The monks of La Sisla, a vanished powerful monastery of the middle ages, ordered of young Tristan a picture for their chapel. Tristan painted the picture and brought it to the abbot, claiming in payment two hundred dollars. The abbot, noting the painter's youth, objected to the price, and said it was far too high. Tristan modestly protested, and referred the abbot to his master, who shortly called on El Greco at an hour when Tristan was working in his studio. He opened the interview by remarking that he believed there was a mistake in the terms demanded by Tristan. "What were they?" dryly asked El Greco. The abbot blandly named two hundred dollars. "A mistake," cried El Greco, "I should think so indeed." He jumped up and flung himself violently on the astounded youth, and began to thump him. "How comes it, you rascal, you could make such a mistake? How dare you ask such a sum as two hundred dollars for a picture worth five hundred? This will teach you to go about the world asking such prices and proving yourself an ass." Thump, thump, and the unfortunate abbot looked on while the blows hailed on the shoulders of the too humble artist. "I buy that picture for five hundred dollars," said El Greco to the abbot, when he had finished Tristan's castigation, whereupon the abbot, who knew his man and was glad enough to get off quietly by the immediate payment to Tristan of five hundred instead of two, politely requested permission to keep the picture. Here was a master worth having. If he did use physical violence to his pupils, he paid a lordly price for the privilege, and in the reckoning it may be said the pupils were more than compensated for affront or wound. In space so limited, it is not to be hoped to find room for mention of all El Greco's pictures in Toledo. All I can endeavour to do is to indicate the best, and thus, perhaps, provoke in the reader by whom his work is ignored, a desire for fuller knowledge than I am able to impart. The first picture he painted here, the "Assumption" of _Santo Domingo el Antiguo_, was purchased by Don Sebastian of Bourbon, and though the copy in its place is not good, a fair idea of the picture might be obtained if the nuns had not the bad taste to place a large and unutterable atrocity in the shape of a hideous tabernacle in front of it. Whatever virtues the ladies of St Dominick may possess, an understanding of art is not among them. Before all their painted retablos, they place offensive dressed statues and tawdry ornaments, out of keeping with the cold severity of this beautiful church of El Greco's. The pictures on either side of the "Assumption," all Greco's, are fine; St John the Baptist and St Paul below, St Benedict and St Bernard above. The Annunciation at the end of the church is by Carducci, and the St Ildefonso opposite by Luis Tristan, neither equal to the master's strong, harmonious work, which they show out in greater relief.