Margaret displayed rare taste for works of art, and her palace was a veritable treasure house of masterpieces, as an inventory prepared at her direction shows. One of the most famous of these was the portrait of Jean Arnolfini and his wife by Jean Van Eyck, which--after many vicissitudes--has now found a permanent resting place in the National Gallery at London, unless some militant suffragette adds another chapter to its chequered history. Another treasure has been less fortunate, namely the portrait of _La belle Portugalaise_, wife of Philip the Good, which was painted by Jean Van Eyck under circumstances already described in another chapter. This famous picture disappeared during the religious wars and has never been discovered. The inventory lists a great many other paintings, of which some are still in existence and some have been lost. The descriptions are often quaint and charming, and may have been dictated by the Duchess herself, as for example: "_Une petite Nostre-Dame disant ses heures, faicte de la main de Michel (Coxcie) que Madame appelle sa mignonne et le petit dieu dort_," and "_Ung petit paradis ou sont touxs les apôtres._" Other artists of note in the collection were Bernard Van Orley, Hans Memling, Roger Van der Weyden, Dierick Bouts, Jerome Bosch and Gerard Horembout. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JEAN ARNOLFINI AND HIS WIFE BY JEAN VAN EYCK.] Among the men of letters whom Margaret gathered around her were Jean Molinet, her librarian and a poet who often celebrated her charms; Jean Lemaire de Belges, who became her historian; Erasmus, Nicolas Everard, Adrian of Utrecht, Cornelius Agrippa, Massé, Rénacle de Florennes, Louis Vivés, and many others. Her library was as choice as her collection of paintings and included a Book of Hours and several other illuminated manuscripts now in the Bibliotheque Royale at Brussels, and many of the mediæval classics. History records few great personages whose personality, considered from every aspect, is more pleasing than that of this gracious lady, whose very pets are known to us through the frequent references made to them by her literary courtiers. Her career, though shaded by sadness and disappointment, was a great and noble one, and, while she lived, the land over which she ruled remained in almost uninterrupted peace and prosperity--the wars of the Emperor being for the most part waged far away on the plains of Italy or in France.