money, turned alchemist and tried to manufacture gold, but when Rubens was approached by a visionary who wanted him to lend him money by which he might pursue such a work, promising Rubens a fortune when he should have discovered how to make his gold, the artist laughed and said: "You are twenty years too late, friend. When I wield these," indicating his palette and brush, "I turn all to gold." Many are the delightful anecdotes told of Rubens. It is said that while he was at the English court he was painting the ceiling of the king's banqueting hall, and a courtier who stood watching, wished to say something _pour passer le temps_, so he asked: "Does the ambassador of his Catholic Majesty sometimes amuse himself with painting?" "No--but he sometimes amuses himself with being an ambassador," was the witty retort, which showed how he valued his two commissions. When King Charles I. knighted Rubens he gave him, beside the jewelled sword, a golden chain to which his miniature was attached. If Rubens had gone about with all the chains and decorations given him by kings and other great ones of the earth he would have been weighted down, and would have needed two pairs of shoulders on which to display them. Rubens's first wife died; and when he married again, he was as fond of painting pictures of the second wife as he had been of the first. The name of the second was Helena Fourment, and she is called by one author "a spicy blonde." Certainly she was very gay, big, and robust, and only sixteen years old when she married Rubens who was then a man of fifty-three. Of one picture, "The Straw Hat," for which he is supposed to have used his wife's sister as model, he was so fond that he would not sell it at any price. Rubens had a rare mother, as shown in her letters to her husband, John, when he was in prison for his wrongdoing. It would seem that such a mother must have a strong, forceful son, and Rubens is less of a surprise than many artists who had no such influence in their childhood. The history of Rubens's mother is worthy of being told even had she not had a famous son who painted a beautiful picture of her. Rubens's "Holy Families" are like those of no other painter. The Virgin, the Child, all the others in the picture, are quite different from the Italian figures. These are human beings, good to look upon; full of love and joy, softness and beauty. It was his learning that first won favour for him in Italy. The Duke of Mantua hearing him read from Virgil, spoke to him in Latin, and being answered in that tongue was so charmed that the foundation of their friendship and the duke's patronage was laid. In Italy he was called "the antiquary and Apelles of our time." His nephew-biographer writes of him: "He never gave himself the pastime of going to parties where there was drinking and card-playing, having always had a dislike for such."