‘So,’ said the painter, looking round at his pupils, ’one of you must have played me this pretty trick.  Well, well, I forgive it.  You young varlets do not know the value of a florin as I know it.’

Sometimes the students nailed small copper coins on the floor, for the mischievous pleasure of seeing their master, who suffered much from rheumatism in the back, stoop with pain and difficulty, and try in vain to pick them up.

Rembrandt married an ignorant peasant who had served him as cook, thinking this a more economical alliance than one with a person of refined mind and habits.  He and his wife usually dined on brown bread, salt herrings, and small beer.  He occasionally took portraits at a high price, and in this way became acquainted with the Burgomaster Six, a man of enlarged mind and unblemished character, who yet continued faithfully attached to the avaricious painter.  His friendship was sometimes put to a severe test by such occurrences as the following:—­

Rembrandt remarked one day that the price of his engravings had fallen.

‘You are insatiable,’ said the burgomaster.

‘Perhaps so.  I cannot help thirsting for gold.’

‘You are a miser.’

‘True:  and I shall be one all my life.’

‘’Tis really a pity,’ remarked his friend, ’that you will not be able after death to act as your own treasurer, for whenever that event occurs, all your works will rise to treble their present value.’

A bright idea struck Rembrandt.  He returned home, went to bed, desired his wife and his son Titus to scatter straw before the door, and give out, first, that he was dangerously ill, and then dead—­while the simulated fever was to be of so dreadfully infectious a nature that none of the neighbours were to be admitted near the sick-room.  These instructions were followed to the letter; and the disconsolate widow proclaimed that, in order to procure money for her husband’s interment, she must sell all his works, any property that he left not being available on so short a notice.

The unworthy trick succeeded.  The sale, including every trivial scrap of painting or engraving, realised an enormous sum, and Rembrandt was in ecstasy.  The honest burgomaster, however, was nearly frightened into a fit of apoplexy at seeing the man whose death he had sincerely mourned standing alive and well at the door of his studio.  Meinherr Six obliged him to promise that he would in future abstain from such abominable deceptions.  One day he was employed in painting in a group the likenesses of the whole family of a rich citizen.  He had nearly finished it, when intelligence was brought him of the death of a tame ape which he greatly loved.  The creature had fallen off the roof of the house into the street.  Without interrupting his work, Rembrandt burst into loud lamentations, and after some time announced that the piece was finished.  The whole family advanced to look at it, and what was their horror to see introduced between the heads of the eldest son and daughter an exact likeness of the dear departed ape.  With one voice they all exclaimed against this singular relative which it had pleased the painter to introduce amongst them, and insisted on his effacing it.