A fellow-student of mine was their lodger, a handsome young German, brimful of talent, but sadly deficient in health.  He had always held most rigid principles on questions of morality, but unfortunately they failed one day in their application, owing to the less settled views entertained by Madame Van-der-something on such subjects.  She certainly gave him much affection on the one hand, but on the other she so audaciously appropriated those of his goods and chattels that could be turned into money, that the police had to intervene, and she eventually found herself before a judge and jury.  There, however, she managed so well to cast all responsibility on her husband, who, to this day, I believe was quite innocent, that—­“cherchez la femme”—­she got off, and he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

Now if Van Ostade or Teniers had risen to prosecute him for forging their signatures, and he had been found guilty and condemned to severe punishment, it would have served him right.  He was a perfect gem of a forger.  He picked up a stock of those dirty old pictures painted on worm-eaten panels that used to abound in the sale-rooms of Antwerp.  On these he would paint what might be called replicas with variations, cribbing left and right from old mildewed prints that were scattered all about the floor.  He would scrape and scumble, brighten and deaden with oils and varnishes; he would dodge and manipulate till his picture, after a given time spent in a damp cellar, would emerge as a genuine old master.  I once asked a dealer whom I knew to be a regular customer of his, at what price he sold one of those productions.  “I really can’t say,” he answered; “I only do wholesale business.  I buy for exportation to England and America.”  If any of my friends here or over there possess some work of Van-der-something’s, I sincerely congratulate them, for the little man was a genius in his way.

Of my friend the German I have only to say that, poor fellow, he spent but a short life of pleasure and of pain.  What became of his Circe I never sought to know.  It was a clear case of “Ne cherchez pas la femme!”

The first friend I made on my arrival in Antwerp was Jean Heyermans (detto il Pegghi), and a very useful one he proved himself, for he at once took me in hand, helped me to find home and hearth, and generally gave me the correct tip, so valuable to the stranger.  He lost no time in teaching me some of those full-flavoured Flemish idioms which from the first enabled me to emphasise my meaning when I wished to express it in unmistakable language.