WELL OF QUENTIN MATSYS, ANTWERP.

“Blacksmith no more,” said Quentin, stepping from behind the canvas, “but the artist who demands his reward.”

It is unnecessary to say more than that genius was rewarded, and to the happy husband Quentin Matsys, the Blacksmith of Antwerp, the world owes some of the finest relics of art.

V
THE MILK GIRL

I

Long, very long before the city of Antwerp had attained the extent which it now has, the milk-women, who supplied the city with this indispensable liquid, met every morning in a public square, which was soon designated by the name of “Marché-au-Lait” (Milk Market). These women, like all business people at that time, belonged to a corporation which had its rules, rights and privileges. They were too proud to serve the “bourgeois” upon the steps of his door, so each servant was obliged to go to their stands to buy milk.

The pump now situated in the Milk Market is a very pretty monument. It is surmounted by a carved statuette representing a milk-woman, with the peculiar brass milk can of the country upon her head. It is the history of this statuette which we propose to relate.

There still exists on the Milk Market an old house, which is, one would say, in nearly the same condition that it was three hundred years ago. Like all the houses of that period (which are so faithfully represented in the admirable paintings of the celebrated artist, Baron Leys) the front is of wood, ornamented with carving in the Gothic style, one story projecting over the other, and surmounted by a triangular gable. One would think it had not undergone the slightest alteration since the day it was built. The same small iron knocker hangs upon the old oaken door. There is not the slightest doubt that the same stone forms the threshold, it is so worn and polished; it was formerly a square but has now become nearly a cylinder. The whole aspect of the house is so little changed, that if the first person who dwelt in it should come back to earth today he would easily recognize it. The interior as well as the exterior is unaltered. There are the same straight somber stairs, the same large fireplaces, and gilded leather upon the principal room. Not a stone has been replaced, not a piece of wood removed. The repairs which must have been made in the course of three hundred years, have only served to retain everything in its original state. But what is still more singular, the individuals who have successively occupied this house, and their number must have been considerable, all resembled each other, in their manners and morals. Was it accident, predestination, or the unvarying aspect of the house, continually making the same impression upon its inhabitants, which finally made them nearly identical beings?

The present inhabitant is a basket maker, as was the first, three centuries ago, and as have been all those who have occupied the house between these two periods. They were from the first to the last, people whose ideas were at least half a century behind the times. If we should search the history of this antique dwelling, we should probably find that the biography of one would answer for all. The basket maker who occupied this house in 1530 was named Klaes Dewis—his wife Gertrude. They were, as we have said, at least half a century behind, in their manners, opinions and dress. His neighbours called him the man of the good old times. Although possessed of a moderate fortune and without children, he was such a miser that he would, as the Flemish saying is, “split a match in four pieces,” which is certainly the height of meanness.