The twenty-fourth is of peculiar interest.  In it we see a youthful Nun, who, it is clear, has taken her vows too hastily, kneeling before the oratory in her cell.  But her heart is not in her devotions; for the lover whom she abandoned has made his way into the apartment, and sits on her bed singing to his lute.  Her hands are clasped, not in prayer, but in an agony of love and apprehension.  She turns from the crucifix to gaze at him; and we see how the interview will end:  for an aged female attendant, in coif and scapulary, leans over to extinguish the candles.  We see, too, what its consequence will be; for that attendant is Death.

Among the remaining subjects, which we cannot examine particularly, or in their order, are those of the Old Man and Old Woman led by Death, each to the sound of a dulcimer;—­the Physician, to whom in mockery Death himself brings a patient;—­the Astronomer, to whom the skeleton offers a skull in place of a celestial globe;—­the Miser, from whom Death snatches his hoarded gold; and the Merchant, whom the same inexorable hand tears away from his ships and his merchandise;—­the storm-tossed ship, with Death snapping the mast;—­a Count, dressed in the extreme of courtly splendor, who recognizes Death in the disguise of a peasant who has flung down his flail to seize his lordship’s emblazoned shield and dash it to pieces;—­a Duchess, whom one skeleton drags rudely from her canopied bed, while another scrapes upon a violin;—­a Peddler;—­a Ploughman, of whose four-horse team Death is the driver;—­Gamblers, Drunkards, and Robbers, all interrupted in their wickedness by Death;—­a Wagoner, whose wagon, horse, and load have been tumbled in a ruinous heap by a pair of skeletons;—­a Blind Beggar, who stumbles over a stony path after Death, who is his deceitful leader, and who turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—­and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, to join his pastime.

A few others claim our more particular attention.  Among them is a Knight, armed cap-a-pie, who is run through and through, from back to front, by Death, himself half armed in mockery.  There is a concentrated vigor in the thrust of the lance, and a cool venom in the countenance of the assailant, that we may seek in vain in the works of famous battle-painters; and it must always be remembered that Holbein’s figure is entirely without those indications of muscular movement by which we express our feelings,—­in fact, a mere bare-boned skeleton.

A Bride at her wedding-toilet, whom Holbein has contrived to make almost beautiful, receives a robe from one attendant; another clasps round her neck a collar—­of gold and jewels?  No,—­of bones, and with bony fingers.  And the next cut to this shows us the Bridegroom and Bride walking through an apartment hung with arras, while before them dances Death, beating a tabor, like a child beside himself with joy.