When the picture was unveiled, the rich donors looked for themselves on the canvas, and some looked in vain.  Only two men were satisfied, and these were the two who marched in the vanguard.

“Where am I?” demanded a wealthy shipowner of Rembrandt as the canvas was scanned in a vain search for his proud features.

“You see the palace there in the picture, do you not?” asked the artist petulantly.

“Yes, I see that,” was the answer.

“Well, you are behind that palace.”

The company turned on Rembrandt, and forbade the hanging of any more of his pictures in the municipal buildings.

Rembrandt shrugged his shoulders.  But as the year passed and orders dropped away, he found how unwise a thing it is to affront the public.  Men who owed him refused to pay, and those whom he owed demanded their money.

He continued doggedly on his course.

Some years before he had bought a large house and borrowed money to pay for it, and had further given his note at hand to various merchants and dealers in curios.  As long as he was making money no one cared for more than the interest, but now the principal was demanded.  So sure had Rembrandt been of his powers that he did not conceive that his income could drop from thirty thousand florins a year to scarcely a fifth of that.

Then his relations with Hendrickje Stoffels had displeased society.  She was his housekeeper, servant and model—­a woman without education or refinement, we are told.  But she was loyal, more than loyal, to Rembrandt:  she lived but to serve him and sought to protect his interests in every way.  When summoned before the elders of the church to answer for her conduct, she appeared, pleaded guilty and shocked the company by declaring, “I would rather go to Hell with Rembrandt Harmens than play a harp in Heaven, surrounded by such as you!”

The remark was bruited throughout the city and did Rembrandt no good.  His rivals combined to shut his work out of all exhibitions, and several made it their business to buy up the overdue claims against him.

Then officers came and took possession of his house, and his splendid collections of jewels, laces, furniture, curios and pictures were sold at auction.  The fine dresses that once belonged to Saskia were seized:  they even took her wedding-gown:  and wanton women bid against the nobility for the possession of these things.  Rembrandt was stripped of his sketches, and these were sold in bundles—­the very sweat of his brain for years.  Then he was turned into the streets.

But Hendrickje Stoffels still clung to him, his only friend.  Rembrandt’s proud heart was broken.  He found companionship at the taverns; and to get a needful loaf of bread for Hendrickje and his boy, made sketches and hawked them from house to house.

Fashions change and art is often only a whim.  People wondered why they had ever bought those dark, shadowy things made by that Leyden artist, What’s-his-name!  One man utilized the frames which contained “Rembrandts” by putting other canvases right over in front of them.